AMD’s Radeon Vega VII (or Vega 7) was released about a month ago, with unconfirmed benchmarks quick to follow. Though unconfirmed (due to major stock shortages) the benchmarks all conclude the same performance figures. In terms of pricing, the Vega 7 blows punches with Nvidia’s RTX 2080 with FPS in 1440p and 4K gaming. See below.
RTX is either slightly ahead, or quite a bit ahead in most comparisons, with Vega II ahead in only a few. Considering the Vega is the same price as the RTX 2080, we can’t see any good reason to wait for Vega to be readily available. Not to mention Nvidia’s RTX cards offer DLSS and Ray-Tracing.
In 2007 German game developer released a first person shooter released a game that signified a generational leap in visual game engine technology; punishing so called high end gaming hardware on its highest settings. If you bought the game day one, chances are you and nobody you knew had what it took to play on ultra at 1080P. If you were a PC gamer back then, you know exactly what we’re talking about. Crysis.
It took 12 years but finally, a truly ‘next-gen’ visual experience is here and again it’s one developed in Europe, although this time Ukraine. The First Metro game was released 2010, only a few short years after Crysis. Metro Exodus, the third game in the series (if you don’t the re-release ‘Redux’ editions) has been in development since 2014 and was just released on February 15th.
Working closely with Nvidia to be one of the first major game releases to implement DLSS and RTX features from the ground up it’s become a showcase piece to show off just what the tech can do. For fans of the Metro series, the genre, or even just cutting edge PC graphics it surely makes a compelling reason to upgrade an RTX powered rig if you haven’t already.
Aside from the fancy graphics, how is the actual game?
Despite the controversy of it being an Epic Games store exclusive on PC, critics are loving the game with it currently sporting a 84/100 on meta-critic.
Succeeds in its ambitions, making it easy to recommend to both newcomers and series fans alike. 8.75/10
GameInformer
An incredible trip through a stunning post-apocalyptic world
PCGamer 78/100
brings its survival horror to the surface without sacrificing any of the series’ signature tension.
IGN 8.5/10
Taking the series to an open world environment, implementing a day-night system which significantly impacts game-play and going all out with their weapon customisation system, there is a lot to love aside from the fancy graphics. It’s not a run-and-gun twitch shooter by any means, it’s most definitely a survival horror game at its core favouring a more measured and stealthy approach to most sequences. Scrounging for, and conserving precious ammo, crafting new weapons at work benches and unlocking missions through interactions with game characters across a wide open environment it definitely has RPG elements thrown in to the mix.
But what does it actually take to play?
To answer this question, the first thing we need to do is figure out exactly what type of experience you’re looking for. If you just want to play the game and have no interest in gorgeous implementation of real time ray-traced global illumination then a GTX1060 and 6th-gen core i5 will be enough to get you through on medium presets at 1080P. But let’s face it, the most impressive part of this game is the visuals and if you really want to get the full effect you’ll need an Nvidia RTX series graphics card (sorry AMD fanboys).
At the moment there is 4 of these RTX cards to choose from. Pair any of these with a current generation (8th or 9th-gen) i5 CPU or higher, 16GB of DDR4 memory and here is what you can expect.
With the RTX2060
At 1080P Ultra with RTX set to HIGH you can expect around 40FPS with occasional dips as low as 25FPS.
At 1440P Ultra with RTX set to HIGH you can expect around 29FPS with occasional dips as low as 20FPS.
At 4K Ultra with RTX set to HIGH you can expect an unplayable frame-rate in the low teens.
With the RTX2070
At 1080P Ultra with RTX set to HIGH you can expect around 50FPS with occasional dips as low as 30FPS.
At 1440P Ultra with RTX set to HIGH you can expect around 36FPS with occasional dips as low as 23FPS.
At 4KUltra with RTX set to HIGH you can expect around 21FPS with occasional dips as low as 15FPS.
With the RTX2080
At 1080P Ultra with RTX set to HIGH you can expect around 60FPS with occasional dips as low as 38FPS.
At 1440P Ultra with RTX set to HIGH you can expect around 36FPS with occasional dips as low as 23FPS.
At 4KUltra with RTX set to HIGH you can expect around 25FPS with occasional dips as low as 17FPS.
With the RTX2080 TI
At 1080P Ultra with RTX set to HIGH you can expect around 78FPS with occasional dips as low as 46FPS.
