Gadgetory

welcome back to hardware unboxed real-time rect racing is finally here and today we're exploring how the effect looks and performs in the first game to support it fully battlefield 5 in this video we've not only benchmarked the three NVIDIA GeForce RT X cards across all the rate racing presets in the game but we've also got some great comparisons for you to show exactly the difference between RT x on and RT X off in the real world we've already touched on battlefield 5s regular performance across a range of GPUs in a video earlier this week and we found that it runs pretty well on ultra settings with a range of graphics cards invidious new r-tx cards do particularly well with something like the RT x 2070 being able to play it above 120 fps at 1080p or well above 80 FPS at 1440p and naturally the RT x 2080 Ti is an absolute beast at both these resolutions with frame rates above 140 fps but we now have rate racing in battlefield 5 and since the announcement of RT X features back in August the big question has been how the game would perform once this stressful effect is enabled NVIDIA has been very careful not to show any official performance figures for the effects running on even their flagship RT X 20 atti but we've seen plenty of reports from those that have tried an early demo version suggesting we're looking at a 1080p 60fps experience at best so how is ray-tracing integrated into battlefield 5 well it's all pretty straightforward all you need to do is download the windows 10 October 2018 update version 18:09 to support microsoft's directx ray tracing technology or DX up this update was famously delayed for more than five weeks due to bugs but microsoft resumed the rollout a little over 24 hours ago so you can now force download it using Microsoft's Windows 10 update tool if it isn't already in Windows Update for you you also need to update battlefield 5 to the latest version 2 through a hefty 16 gigabyte patch and you'll need the latest GeForce 4 1694 drivers from Nvidia after all that you simply load the game enable DirectX 12 then enable direct X ray tracing reflections from there you'll have access to four preset options 4dx are the standard ultra high medium and low settings in the game if you just use the presets rather than custom settings the DXi mode corresponding to your preset will be selected you'll also see here that dice isn't using game works to integrate ray-tracing instead of sticking to a basic cross vendor DirectX ray-tracing implementation RTX which is invidious ray tracing technology platform sits below DXi in the stack and is the tech that essentially translates DirectX ray tracing requests from the game into the staff the GPU can actually work with so how does the X are actually a look in battlefield 5 well here's a direct comparison of all four presets and the first thing you should notice if there is a large visual difference between ultra and low but there's not much of a difference between ultra high and medium in fact there is basically no difference between those settings for DX our reflections and it's not just in this scene I tested several other sections of the game and couldn't spot any difference between the highest three settings this leads me to conclude that there are only really two DXR modes in the game ultra which applies the full complement of ray tracing reflections in the game and a cut-down lo mode for better performance both the low and ultra modes apply reflections to surfaces like water puddles and shiny objects but it's only the ultra mode that also applies these reflections to more matte surfaces like mud and your gun your spot in this scene for example that the ultra mode reflects the fiery vehicle wreck of the muddy surface in the front as well as on the barrel of your weapon at some distance away switch down to low and the reflection is disappear on your gun and from the mud leaving just reflections from the water's surface from what we can tell this is the main difference between the two modes the quality of reflections in terms of resolution accuracy and draw distance is unaffected between the presets so you get the same sort of experience looking at those shiny surfaces whether you're playing on ultra or low switching it down a notch only affects the amount of materials and surfaces that are TX reflections apply to ultra in my opinion gives a far better and more realistic presentation and really shows off the quality of ray tracing while it's still pretty good but it's not quite at the same level one of the main questions is how does rate racing compared to the games standard reflection mode screen space reflections well undoubtedly DXR provides a more realistic presentation with far greater reflection accuracy and resolution and of course the ability to reflect objects that aren't necessarily in your field of view screen space reflections are only able to reflect objects present on the screen so things outside the field of view are crudely cut off in an unnatural way depending on the angle of reflection you'll notice in the DXR off footage that anything passing over the reflected area like the falling leaf particles or other people causes artifacting in the reflected area and looks pretty ugly but before you wonder this is the same issue that was present in battlefield 1 so it's not like diocese specifically downgraded reflections in battlefield 5 only to upgrade them again with raytrace naturally