8K benched: RX Vega 64 vs. GTX 1080 Ti vs. TITAN Xp SLI

Introduction

8K Benchmarking: Part Two

I started off our 8K benchmarking articles by throwing the visual settings in all of our games up into Ultra, just because I'm used to doing that - but if you want playable framerates at 8K, super high-end graphics aren't going to let you get there.

This is why we're back with some new testing, and some crazy insane TITAN Xp SLI results ($4000 worth of graphics cards), all at 7680 x 4320. I've gone over just how incredible 7680 x 4320 is, but if you need the refresher course, check it out. I've been using the Dell UP3218K monitor for a couple of weeks now, with the 8K display being my workstation daily driver and I've got nothing but praise for it.

If you've forgotten just how balls-to-the-wall 8K is in terms of raw pixel numbers, this is the image that you need to cry yourself to sleep with at night.... I know I do.

Yeah... I get the reaction; it happens to me, too. 8K is monstrous, so much so that you can't run 100% DPI scaling in Windows 10, it's just too small. You can't even see the date and time, or text - it's amazing in terms of desktop real estate of course.

Native 8K videos look absolutely sublime. I could really sit there for hours just pouring myself into the display. It's like looking into a portal of a new world that somehow looks better than the real one. Thought I was joking? Comment here after you've seen 8K video at 60FPS on the Dell UP3218K, and if you say you can't tell the difference, or it's not some of the most amazing clarity, depth of color, and crispness - I'll buy you lunch.

8K Benching: Powered By Ryzen Threadripper

8K benchmarking is something that I've been planning for quite a while, and one of the most important parts is that I wanted to go as all-out as I could at first, with the months leading up AMD's launch of Ryzen Threadripper filling me with excitement.

It wasn't the 16C/32T of CPU power on tap; it was the new X399 chipset that features a massive 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes that I can use for all of my enthusiast level hardware. Playing games and benchmarking at 7680 x 4320 isn't easy, rendering 16 x the pixels of 1080p isn't something you do with your $1500 gaming PC. 8K is for out-of-this-world enthusiasts who need to drive 16 x the pixels of 1080p @ 60FPS, which deserves some AAA level hardware.

I reached out to our friends at ASRock who were generous enough to send one of their awesome X399 Taichi motherboards my way, so that I could slot in that beasty Ryzen Threadripper 1950X processor.

ASRock X399 Taichi + Ryzen Threadripper 1950X

The ASRock X399 Taichi in all of its glory, with a super-slick cog-style chipset cooler and look across the board.

This massive socket is going to be home for our Ryzen Threadripper 1950X.

Installing Threadripper CPUs feels like you're working with a server...

We've got 128GB of DDR4 on its way from Corsair for this build, which will fill all of those eight DIMMs.

Yep. All of those PCIe slots will be filled with TITAN Xp graphics cards soon... with full x16 bandwidth.

8K Benchmarks: Low Detail

Low/Lowest Detail

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the best looking games on the market, a truly gorgeous game - and a wonder to benchmark. The team at Crystal Dynamics made a very scalable PC game that plays really well testing graphics cards. We've got DX11 and DX12 results in one here, showing the slight strengths of running DX12 mode.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is one of the most graphically intensive games we test, with Monolith using their own Lithtech engine to power the game. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor at Amazon.

8K Benchmarks: Medium Detail

Medium Detail

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the best looking games on the market, a truly gorgeous game - and a wonder to benchmark. The team at Crystal Dynamics made a very scalable PC game that plays really well testing graphics cards. We've got DX11 and DX12 results in one here, showing the slight strengths of running DX12 mode.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is one of the most graphically intensive games we test, with Monolith using their own Lithtech engine to power the game. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor at Amazon.

8K Benchmarks: High Detail

High Detail

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the best looking games on the market, a truly gorgeous game - and a wonder to benchmark. The team at Crystal Dynamics made a very scalable PC game that plays really well testing graphics cards. We've got DX11 and DX12 results in one here, showing the slight strengths of running DX12 mode.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is one of the most graphically intensive games we test, with Monolith using their own Lithtech engine to power the game. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor at Amazon.

8K Benchmarks: Very High/Ultra Detail

Very High/Ultra Detail

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the best looking games on the market, a truly gorgeous game - and a wonder to benchmark. The team at Crystal Dynamics made a very scalable PC game that plays really well testing graphics cards. We've got DX11 and DX12 results in one here, showing the slight strengths of running DX12 mode.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is one of the most graphically intensive games we test, with Monolith using their own Lithtech engine to power the game. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor at Amazon.