At 1440P Ultra with RTX set to HIGH you can expect around 58FPS with occasional dips as low as 37FPS.
At 4K Ultra with RTX set to HIGH you can expect around 35FPS with occasional dips as low as 24FPS.
Yep, you read that right. A $2,000 top of the line RTX 2080 TI GPU will be virtually unplayable at 4K on ULTRA presets. But don’t worry, the game will still look awesome on a 4K monitor with DLSS at 1440P or if you go in tweak some of those ‘ULTRA’ preset graphics options down a bit to get your desired frame rates.
So where do I get my hands on a brand new RTX ready gaming PC?
It’s easy. We build them to order right here in Australia and deliver to your door nation wide. With built in compatibility checking and performance indicators you can use our online custom PC builder for unrivalled customisability options an instant quote with just a few clicks. A few more clicks and you can order online and have the system on its way to your door anywhere in Australia.
In a surprise announcement yesterday, Respawn Entertainment both announced and launched Apex Legends. A free to play battle-royal shooter set in the Titan Fall universe and running in the same engine. Taking on the likes of PUBG and Fortnite, the battle-royal shooter genre is fast becoming a crowded space but in just 13 hours Respawn recorded an active player count of over 1,000,000!
Is it any good & what does it take to play it?
Online reviews are very positive with quotes like ‘Better than Fornite in every way’ and ‘Feels a lot like Call of Duty Blackout, just more fun’, it’s pretty clear to see why it’s getting so much traction so fast. The developers have also promised long term support and updates with new content patched in periodically to keep it new and interesting to long term players.
The game is currently only Available on EA Origin’s marketplace but is completely free and is set to stay that way. The developers have promised that all paid content will be cosmetic only and won’t give any players any advantages in-game.
As with most free to play games, the hardware requirements to get it running are pretty minimal. A modern i3 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a GTX1050 will get a pretty enjoyable experience at 1080P with some of the in-game settings scaled down. That being said, crank all the settings up to max and this game really can look quiet good. To do so at 1080P, we would recommend a GTX1060 6G and i5 CPU combination with 8 to 16GB of RAM. You can scale up the graphics card to a RTX2060 and RTX2070 respectively for 1440P and 4K resolutions.
Thinking of getting a new gaming rig? It’s a great time! Head on over to our store page here and start customizing your next dream gaming PC today.
Most of you will know about the big online game stores, Steam, Origin, Uplay. Perhaps if you’re into Fortnite, you’ll know of Epic Games.
Even if you don’t care for Fortnite, there are a collection of other great games available on the Epic Games store. Right now, for example, “The Jackbox Party Pack” is free (until Feb 7th). Highly anticipated titles “Metro Exodus” and “The Division 2” which launch this month and next month respectively. As Epic tries to secure their position as one of the top stores, make sure you check with them as they could have exclusive titles, or better pricing than other stores!
Discord (previously well regarded for being the best platform for free voice and text chats between gamers worldwide) also has a respectable offering of games. Be sure to check with them, too, as pricing differs between all stores.
Battle.net is one of the oldest still going. Giving us the Warcraft series, Starcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Destiny 2, and Call of Duty. Not much of a range, to be sure, but an undeniable collection of highly regarded games.
As annoying as it may be to have different stores to buy different games from, and at different prices, it creates competition, which should help keep the prices nice and affordable for us gamers, rather than one place having a monopoly and charging whatever they want.
On the other hand, if you want to know what games you can expect to play with your next or current Evatech gaming PC… look no further than our games database which is deeply embedded into our PC builder. If you have already bought one of our PCs, simply re-enter the PC ID into our website to pull up your unique PC page (eg). Then scroll down to the games portion of the page, and you’ll see what games and what settings you can achieve.
Let us know if we are missing any titles you want to see in our game database.
Now that you know what you need to play the most anticipated games of Q1, head on over to our PC builder!
Hot on the heels of last week’s highlighted build of the week which showcased how easy it is to configure a visually stunning gaming PC with our online PC builder – here’s this.
RGB matching so well, you’d be excused for thinking they’re brought to you from the same brand. In fact, the graphics card you can see is MSI’s highly sought after RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio while the RAM is Corsair’s Vengeance RGB Pro 3000MHz, totalling 32GB of system memory.
