Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU shows blistering frame rates in Overwatch 2
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Nvidia’s RTX 4090 can hit over 500 frames per second (fps) in Overwatch 2 at 1440p resolution, a ridiculously smooth game level – with one notable caveat we’ll get to later on the monitor – Team Green themselves told us.
To be precise, Nvidia’s own benchmarking (opens in new tab) shows the shooter (released yesterday) at an average speed of 507 fps with the RTX 4090, and this was at 1440p with maximum graphics settings (the test rig paired the GPU with an Intel Core i9-12900K CPU, by the way).
As for the RTX 4080 16GB, it got 368 fps, and the lesser RTX 4080 with 12GB (cough, RTX 4070, ahem) still got 296 fps.
For last-gen comparisons, the RTX 3080 hit 249 fps, and the RTX 3070 weighed in at 195 fps, with the RTX 3060 hitting 122 fps, all with the same rig and settings, of course.
Nvidia recommends the RTX 3060 for those who want to get 144 fps at 1080p (Full HD instead of 1440p), and the RTX 3080 Ti for those who want to see 360 fps again at 1080p.
Analysis: The advantage of both resolution and super-fast fps
We normally think of Nvidia’s flagships like the RTX 4090 as graphics cards built to handle high-resolution gaming (4K, or even 8K with the new Lovelace top dog), but competitive gamers naturally want to go the other way – no more detail, but more frames is the priority. That ensures the smoothest gameplay experience.
It’s quite an achievement to see 500 frames per second break in Overwatch 2, when you consider that this isn’t 1080p resolution either – it’s a step above 1440p, giving you much better picture quality (and sharpness) than Full HD. And as Nvidia points out, going to 1440p may have some advantages over 1080p in terms of accurate aiming as a headshot, noting, “Our research found that 1440p 27-inch displays can improve aiming by up to 3% over of traditional 1080p 24-inch when aiming at small targets, such as an enemy’s head.”
Add your own spice, of course, and there are new G-Sync monitors of the 27-inch 1440p variant in the pipeline and arriving soon, from Asus, with a 360Hz refresh rate. So the RTX 4080 16GB can fully drive and utilize that refresh rate, as the benchmarks above show (360 Hz, meaning it can display 360 fps).
Don’t forget, of course, that you need a high-end monitor with a super-fast refresh rate to display the staggering amount of fps generated by these GPUs in the presented scenarios for Overwatch 2.
And yes, there’s coming a 500Hz monitor from Asus – which can display 500fps – although we’re not sure when, and in any case, it’ll be 1080p and will probably cost an arm and a leg (and possibly another arm). 480Hz models are also likely to arrive next year, but monitors like this are becoming the province of professional esports gamers willing to spend anything to gain even the slightest competitive advantage.
As a final note, if you compare the relative price of the two RTX 4080 models and the performance here, you’ll pay a third more for the top-of-the-line (16GB) 4080, but you’ll get a performance improvement of a quarter over the 12GB. -variant. So it looks like Nvidia has pushed the pricing a little harder with the faster RTX 4080, but obviously we can’t make these sorts of comparisons based on a single game – it’s more of an interesting observation than anything.
We need full reviews of both RTX 4080 versions of course to draw any conclusions in this area, although it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the bottom tier being the price champion for the overall price/performance ratio.
Through VideoCardz (opens in new tab)