We recently received an ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition 12GB from Nvidia and we have been testing it for the past ten days by using 19 PC games plus hybrid and non-synthetic benchmarks. This time, there will be no production nor distribution of Founder Edition models for its RTX 4070 Ti GPU (AD104) by Nvidia, and AIBs will be the only ones assembling and distributing custom models of this Ada Lovelace GPU. Although these GPUs arrive with multiple new features, including DLSS 3, this review will focus mainly on testing raw performance, not upscaling.

Our Plan

Nvidia touted the RTX 4070 Ti as a card delivering an outstanding efficient performance that can be up to 3x faster than the RTX 3090 Ti in specific games which offers a tremendous upgrade for GTX 1080 Ti or RTX 2080 users. Although for this review, we have not been able to use those same Pascal, Turing, and Ampere GPUs, we have been able to compare our RTX 4070 Ti versus an RTX 3080 (Ampere micro-architecture, 2nd RTX generation) and RTX 2080 Ti (Turing micro-architecture, 1st RTX generation).

We think comparing the RTX 4070 Ti’s performance against two iconic cards from Nvidia’s previous two RTX generations of GPUs may be worth it for Turing or Ampere users considering an upgrade to Ada Lovelace.

The RTX 4070 Ti features 7680 CUDA Cores, 40 Shader TFLOPS, 93 RT-TFLOPS, 641 Tensor FLOPS, and 12GB of GDDR6X memory, so we will see how it performs and compare with raster games and ray-tracing/DLSS games. We will focus on RTX 4070 Ti raw performance as well as consider whether the new RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC Edition at $850 delivers a good value as an upgrade from the RTX 3080 that launched at $700 MSRP two years ago and from the RTX 2080 Ti which launched at $1000 MSRP four years ago.

Features & Specifications

Key Features from ASUS

• Dedicated 3rd generation ray tracing cores (60)
• Dedicated 4th generation Tensor cores (240)
• NVIDIA DLSS 3 support
• Game Ready and Nvidia Studio drivers
• Nvidia GeForce Experience
• Nvidia Broadcast
• Nvidia G-Sync
• Nvidia GPU Boost
• PCI Express Gen 4
• Microsoft DirectX 12 Ultimate support
• Support for Vulkan RT APIs, Vulkan 1.3, and OpenGL 4.6
• HDCP 2.3 support
• DisplayPort 1.4a support: up to 4K at 240Hz or 8K at 60Hz with DSC, HDR
• HDMI 2.1a support: up to 4K 240Hz or 8K 60Hz with DSC, Gaming VRR, HDR

Specifications

Nvidia’s MSRP price for RTX 4070 Ti GPUs is $799, and ASUS’s price for the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC Edition is $849.99. This is approximately $50 over Nvidia’s MSRP price for a quality well-cooled tri-fan custom model with a factory GPU overclock of 120 MHz over the Nvidia reference 2610MHz boost clock.

According to GPU-Z, the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC has the same default GPU clock of 2310MHz and boost GPU clock of 2730MHz – 120MHz higher than the reference – using both VBIOS modes, so the only difference between VBIOS modes is the fan curve.

We will show GPU-Z data and test the card using the Performance VBIOS mode only, as the factory overclock doesn’t change between VBIOS modes, and the card is silent under full-load when in Performance Mode, so it is not worth having higher GPU temperatures with slightly worse performance.

Below is the advanced general information on the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC reported by the GPU-Z tool.

As you can see from the GPU-Z screenshots above, you can even increase both power and temperature limits to some degree, so there is still some room for GPU overclocking, but not very high or extreme, at least without taking other risky modding procedures.

The Test Bed

We benchmark with CapFrameX and FrameView tools on a recent install of Windows 11 Pro Edition 22H2, at 2560×1440 and 3840×2160, using an Intel Core i9-12900K with stock clocks and 32GB of T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE DDR4 3600MHz memory on an ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard. All games and benchmarks are the latest versions, and we use the latest GeForce Game-Ready 527.62 press drivers for games and hybrid and non-synthetic tests. The games tested, display driver, settings, and hardware are identical except for the GPUs we compare.

Let’s see the unboxing and take a closer look at this graphics card.

A Closer Look at the ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition 12GB

Packaging

The box cover highlights the graphics card image, adding the TUF GAMING logo, the GeForce RTX GPU name, and references to AURA SYNC, OC Edition, 12GB of GDDR6X memory, and DLSS3, ray tracing, Reflex, and Studio.

The back of the case touts the strengths of this model in terms of cooling, durability, aesthetics, and ASUS software. It also includes a list of key features like its dedicated ray tracing and tensor cores, PCI-E Gen 4, Display Port 1.4a, HDMI 2.1a, and HDCP 2.3, and support for DirectX 12 Ultimate, DLSS 3, and G-Sync.