Performance Analysis

For all benchmarks, I used their in-game visual settings and disabled any and all AA.

I will be adding more games to the lineup, but for now, I've only included the games that ran on SLI at 8K, which isn't much. There will be another article coming soon that covers a few more games and then another after that which will add in games like Battlegrounds and Overwatch.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Looking at Rise of the Tomb Raider on its Very High setting, AMD's new Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition only manages 14FPS... which is simply not playable. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti only manages 1FPS more at 15FPS average, while the $1199 TITAN Xp pushes 20FPS. Still not playable, but it's a huge 42.8% faster than RX Vega 64 LCE.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the better-looking games out there, and even with 2 x GTX 1080 Ti cards in SLI we only managed to hit 25FPS average. Ramping up from those two cards in SLI, I pushed the TITAN Xp SLI system into the mix for a much more respectable 28FPS average - close to the 30FPS minimum most gamers would strive for.

On the other side of the spectrum of ROTTR on its Lowest setting saw AMD's new Radeon RX Vega 64 LCE with 25FPS, up from the unplayable 14FPS on the Very High setting. NVIDIA's own GeForce GTX 1080 Ti manages 31FPS average, while TITAN Xp zooms along with 36FPS.

SLI is the saving grace for Rise of the Tomb Raider, with our GTX 1080 Ti SLI setup offering 54FPS average while the monstrous TITAN Xp SLI scored 56FPS average. At this performance level, you can easily play Rise of the Tomb Raider at 8K, which is a game-changing experience. Seriously, don't play games at 8K, you'll never go back to anything else.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

One of the main reasons I still use Shadow of Mordor is because it has a built-in benchmark, which makes testing 4-5 different in-game graphics settings a much easier process across a bunch of cards, and second: it really stresses the memory bus and memory bandwidth. This means that HBM2 bandwidth, along with the larger 352- and 384-bit memory buses on the GTX 1080 Ti, and TITAN Xp respectively.

Starting off with Shadow of Mordor's built-in Very High preset, the Radeon RX Vega 64 LCE is capable of only 21FPS average... not good enough to game with. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti manages 27FPS average, which is much more playable, as does the TITAN Xp with 30FPS average. The minimum FPS performance of all three of these cards was also impressive, with 17/20/23FPS minimum for the RX Vega 64 LCE/GTX 1080 Ti/TITAN Xp, respectively.

But as we saw with Rise of the Tomb Raider, the second NVIDIA graphics card in SLI really helps. 8K gaming is the reason for multi-GPU rigs, which makes AMD a sore loser at 8K unfortunately. GTX 1080 Ti SLI manages 56FPS average, a 107% improvement over the single GTX 1080 Ti with 27FPS. Incredible results there. TITAN Xp SLI continues the multi-GPU dominance at 8K, with 54FPS - losing by 2FPS to the GTX 1080 Ti SLI.

SLI really helps at 8K, and Shadow of Mordor proves that. NVIDIA: please work with more game developers on SLI support. Thanks.

Final Thoughts

8K gaming really isn't for the faint of heart, as you're spending probably close to $10,000 on your gaming PC... but is it worth it? Well, you can't run many games at 8K anywhere near 60FPS on Very High/Ultra detail, as you can see in the handful of benchmarks we've run.

Games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds chugs beyond crazy at 8K on Ultra graphics, and without SLI or CF, you're really stuck out in the middle of nowhere without gas. Stranded, on a performance-less beach with single-digit FPS. Even the $2400 worth of TITAN Xp graphics cards in SLI couldn't do 60FPS without dropping down to Low/Medium graphics in games.

But then you see a 100% performance gain with SLI in Shadow of Mordor on both GTX 1080 Ti and TITAN Xp cards in SLI, and you sit back and wonder: is 8K 60FPS really that far away? If you had 4 x TITAN Xp cards in SLI and had close to 100% scaling - you should reach 60FPS in most games that have great SLI scaling, at Ultra graphics in 8K. It would be glorious.

For now, the 8K benchmarking continues... as we find games that scale well with SLI (AMD needs to hurry up and have CF working on RX Vega... like, now) and then we'll be cooking with gas. I'm in for the long-run and remember... this is just part two of our 8K benchmarking content. If you want more games tested, let us know in the comments. If you liked the detailed breakdown of all the different in-game visual settings - you know what to do: leave a comment!