Battlefield 1 (DirectX 12)
In our AMD Radeon RX 550 2GB Review, we tested Battlefield 1 at the game’s Low quality preset in the hope of making 1920x1080 playable. And we did, more or less. But the graphics look so bad down there that we decided to start testing at 1280x720 this time around using Medium detail.
Despite the higher quality, dropping to a lower resolution results in more frames per second, on average. Good thing, too. Although GeForce GT 1030’s GPU sports a base clock rate of 1227 MHz and a typical GPU Boost frequency of 1468 MHz, its 384 CUDA cores, 24 texture units, and 64-bit memory interface fall short of GTX 750 Ti’s 640 CUDA cores, 40 texture units, and 128-bit memory bus. In this game, at least, Nvidia’s latest only beats Intel’s on-die HD Graphics 530.
Jumping up to 1920x 1080 has the anticipated effect of cutting into performance and graphics quality, causing lots of popping and shimmering on barbed wire, especially.
Although it’s redeeming that GeForce GT 1030 achieves a higher minimum frame rate than GTX 750 Ti, it again posts a lower average frame rate than the 2014-era mid-range card. Disappointing also is that AMD’s Radeon RX 550 is almost 24% faster; we were expecting a tighter race between the two cards. But it goes to show how well the Graphics Core Next architecture handles DX12-based gaming, even on a lower-end platform.
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