DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction Performance Compared
Since we have just looked at the game’s quality presets compared, and the Ray Tracing quality presets compared, let’s see how DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction alone affects Ray Tracing performance. Remember, the goal of Ray Reconstruction is to provide better image quality than the game’s default denoiser for Ray Tracing, inherintely the technology is not meant to provide a performance increase. However, due to the complexity of denoisers, using machine learning the way NVIDIA is doing it can actually alleviate some performance bottlenecks, and also speed up the process, and make it look better.
Below, we are going to customize the Ray Tracing settings by turning off Ray Reconstruction and comparing it to the game’s denoiser performance. We are going to compare Ray Reconstruction to the “High” Quality setting of both the Direct Lighting Denoising Quality and Path Traced Indirect Lighting Denoising Quality.
4K – Native Rendering with DLAA
In the above graph, we are running at 4K display resolution and 4K render resolution, with DLAA. We have the game set to the High-Quality Preset for graphics settings, and Ray Tracing is also set to the High Ray Tracing Preset. When DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction is toggled off the Denoiser settings are at “High.”
Right off the bat, we see that Ray Reconstruction is actually improving Ray Tracing performance. With Ray Reconstruction turned on performance increases by 17% from 24 FPS to 28 FPS. Of course, without DLSS or Frame Generation, the game isn’t playable here, but hey, it shows Ray Reconstruction positively affecting the game in performance regardless.
4K – Quality DLSS (2560×1440 Rendering Resolution)
Now we have Quality DLSS Super Resolution upscaling enabled, and the game is more playable, but more so with Ray Reconstruction enabled. We see a 16% improvement in performance with Ray Reconstruction, wow.
4K – Quality DLSS (2560×1440 Rendering Resolution) + DLSS 3 Frame Generation
With DLSS 3 Frame Generation enabled this game is very playable, but it is more playable with DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction enabled with an 11% gain in performance. Any way you slice it, Ray Reconstruction is not only a visual benefit but also a performance benefit.
Discussion (7 replies)
Join Discussion →Thanks for the detailed write-up. I'm sorely tempted to get this game even though I'm not really into the story due to how amazing it looks. I've been seeing videos popping up and I'm surprised at how good it can look in different parts.
Thank you as well for the write up. I got this game free with my video card. Plays great in 4K on my 4080 with max settings. After hearing about how demanding this game would be I am pleasantly surprised.
Ok so you were testing at 4k which is standard these days... but what video card were you using? Yes it was an Nvidia card... or was the intent here just to show how the options impacted an nvidia 4000 series video card?
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.thefpsreview.com/2023/10/28/alan-wake-2-graphics-settings-performance-tested-and-compared/2/#ftoc-heading-3[/URL]
How the heck did I miss that?! Soorry my bad. I thought I went through every page looking for that exact table. My bad.
All of the graphs are labeled with GeForce RTX 4090 on them. It's written on every single graph.
Yea I read this and was like. what graphs... I went back and looked and I scrolled down... to the Join our discussion link... and NEVER went past the ad jump to see the pages link. The navigation thing at the top I always miss and almost never use because it doesn't look like there's anything to it. So yea I completely flubbed that one... thought it was a 1 page short article and didn't catch anything else.