Maximum PC - USA (2022-06)

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* GPU could not run all of the test due to insufficient VRAM

cards tend to not age quite so well. Even

if there aren’t driver issues, modern

games push the hardware in new and

demanding ways, and sometimes older

GPUs simply fall flat on their faces. But if

you’re just trying to play Fortnite or other

less demanding games and you’re willing

to drop the settings and resolution, even

relatively ancient hardware can still get

the job done—assuming you didn’t kill the

GPU with crypto mining, naturally.

GAMING PERFORMANCE OVER TIME

You won’t be shocked to see a clear trend

of improving performance through the

generations of hardware. Today’s RTX

3090 Ti basically doubles the performance

of the GTX 1080 Ti, and the same goes for

the RX 6900 XT and the two-generation

old RX Vega 64. Go back another

generation to the R9 Fury X and the GTX

980 Ti and the gap becomes even larger,

with modern high-end cards like the RTX

3080 and RX 6800 XT more than tripling

the performance of the fastest cards in

2015, the GTX 980 Ti, and R9 Fury X.

As impressive as that is, let’s keep

things in perspective. The fastest GPUs

in 2015 packed 8 billion transistors into

a 601mm^2 die size, the GM200 used in the

GTX 980 Ti. Today’s GA102 that powers the

RTX 3090 Ti sports a whopping 28.3 billion

transistors—3.5 times as many—in a chip

measuring 628mm^2. Clock speeds have

improved from 1.2GHz in 2015 to nearly

2GHz for Nvidia on the RTX 30-series,

while AMD has boosted clocks from over

1GHz on the R9 Fury X to over 2.5GHz on

the fastest RX 6000-series GPUs.

In other words, looking at transistor

counts and clock speeds, GPUs haven’t

even managed to achieve linear scaling.

We have larger chips, with lots more

transistors, running substantially higher

clocks, but performance has started to

taper off. On the other hand, today’s chips

do a lot more than those of six years ago,

with features like ray tracing and DLSS.

Another way of looking at it is to focus

on a specific level of GPU, like Nvidia’s

980, 1080, 2080, and 3080. Here’s where

the end of Moore’s Law and Dennard

scaling become more obvious. The 1080

boosts performance by 84 percent over

the 980, the 2080 is 55 percent faster than

RX 6000-SERIES

RX 6500 XT*

RX 6600

RX 6600 XT

RX 6700 XT

RX 6800

RX 6800 XT

RX 6900 XT

RTX 20-SERIES

RTX 2060

RTX 2060 Super

RTX 2070

RTX 2070 Super

RTX 2080

RTX 2080 Super

RTX 2080 Ti

Titan RTX

RTX 30-SERIES

RTX 3050

RTX 3060

RTX 3060 Ti

RTX 3070

RTX 3070 Ti

RTX 3080 Ti

RTX 3080 12GB

RTX 3080 Ti

RTX 3090

RTX 3090 Ti

Only Nvidia RTX cards and AMD

RX 6000 GPUs can run our full

ray tracing test suite.

GPU STATE OF PLAY

RAY TRACING PERFORMANCE AT 1080P MEDIUM (FPS)

As with cars, putting the

wrong driver at the wheel

can be a recipe for disaster

with graphics cards.

state of the GPUnion address

30 MAXIMU MPC JUN 2022

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