AMD RX Vega vs Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti: Blind Gaming Test

Recently, Kyle Bennett of HardOCP managed to get hold of an RX Vega reference card. Bennett published the photo of the new graphics card and revealed that he took the photo while preparing an AMD RX Vega FreeSync vs Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti G-Sync Blind Gaming test video.

The video is now released. Frankly speaking, the comparison seems a bit odd considering AMD also showcased the RX Vega performance but it pitted the card against the GTX 1080 instead of the flagship Ti model. Bennett says he decided to do so simply “because I wanted to.”

The HardOCP editor further notes that he had access to the AMD RX Vega for less than a day. He took it as an opportunity to do a quick blind test and “thought it would be a good look at G-Sync vs. FreeSync.”

AMD RX Vega FreeSync vs Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti G-Sync Blind Test

The blind gaming test included setting the two system up side by side. “System 1” used the GTX 1080 Ti, while “System 2” was powered by RX Vega.

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AMD shipped both these systems to HardOCP fully loaded, but according to Bennett, he swapped AMD supplied Nvidia card with their own GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition, and installed the Nvidia drivers. Moreover, they formatted the SSDs and built both operating systems themselves.

The installation of the RX Vega card along with the driver package was, however, done by an AMD representative on site. The panels used for the test were both Asus built 100Hz displays: one was a $1300 PG348 G-Sync display and the other was a MX34V FreeSync display, priced at $720.

Both test systems used the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X processors coupled with 16GB of 2666MHz RAM. In other words, the internals of the machines were exactly the same except for the GPU and display.

Finally, testers were invited to start gaming on each system, and the title chosen for this purpose was DOOM running Vulkan. Both systems were fully shrouded so that players were not able to tell which hardware was being used.

Conclusion

The results are a little bit surprising. Out of six gameplay testers, two thought it was a tie between the two systems and they really couldn’t tell any difference. One person preferred the GTX 1080 Ti G-Sync system while the remaining three people preferred the AMD RX Vega FreeSync system.

That being said, the test is not conclusive in any way. It features just one game, and that is the one that favors AMD hardware, so it’s hardly a review. But, it still gives us a preview of the RX Vega and its FreeSync capabilities.

More details about the AMD RX Vega will be revealed at SIGGRAPH 2017, which is the company’s chosen platform to launch its next-gen consumer cards. Meanwhile, check out the blind gaming test video below, and don’t forget to tell us what you expect from AMD’s upcoming GPU.