Synthetic Benchmarks
Okay, to start off our testing I always like to take a look at a few of our preferred synthetic benchmarks. They don’t really translate to an exact FPS for in game performance, but they are always very consistent and a great way to compare from card to card. I of course always start off with 3DMark using the Fire Strike benchmark on all three of its settings that represent 1080p, 1440p, and 4k testing. Because we are testing both the GTX 1050 and the GTX 1050 Ti today, I have both results highlighted. I apologise for the Ti results being a little hard to read. Anyhow, my big focus was on the two new cards and how the RX 460 compares to the GTX 1050. Well in Fire Strike the Ti pulled ahead in the performance setting by a relatively small amount but it was enough to fit a few of the older cards in between like the old R9 280. Both were well above the RX 460 though. In Time Spy, the new DX12 3DMark benchmark the results were similar. The two 1050’s were back with the GTX 780 that struggles in DX12 but still above the RX 460. The 470, 480, and 1060 were all well ahead of the 1050’s.
Next, I tested with Unigine’s Valley Benchmark, this is the closest any of our synthetic benchmarks are to being an actual game. This test gives us a good look at performance in Unigine based games and the GTX 1050 was 15 FPS ahead of the RX 460 and a lot close to the RX 470 in this benchmark.
Next, I tested using the Catzilla benchmark at all three popular resolutions. Here the 1050 Ti had a little more of a lead on the GTX 1050, especially in the higher resolutions with its higher vRAM and higher CUDA count. Once again the RX 460 was a lot farther behind than I expected compared to the 1050.
For our last synthetic test, I take a quick look at potential VR performance using Steams VR benchmark. This test gives us an idea of about where the cards would stand and if they can handle any VR gaming at all. Given the low number of the RX 460, I wasn’t expecting much but I was surprised to see that both cards fall into the yellow section meaning both can play some VR games though admittedly, they are both way on the low side of that category.
