GTA V, Hitman, Metro & Project Cars
GTA V
The Radeon RX 480’s advantage over the 470 shrinks to 11% in GTA V; both cards can easily be considered playable.
GeForce GTX 1060 and 970 secure the top two positions, which make sense since they’re also pricier than the AMD competition. In fact, the 970 is so much more expensive that you should avoid it altogether, given what Polaris- and Pascal-based boards sell for.
Hitman
Polaris shines in Hitman; the Radeon RX 480 takes first place, 14% faster than RX 470. Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 fares similarly. At $250, though, that’s quite a premium for comparable performance.
You can see how a card like the RX 470 would make a solid upgrade if you’re currently on a 2GB board, or even a first-gen GCN-based card like the R9 280X.
Notice how the 2GB GeForces run in DX11 mode? Both cards crashed at the same point in our benchmark with DirectX 12 active.
Metro: Last Light Redux
Surprise! Radeon RX 480 is 13% faster than RX 470 once more, while both cards trail competing GeForces. Although you’ll find Radeon R9 380s for less than $200, you can see they take quite a performance hit in a graphics-bound game like Metro. In this case, it’s worth paying more for a playable experience, particularly if anti-aliasing and maxed-out settings are important to you.
Project CARS
It looks like a more taxing anti-aliasing method helps close the gap between AMD’s and Nvidia’s graphics cards compared to past reviews. On this page of our GeForce GTX 1060 review, Nvidia’s latest enjoyed a 50% lead over Radeon RX 480. That gap is down to 19% as we increase the graphics workload.
Meanwhile, Radeon RX 480 is 12% quicker than RX 470, which does deliver playable performance through our benchmark replay.
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