However, on the back of the box, there is no mention of the minimum system requirements. Only a QR code that leads to a table of recommended PSUs is added. The minimum system requirements are only shown on one lateral side of the cover and only mention the need for a 1*16-pin supplementary power connector.

Accessories

We open the box and note there are parts for a card stand. The card stand is height adjustable, and its thinner upper part can also be separated and become a small screwdriver for card disassembling purposes. Also, the card stand has a rubber band at one end, and the support base has a magnet to fix the card stand inside the chassis.

ASUS includes a PCIe Gen5 power cable adapter to two PCI-E 8-pin cables to connect the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC to most PSUs. While the power connector adapter requires two Molex wires from the PSU to operate, newer PSUs may offer the new PCIe Gen5 single cable connector instead of massive double cabling. They also include a Velcro cable management strap with TUF GAMING branding.

Above, you can see the card stand fully assembled. Some may not feel the need to use the card stand, given how relatively heavy the 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC is. However, for safety and given the little volume it occupies inside the case, we think it is a worthwhile addition.

Also, you will find a small detachable black cardboard box, which includes the quick start guide, the warranty card, the certificate of reliability, the graphics card holder manual, an ASUS promotional detachable cardboard holder for your mobile phone, and a collectible card advertising this model.

The Card

The RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC is a large tri-fan and three-slot graphics card with sober aesthetics and solid and quality design.

Turning it over, we see a sturdy metal backplate featuring the TUF and GeForce RTX logos and branding.

Heat pipes and heatsink fins cover the entire PCB, and there is a switch to choose between the Performance and Quiet VBIOS modes. We didn’t bother using the Quiet VBIOS mode as the card is silent anyway, and the factory overclock is the same, but it is good to have in case a flash procedure fails.

The IO panel connectors are 3 DisplayPorts and 2 HDMI connections.

Below is the other card end.

Plugged in & Inside the case

The RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC looks beautiful inside a case. We liked that only the TUF logo has RGB lighting to match our RGB-lite gaming rig.

The specifications look promising, and the card, itself, looks solid and quality.

Next is our testing configuration, methodology, and more.

Test Configuration

Benching Methodology

Test Configuration – Hardware

• 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900K (Hyper-Threading/Turbo boost on; stock settings)
• ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, v.1008 BIOS)
• T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE 32GB DDR4 (2×16GB, dual-channel at 3600 MHz CL14 XMP), supplied by TeamGroup
• ASUS TUF GAMING GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition 12GB, stock clocks; supplied by Nvidia
• Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 MASTER 10GB (rev. 1.0); v.F4 VBIOS, stock clocks
• EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti BLACK EDITION GAMING 11GB, stock clocks
• 1 x Samsung 500GB SSD 960 EVO NVMe M.2
• 2 x WD Blue 1TB SATA SSD
• 1 x TeamGroup MP33 M.2 PCIe 1TB SSD
• Corsair RM850x, 850W 80PLUS Gold power supply unit
• ASUS TUF Gaming VG289Q 28? IPS UltraHD (3840×2160) 60Hz 5ms FreeSync Monitor for testing games at 2160p resolution.
• ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q 27? IPS QuadHD (2560 x 1440) 165Hz 4ms G-Sync Monitor for testing games at 1440p resolution.

Test Configuration – Software

• NVIDIA GeForce 527.62 press drivers; ‘Prefer maximum performance’ (on a per-game profile basis); Shader Cache Size ‘Unlimited’ (globally); fixed refresh rate (globally).
• We enable Resizable BAR (disabled with RTX 2080 Ti due to the lack of full support).
• ‘V-Sync application controlled’ in the control panel; V-Sync off in-game.
• We note and specify the main in-game display, graphics, AA, and scaling settings in the performance summary charts.
• Windows 11 64-bit Pro edition, latest updates v22H2, High-performance power plan, HAGS & Game Mode are enabled, Game DVR & Game Bar features off, Control Flow Guard (CFG) off on a per-game basis, Hypervisor and Virtualization-based security are disabled.
• We do not install GIGABYTE or ASUS tools.
• Latest DirectX
• All 19 games are patched to their latest versions at the time of publication.
• 3DMark suite and UNIGINE Superposition benchmark, the latest version
• Basemark GPU benchmark, v.1.2.3
• UNIGINE Superposition, v.1.1
• CapFrameX (CX), the latest version
• RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS), the latest version
• FrameView, the latest version
• Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), the latest version; always uninstall drivers using DDU in safe mode, clean, and restart.

• ISLC (Purge Standby List) before each benchmark.

GeForce Driver Suite-related

• We use DCH Game Ready drivers.
• The display driver is installed.
• We install the latest version of PhysX.

Hybrid & Non-Synthetic Tests-related

• Single run per test.

Game Benchmarks-related

• We use the corresponding built-in or custom benchmark sequence.

