180 Graphics Cards - Ultimate Performance Comparison: What has changed since 2009?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the world's biggest bar chart extravaganza: PCGH is testing 180 graphics cards! Join us on a journey through time—what has changed from 2009 to today?
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Welcome to the world's biggest graphics performance showdown: PCGH is testing 180 graphics cards spanning 16 years. Join us on a journey through time, gaze at the tremendous advancements, and reminisce about your former graphics cards!
Kickoff
Our starting point is DirectX 11, which was introduced in 2009 with Windows 7. The first graphics cards with full DX11 compliance were the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and, a couple of months later, Nvidia Geforce GTX 480. Unlike even older architectures, these graphics cards—which are more than 15 years old—allow us to make direct comparisons with modern high-performance GPUs.
Source: PCGH
Our test system is based on an Intel Core i9-14900KS @ 6.2 GHz, an Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Apex Encore motherboard, and Teamgroup DDR5-8200 memory— manually optimized for maximum performance.
When it comes to comparative benchmarks of new and (very) old, some workarounds are necessary. For obvious reasons, we can't use the current benchmark suite to compare the old and new graphics cards—the retired GPUs would crash about 19 of the 20 tests with an error message and choke under the load in the remaining one. A compromise was needed. A selection of benchmarks that would appeal to both old veterans and young up-and-comers. That's easier said than done, because the slowest and fastest graphics cards in the test field are separated by a factor of more than 1,000 (!)—it's 0.1 to 105 TFLOPS.
A test lineup this extensive invites readers to spend some time browsing and reminiscing. Depending on how long you've been into PCs, you'll be able to find and compare at least one—and in most cases, several—of your old graphics cards. If you're not interested in the history but are here for the benchmarks: On the following page, we take a look at 16+ years of GPU development from 2009 to today. Page 3 kicks off the bar charts.
