GPU Testbench Upgrade & Performance 2018-2019

GPU Testbench Upgrade

The hardware elves have been to visit us way in advance of Christmas this year. That means we’ve had the hardware and the time to overhaul our test benches, software, and methodology once more! That means a faster test system to ensure we get the best out of what we’re benchmarking. Furthermore, it’s a great time to re-test older review hardware, introduce new software tests, and generally refine our processes.

I’ve spent the last few weeks between other reviews, working this out, and it has been worth it. We’ve ditched a few of the synthetic benchmark runs, as there was little to learn from three 3DMark charts that we couldn’t learn from one. The same goes for Unigine, now only running the 4K Optimised benchmark. However, good news for gamers, as we’ve refreshed our titles, added more resolutions, and increased the overall graphics profiles to High when we used to favour Medium.

Features

Now, we have three resolutions (again), spanning 1080p, 1440p, and 2160p (4K). Since modern GPUs are just so damn powerful even at 4K, we’ve upped the profiles to High. Why not Ultra? I still thing Ultra is a world of diminishing returns, and anywhere from Normal to High is as the developer intended. Plus 4K Ultra on new releases? Forget about 60 FPS. Plus Ultra often enabled too many post-processing features and GPU specific features that we would like to negate. If a card is hitting 200 FPS at High, then you as a reader know that Ultra isn’t out of the question for you.

Hardware Used

We’ve got the best and brightest of the AMD and Nvidia catalogue where possible. Most of these cards have already been reviewed by us over the last year or so. However, since we’ve changed resolutions, graphics settings, motherboard, processors, drivers, and in many cases the games, the old results simply are not comparable in any way to the new ones. Please read the “how we test” page next to familiarise yourself with what we do.