Destiny 2 Beta PC Performance Review

AMD VS Nvidia – RX 480 VS GTX 1060 – Low to Highest Settings

When looking at Destiny 2’s PC performance it is clear to see that the game’s highest graphical preset is exceptionally demanding, particularly when MSAA is enabled. Bungie has stated that their MSAA implementation is a work in progress, so we have conducted an additional test that uses Destiny 2’s Highest Preset with MSAA turned down to SMAA, offering a huge performance uplift for both our RX 480 Strix and GTX 1060 Strix. 

Bungie has stated that their MSAA implementation is a work in progress, so we have conducted an additional test that uses Destiny 2’s Highest Preset with MSAA turned down to SMAA, offering a huge performance uplift for both our RX 480 Strix and GTX 1060 Strix. 

When comparing our GTX 1060 and RX 480 Strix models we can see that Destiny 2’s Highest preset (SMAA) has a disproportionate impact on the performance of our AMD RX 480. This is something that will require optimisation before the game officially launches, though performance is fairly comparable at lower graphical settings, with Nvidia’s GTX 1060 holding the performance advantage in most cases. 

Due to the Highest Preset’s disproportionate effect on the performance of AMD GPUs, we will be conducting further tests on Destiny 2 with the game’s High Preset, as this is the preset that we expect most gamers to use (or similar settings) to offer a great balance between graphical fidelity and game performance.