GeForce & Radeon 1080p & 1440p Gaming Performance Roundup

[PAGETITLE=Games: AC Valhalla, Borderlands 3, Destiny 2, Monster Hunter...][Top Ad] It's been some time since we've taken a good look at 1080p and 1440p gaming performance, so with AMD's Radeon RX 6700 XT and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 having been released, now seems like a great time to get current with the latest drivers and game updates. As is likely obvious by now, this article is going to focus on 1080p and 1440 gaming, with 11 graphics cards being tested across ten game titles (and synthetics). We're currently working on a follow-up to this article that will shift the focus to 3440x1440 ultrawide and 4K performance, as well as another that will be laser-focused on ray tracing. If you're in the market for a new graphics card, you're no doubt aware that the industry is suffering from chip shortages, and thus store shelves are largely empty. It's for that reason that writing this kind of content right now doesn't feel fulfilling, because the chances of you finding the exact GPU you want is going to be stupidly tough. But, if you do happen to find a model in stock that fits your budget, our benchmark results here should help you decide one way or another whether you should pull the trigger. Before jumping into our test results, let's quickly go over AMD's and NVIDIA's GPU lineups. To give some extra perspective, these tables also include last-gen models. AMD's Radeon Gaming GPU Lineup Cores Base MHz Peak FP32 Memory Bandwidth TDP Price RX 6900 XT 5,120 2,015 23 TFLOPS 16 GB 1 512 GB/s 300W $999 RX 6800 XT 4,608 2,015 20.74 TFLOPS 16 GB 1 512 GB/s 300W $649 RX 6800 3,840 1,815 16.17 TFLOPS 16 GB 1 512 GB/s 250W $579 RX 6700 XT 2,560 2,321 13.21 TFLOPS 12 GB 1 384 GB/s 230W $479 RX 5700 XT 2,560 1,605 9.75 TFLOPS 8 GB 1 448 GB/s 225W $399 RX 5700 2,304 1,465 7.95 TFLOPS 8 GB 1 448 GB/s 180W $349 RX 5600 XT 2,304 1,375 7.19 TFLOPS 6 GB 1 288 GB/s 150W $289 RX 5600 2,048 1,375 6.39 TFLOPS 6 GB 1 288 GB/s 150W $279 RX 5500 XT 1,408 1,717 5.2 TFLOPS 8 GB 1 224 GB/s 130W $199 Notes 1 GDDR6 Architecture: RX 6000 = RDNA2; RX 5000 = RDNA AMD's GPU lineup is interesting for a few reasons, but a big one is the fact that the last-gen parts slide in cleanly behind the new RDNA2-based parts. In other words, AMD's current-gen RDNA2 cards have so far only catered to the high-end crowd, with pricing starting at $479 SRP, while the previous-gen RDNA cards take care of the rest, topping out at $399 SRP. With RDNA2, AMD made great improvements to its architecture, making those cards the first Radeons to officially support accelerated ray tracing. As we'll see later, the company also did well in improving RDNA's power efficiency. As for NVIDIA: NVIDIA's GeForce Gaming GPU Lineup Cores Base MHz Peak FP32 Memory Bandwidth TDP SRP RTX 3090 10,496 1,400 35.6 TFLOPS 24GB 1 936 GB/s 350W $1,499 RTX 3080 8,704 1,440 29.7 TFLOPS 10GB 1 760 GB/s 320W $699 RTX 3070 5,888 1,500 20.4 TFLOPS 8GB 2 448 GB/s 220W $499 RTX 3060 Ti 4,864 1,670 16.2 TFLOPS 8GB 2 448 GB/s 200W $399 RTX 3060 3,584 1,780 12.7 TFLOPS 12GB 2 360 GB/s 170W $329 RTX 2080 Ti 4,352 1,350 13.4 TFLOPS 11GB 2 616 GB/s 250W $1,199 RTX 2080 S 3,072 1,650 11.1 TFLOPS 8GB 2 496 GB/s 250W $699 RTX 2070 S 2,560 1,605 9.1 TFLOPS 8GB 2 448 GB/s 215W $499 RTX 2060 S 2,176 1,470 7.2 TFLOPS 8GB 2 448 GB/s 175W $399 RTX 2060 1,920 1,365 6.4 TFLOPS 6GB 2 336 GB/s 160W $299 GTX 1660 Ti 1,536 1,500 5.5 TFLOPS 6GB 2 288 GB/s 120W $279 GTX 1660 S 1,408 1,530 5.0 TFLOPS 6GB 2 336 GB/s 125W $229 GTX 1660 1,408 1,530 5 TFLOPS 6GB 3 192 GB/s 120W $219 GTX 1650 S 1,280 1,530 4.4 TFLOPS 4GB 2 192 GB/s 100W $159 GTX 1650 896 1,485 3 TFLOPS 4GB 3 128 GB/s 75W $149 Notes 1 GDDR6X; 2 GDDR6; 3 GDDR5 RTX 3000 = Ampere; GTX/RTX 1600/2000 = Turing NVIDIA has so far released five Ampere-based GeForces, ranging from the $329 SRP RTX 3060 up to the $1,499 SRP RTX 3090. Interestingly, that lowbie RTX 3060 has a bigger frame buffer than the middle three SKUs, making it an appealing GPU not just for gaming, but also creation (and yes, we have fresh benchmarks in the works for that angle, as well.) Whereas AMD has just gained accelerated ray tracing support, the current Ampere-based GeForce generation marks NVIDIA's second go, and it really shows. Those who care deeply about ray tracing performance need to go green. As mentioned before, this article focuses on 1080p and 1440p gaming performance. If you're curious about performance specific to ray tracing, we'll be dedicating an article to it soon. Also, while we've tested only 11 GPUs in our standard game collection, eight more have been added to the synthetics, found on the next page. Benchmarking PC & Testing Methodology. Techgage Gaming GPU Test PC Processor AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (3.4GHz Base, 4.9GHz Turbo, 16C/32T) Motherboard ASRock X570 TAICHI (EFI: P4.00 01/19/2021) Memory G.SKILL TridentZ Royal (F4-3600C16-8GTRG) 8GB x 2 Operates at DDR4-3600 16-16-16 (1.35V) AMD Graphics AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (16GB; Adrenalin 21.3.1) AMD Radeon RX 6800 (16GB; Adrenalin 21.3.1) AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT (12GB; Adrenalin 21.3.1) AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (8GB; Adrenalin 21.3.1) NVIDIA Graphics NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (10GB; GeForce 461.72) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (8GB; GeForce 461.72) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (8GB; GeForce 461.72) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (12GB; GeForce 461.72) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER (8GB; GeForce 461.72) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER (8GB; GeForce 461.72) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB; GeForce 461.72) Storage GeForce: WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB (SATA 6Gbps) Radeon: WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB (SATA 6Gbps) Power Supply Corsair RM850x (850W) Chassis Fractal Design Define C Mid-tower Cooling Corsair iCUE H115i RGB PLATINUM (240mm) Et cetera Windows 10 Pro build 19042.867 (20H2) All of our testing is done using the latest versions (at the time of benchmarking) of Windows (10, 20H2) and all of the games tested. Because some games update frequently, our goal is to always clear through our chosen set of GPUs before any of our tested games manage to drop a new update. If an update does roll out, we quickly sanity check a previous result to make sure performance remains the same. Here are some other general guidelines we follow: Disruptive services are disabled; eg: Search, Cortana, User Account Control, Defender, etc. Overlays and / or other extras are not installed with the graphics driver. Vsync is disabled at the driver level (and in any tested game). OSes are never transplanted from one machine to another. We validate system configurations before kicking off any test run. Testing doesn’t begin until the PC is idle (keeps a steady minimum wattage). All tests are repeated until there is a high degree of confidence in the results. We do not use outdated data. Performance numbers seen here are the result of fresh testing. Games Tested & Vendor Neutrality. This article includes testing with nine standard games, and one specific to high-performance esports gaming. We wanted to include Rainbow Six Siege as a second esports title, but a recent update causes the game to use a random texture detail setting instead of the one specified, which is obviously a problem. To round our testing out, we have a number of synthetic tests on the next page, thanks to UL and Unigine. Here's the full breakdown of our tested games and synthetic tests: Assassin's Creed Valhalla - AMD Ryzen partner Borderlands 3 - AMD Radeon partner Death Stranding Destiny 2 Horizon Zero Dawn Monster Hunter World Tom Clancy's The Division 2 - AMD Radeon partner Total War: Three Kingdoms Watch Dogs Legion - NVIDIA GeForce partner eSport: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive eSport: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege - NVIDIA GeForce partner Synthetic: UL 3DMark & VRMark Synthetic: Unigine Superposition Note: You can download all of the tested setting images at once here (ZIP, 10MB). Assassin's Creed Valhalla. This article marks the first time we've tested with Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and we're fairly surprised with some of the results. In the past, NVIDIA seemed to generally have an edge in AC titles, but AMD's Radeon performs strongly here. It's not only with the current generation of cards, either; even the last-gen RX 5700 XT performs great against its competition. If your aim is 60 FPS, then either the RX 5700 XT or RTX 3060 Ti will deliver it at ultra high detail levels. Valhalla has a decent assortment of graphics settings to tweak, so you will have options if you are struggling to hit 60 FPS. One option worth noting is Resolution Scale, which lets you render the game at a lower resolution than your native to improve performance at the expense of some sharpness. On some GPUs, this option may default to 70% (something that bit us during testing). Borderlands 3. AMD's Radeons continue to perform great against the NVIDIA competition in Borderlands 3, which isn't much of a surprise given what we've seen in the past. This is one game we've previously tested resizeable BAR with, and we can say that's worth turning on if you have supported hardware. Note, though, that reBAR wasn't enabled for any of our tested configurations. Since NVIDIA now supports reBAR on its current-gen GPUs, we're tempted to explore before / after performance in a wider variety of games soon. Death Stranding. Death Stranding is arguably one of the best-looking games in this lineup of ten titles, and thankfully, it doesn't require a powerhouse GPU to run. Even at 1440p, the smallest GPU in this tested lineup could hit 77 FPS average, and 59 FPS low. That means the higher-end SKUs would have no trouble running this game with good frame rates at 4K. There are many different battles you can look at here, since the cards tested range from $329 up to $699. Overall, AMD's Radeons once again perform strongly here, with even the RX 5700 XT outpacing the RTX 3060, at both resolutions. Destiny 2. After falling a bit behind AMD in the previous games, NVIDIA strikes back in Destiny 2. As we've seen in the past, AMD's GPUs suffer a bit with percentile lows...

GeForce & Radeon 1080p & 1440p Gaming Performance Roundup

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Rob Williams