Ray Tracing and DLSS Performance
Next up, we’ll look at the impact of Ray Tracing and DLSS in a few different ways to see if the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING can pull off a decent Ray Tracing experience at 1440p. We tried 4k out and even with DLSS enabled, we noped on back to 1440p rather promptly. For each game, we are using the game benchmark included with the game and reporting the average frames per second.
Cyberpunk 2077
In Cyberpunk 2077, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING achieved 24 FPS in our manual run-through. Overclocking the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING rounded up to 27.3 FPS which did not make a material difference in the slide show we experienced. If you intended on playing Cyberpunk 2077 with Ray Tracing on, the 3070 class card is not what you’d want.
Next, we enabled DLSS in “Quality” mode which pulled out a near doubling of performance across the board. Specifically, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING boosted up to 43.9 FPS and punched the overclocked value up to 50.2 FPS. At this point, if you find the extra eye candy brought by Ray Tracing to be good then this is a good combination. Overall for Cyberpunk 2077, we’d leave Ray Tracing and DLSS off with this card.
Watch Dogs: Legion
In Watch Dogs Legion, the EVGA GEFORCE RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING achieved 39 frames per second, which is 7 frames per second faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6800, but 1 frame per second slower than the ASUS ROG STRIX 2080 Ti. Overclocking the EVGA GEFORCE RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING didn’t make a difference to its Racy Tracing performance. You don’t want to play Watch Dogs: Legion with Ray Tracing on any of these cards.
Next, we tried out the DLSS set to “Quality” mode and as you can see in the chart, it boosted the overall performance of the NVIDIA cards by a significant margin, to the extent that it makes for a great gaming experience to have both Ray Tracing and DLSS: Quality enabled. DLSS made Ray Tracing very playable at this resolution.
Metro Exodus
In Metro Exodus, the EVGA GEFORCE RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING cranked out 45.4 frames per second, which is 13.4 frames per second faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6800, and 0.7 FPS slower than the ASUS ROG STRIX 2080 Ti. Overclocking the EVGA GEFORCE RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING notched an additional 1 frame per second to the tally. Whether Metro Exodus is playable on these cards is really the dealer’s choice as there will be some areas that have less than ideal performance but most of the game should be just fine.
Next, we tried out DLSS turned on and as you can see in the chart, it boosted the overall performance of the NVIDIA cards by about 10 frames per second, to the extent that it makes for a great gaming experience to have both Ray Tracing and DLSS: Quality enabled.