Test Setup
Please read our testing methodologies and benchmarks and review format for an explanation on our procedures.
Single Video Card Review Format
For our review today we are going to do what we call a single video card review. This differs from the comparison review format. In this review we are going to review only the video card being reviewed, we are going to solely focus on this video card and not include comparison video cards to compare it with. This may, at first, seem off-putting, but we assure you that this is possible, and will be chock full of information.
There are a couple of reasons why we may do this type of review format. Number one, it sometimes means we simply don’t have the comparison cards needed to make a price-to-price comparison. Second, we may start doing this for new release video cards, to first focus on the gameplay experience. We can then follow-up with comparison card reviews, or use these cards for comparison, in future reviews.
Just because you see either a “single video card review” or a “comparison video card review” doesn’t mean it stops there for us. We like to and will continue to make more reviews on the video card using comparisons when we can. What you see isn’t always the end all be all of the review process.
The focus we are putting on this video card is its real-world gaming experience in the latest games. Instead of focusing on how it compares to other video cards, we are going to simply look at how this video card games and explore the kind of experience you will have when gaming with it.
In this format what we will do is first show you performance at the three standard 16:9 gaming resolutions gamers care about. We will run the games at the highest in-game settings and show performance experienced at 1080p, 1440p and 4K. In this way, you can see how performance scales with resolution. You will also see what the best resolution is for playability with this video card in each game. Using the highest in-game settings will show you the true nature of the video card without sacrificing image quality.
Then, below that section, we will show you the “Playable Settings” that we found playable. We will show you the playable resolution, and game settings that make this video card playable and talk about our gameplay experiences. With this information on each game with this video card, you’ll walk away knowing the kind of gameplay experience you will have with this video card.