Battlefield V DXR Real-Time Ray Tracing Performance Tested

Real-fourth dimension ray tracing is finally here and today we're exploring how it looks and performs in the first game to support it fully: Battlefield V. In this commodity nosotros're not only benchmarking the iii GeForce RTX cards beyond all the ray tracing presets in the game, just we've too got some cracking comparisons for you to show exactly the difference between RTX on and RTX off.

We've already touched on Battleground V's GPU performance and we found that it runs pretty well on Ultra settings with a range of graphics cards. Nvidia'southward new RTX cards practice particularly well, with something like the RTX 2070 beingness able to play at to a higher place 120 FPS at 1080p, or well to a higher place fourscore FPS at 1440p. Naturally, the RTX 2080 Ti is a beast at both those resolutions, with framerates above 140 FPS.

Just we now have ray tracing in Battlefield 5 and since the RTX cards launch, the big question has been how the game would perform once this taxing issue is enabled. Nvidia has been conscientious not to bear witness any official performance figures for the effect running on even their flagship RTX 2080 Ti, simply we've seen plenty of reports from those that have tried an early demos, suggesting we're looking at a 1080p 60 FPS experience at all-time.

Then how does the final version stack up? We'll get to that in a moment, I'm not going to spoil the surprise for you just all the same...

In society for Battleground 5 to back up ray tracing, y'all demand to download the Windows ten October 2022 update version 1809 which adds back up for Microsoft'south DirectX Ray Tracing technology, or DXR. This OS update was delayed for a few weeks due to a nasty file deletion problems, just Microsoft has just resumed the rollout now. You'll also need to update Battlefield V to the latest version through a hefty 16GB patch, and install Nvidia's latest GeForce 416.94 drivers.

Once that'due south done, load the game, enable DirectX 12, then enable DirectX Ray Tracing Reflections. From there you'll accept access to four preset options for DXR: Ultra, High, Medium and Low settings. If y'all just use the presets rather than custom settings, the DXR way corresponding to your preset will be selected.

You'll as well see here that Die isn't using GameWorks to integrate ray tracing, instead sticking to a basic, cross-vendor DirectX Ray Tracing implementation. RTX, which is Nvidia's ray tracing technology platform, sits below DXR and is the tech that essentially translates DirectX ray tracing requests, into stuff the GPU can actually work with.

And so how does DXR actually await in Battleground 5? Above is a direct comparison of the four presets, and the kickoff thing you should notice is at that place's a large visual deviation betwixt Ultra and Depression, but there's not every bit much of a deviation between Ultra and Medium. In fact, there is basically no departure betwixt the Ultra, High and Medium settings for DXR reflections, and it's not only in this scene. We tested several other sections of the game and couldn't spot any divergence between the three higher settings.

This leads me to conclude that there are only two DXR modes: Ultra, which applies the full complement of ray tracing reflections in the game, and a cut down Low mode for improve performance. Both the low and ultra modes utilize reflections to surfaces similar water, puddles and shiny objects, but it'south merely the ultra fashion that as well applies these reflections to more matte surfaces similar mud and your gun.

Yous'll spot in this scene for example that the ultra mode reflects the peppery vehicle wreck off the muddy surface in the front, equally well as on the barrel of your weapon at some distance away. Switch down to low, and the reflections disappear on your gun and from the mud, leaving just reflections from the water's surface.

From what nosotros can tell, this is the main divergence betwixt the ii modes. The quality of reflections in terms of resolution, accurateness and depict altitude is unaffected, so you'll get the same sort of experience looking at those shiny surfaces whether y'all're playing on Ultra or Low. Switching it down a notch only affects the amount of materials and surfaces that RTX reflections apply to. Ultra, in my opinion, gives a far better and more realistic presentation and really shows off the quality of ray tracing.

Ane of the master questions nosotros've seen so far is how does ray tracing compare to the game's standard reflection way, screen infinite reflections? Undoubtedly DXR provides a more than realistic presentation, with far greater reflection accuracy and resolution, and of coursem the ability to reflect objects that aren't necessarily in your field of view.

Screen space reflections are but able to reflect objects present on the screen, and then things outside the field of view are crudely cut off in an unnatural fashion depending on the angle of reflection. Yous'll discover in the DXR off footage that anything passing over the reflected surface area, like the falling leaf particles or other people, causes artifacting in the reflected area and looks pretty ugly. This was the same in Battlefield ane, and so information technology's not like DICE has specifically downgraded reflections in BFV but to upgrade them again with ray tracing. These issues aren't present with ray tracing, instead you become nice, authentic reflections in real time.

