Ray Tracing Performance
We are going to focus on Ray Tracing gameplay performance with the ASUS ROG STRIX LC RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card. We will include DLSS and FSR performance on the same graph in the games that are supported. We will use DLSS on NVIDIA GPUs and FSR on AMD GPUs. For video card comparisons we are using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition video card and an AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT video card.
Dying Light 2
Dying Light 2 was released in February 2022 on the PC and uses Techland’s C-Engine. The game supports Ray Tracing, DLSS, and FSR. This game supports Ray Tracing environmental effects including Ray Traced Soft Shadows, Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion, Ray Traced Global Illumination, and Ray Traced Reflections. We utilize the built-in preset option to set “HIGH QUALITY RAYTRACING” which enables the game’s highest graphics settings plus the environmental effects explained above at the highest values. The game is run in DX12 Ultimate mode with ASYNC Compute turned on. For our benchmark, we are using a custom manual run-through at the end of the game hopping between rooftops, as well as free-roaming on the ground city level, as well as a forested area, in the daylight.
Because Dying Light 2 is very demanding at 4K trying to run full quality Ray Tracing, we have dropped the resolution to 1440p to enable the highest quality Ray Tracing options in this game. At 4K, performance was unplayable, however, at 1440p this changes. The ASUS ROG STRIX LC RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING is playable at 57FPS average. It’s a little smoother and faster than the Founder Edition, by 4%. It’s faster than the Radeon RX 6900 XT by 96%, which is not playable. Overclocking the video card improves performance by 7%.
If this isn’t fast enough for you, enabling DLSS brings performance above 80FPS and the game is super smooth with full Ray Tracing. The performance increase with DLSS is 56%. With the card overclocked, DLSS performance is over 90FPS with full Ray Tracing at 1440p. On the Radeon RX 6900 XT, even using FSR is not enough to make that video card playable will full Ray Tracing at 1440p.
Far Cry 6
Far Cry 6 was released in October of 2021 and uses the Dunia Engine. We utilize the built-in benchmark for testing. We have the HD Texture pack installed and turned on. We utilize the “Ultra” graphics preset which sets all options to the highest game settings. This game supports Ray Tracing via two DXR settings, one for Reflections and the other for Shadows, we turn on both for testing. This game supports FSR upscaling.
In Far Cry 6 DXR Ray Tracing performs so well that we can actually run it and turn it all on at 4K on each video card on this graph. The ASUS ROG STRIX LC RTX 3080 Ti is very playable at 73FPS with DXR ON and running at 4K. This is 3% faster than the Founders Edition and 6% faster than the Radeon RX 6900 XT, which is playable with Ray Tracing for a change at 4K in this game at near 70FPS. Overclocking the video card improves performance by 7%.
If that isn’t enough for you, using FSR will improve performance on each video card. Using FSR takes performance to 90FPS+ on each video card with DXR enabled. For the ASUS ROG STRIX LC RTX 3080 Ti card that’s a 30% performance increase.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 was released in December of 2020 and uses the REDengine 4. We have the game patched to version 1.52 and perform a long manual run-through driving in the game’s open world. We test using the Graphics Preset option to set graphics settings. We use the Ray Tracing Graphics Preset of either: “Ray Tracing: Low”, or “Ray Tracing: Medium” or “Ray Tracing: Ultra” as indicated. This game supports DLSS and FSR.
Like Dying Light 2, turning on the highest Ray Tracing quality in Cyberpunk 2077 is not playable at 4K on any of these video cards. Therefore, we have to turn the game down to 1440p resolution to get any level of playable performance with full Ray Tracing. Even at 1440p, this game is still a bit too demanding. The ASUS ROG STRIX LC RTX 3080 Ti is not playable with “Ultra” Ray Tracing at 1440p, pulling in just 45FPS average. It is faster than the Founders Edition by 3% and faster than the Radeon RX 6900 XT by 79%. Overclocking improved performance 6%, but that still wasn’t enough to make it playable.
The only way to make this game playable with “Ultra” Ray Tracing at 1440p is to enable DLSS and or FSR. With DLSS enabled at “Quality” performance jumps up 58% to 72FPS and the game is now very smooth and playable at 70FPS. That is what it takes though, to make the game playable with “Ultra” RT at 1440p. With the card overclocked it sits nicely at 76FPS. Unfortunately for the Radeon RX 6900 XT even FSR is not enough to help it get to playable performance levels at all, it’s sitting at just 38FPS with FSR.
Watch Dogs Legion
Watch Dogs Legion was released on the PC in October of 2020 and uses the Disrupt game engine. We utilize the built-in benchmark for testing. We have the HD Texture pack installed and enabled for testing. We use the built-in graphics preset of “Ultra” for testing. We utilize the “Ultra” preset quality option for Ray Tracing. This game supports DLSS upscaling.
Like Dying Light 2 and Cyberpunk 2077, Watch Dogs is also too demanding to enable “Ultra” Ray Tracing at 4K. The game is simply unplayable with “Ultra” Ray Tracing at 4K on these video cards. Therefore we dropped it down to 1440p, and now the game is playable on the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. The ASUS ROG STRIX LC RTX 3080 Ti is playable at 62FPS and is 3% faster than the Founders Edition and 44% faster than the Radeon RX 6900 XT. Overclocking the video card improves performance by 5%.
This game also supports DLSS, and with DLSS performance increases 34% and now delivers over 80FPS with “Ultra” Ray Tracing at 1440p.