Custom PC - UK (2020-07)

Wemainlyevaluategraphics

cards on the performance they

offer for the price. However, we

also consider the efficacy and

noise of the cooler, as well as

the GPU’s support for new

gaming features, such as ray

tracing. Every graphics card is tested in the same PC, so the

results are directly comparable. Each test is run three times,

and we report the average of those results.

We test graphics cards at 1,920 x 1,080, 2,560 x 1,440 and

3,840 x 2,160, although we omit the latter resolution on cheaper

cards that can’t produce playable frame rates at this setting.

TEST KIT

Intel Core i7-8700K overclocked to 4.7GHz on all cores, 16GB

Corsair Vengeance LED 3000MHz DDR4 memory, Gigabyte

Z370 Aorus motherboard, Cooler Master MasterLiquid 240

CPU cooler, Corsair HX750 PSU, Cooler Master MasterCase

H500M case, Windows 10 Home 64-bit.

GAME TESTS

Red Dead Redemption 2 Tested at custom high settings. We

run the game’s built-in benchmark, and use FrameView to

record the end portion, which is based on real gameplay. We

report the 99th percentile and average frame rates.

Battlefield V Tested in DirectX 12 at Ultra settings on every

card. If a GPU also supports real-time ray tracing, we then test

it with DXR enabled on High settings with TAA, and also with

DLSS if it’s supported. We run through a one-minute custom

benchmark in the ‘Under No Flag’ War Story, recording the 99th

percentile and average frame rates with FrameView.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider Tested at the Highest settings

preset with TAA. We run the built-in benchmark and record the

99th percentile and average frame rates with FrameView.

Total War: Warhammer II Tested in

DirectX 11, as the DirectX 12 beta

currently causes stuttering issues

on some GPUs. We test at Ultra

settings with FXAA, and run the

built-in ‘Battle’ benchmark. We

record the 99th percentile and

average frame rates with FrameView.

POWER CONSUMPTION

We run Unigine Superposition at 4K Optimized DirectX settings.

We measure the power consumption of our whole graphics test

rig at the mains during the test, and record the peak power draw.

This result is for the whole system, not the graphics card alone.

GRAPHICS CARDS

CUSTOM PC REALBENCH

Our own benchmark suite, co-developed with Asus, is

designed to gauge a PC’s performance in several key areas,

using open source software.

GIMP IMAGE EDITING

We use GIMP to open and edit large images, heavily stressing

one CPU core to gauge single-threaded performance. This

test responds well to increases in CPU clock speed.

HANDBRAKE H.264 VIDEO ENCODING

Our heavily multi-threaded Handbrake H.264 video encoding

test takes full advantage of many CPU cores, pushing them to

100 per cent load.

LUXMARK OPENCL

This LuxRender-based test shows a GPU’s compute

performance. As this is a niche area, the result from this test

has just a quarter of the weighting of the other tests in the

final system score.

HEAVY MULTITASKING

This test plays a full-screen 1080p video, while running a

Handbrake H.264 video encode in the background.

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C

US

TOMK

IT

CUSTOM KIT

For those gadgets and gizmos that really

impress us, or that we can’t live without,

there’s the Custom Kit award.

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AP

PROVED

APPROVED

Approved products do a great job for the

money; they’re the canny purchase for a

great PC setup.

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PR

OF

ESSION

AL

PROFESSIONAL

These products might not be appropriate for a

gaming rig, but they’ll do an ace job at

workstation tasks.

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P

RE

MI

UM GR

AD

E

PREMIUM GRADE

Premium Grade products are utterly desirable,

offering a superb balance of performance and

features without an over-the-top price.

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EX

TR

EME ULT

R

A

EXTREME ULTRA

Some products are gloriously over the top. They

don’t always offer amazing value, but they’re

outstanding if you have money to spend.

AWARDS