In-Game Benchmarks

Now we finally get into the in game performance that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our recently updated benchmark suite that tests 10 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). I also slipped in a few variations on the same games for comparisons like DX11 to DX12, OpenGL to Vulkan, and a couple of games are just tested at their highest setting and lower but still high detail options to show the performance difference when things are turned down slightly. In total, each video card is tested 41 times and that makes for a huge mess of graphs when you put them all together. To help with that I like to start off with these overall playability graphs that take all of the results and give an easier to read the result. I have one for each of the three resolutions and each is broken up into four FPS ranges. Under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, over 30 is playable but not ideal, over 60 is the sweet spot, and then over 120 FPS is for high refresh rate monitors.

So how does the XFX RX580 GTS perform? Well at 1080p all of the games, running at their highest settings mind you, were playable. 10/13 were above the 60 FPS sweet spot and even a few were up in the high refresh rate range. In other words, anything you toss at this card at 1080p is going to play and play well with the settings at or very near the highest settings. At 1440p the result was similar but with more in the 30-59 fps range, you are more likely to have to turn things down just a touch. The at 4k you are going to have to make big adjustments to get some of the games to be playable at all and all will need to be turned down at least a little.

I still have all of our regular graphs showing the actual results as well so don’t worry. I just think only a crazy person like me would sort through them all. A few things to check out though the gap between running ultra and high settings on wildlands shows really well that getting your settings right can be the difference between 30 and 60 FPS. The Doom results hammer in the reason to run Vulkan, especially on AMD cards with the FPS jumping from 86 to 136. Beyond that, the Sapphire did come in ahead by an FPS or two across the board as expected with the RX480 behind. The 1060’s only really outperformed in Wildlands, beyond that the 580 GTS was faster in every other test.