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 did the Aorus GTX 1060 9Gbps do? The 1080p results weren’t a huge surprise, the GTX 1060 did very well at this resolution and with a great overclock and the faster memory this one did great as well. One of the games averaged over 120 FPS but most came in with an average of 60 FPS or higher. There were 4 games that did come in the 30-59 FPS range though so you will still have to keep an eye on settings and adjust as you go to get the smoothest gameplay. What GTX 1060 isn’t really known for great 1440p performance but all of our tests were playable, with half coming in the 60 FPS or higher range. Then at 4k, the performance dropped considerably with just one over 60 FPS, 8 in the 30-59 FPS range, and 5 not playable at all. Basically, 1080p is ideal but if you end up gaming at 1440p it is at least still going to be playable.

As always I also include all of the actual performance graphs as well for all of you who are crazy enough to be digging through them like I am. So what was interesting? Well, first I was flipping through checking out how the RX 480/580 and the original GTX 1060’s compared. In a lot of the games the results were similar to the synthetic benchmarks where the RX 580 and the 1060 9Gbps were really close, but just like our Unigine tests I also saw a few games where the performance had dropped from the last time I tested the GTX 1060 like in Wildlands. Overall this card performed better than the RX580 at 1440p and 4k but the edge went to the RX 580 at 1080p just barely. The DX11 vs DX12 tests gave a small bump in performance on DX12 and OpenGL vs Vulkan have Vulkan with an addition 12 FPS. As expected dropping down to high settings from ultra was the difference between 21 FPS in Wildlands and 17 in Dues Ex. Wildlands also came in literally a hair away from 60 FPS, it would have been another in the 60 FPS in the 1080p graph with a fraction of an FPS more.