Ghost Recon Breakpoint DX11 vs Vulkan Performance

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AMD vs NVIDIA Cont

Now it is time to compare all the lower-end video cards to each other at 1080p.  The setup is the same as the previous page. 

1080p “Ultimate”

Ghost Recon Breakpoint Graph

In this graph, we have all the video cards compared at 1080p with the “Ultimate” preset, which is the highest graphics settings.  There is an interesting result between the Radeon RX 5600 XT and the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti.  Under DX11 the Radeon RX 5600 XT is slightly faster.  However, once you run in Vulkan both video cards end up performing exactly the same.  The performance and the gameplay experience is exactly the same between them.

The GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER also does well at 1080p at “Ultimate” settings and is faster than the Radeon RX 5500 XT video cards (8GB and 4GB) as well as the GTX 1650 SUPER.  The 8GB Radeon RX 5500 XT video card is competitive at these settings thanks to its 8GB of VRAM.  While the GTX 1660 SUPER beats it in performance, it does not have the huge falloff we see on the two 4GB video cards at the bottom.  It can at least hold its own.

The 4GB Radeon RX 5500 XT and 4GB GTX 1650 SUPER are just super bottlenecked at 1080p with “Ultimate” settings.  No amount of Vulkan can save them.  However, for all the other video cards, Vulkan does give us much needed performance over DX11.

1080p “Medium”

Ghost Recon Breakpoint Graph

We lowered the game setting to “Medium” on this graph at 1080p to alleviate any VRAM limitations.  VRAM usage was below 4GB.  When we did this the scene changed a bit.  Firstly, the Radeon RX 5600 XT is taking a commanding lead over the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti now.  It’s slower in DX11 performance compared to the GTX 1660 Ti, but when you play the game under Vulkan it shoots past GTX 1660 Ti performance.  Vulkan is really good for the Radeon RX 5600 XT when VRAM is not limited here.

The GTX 1660 SUPER is doing good as well, we see a drop off in performance when we get to the Radeon RX 5500 XT video cards.  The GTX 1660 SUPER’s DX11 performance is as high as the Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB’s Vulkan performance, heh.  The 8GB Radeon RX 5500 XT still hangs in well though and is still faster than the exact same 4GB Radeon RX 5500 XT showing that VRAM capacity still makes a difference even at “Medium” settings.

What is really interesting here also is that when the 4GB Radeon RX 5500 XT is not VRAM limited in this game it is much faster than the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER video card.  In DX11 it is 21% faster, and in Vulkan, it is 28% faster.  It seems the 4GB Radeon RX 5500 XT can be a good GPU when it is not VRAM bottlenecked.  Vulkan performance is higher on it compared to DX11 than Vulkan is on the GTX 1650 SUPER compared to DX11.  It seems to handle Vulkan very well. 

Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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