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World of Warcraft (DirectX 11)
Our WoW results in the Radeon RX 550 review also looked higher than they needed to be, so we put all of our cards through a couple of different quality levels to dial in an ideal balance.
Right out of the gate, we noticed that our Radeon RX 550 and 460 numbers at a Graphics Quality setting of 4 were lower here than in our RX 550 review. Fortunately, we take screenshots of our test platforms when each game is configured, and discovered that a 4 today means Texture Resolution set to High, 8x Anisotropic Filtering, Projected Textures Enabled, and all of the Effects settings bumped up a notch. Back in April, the same preset represented more conservative options.
Even still, a GeForce GT 1030 averages more than 110 FPS at 1920x1080, sliding past the Radeon RX 550 and nearly matching the RX 460 (with a markedly higher minimum frame rate). The old GeForce GTX 750 Ti beats them both, though.
This aligns well with observations we’ve been making over the past year: mainly, Nvidia jumps out ahead in older DirectX 11 titles, while AMD’s GCN architecture is utilized more effectively under DirectX 12 and Vulkan.
Moving the Graphics Quality slider to 7 has a profound impact on frame rates, knocking the GeForce GT 1030 down to an average of 44 FPS. It continues to beat Radeon RX 550, but trails the more resource-rich RX 460 by a larger margin.
GeForce GTX 750 Ti rolls along merrily roughly 21% faster than the GT 1030. It also starts at around $100, though (while they last). At that point, you’re better off with a GeForce GTX 1050 starting at the same price.
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