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.

I don’t normally include our overall performance graphs for multi-card testing but I thought I would try it out. So in 1080p the pair has a few games in the 30-59 FPS range but just as many in the 120+ range with most being 60 FPS or more. The 1440p results are similar as well showing how games without Crossfire support are a drastic change in performance compared to the games that do have it. Then at 4k, most games are unplayable with just a few up in the 60 FPS range.

Really the main thing to keep an eye on with the detailed graphs is what games support Crossfire. When I updated our test suite a lot of the older titles that didn’t have Crossfire support were dropped but Deus Ex, Theif, and Doom both don’t support it. Ashes of the singularity does but you have to run a specific multi-GPU mode. The same goes for Hitman in DX12 as well but that gets complicated as well, you have to turn off Crossfire on your PC then turn on the multi-GPU mode in that specific game. Most people won’t do that and if they do it will just be turning on the multi-GPU mode but that likes to cause crashes if you still have Crossfire turned on. When things are working performance ranges as well, most of the games still com in behind the GTX 1080 FE but a few like Sniper Elite and Total War: Rome II did perform about on par with the overclocked 11Gbps GTX 1080 though that performance drops more as you go up in resolution.