Value Perspective, The Wrap
Drilling down on the performance-versus-value metric further, taking the QHD benchmarks scores as a base - there's a decent compromise between performance and framerate - we calculate a basic bang4buck by dividing the average FPS by the respective cards' pricing in US dollars, taken from Newegg.com on September 10. The resulting score is multiplied by 100 for easy viewing.
Cheaper cards tend to do better because performance improvements naturally tail off as we go up the financial stack. GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition is the fastest, easily, but it costs over five times as much as the XFX RX 590 but 'only' offers 2.5x the QHD performance.
Looking solely at cards that achieve the QHD60 base level, a bunch are fairly evenly matched. The new Navi cards do well because of their keen pricing, of course, yet anything from a Radeon RX 5700 through to an RTX 2070 Super offers good comparative value.
If we were building a QHD-ready Gears 5 machine, the Radeon RX 5700 XT would be our first choice; it has sufficient framerate allied to a sensible street price. That said, a number of Nvidia cards also do well, suggesting that both teams' drivers are up to scratch.
The Wrap
Gears 5 has an entertaining 12-hour campaign mode filled with some of the best-looking scenes of any game to grace the Xbox One console, switching between frozen wastelands and deserts. Using a heavily-tuned Unreal Engine 4 bodes well for performance across console and PC. The reality is that, going by our testing, obtaining smooth frames with the ultra quality preset is possible on a £200 card at an FHD resolution. Jumping up to QHD60 requires, ideally, a Radeon RX 5700 (£350) or GeForce RTX 2060 Super (£400), while UHD60 is not even the preserve of the mighty GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (£1,100).
We'd want to play a game such as this at the ultra quality preset, beating out the visuals for the Xbox One (X), but if you have already started playing on your PC, we'd be intrigued to learn of which card and quality settings you've used. Feel free to let us know what you think of Gears 5 and your config in the comments.