these issues aren't present with ray tracing you get nice accurate reflections in real time but there are some issues with DXi as well in this scene with a large puddle DXR seems to be reflecting Gadre type lighting effects that don't actually exist in the non reflected world one of these effects also is bizarrely cut off which you can see here then 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 even at 4k reflection resolution of water doesn't seem to be impacted nearly as much by this low resolution effect in fact I say the quality of those reflections is very good it's also worth pointing out that Ray traced reflections is the only ray traced effect in battlefield 5 every other aspect of how the game is rendered is done through traditional means so shadows and ambient occlusion for example are the standard game effects this means that if you're not in an area with reflective surfaces you basically aren't getting any benefit from DX R so let's talk performance and here's where it all falls apart for ray tracing because performance is absolutely horrendous even if you have Nvidia's flagship RT X 20 80 TI and just wait until I show you the results from the RT X 2070 because it's well I guess you'll see in a moment for this testing we used all three of invidious RT X cards running a core i7 8700 K test rig and we tested at both 1080p and 1440p for reasons that will become quickly apparent we didn't bother testing at 4k all other settings were set to ultra and we only tested with the ultra and lo DX our settings as well as DXR off there was no performance difference between ultra high and medium for DX our reflections our test run was doing an intensive part of the single-player campaign with lots of reflective areas we also did some spot tests in multiplayer but it's hard to get consistent accurate results only testing in the multiplayer part of the game in any case we didn't see any significant performance differences between single-player and multiplayer in similar environments so here's the results with the r-tx 20 80 TI and boy oh boy it's not looking pretty at 1080p the game comfortably runs at 150 FPS with DXi disables but as soon as you crank the DXi mode up to ultra performance absolutely tanks dropping to below 50 fps in other words performance is immediately cut to one third of its previous level switching down to the low mode does improve things somewhat although we're still facing half the framerate we once had and even with an RT X 20 atti it's only at low DX our settings at 1080p that we're looking at average frame rates above 60 fps then at 1440p it's nightmare territory using the ultra DX our mode performance is roughly one-quarter of what it was with DX our off while the frame rate was more than halved using the low mode neither setting can deliver 60 FPS with an RT X 20 atti the game is smooth and very enjoyable with DX I'll off that 1440p with this flagship GPU but with DX r on it's not a pretty situation then looking at the RT x 2080 we're only just creeping above 60 FPS on average at 1080p with the low DX our mode again performance is cut down to one third of what it was when using the ultra mode which in this case delivers around 40 FPS which isn't acceptable for a first-person shooter like this even in single player and that 1440p how does a 47 FPS average sound using the low DX our mode could more than a hundred FPS with dioxide disabled and with the RT X 2070 performance is absolutely evils half a ball if I'm honest the ultra mode delivers 30 FPS at 1080p down from a hundred and ten FPS with DXi disabled and with the low mode we're unable to hit a 60 FPS average the game is completely unplayable at 1440p as well with DX are on an RT x 2070 in our opinion it's interesting to note across these tests that we are being RT called limited here the higher the resolution the higher the performance hit using the ultra d XR mode to the point where playing at 4k is more than four times faster with DX our off this also plays out when we spot-checked power consumption the cars were running at consistently lower power with DX are on because the regular cuda cores are being underutilized as such a low framerate again though the degree to which performance is reduced does depend on how many reflective surfaces are in the environment wet muddy areas are the most heavily impacted playing in the city area of Rotterdam in multiplayer mostly had shiny reflective surfaces so the performance hit wasn't as bad as in our benchmark runs but we're still facing less than half the framerate with the ultra mode and then snowy areas seen the least affected with relatively good performance namely above 80 FPS at 1080p with DX our on and a 20 atti involved if you can count that as good but no matter the environment if there are no appropriately reflective surfaces performance will be much better though it still won't really come close to reaching the level of playing with DX are disabled at the same time if there are no reflective surfaces visual quality is largely identical to playing with DX I'd disabled so you really want a camp near water and shiny surfaces to get that sweet ray-tracing goodness some when it comes down to it DirectX ray tracing and r-tx has basically played out exactly as expected in the public launch of the technology in battlefield 5 it was looking like performance would be terrible and well it is terrible just judging based on the demo footage