Watch Dogs Legion Ray Tracing and DLSS RTX 30 Performance

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Ultra Quality Resolution Performance

Before we dive into Ray Tracing and DLSS performance, we do need to find out what the baseline without those features are.  Therefore, on this page, we are going to simply test 1080p, 1440p, and 4K in the game at the default “Ultra” game quality, with No Ray Tracing and No DLSS.  This is pure rasterized performance. We are testing on the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition and GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition.  Also note, the HD Texture pack is NOT installed.

GeForce RTX 3080 FE

Watch Dogs Legion GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Ultra Quality Performance Graph

On the GeForce RTX 3080 FE 1080p and 1440p play very well, with great framerates.  At 4K though, it averages 55FPS, and this is without Ray Tracing or the HD Texture Pack.  The fact that the video card can’t even hit 60FPS at 4K at “Ultra” settings shows just how demanding the game is without those special features.  The minimum framerate dipped into the ’30s at times.  That’s a lot slower than we would have thought the RTX 3080 FE would be at 4K.

GeForce RTX 3070 FE

Watch Dogs Legion GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition Ultra Quality Performance Graph

At 1080p and 1440p the GeForce RTX 3070 FE is fine.  It does exceed 60FPS at 1440p, but at 4K it averages a miserable 43FPS even without Ray Tracing.  That seems rather slow, to be honest.  The minimums were at unplayable levels.  Basically, 4K is not playable on the RTX 3070 FE at 4K and “Ultra” game settings, forget Ray Tracing.

Video Card Comparison

Watch Dogs Legion 1080p Ultra Quality GeForce RTX 3080 FE versus GeForce RTX 3070 FE Performance Graph

In this first graph, we are comparing performance between the RTX 3080 FE and RTX 3070 FE at 1080p.  We find the RTX 3080 FE only 11% faster than the RTX 3070 FE, indicating some bottlenecking, perhaps CPU bottlenecking at 1080p even at “Ultra” settings.

Watch Dogs Legion 1440p Ultra Quality GeForce RTX 3080 FE versus GeForce RTX 3070 FE Performance Graph

At 1440p we are seeing a better 20% performance advantage with the RTX 3080 FE over the RTX 3070 FE.

Watch Dogs Legion 4K Ultra Quality GeForce RTX 3080 FE versus GeForce RTX 3070 FE Performance Graph

Finally, at 4K the RTX 3080 FE is not as bottlenecked, and it is 28% faster than the RTX 3070 FE.

Keep in mind, all this above is without Ray Tracing or DLSS, now let’s see how Ray Tracing performs on the next page.

Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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