But there are some bug with DXR every bit well. In this scene with a large pool, DXR seems to be reflecting godray type lighting effects that don't really exist in the not-reflected earth. 1 of these effects too is bizarrely cut off. And so in the footage showing reflections on the surface of your gun, reflection quality is quite low, with almost a video encoded blockiness to the effect, fifty-fifty at 4K. Reflection resolution of h2o doesn't seem to be impacted nearly every bit much past this depression resolution effect, in fact, I'd say the quality of those reflections is very good.

It'due south too worth pointing out that ray traced reflections is the merely ray traced effect in Battleground V. Every other aspect of how the game is rendered is washed through traditional ways, so shadows and ambient occlusion, for example, are the standard game furnishings. This means that if you're not in an expanse with cogitating surfaces, you basically aren't getting any benefit from DXR.

Benchmark Time

Allow's talk performance. And hither's where it all falls apart for ray tracing, because performance is absolutely horrendous even if you have a flagship RTX 2080 Ti. And only await until I testify you the results from the RTX 2070, because it's… well you'll meet in a moment.

For this testing we used all iii of Nvidia's RTX cards running on a Cadre i7-8700K examination rig, and we tested at both 1080p and 1440p. For reasons that will become rapidly apparent, we didn't bother testing at 4K. All other settings were set to Ultra, and we only tested with the Ultra and Low DXR settings, as well as DXR Off. In that location was no performance difference between Ultra, Loftier and Medium for DXR reflections.

Our test run was during an intensive part of the single role player campaign with lots of reflective areas, we also did some spot tests in multiplayer, only it'south hard to get consistent, accurate results only testing in the multiplayer part of the game. In whatever case, we didn't meet any significant operation differences between single player and multiplayer in similar environments.

These first results were run with the fastest gaming GPU you can buy today, the RTX 2080 Ti, and male child is it not looking pretty. At 1080p, the game comfortably runs at 150 FPS with DXR disabled but as shortly as you creepo information technology up to Ultra performance tanks, dropping below 50 FPS. In other words, performance is cutting to a tertiary. Switching down to the Low mode does improve things somewhat, although we're nevertheless facing one-half the framerate we once had. And even with an RTX 2080 Ti, information technology's simply at low DXR settings at 1080p that we're looking at average framerates in a higher place 60 FPS.

So at 1440p, it's nightmare territory. Using the Ultra DXR way, functioning is roughly one quarter of what it was with DXR off, while the framerate was more than halved using the depression way. Neither setting can evangelize 60 FPS with an RTX 2080 Ti. The game is polish and very enjoyable with DXR off at 1440p with this flagship GPU, simply with DXR on, it's non a walk in the park situation.

Lets move to the RTX 2080.

We're simply creeping above 60 FPS on average at 1080p with the low DXR way. Pattern is the same, where functioning is cutting down to a third of what it was when using the Ultra mode, which in this case delivers around 40 FPS, an unacceptable mark for a first person shooter like this, fifty-fifty in unmarried player. At 1440p the RTX 2080 delivers a 47 FPS average using the depression DXR mode compared to over 100 FPS with DXR disabled.

What we were the most afraid of, ray tracing operation with the RTX 2070 is laughable. The ultra mode delivers 30 FPS at 1080p, downward from 110 FPS with DXR disabled. And with the low mode nosotros're unable to hitting a 60 FPS average. The game is completely unplayable at 1440p with DXR on an RTX 2070 in our opinion.

Information technology is interesting to note beyond these tests that we are being RT core limited hither. The college the resolution, the higher the performance hit using the Ultra DXR mode, to the bespeak where playing at 4K is more than 4x faster with DXR off. This also plays out when we spot checked ability consumption: the cards were running at consistently lower power with DXR on, because the regular CUDA cores are being underutilized at such a low framerate.

At present, existent time ray tracing is a significant graphical accomplishment, it's something that has been impossible to produce on a single GPU before, and is likely to become the future of the graphics industry. Simply right now...

The caste to which functioning is reduced does depend on how many reflective surfaces are in the environment though. Wet, muddy areas are the most heavily impacted. Playing in the urban center area of Rotterdam in multiplayer more often than not had shiny reflective surfaces, so the operation hit wasn't as bad as in our benchmark runs, but we're still facing less than half the framerate with the Ultra style. And then snowy areas seem the least afflicted with relatively proficient performance, namely above eighty FPS at 1080p with DXR on and a 2080 Ti, if you tin count that every bit good.

