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Looking at the 1440p ultra results, we see the EVGA RTX 2080 Super XC Hybrid averaged 105.8 fps across all nine games. The air-cooled Asus ROG Strix 2080 Super OC averaged 105.9 fps while the RTX 2080 Super Founders Edition averaged 104.9 fps—a virtual tie in overall performance. Every game averages more than 60 fps, and several are over 100 fps, allowing for high refresh gaming at these settings.
AMD’s current flagship Radeon RX 5700 XT holds its own, managing 90 fps on average with the factory overclocked ASRock EX 5700 XT Taichi, and 86.8 fps with the reference 5700 XT. Both are well behind any 2080 Super, but they're nearly tied with AMD's slightly older Radeon VII. Obviously, AMD's RX 5700 series competes on price and not just raw performance, and until Big Navi arrives this is AMD's best solution.
We should also note that all GPUs are tested using DirectX 12 in Borderlands 3, The Division 2, Metro Exodus, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider—and the Vulkan API for Red Dead Redemption 2 and Strange Brigade. We mention this because in many games that have DirectX 11 as an option, they actually run slightly better on Nvidia cards in that mode. Borderlands 3 in particular is typically around 10% faster in DX11 on Nvidia GPUs at 1440p and 4K, but even Division 2 and Metro Exodus see a modest 3-5% uplift. And of course, for games like Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, DX12 is required if you want to use ray tracing on an RTX card.
We felt it best to standardize on one API for each game, as it helps simplify testing. Otherwise, we'd need to check performance in every API offered for each game to determine the best choice for each GPU at each resolution and setting. That increases the number of test runs and thus testing time by 66%, plus we'd need a lengthy explanation saying which API was used on each GPU at each setting. Besides, long term we expect more games to begin using DX12 and/or Vulkan exclusively, especially once the next generation of consoles arrive with ray tracing hardware support.
9 Game Average
Borderlands 3
The Division 2
Far Cry 5
Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers
Forza Horizon 4
Metro: Exodus
Red Dead Redemption 2
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Strange Brigade
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