s2fix mod reportedly boosts Total War: Shogun 2 performance by up to 136%

A community-developed mod called s2fix reportedly provides significant performance gains for Total War: Shogun 2. Developed by Meisgoot312, the open-source mod works for both the original 2011 release and the Complete Edition.

Total War: Shogun 2 · official art via IGDB

The developer says the mod addresses CPU bottlenecks by using multithreaded draw-call submission through DirectX 11 deferred contexts, improved task distribution, optimized CPU thread placement, and more efficient caching. Version 0.2.3 specifically targets the campaign map by using improved caching to reduce repeated calculations for character appearances and faction relationships.

Developer benchmarks show battle frame rates increasing by approximately 50%, with one test moving from 142 FPS to 210 FPS. In that test, GPU utilization reportedly rose from about 40% to between 70% and 80%. The mod also reportedly increases the video memory allowance from around 3GB to nearly 4GB. On the campaign map, the developer reports a frame rate increase of approximately 136%.

Users need DirectX 11 to use the mod. While testing has focused on NVIDIA drivers, reports say the mod is compatible with several gameplay modifications. Performance gains depend on a user's hardware, and systems already limited by the GPU may see smaller improvements than the developer's reported numbers. Independent testing across various hardware configurations remains limited.

Background On October 13, the Complete Edition was released before being pulled from sale due to bugs and performance problems. Our earlier story