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Results: Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, The Witcher 3, and WoW
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon (DX11)
The only reason we use Ghost Recon’s Very High detail setting is to avoid the Ultra preset’s Turf Effects option, which creates an unfair comparison between GeForce and Radeon cards.
Clearly, the GeForce RTX 2080 has performance to spare if you’d like to crank graphics quality up even higher, though. It’s only a bummer that a 4% lead over GeForce GTX 1080 Ti isn’t particularly inspiring.
An average of 54.1 FPS falls just short of what we’d consider a smooth experience at 4K with quality settings cranked up. Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080 Ti forces a similar admission. You can splurge on GeForce RTX 2080 Ti for the ultimate experience at 3840x2160, drop to 2560x1440 and maintain the gorgeous-looking visuals, or dial back the quality settings to get a better frame rate at 4K. It’s a tough balancing act, to be sure.
The Witcher 3 (DX11)
You don’t need a GeForce RTX 2080 or 2080 Ti to enjoy The Witcher 3 at 2560x1440 using the game’s Ultra quality preset. We’d be perfectly happy with a GeForce GTX 1070 Ti for $400 in an older DirectX 11 title like this one.
Never mind the fact that The Witcher 3 is more than three years old; it remains one of the most picturesque games in our suite. Up until now, we considered the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti’s 66 FPS smooth enough for an enjoyable experience. But this is one of the few scenarios where dropping the extra $100 on GeForce RTX 2080 pays off.
Bonus: World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth (DX12)
WoW is another game that’d likely benefit more from a CPU upgrade than an $800 graphics card. However, since Battle for Azeroth added DirectX 12 support to its custom engine, we decided it’d be fun to test the game using its most taxing detail settings with 4x MSAA enabled.
If you’re already using a high-end Pascal-based graphics card, Blizzard’s latest expansion doesn’t get much faster from Turing at this resolution. Just the fact that GeForce RTX 2080 lands on top is enough to demonstrate a severe platform bottleneck.
Switching to 4K and disabling MSAA has little effect on the top five finishers. GeForce RTX 2080 appears to match Titan V, beating GeForce GTX 1080 Ti by almost 4%.
30-year-old Pentium FDIV bug tracked down in the silicon — Ken Shirriff takes the microscope to Intel's first-ever recall
Cyberpunk 2077 update 2.2 claims to improve Arrow Lake performance by up to 33%, theoretically matching the Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Empyrean Technology gives control to CEC after U.S. blacklisting — China’s top developer of chip design systems hands reins to state-owned firm
