eTeknix GPU Retest and Testbench Upgrade 2018

GPU Test Bench Upgrade That's right, we finally got around to a big upgrade on our GPU test bench. I was hoping to do this sooner, but recent launches didn't provide me with enough free time to retest a lot of graphics cards. We've moved on from our once brilliant but comparatively slow these days X99 test bench. With Z370 and the Intel Core i7-8700K proving to be a gaming beast, we had to start using it properly. We switched to the new CPU as we knew it had everything we need to push GPUs to their limits. In the process, we obviously swapped the motherboard to the new Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 Z370. Furthermore, we've upgraded to 3000 MHz 32GB of DDR4 memory, ensuring there are no performance issues there either. Graphics Settings Another big change is that our settings used have been heavily changed. Before we would run everything at ultra. This has now changed to Normal/Medium graphics profiles for games. This is now in line with the same settings we use for system reviews, motherboards, CPUs and other review sections. This means we can easily cross-reference the performance of any one review to any other. Out With The Old In With The New Of course, this change also meant that all of our old figures are now completely useless. With that in mind, we grabbed the lastest 10 series GPUs from Nvidia, the 5xx and Vega cards from AMD, and put them through their paces on the new test bench. The performance on all of them was a lot higher than when they were originally tested. Update All The Things! Everything is now up to date. The latest version of Windows 10, the latest GPU drivers, all the latest game updates, it's all taken care of. Of course, this makes sense, giving you a better idea of how this hardware performs today, not how it performed 6 months, 12 months, or even more ago. Overclocked A gaming system should perform the best it possibly can. To reflect this, we've locked that Intel Core i7-8700K to 5 GHz, ensuring it never becomes a bottleneck or hinders the performance of the GPU. Specifications Motherboard – Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 Z370 Processor – Intel Core i7-8700K @ 5.0 GHz RAM – Crucial Ballistix Gaming 32GB (4 x 8GB) 3000 MHz CPU Cooler – Noctua NH-D15S Power Supply – Be Quiet Power Zone 1000W Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Open Air Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 64-bit GPUs Tested AMD VEGA 56 ASUS GTX 1060 ASUS STRIX RX 560 Colorful iGame GTX 1050 Ti Gigabyte G1 GTX 1080 Gigabyte GTX 1050 MSI Forzr VI GTX 1070 Ti Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti PNY GTX 1070 Powercolor RX 570 Powercolor RX 580 Sapphire VEGA 64 Test Your One Hardware? As you'll see on our "How We Test" page, we encourage you to not just look at how one GPU compares to any other. I would rather see you test your own system if possible, and see how much of a performance improvement any hardware would be for you. Of course, you may not have the same system as us, but we hope to provide a best-case scenario with our new tech bench. Of course, many if not all of the GPUs listed in this article have already been reviewed on our old test bench. You'll find those review here. This is our base set of results, allowing us to be ready for the inevitable launch of new GPUs in the near future. How We Test Testing Procedure Here at eTeknix, we endeavour to disclose vital information regarding the benchmarking process so that readers can quantify the results and attempt to replicate them using their hardware. When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of graphics card, CPU, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there's always a margin for error when using any software. Therefore, your experience may vary. Testing Your Own System Links are provided below, as well as the settings we use. We encourage you to not just look at how one product compares to any other, but how it compares to your own. If you're looking to build a new system, you should benchmark your current PC using our benchmarks and settings where possible. You should then look at the percentage improvement from your current hardware to the hardware we tested to give you a ballpark figure of how much an upgrade this will provide you with. Graphics Card Test System Motherboard – Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 Z370 Processor – Intel Core i7-8700K @ 5.0 GHz RAM – Crucial Ballistix Gaming 32GB (4 x 8GB) 3000 MHz CPU Cooler – Noctua NH-D15S Power Supply – Be Quiet Power Zone 1000W Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Open Air Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 