When information technology comes down to it, DirectX Ray Tracing and this outset generation of RTX GPUs has played out exactly as expected. It was looking like functioning would be terrible, and it is terrible. Merely judging based on the demo footage, compared to performance you can go today, and it doesn't look similar in that location have been many significant steps towards getting ray tracing running at college framerates.

Now, existent fourth dimension ray tracing is a significant graphical achievement, it's something that has been impossible to produce on a unmarried GPU earlier, and is probable to become the time to come of the graphics industry. But right now, at that place is basically no reason to enable ray tracing in Battleground V, considering the operation hit is so astringent it impacts the experience massively.

We're in a state of affairs where the RTX 2080 Ti is simply somewhat playable with DXR enabled at 1080p, while 1440p is borderline and 4K is out of the question. Then with the RTX 2080 you might be able to scrape by with the low manner at 1080p, and in our opinion the RTX 2070 is not suitable for ray tracing at all. And that's just looking at DXR performance on its own.

With DXR disabled the game looks great and runs at splendid framerates with RTX cards. We're talking well above 100 FPS on all three cards at 1080p. 1440p is besides very playable at loftier framerates on even the RTX 2070, and yous tin can even savor 4K gameplay, especially on the 2080 Ti.

Going beyond the raw functioning and comparisons in Battlefield 5, real-time ray tracing was meant to be the key selling point of GeForce RTX cards.

In practice, I don't see gamers moving from 130 FPS with the notwithstanding visually impressive ultra graphics to 40 FPS with improve reflections. The quality improvement from DXR reflections is nice, but you'll be hard pressed to spot the difference in fast paced motion. Screen space reflections, while not perfect if you stare at a pool for hours, practice a decent job of approximating reflections at a respectable performance cost. And when you're more focused on running around and shooting enemies, I'd say information technology's nigh impossible to tell the divergence between SSR and DXR reflections.

Going beyond the raw performance and comparisons in Battlefield V, existent-time ray tracing was meant to be the key selling point of GeForce RTX cards, with Nvidia using this engineering science every bit a way to justify the higher toll on these cards compared to their GTX predecessors. It was meant to be a game changing characteristic, something that would revolutionize your gaming experience with crazy levels of visual quality.

At least with Battlefield 5, the quality comeback doesn't come anywhere shut to justifying the insane operation drop you'll experience with DXR enabled. RTX in this game simply isn't a reason to buy the RTX cards. When you spend the large bucks on a RTX 2080 Ti ($1,200), you want to be playing this game or whatever other game at more than 100 FPS at 1440p with all the center candy turned on. You don't want to cut that down to below 60 FPS, and yous should be getting well over 60 FPS at 4K, allow lone on 1080p.

For real time ray tracing to become the future of graphics technology, we demand more computing power. Specifically, nosotros need more RT cores in Nvidia's GPU compages, because the 68 cores provided with the RTX 2080 Ti allowing for x Gigarays per second isn't cutting it. This may be a stepping rock to getting ray tracing supported in games, and to show the engineering science off to the world, only consumers shouldn't be paying a premium right now to run what essentially amounts to a tech demo on their PCs.

Nvidia is understandably excited. They released this short behind-the-scenes video for the DXR launch showcasing their work along with EA and DICE to deliver ray tracing effects in Battlefield V. Perhaps a RTX 280 Ti SLI rig volition do nicely ( not a buying recommendation).

And honestly, Nvidia should take been far clearer about what to expect from ray tracing when they appear their new GPUs. It's all well and practiced to denote real time ray tracing every bit a major new characteristic, simply buyers are going to be disappointed when they purchase a $1,200 product only to find out using that feature results in awful performance. If ray tracing had been presented as more of a look into the futurity, rather than a feature ready for prime number time in today'southward games, it'd be much easier to swallow what is being dished up in this initial release.

The RTX 2070 deserves a special mention, because this card can barely be classed as ray tracing compatible. Delivering performance barely over 30 FPS at 1080p with DXR reflections set to depression, it's clear that 36 RT cores and 6 gigarays per second of ray tracing performance doesn't cut information technology for actual existent time ray tracing. We'd be bitterly disappointed if nosotros bought an RTX 2070 for ray tracing, only to be left with that sort of performance.

We're expecting a like story with other games that are set to use ray tracing in the futurity, such every bit Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Metro Exodus. Everything nosotros've seen from DXR demos suggest we're facing a similar performance penalty to Battlefield V, for a similar modest increase in quality. We'll test those games with ray tracing as presently as we can, but we wouldn't exist holding out for annihilation better in future titles.