Ray Tracing and Quality Comparison
We wanted to hone in and do some more granular testing, starting with Ray Tracing performance and how the different settings scale in performance. Therefore, on the GeForce RTX 3080 FE only, we set the game to 1440p and did tests at “Very High” graphics quality and “Can It Run Crysis?” graphics quality comparing the four Ray Tracing modes. We compared performance with No RT, then Performance RT, then High RT and then Very High RT, and then Can It Run Crysis? RT. This lets us see how much each quality setting has a burden on performance.
In this graph, we are running at 1440p with “Very High” graphics quality. You can see without RT the RTX 3080 FE is 69FPS, which is very playable. Turning on Performance RT brings that down to 56.6, which is a drop of 18% in performance. However, what really gets weird is that as we keep upping the quality, the framerate doesn’t change. Can It Run Crysis? Ray Tracing is just as demanding as Performance Ray Tracing. We will have more on this below.
In this graph we are running at 1440p with the “Can It Run Crysis?” graphics quality. You can see without Ray Tracing performance is at 47.3FPS. Dropping to Performance RT has a drop of 14% in performance. However, once again every quality setting of RT is pretty much the same. More on this below.
Ok, so when we got the results from the two graphs above, we had to think about what could be causing it. It could be a bottleneck, or it might also be our particular run-through not taking advantage of all the goodness of Ray Tracing. Therefore, we created a new alternate run-through that takes place solely along the water and out into the water (ocean) where Ray Tracing is used most. This surely would put a burden on Ray Tracing reflections, right?
Well, apparently, it’s a little bit better in separation, but not all that much. We are still seeing very small differences in performance between each Ray Tracing quality level, even in an area that it should be using Ray Tracing the most. This is just really odd behavior.
BTW the drop in performance here from No RT to Can It Run Crysis? RT is 24%, and that’s the largest drop we saw due to Ray Tracing.
Graphics Quality Comparison
The next thing we wanted to test closer is the difference that “Can It Run Crysis?” Quality Mode has over “Very High” Quality Mode. We wanted to see how much of a drop in performance “Can It Run Crysis?” actually make, especially compared to the drop with Ray Tracing to see which is more of a burden.
In the above graph, we have the game running at 1440p with No Ray Tracing at all to get in the way. We are simply comparing the “Very High” global setting to the “Can It Run Crysis?” global setting with NO Ray Tracing. You can see here that turning on Can It Run Crysis? Causes a huge drop in performance, it goes from near 70 FPS down to 47 FPS. That’s a 31% drop in performance which is much larger than the drop in performance Ray Tracing alone cost.
In this graph we are now looking at 4K resolution between “Very High” and “Can It Run Crysis?” again with NO Ray Tracing. Here we see a 24% drop in performance, actually less than 1440p, which is odd, but there you go.
Now in this graph, we wanted to see what both combined “Very High” with “Very High” Ray Tracing and then “Can it Run Crysis?” with “Can It Run Crysis” Ray Tracing is compared. This means all global settings are at Very High and all Global Settings are at Can It Run Crysis? We see a big drop between Very High and Can It Run Crysis? Going up to Can It Run Crysis is a 28% total drop in performance.
The same thing as above is being compared, now at 4K. The drop here is 29%.