the 1080, but the 3080 is only 40 percent
faster than the 2080. AMD’s GPUs tell a
similar story, the shape of things to come.
The other end of the performance
spectrum tells a mixed story. The RTX
3050 more than triples the performance
of the GTX 1050, but we’re looking at a
budget card from five years back that
launched with a $110 price tag going up
against a midrange card that costs more
than twice as much—there’s no actual
‘budget’ RTX 30-series offering so far.
AMD’s budget GPUs show an even
more perplexing story, with the RX 5500
XT doubling the performance of the RX
560, but then the latest RX 6500 XT takes
a step backward from there—and both
of the newer generation cards carry
substantially higher prices than the $100
launch price on the RX 560 4GB. Of course,
you don’t need to run maxed-out settings
(see sidebar on ultra quality), but if you’re
already running medium settings, you’ll
be in need of an upgrade sooner than later.THE NEED FOR MORE VRAM
One noteworthy change that we’ve seen
repeatedly through the years is the need
for more VRAM. There was a time whenpeople were debating between 1GB
and 512MB graphics cards and, before
that, we argued about 128MB vs. 64MB.
Today, we’ve reached the point where
4GB is barely sufficient to run all of our
benchmarks and there are several games
in our test suite that will warn about the
lack of graphics card memory—Far
Cry 6, Forza Horizon 5, and Watch Dogs
Legion can even suffer from degradedperformance with 8GB of VRAM! Game
developers clearly want more VRAM for
their purposes, and with high-resolution
textures, more detailed models, and
technologies like ray tracing, 8GB
represents the bare minimum of what we
want to see on any midrange or higher
GPU. If you want a great example of the
difference more VRAM can make, just
look at the R9 390 and GTX 980.Depending on the game, the
difference in visual fidelity
between medium settings
and ultra settings may not
be worth the performance
penalty. Those running
extreme GPUs, like the RTX
3090 or RX 6900 XT, can safely
set phasers to vaporize and
carry on. But if your GPU is
long in the tooth, dropping the
settings a notch or two can do
wonders for performance—
particularly if you’re using
a graphics card that doesn’t
have at least 4GB VRAM, and
some recent games even want
8GB just for 1080p ultra.
Take the GTX 1050,
which sits at the bottom of
the rankings in terms of
1080p ultra-performance
and delivered just 15fps
on average. Dropping to
1080p medium doubled its
performance, and while a
few games still struggled—
Warhammer 3 and Flight
Simulator still failed to break
30fps—most games are at
least playable.What can you expect from
medium-quality visuals
compared to ultra quality?
There’s a bit less of all the
finer details, like shadows
and reflections, but in some
games, the ultra settings feel
like a placebo. The Xbox One
and PlayStation 4 essentially
run at settings comparableto medium quality in most
games, and millions of console
users still enjoy playing games
on those systems. 30fps at
1080p medium might not be
much to brag about, but if the
only other option is not to play,
don’t be afraid to give it a shot.
Similarly, if you aren’t
rocking top-shelf hardware,you’ll be far better off running
at 1080p than at 1440p or
4K. Even if you have a 4K
monitor, playing games at
1080p is a reasonable option,
and upscaling technologies
like AMD’s Radeon Super
Resolution (RSR) and Nvidia
Image Scaling (NIS) can still
provide a pleasing result.YOU DON’T NEED ULTRA QUALITY
Even using the medium
preset, games such as
Forza Horizon 5 are still
visually impressive.The GeForce RTX
3080 Ti has 12
GDDR6X chips
surrounding the
GPU to help
feed the beast.state of the GPUnion address
32 MAXIMU MPC JUN 2022
© XBOX GAME STUDIOS, NVIDIA