Radeon RX 6800 XT Cyberpunk 2077 Ray Tracing Performance

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Conclusion

On March 29th, 2021 one of the large patches for Cyberpunk 2077 was finally released.  In addition to the ton of fixes for the game, Ray Tracing support for AMD Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs was finally enabled.  This game was released 6 months ago, more than even, and it should have had this support from day one since its Ray Tracing implementation is DXR based and it supported it on GeForce RTX cards at launch. 

Half a year is a long time for people to wait for such features that should be a standard implementation.  In today’s review, we have taken the Radeon RX 6800 XT and compared it with the GeForce RTX 3080 FE in Ray Tracing performance in the game.  We have also compared the individual Ray-Traced settings to see the kind of impact they have on performance and which video card handles them better.

Performance

Firstly, take note of this, without Ray Tracing enabled the Radeon RX 6800 XT and GeForce RTX 3080 FE are extremely competitive.  At 1080p and 1440p the Radeon RX 6800 XT was actually 4-5% faster.  At 4K they were very similar.  At 1080p and 1440p without Ray Tracing both video cards are very playable.  What this shows is just how close they really are in standard rasterized performance.

However, the tables change when Ray Tracing is enabled.  The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT experienced a larger drop in performance at each resolution enabling Ray Tracing: Medium and Ray Tracing: Ultra.  With Ray Tracing: Ultra the drop was in the upper 60’s of percentage.  In Ray Tracing: Medium it was still in the mid-’50s of percentage.  Whereas, with the GeForce RTX 3080 FE the drop in performance with Ray Tracing: Ultra was in the ’40s of percentage, and the drop in Ray Tracing: Medium was in the ’30s of percentage.

We also found that the largest culprit in the performance drop on both video cards is the Ray-Traced Lighting option.  Second, to that is the Ray-Traced Reflections option, and then lastly the least intensive is the Ray-Traced Shadows option.  Unfortunately for the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT turning on any one of these options dropped performance to unplayable levels at 1440p.  However, at 1080p you can turn on one of these features and it will be playable. 

The Final Points

If you want the best gameplay experience with Ray Tracing on the Radeon RX 6800 XT, you are going to have to play at 1080p.  At 1080p you still will not be able to have all the Ray-Traced features enabled, but with some manual manipulation of turning down Lighting Quality and maybe turning off Reflections, it should be playable.  At 1440p there is no hope of having Medium or Ultra Ray Tracing on with the Radeon RX 6800 XT, even with just Ray-Traced Shadows on the game is borderline, not playable.

We are glad that Ray Tracing support is finally in the game for the Radeon RX 6000 series of GPUs.  Unfortunately, even at 1080p, you will have to make Ray Traced sacrifices in order to find a playable performance on the Radeon RX 6800 XT.  With the Radeon RX 6800 and 6700 XT being slower, we don’t see any hope for those being playable at 1080p with any level of Ray Tracing.  The only chance for maybe an “Ultra” Ray Tracing experience at 1080p may be with the Radeon RX 6900 XT, and then maybe one or two features at 1440p.

Discussion 

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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