64-bit Additional Hardware Killawatt style electricity usage meter wall plug Precision Gold N05CC Decibel meter Gaming Any technology which favours either AMD or NVIDIA is disabled where possible. More specifically, this refers to PhysX, Hairworks and similar technologies. Additionally, we also disable all forms of AA, including FXAA, that were not automatically applied by the profiles stated below to gauge performance levels which aren't impacted by sophisticated AA wherever possible. V-Sync is always disabled in our testing, as is FreeSync and G-Sync technologies or similar. Graphics card power usage set to optimised or balance, and the system power mode set to High Performance within Windows and the available GPU driver software. Identical settings are used for all resolutions unless otherwise stated. Games and Settings Used Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Pure Hair Off Deus Ex (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Ghost Recon: Wildlands (Uplay) Medium Preset Turf Effects Off Far Cry Primal (Uplay) Normal Preset Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download) FireStrike (1080p) Benchmark FireStrike Extreme (1440p) Benchmark FireStrike Ultra (2160p) Benchmark Unigine Superposition (download) 1080p Extreme Benchmark 4k Optimised Benchmark HWMonitor (download) Noise Everyone has a reasonable noise level preference when it comes to comes to components on a computer. Some can handle all fans at 100% load to keep temperatures down; some want an entirely silent computer. To accurately gauge the noise output of a graphics card, we position a Precision Gold N05CC one meter above our open-air test bench and take an average reading at idle and load. Noise levels in your own system or an enclosed system will likely be lower than this. Power Consumption We take power readings during idle state with no background applications running. Then again at 50% completion of the Unigine Superposition benchmark, using the average as the final published result. Temperatures We take temperature readings after 10 minutes of desktop idle with no background programs running, then take the recorded maximum delivered from Unigine Superposition after a 4K optimised run, confirming the numbers are accurate with HWMonitor. Furthermore, the ambient temperature is always kept +/- 1c from 21c. 3DMark & Unigine Standard Extreme Ultra Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme Unigine Superposition 4K Optimised DirectX12 Gaming Benchmarks Deus Ex: Mankind Divided 1080p 2160p Rise of the Tomb Raider 1080p 2160p DirectX11 Gaming Benchmarks Far Cry Primal 1080p 2160p Ghost Recon: Wildlands 1080p 2160p Final Thoughts Prices AMD VEGA 56 - £599 ASUS GTX 1060 - £329.99 ASUS STRIX RX 560 - £148.10 Colorful iGame GTX 1050 Ti - £199.99 Gigabyte G1 GTX 1080 - £519.99 Gigabyte GTX 1050 - £128.99 MSI Forzr VI GTX 1070 Ti - £479.34 Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti - £749.99 PNY GTX 1070 - £510 Powercolor RX 570 - £259.99 Powercolor RX 580 - £319.99 Sapphire VEGA 64 - £675.36 Overview It's been fun blowing the dust off of these cards. We love benchmarking and showing you the performance of as much hardware as possible. Obviously, we didn't oversaturate the charts today, as we want to leave breathing room for anything new in the near future. Of course, on the new test bench, every card that was retested exceeded the results we scored in previous benchmarks. All New Remember, these results can not be compared to any previous GPU reviews we have performed. The change of graphics settings has a huge impact and scores are much higher with the settings used. Furthermore, the changes in resolution, drivers, processor, overclocking, memory, the motherboard and more all have a very significant impact also. What Comes Next? We know about the same as you do at this time. We know that AMD and Nvidia are cooking up their next generation, but we've yet to lay eyes on them in real life. Of course, this market moves fast, and rumours are building, so hopefully, we'll have something else on our test bench soon enough and see how the current gen holds up against its impending replacements. Back to the Benchmarking We've recently overhauled our motherboard testing, CPU testing, memory testing and more. All the changes will be worth it, giving you results that are more easily understood, analysed, and comparable with other reviews from ourselves. Stay tuned, you know we've always got a lot more cool stuff to bring you! Which GPU Are You Using? Are you rocking one of the GPUs in these benchmarks? How does your system compare? Feel free to post your benchmark results in the comments below!