compared to performance you can get today and it doesn't look like there have been many significant steps towards getting rate racing running at a higher framerate it's just extremely computationally intensive now real time rate racing is a graphical achievement is something that has previously been impossible with single GPS and will likely be the future of the graphics industry but right now there is basically no reason to enable ray-tracing in battlefield 5 because the performance hit is so severe it impacts the experience massively we're in a situation where the r-tx 2080 Ti is only somewhat playable with DXR enabled at 1080p while 1440p is borderline and 4k is out of the question then with the RT X 2080 you might be able to scrape by with the low mode at 1080p and in our opinion the RT X 2070 is not suitable for rate racing at all and that's just looking at DX our performance on its own the game runs at excellent frame rates with these cards with DXi disables we're talking well above 100 FPS on all three cards at 1080p 1440p is also very playable at high frame rates on even the RT x 2070 and you can even enjoy 4k gameplay particularly on the 2080 ti I just don't see why any gamer will choose to cut their frame rate at least in half sometimes up to a quarter to get rate racing in a game where framerate has a significant impact on competitiveness and the overall experience you want to be running this game at 130 fps with the still visually excellent ultra settings not 40 FPS with slightly better reflections on top of that the quality improvement from DX our 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 puddle for hours do 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 it's almost impossible to tell the difference between SSR and DX our reflections and it goes beyond just the raw performance and comparisons in battlefield 5 real-time ray tracing was meant to be the key selling point to the GeForce r-tx cards in video is basically using this technology as a way to justify the higher price of these cards compared to their GTX predecessors it was meant to be a game-changing feature I guess something that would revolutionize your gaming experience with crazy levels of visual quality but the reality is at least with battlefield 5 the quality improvement doesn't anywhere close to justify the insane performance drop your experience with DXi enables r-tx in this game simply isn't a reason to buy the r-tx cards it doesn't justify the price premium you're paying for RTX features because honestly i can't see any gamer playing with DXR enabled for more than a few minutes when you buy an RT x 2080 TI you want to be playing the game at more than 120 FPS at 1440p with ultra settings you don't want to cut that down to below 60 FPS so reflections can be slightly more accurate you spent $1,200 on the card after all you should be getting well over 60 FPS at 4k let alone 1080p for real-time ray tracing to become the future of graphics technology we need more computing power specifically we need more RT cores in invidious GPU architecture because this 68 core is provided with the RT X xx atti allowing for 10 gig rates per second well it isn't cutting it this may be a stepping stone to getting read tracing supporters in games and to show the technology off to the world but consumers really shouldn't be paying a premium right now to run what essentially amounts to a tech demo on their PCs and honestly in the video should have been far clearer about what to expect from ray tracing when they announce their new GPUs it's all well and good to announce real-time ray tracing as a major new feature but buyers are going to be disappointed when they purchase a $1200 product for real-time ray tracing only to find out using that feature results in awful performance if ray tracing was presented as more of a look into the future rather than a feature ready for primetime in today's games it would be much easier to swallow what is being dished up in this initial release the RT X 2070 deserves a special mention here because this card can barely be classed as ray tracing compatible delivering performance barely over 30 FPS at 1080p with DXi reflection set too low it's clear that a mere 36 RT cores and 6 gigabits per second of ray tracing performance doesn't cut it for actual real time ray tracing I'd be bitterly disappointed if I bought an RT X 2074 ray tracing only to be left with that sort of performance on the lowest settings in battlefield 5 and I'm expecting a similar story with other games that are set to use ray tracing in the future such as shadow of writer and Metro Exodus everything we've seen from demos of DXi in those games suggests we're facing a similar performance penalty to battlefield 5 for a similar small increase in quality we'll test those games with ray tracing as soon as we can but I wouldn't be holding out for anything better in future titles so I guess that brings us to the end of this initial battlefield 5 and DirectX ray-tracing evaluation we'll have a full video breaking down the rest of battlefield 5s quality options and providing you with some optimal settings in the next few days so subscribe and stay tuned for that consider supporting us on patreon to get access to our exclusive discord chat and monthly live streams it's been a lot of work to get this one done in a very short period of time so I hope you all appreciate it and I'll catch you in the next one you