Grand Theft Auto V (DX11)

Now a truly venerable title, GTA V is a veteran of past game suites that is still graphically demanding as they come. As an older DX11 title, it provides a glimpse into the graphically intensive games of yesteryear that don't incorporate the latest features. Originally released for consoles in 2013, the PC port came with a slew of graphical enhancements and options. Just as importantly, GTA V includes a rather intensive and informative built-in benchmark, somewhat uncommon in open-world games.

The settings are identical to its previous appearances, which are custom as GTA V does not have presets. To recap, a "Very High" quality is used, where all primary graphics settings turned up to their highest setting, except grass, which is at its own very high setting. Meanwhile 4x MSAA is enabled for direct views and reflections. This setting also involves turning on some of the advanced rendering features - the game's long shadows, high resolution shadows, and high definition flight streaming - but not increasing the view distance any further.

GTA V 1920x1080 2560x1440 3840x2160
Average FPS
99th Percentile

There was an interesting issue during testing that affected the RTX cards at 4K; running the benchmark would result in a blank screen for the entirety of the run. The image would appear with Alt+Enter to put it in windowed mode, but disappear again back in fullscreen. An external overlay resolved the issue, but performance results were identical either way. We really didn't have time to investigate thoroughly, but GTA V, especially with Social Club, can be quite finicky and I hesitate to call it a driver bug without digging into it more.

It's a testament to both GTA V and the nature of graphics optimization work that a GeForce card can only now average 60fps. Even still, it's restricted to the RTX 2080 Ti performance tier, which is roughly where the Titan V stands as well. Regardless, the results represent the performance scenario that NVIDIA is ultimately hoping to avoid: the 1080 Ti exceeding the 2080 in performance even with the Founders Edition tweaks. At this point, the 1080 Ti is a mature card and the offerings will skew towards tried-and-true halo custom cards, factory overclocked and well-cooled. Plain performance regression in reference settings is not something the RTX 2080 can easily afford with the higher price - Founders Edition or otherwise.

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  • mapesdhs - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link

    It also glosses over the huge pricing differences and the fact that most gamers buy AIB models, not reference cards.
  • noone2 - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link

    Not sure why people are so negative about these and the prices. Sell your old card and amortize the cost over how long you'll keep the new one. So maybe $400/year (less if you keep it longer).

    If you're a serious gamer, are you really not willing to spend a few hundred dollars per year on your hardware? I mean, the performance is there and it's somewhat future proofed (assuming things take off for RT and DLSS.)

    A bowling league (they still have those?) probably costs more per year than this card. If you only play Minecraft I guess you don't need it, but if you want the highest setting in the newest games and potentially the new technology, then I think it's worth it.
  • milkod2001 - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link

    Performance is not there. Around 20% actual performance boost is not very convincing especially due much higher price. How can you be positive about it?
    Future tech promise doesn't add that much and it is not clear if game developers will bother.
    When one spend $1000 of GPU it has to deliver perfect 4k all maxed gaming and NV charges ever more. This is a joke, NV is just testing how much they can squeeze of us until we simply don't buy.
  • noone2 - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link

    The article clearly says that the Ti is 32% better on average.

    The idea about future tech is you either do it and early adopters pay for it in hopes it catches on, or you never do it and nothing ever improves. Game developers don't really create technology and then ask hardware producers to support it/figure out how to do it. Dice didn't knock on Nvidia's door and pay them to figure out how to do ray tracing in real time.

    My point remains though: If this is a favorite hobby/pass-time, then it's a modest price to pay for what will be hundreds of hours of entertainment and the potential that ray tracing and DLSS and whatever else catches on and you get to experience it sooner rather than later. You're saying this card is too expensive, yet I can find console players who think a $600 video game is too expensive too. Different strokes for different folks. $1100 is not terrible value. You talking hundreds of dollars here, not 10s of thousands of dollars. It's drop in the bucket in the scope of life.
  • mapesdhs - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link

    So Just Buy It then? Do you work for toms? :D
  • TheJian - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link

    "Ultimately, gamers can't be blamed for wanting to game with their cards, and on that level they will have to think long and hard about paying extra to buy graphics hardware that is priced extra with features that aren't yet applicable to real-world gaming, and yet only provides performance comparable to previous generation video cards."

    So, I guess I can't read charts, because I thought they said 2080ti was massively faster than anything before it. We also KNOW devs will take 40-100% perf improvements seriously (already said such, and NV has 25 games being worked on now coming soon with support for their tech) and will support NV's new tech since they sell massively more cards than AMD.

    Even the 2080 vs. 1080 is a great story at 4k as the cards part by quite a margin in most stuff.
    IE, battlefield 1, 4k test 2080fe scores 78.9 vs. 56.4 for 1080fe. That's a pretty big win to scoff at calling it comparable is misleading at best correct? Far Cry 5 same story, 57 2080fe, vs. 42 for 1080fe. Again, pretty massive gain for $100. Ashes, 74 to 61fps (2080fe vs. 1080fe). Wolf2 100fps for 2080fe, vs. 60 for 1080fe...LOL. Well, 40% is, uh, "comparable perf"...ROFL. OK, I could go on but whatever dude. Would I buy one if I had a 1080ti, probably not unless I had cash to burn, but for many that usually do buy these things, they just laughed at $100 premiums...ROFL.

    Never mind what these cards are doing to the AMD lineup. No reason to lower cards, I'd plop them on top of the old ones too, since they are the only competition. When you're competing with yourself you just do HEDT like stuff, rather than shoving down the old lines. Stack on top for more margin and profits!

    $100 for future tech and a modest victory in everything or quite a bit more in some things, seems like a good deal to me for a chip we know is expensive to make (even the small one is Titan size).

    Oh, I don't count that fold@home crap, synthetic junk as actual benchmarks because you gain nothing from doing it but a high electric bill (and a hot room). If you can't make money from it, or play it for fun (game), it isn't worth benchmarking something that means nothing. How fast can you spit in the wind 100 times. Umm, who cares. Right. Same story with synthetics.
  • mapesdhs - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link

    It's future tech that cannot deliver *now*, so what's the point? The performance just isn't there, and it's a pretty poor implementation of what they're boasting about anyway (I thought the demos looked generally awful, though visual realism is less something I care about now anyway, games need to better in other ways). Fact is, the 2080 is quite a bit more expensive than a new 1080 Ti for a card with less RAM and no guarantee these supposed fancy features are going to go anywhere anyway. The 2080 Ti is even worse; it has the speed in some cases, but the price completely spoils the picture, where I am the 2080 Ti is twice the cost of a 1080 Ti, with no VRAM increase either.

    NVIDIA spent the last 5 years pushing gamers into high frequency displays, 4K and VR. Now they're trying to do a total about face. It won't work.
  • lenghui - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link

    Thanks for rushing the review out. BTW, the auto-play video on every AT page has got to stop. You are turning into Tom's Hardware.
  • milkod2001 - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link

    They are both owned by Purch. Marketing company responsible for those annoying auto play videos and the lowest crap possible From the web section. They go with motto: Ad clicks over anything. Don't think it will change anytime soon. Anand sold his soul twice to Apple and also his web to Purch.
  • mapesdhs - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link

    One can use Ublock Origin to prevent those jw-player vids.

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