In-Game benchmarks

Now we finally get into the in game performance and that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our new benchmark suite that tests 8 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). Most of the games tested have been run at the highest detail setting and a mid-range detail setting to get a look at how turning things up hurts performance and to give an idea of if turning detail down from max will be beneficial for frame rates. In total, each video card is tested 42 times and that makes for a huge mess of results 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 RTX 2080 SUPER Founders Edition perform? Well, I would consider the RTX 2070 SUPER to be a solid 1440p card and at 1080p a high refresh rate card. The bump in performance over the RTX 2080 puts the RTX 2080 SUPER up over that with this being a great 1440p high refresh rate card. As well as 1080p. At 1080p 8 of the results were up over 120 FPS and the other 6 were between 60 and 119 FPS. 1440p was similar with 4 in the 120+ FPS range and 9 between 60-119. Now keep in mind I’m not testing the less demanding esports titles, these are new high-end games running at sometimes their highest detail settings and the RTX 2080 SUPER just ate them all up at both resolutions. 4k did show a drop off, but not as significant as other cards and everything at 4k is still playable with a majority being smooth. The RTX 2080 Ti is still THE 4k card, but the RTX 2080 SUPER is edging close to that as well. You might have to turn a game or two down to medium settings but you aren’t going to have touch with gaming at 4k as well. But this is the card for high refresh rate fans. This will push those high refresh rate 1440p monitors.

Digging into the detailed graphs I wanted to see if the trend of the top cards being the 2080 Ti then the 2080 SUPER continued or if any of the AMD cards have disrupted that at all but none of them have. The Radeon VII did come close in some of the tests but at the lower resolutions, the RTX 2080 still pulled ahead. This range of card right now is basically uncontested, though AMD is slowly getting closer. Beyond that, there weren’t really any surprises in the results at all for once!