Capcom started 2019 off to a good start with two hits — a remake of the classic game Resident Evil 2 and a continuation of the popular slasher series Devil May Cry 5. Both games gained great popularity among a wide audience and pleased with an excellent picture. We shared our opinion about games in thematic reviews, now let’s talk about performance and some technical nuances.

We will conduct a comparative test of AMD and NVIDIA video cards in three resolutions, from Full HD to 4K. Since both projects support DirectX 11 and DirectX 12, at the same time we will compare the results in different versions of the API. Based on the results, we will determine the optimal graphic solutions for different modes. In this review, there will be no tests of overclocked video cards, only at standard frequencies. But even without this, you can get a complete picture of the performance of different solutions. As an extra, there will be some 4K comparison videos at the end.

Test participants

The testing will involve solutions from the top, middle and budget segments, including new generation models and old video cards. All of them were brought to standard frequencies to match the reference versions.

NVIDIA’s flagship model is the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition reference graphics card. Recall that for older Turing, the Founders Edition option implies a slight boost in Boost.

The ASUS ROG-STRIX-RTX2080-8G-GAMING graphics card replaces the regular GeForce RTX 2080.

There is the flagship of the old generation — GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in the reference version.

The older solutions of the Pascal family are also represented by the MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Gaming 8G video card. It was tested only in Resident Evil, by the time Devil May Cry 5 was tested, it was no longer on hand.

The new GeForce GTX 1660 Ti series is represented by the ASUS ROG-STRIX-GTX1660TI-O6G-GAMING.

Not without a popular representative of the middle class in the face of GeForce GTX 1060 from Gigabyte.

AMD’s flagship graphics accelerator is currently the Radeon VII.

The younger brother of the newcomer is the Radeon RX Vega 64.

Radeon RX 580 and Radeon RX 480 will replace ASUS ROG-STRIX-RX580-O8G-GAMING with appropriate frequency correction.

The full list of participants is below:

• GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB Founders Edition;
• GeForce RTX 2080 8GB;
• GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB;
• GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB;
• GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB
• GeForce GTX 1060 6GB;
• GeForce GTX 780 Ti;
• GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB;
• GeForce GTX 960 2GB;
• Radeon VII 16GB
• Radeon RX Vega 64 8GB;
• Radeon RX 580 8GB;
• Radeon RX 480 8GB.

Characteristics of test participants

The table shows the official specifications for GPU frequencies. The graphs show the full frequency range, including brief Boost peaks. This notation is used both for NVIDIA solutions and for AMD representatives.

test stand

The test bench configuration is as follows:

• processor: Intel Core i7-6950X (3.0@4.2 GHz);
• cooler: Noctua NH-D15 (two NF-A15 PWM fans, 140 mm, 1300 rpm);
• motherboard: MSI X99S MPower (Intel X99);
• memory: G.Skill F4-3200C14Q-32GTZ (4×8 GB, DDR4-3200, CL14-14-14-35);
• system drive: Kingston SSDNow KC400 (256 GB, SATA 6Gb/s);
• secondary drive: WD Red 3TB WD30EFRX (3 TB, SATA 6Gb/s, 5400 rpm);
• power supply: Raidmax Cobra RX-800AE (800 W);
• monitor: ASUS PB278Q (2560×1440, 27″);
• operating system: Windows 10 Pro x64;
• Radeon driver: AMD Adrenalin Edition 19.3.1;
• GeForce driver: NVIDIA GeForce 419.67/417.71.

Further, briefly about the games and the test methodology.

Devil May Cry 5

Let’s start with a newer game. Devil May Cry uses the RE Engine, which became the basis for the new games in the Resident Evil series.

The picture is juicy, a lot of bright colors. The faces of virtual actors look alive and authentic. The monsters also did not let us down, their detailing is at a very high level.

All fights take place in arenas limited in area. The levels themselves look nice, but without frills. It can be empty streets of a ruined city, some gothic interiors or otherworldly landscapes. Some levels look too simple, especially when it comes to some interior spaces. But as soon as a fight starts, what is happening on the screen stops in a riot of bright effects.

There are a lot of cut scenes in the game, and the performance in them is often lower than in the real game. In order to take into account the different rendering quality in our testing, a certain test scene was selected, which includes several simple actions in the arena and part of a staged cut-scene. A series of repetitions were performed for more accurate summary data. The test plot is shown below.

The maximum graphics quality is used, all effects are active. Note that the maximum settings in this case assume active HDAO shading. The rendering method is «normal». Another rendering option is relevant only for weak systems, it provides rendering in variable resolution for higher performance. If you want a clear beautiful picture, leave the «normal» rendering option.

Readers familiar with the game may note that there is no DirectX option in the settings. The game automatically launches under DirectX 12 on Windows 10 and under DirectX 11 on Windows 7/8. You can select the mode through manual editing of the configuration file. Go to the folder with the game installed, open the dmc5config.ini file and change the «TargetPlatform=» value to «DirectX11» or «DirectX12».

Resident Evil 2 Remake

This game stands out with a dark gloomy picture, which is due to the genre and theme of the game. All events take place at night, and the heroes are trying to survive in a police station filled with zombies.

The faces of the characters and the characters themselves look great — soft skin with folds and pores, dynamic hair. Subsurface scattering helps to achieve the effect of soft skin. From the water, the skin and clothes get wet, and over time become covered with dust and dirt. Virtual heroes turned out to be very realistic, which allows you to better identify yourself with them.

All locations are highly detailed and crisp textures. The play of light and shadow is well implemented, which plays an important role in such games. There is a volumetric lighting effect, but it is clearly expressed only in certain scenes.

The problem with the game is that due to post-processing effects and the same type of gray scale, the picture is blurred and all these clear textures are simply not visible. Therefore, we highly recommend choosing FXAA or SMAA instead of the standard anti-aliasing configuration «FXAA + TAA» and turning off the grainy effect. Additionally, you can deactivate motion blur and turn off lens distortion (slight geometry distortion at the edges of the frame and chromatic aberration for a cinematic effect). All this has little effect on performance, but the picture will become clearer and more pleasant.

In this game, I had to deal with an unpleasant effect on the old GeForce GTX 780 Ti video card — a dark gray screen with a barely visible image. The problem is somehow related to the operation of the lighting system on old NVIDIA solutions with unstable fps. This is treated by limiting the frame rate, and in a good way you will have to set a limit of 30 frames. To test the GeForce GTX 780 Ti, we set a limit of 60 frames, which only partially solved the problem (the picture darkened with a delay), but allowed us to carry out the necessary tests.

The test sequence is a run through the main hall of the police station. This is a large illuminated location with the effect of volumetric lighting, many lamps and shiny cladding on the floor and walls. Therefore, this moment is one of the most resource-intensive scenes in the game.