Total War Warhammer 3’s 9.0 update delivers a dramatic speed boost

Expect much faster end-turn times with Total War: Warhammer III’s 9.0 update

Total War: Warhammer 3 is about to get a big upgrade. Patch 9.0 arrives on September 24th and will bring new content (Free-LC), support for the game’s Lords of the End Times DLC, and several small and large game reworks. However, one of the game’s most impactful changes is buried within update 9.0’s patch notes. Total War: Warhammer 3 is getting an end-turn speed boost.

Patch 9.0 is expected to shorten campaign end-turn times by up to 30%. This is thanks to a wave of optimisations that all add up to deliver a dramatic end-turn time reduction. In effect, this change is similar to Total War: Warhammer 2’s “Potion of Speed” update, which reduced end-turn times by up to 60%. With Total War: Warhammer 3 having a much larger map and many more factions, update 9.0’s speed boost will be a welcome one. This is especially true for PC gamers with lower-end systems.

With update 9.0 bringing the game’s Lords of the End Times DLC and a lot of new content, it is great to see improved performance on Creative Assembly’s radar. I expected the game’s increased complexity to make end-turn times longer. Thankfully, the opposite is true.

End-turn Performance Improvement

• Reduced campaign end-turn times by up to 30%:
  • Improved armoury management execution cost
  • Improved execution cost of looping through unit abilities
  • Batching of settlement prefab visual changes
  • Rework how the VFX system is issuing commands which results in a reduced overall CPU cost and performance improvement
  • Optimised faction influence map construction
  • Optimised worker thread tasks granularity
  • Other various small micro-optimisations

TAA improvements

Creative Assembly has also worked to improve Total War: Warhammer 3’s TAA. Gamers can now expect less flickering on the game’s campaign map, less motion blur for siege towers and siege rams, and reduced “ghosting and blur issues on units”. These changes will make Total War: Warhammer 3 look better than before. That said, the difference will be hard to spot unless you were aware of these issues.

Honestly, I think it is a shame that Total War: Warhammer 3 has never received modern upscaler support. DLSS, FSR 4, and XeSS are all missing from Total War: Warhammer 3. While the game’s old DirectX 11 renderer could be blamed for this, it remains a frustration given how demanding this game is when maxed out and how poor its native AA can be at times.

While patch 9.0 will not increase your framerates, it should give PC gamers reduced end-turn times and notably improved TAA. Those are both welcome upgrades. Even if you aren’t interested in the game’s new DLCs, update 9.0 has some neat additions.

Join the discussion on Total War: Warhammer 3’s 9.0 update on the OC3D Forums.