NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER At 1080p, 1440p & Ultrawide

Total War: Three Kingdoms

Total War is a well-regarded strategy series that also happens to be great when acting as a GPU benchmark. Many of the games in this series simply bog modern rigs down at high-end settings, and really, Three Kingdoms is no different. That said, the developers made it a point to focus on optimization with this game, but because the game is so graphically rich, you still need a powerful system if you want to eke as much detail out of the game as possible.

Three Kingdoms might actually be our most grueling test, with the 2080 Ti barely passing 60 FPS at ultrawide, and the 2080 SUPER falling about 10 FPS behind that. The 2080S delivers very well at 1080p and 1440p, exceeding 60 FPS in the latter, and coming close to it for minimums. At top detail, older GPUs really begin to show their age.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Some games in our test suite are great for punishing GPUs, but CS: GO isn’t one of them. This game gives the impression that it’d run well on a toaster, which bodes well for those looking to hit super-high frame rates. We’re talking 200+, not just 144Hz. At 1080p and 1440p, all of the tested GPUs hit at least 144 FPS, with most exceeding 200 quite easily. There seems to be a clear bottleneck here, with the Source engine itself likely to be the cause (eg: Siege can go above 300 FPS), since the Intel 9900K we tested with is currently one of the best gaming CPU on the market.

For 4K gaming, almost all of the GPUs here will hit or come close to 144Hz, but of course, if you want guaranteed 144Hz, you will want to opt for a GPU that has enough performance to ensure it.

Rainbow Six: Siege

Whereas CS: GO caps at around 235 FPS, Siege has no problems going much higher. At 1440p, the 2080 SUPER hits nearly 240 FPS, and exceeds 300 FPS at 1080p. At 4K, the strong performance continues, with the 2080 SUPER hitting 130 FPS.

Not every competitive gamer expects to hit such sky-high frame rates, so it’s at least nice to see that modest GPUs are still capable of delivering well over 60 FPS without an issue. That’s even the case at ultrawide, with the lowly RX 590 coming seriously close to 60 FPS. For latency-sensitive gameplay though, you’ll definitely want to go faster if you can.