GPU Comparison – HIGH Quality Preset – HIGH Ray Tracing Preset – Upscaling
On the previous page, we tested the “High” Ray Tracing Preset without upscaling, but now it is time to turn on upscaling using DLSS or FSR 2 and see what is playable at each resolution. In the tests below we are running the “High” Quality Preset with the “High” Ray Tracing Preset and turning on “Quality” DLSS or FSR 2. DLSS is used on NVIDIA GPUs and FSR 2 on AMD GPUs.
Remember, in this game, when you enable the “High” Ray Tracing Preset it enables the Path Tracing mode and turns everything up to the highest levels. That means at the “High” Ray Tracing Preset the Path Traced Indirect Lighting is also on the “High” quality setting, so that means Ray Tracing is maxed out on these tests at the absolute highest possible level in the game. On NVIDIA GPUs Ray Reconstruction is used, but on AMD GPUs they don’t have this feature so just the default game denoiser is used, but these are the DEFAULT settings you get in this game with these settings with each video card shown below. The graphs are sorted from fastest to slowest, NVIDIA is in green, AMD is in red, let’s go.
4K
Even with upscaling enabled, we were still limited to cards we could actually test here because many were just too slow to worry about. The GeForce RTX 4090 was not playable on the previous page when upscaling wasn’t used, but now that we have Quality DLSS enabled it is very much playable at 69 FPS. However, it really is the only card that is playable, the GeForce RTX 4080 is iffy. The GeForce RTX 4090 is 39% faster than the GeForce RTX 4080. The RTX 4070 Ti is not playable, and none of the AMD GPUs are playable either with FSR 2, not even the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
1440p
Moving down to 1440p and enabling DLSS and FSR 2 opens up the game for a few more cards, but not many. That “High” Ray Tracing mode is really putting the hurt on everything still. The GeForce RTX 4090 is playable, the GeForce RTX 4080 is playable, and the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is playable but the RTX 4070 is iffy. The GeForce RTX 4090 is 28% faster than the GeForce RTX 4080 and has narrowed the gap from 4K. The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is also iffy on performance, it matches the GeForce RTX 4070 here, some may be ok with this performance level, and for the most part, it could be fine, but it’s not the smoothest experience always at this performance level.
1080p
What’s really shocking is that even at 1080p WITH upscaling DLSS or FSR 2 enabled, many cards are still not playable with “High” Ray Tracing Preset! Yep, the GeForce RTX 4060 really struggles, and the Radeon RX 7700 XT and Radeon RX 7600. The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti doesn’t hit 60 FPS, but the game is still enjoyable below 60 FPS here, since it is a slower-paced game. Every card above that is very smooth and enjoyable and playable, which means finally the Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX are playable at “High” Ray Tracing, but it takes 1080p with FSR 2 to do it.
Discussion (3 replies)
Join Discussion →Nice review I love to see the just bring all your cards knock down drag out sort of review. :) Even if the card I bought isn't dominating the charts. It falls in line with what I spent! ;)
Thanks for the write up! I got lucky and had a code for this game with my new laptop. Ironically I haven't had a chance to play it on it yet but I did fire it up on the 4090/OLED rig last night and yeah, it's beautiful. I don't know when I'll get around to playing this but I'm looking forward to it.
I've been playing this on the laptop, 4080 SUPER, and 4090 for the last few weeks and have very much enjoyed the visuals. The laptop at 2500x1600, and 4080 SUPER at 4K, perform very similarly with max settings but also using DLSS w/ framegen. The lag is noticeable with framegen but otherwise I'd say it is very well implemented.
The best experience is, of course, with the 4090 at 4K. There are moments I can turn off frame gen for 60+ FPS but I've left it on for the mostly 90-115+ FPS.
Visually speaking, I've really enjoyed the look of this game as I did briefly live in the backwoods of the Northwest (Aberdeen WA in the mid 80s, which looked a lot like most of this game). HDR is also well used.
I've enjoyed it the most out of the various Wake/Control franchise games I've played but it's getting a bit depressing and I've got enough things to bring me down these days so I'm going to drop it and switch over to something else, probably Baldurs Gate 3 since I could use a decent fantasy RPG to get lost into for a bit.