Frametimes Capture & Analysis tool-related

• We use CapFrameX for capturing frametimes and analyzing the relevant performance numbers obtained from each recorded built-in or custom benchmark sequence.
• We use FrameView for capturing purposes only when DLSS 3 is enabled for maximum reliability.
• We always perform consecutive runs until detecting three usable runs (no outliers) that can be aggregated by CapFrameX using the following method:
  • Aggregate excluding outliers:
    • Outlier metric: Third, P0.2 (0.2% FPS percentile).
    • Outlier percentage: 3% (the % the FPS of an entry can differ from the median of all entries before counting as an outlier).
• We compare and evaluate the results and aggregated records in terms of percentages of gain/loss and set the following thresholds to consider a % value as significant (not within the margin of error) for our benchmarking purposes:
  • Score/Avg FPS > 3% when valuing hybrid and non-synthetic benchmarks;
  • Avg FPS > 3% when evaluating raw performance.

Benchmark Suite: 19 Games, 6 Hybrid & 3 Non-Synthetic Tests

PC Games

DX11 Games

• Days Gone (DX11)
• God of War (DX11)
• Total War: Warhammer III (DX11)

DX12 Games

• A Plague Tale: Requiem (DX12)
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (DX12)
• Call of Duty: Vanguard (DX12)
• Cyberpunk 2077 v.1.61 (DX12)
• F1 2021 (DX12)
• Far Cry 6 (DX12)
• Forza Horizon 5 (DX12)
• Hitman 3 (DX12)
• Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12)
• Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DX12)
• Spider-Man: Remastered (DX12)
• The Callisto Protocol (DX12)
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt v.4.00 (DX12)

Vulkan Games

• DOOM Eternal (VK)
• Quake 2 RTX (VK; v.1.6.0)
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood (VK)

Synthetic Tests

• AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 3.4.0 benchmark
• Geekbench 5
• Sandra 2021 GPGPU Benchmarks

Hybrid Tests (3DMark)

• DirectX Raytracing feature test
• Fire Strike Extreme
• Fire Strike Ultra
• Port Royal
• Time Spy
• Time Spy Extreme

Non-Synthetic Tests

• Basemark GPU
• GPUScore: Relic of Life
• UNIGINE Superposition

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the global NVIDIA Control Panel settings:

Noise, Temperatures, and Power Consumption

Unfortunately, we did not have time to check out the overclocking potential, but temperatures were slightly higher than the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER. So BTR plans to follow this review up with a VR review – conducted by Mark Poppin, BTR’s PC VR specialist – and an overclocking and creative and pro apps performance analysis – done by the author of the current article.

The RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC is quiet, and its fans never spin up, even under a heavy or full load, to be irritating or noticeable. It is as silent as the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER. This model also supports a 0RPM fan mode on idle or light load conditions.

This card is factory clocked 120MHz higher than the reference version at 2610MHz using both BIOS modes. According to its specifications, the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC boost can clock up to 2730MHz out of the box. From our testing, we generally see it boosting even higher and typically settling in 2820MHz with peaks above 2850MHz under full or heavy load conditions.

Below is our thermal and approximate power consumption analysis on idle (Windows desktop, no user interactions) and full-load (UNIGINE Superposition Stress Test, 2160p resolution, highest settings, 10 minutes).

Idle conditions

On idle conditions, we see a maximum GPU clock of 210MHz, a Memory Clock of 50.6MHz max, a GPU temperature of 23 Celsius degrees (room temp at 19 Celsius degrees) max, an average board power draw of approximately 9.0W, average power consumption of 3%, and a maximum GPU voltage of 0.88V.

Full-load conditions

Under full-load conditions, the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC peaked at a maximum clock of 2880MHz, but after some minutes running the Superposition stress test, it slowed down progressively, step by step, and stabilized at 2820MHz when GPU temp stays in the mid-60s C. Also, the maximum memory clock was 1312.7MHz, the GPU peaked at 65.50 Celsius degrees max (room temp at 21 Celsius degrees), the approximate board power draw was 272.8W max, a maximum power consumption peak of 95.7%, and the GPU voltage reached a maximum of 1.10V.

Finally, the reported PerfCap reason (performance limited by different factors) during our full-load GPU stress test was either the intended VBIOS power or reliability limits.

So taking into account all the above, we consider that our ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition sample works great and as intended in terms of frequencies, noise level, temperature, and power consumption. Overall the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC is quiet, well-cooled, and power efficient.

Let’s head to the performance charts to compare the graphics performance of the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC with two other graphics cards; an RTX 3080, based on the Ampere architecture, and an RTX 2080 Ti, based on the Turing architecture.

Gaming Performance Charts

DirectX 11 Game Performance Charts

Days Gone (DX11)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

God of War (DX11)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Total War: Warhammer III (DX11)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

DirectX 12 Game Performance Charts

A Plague Tale: Requiem (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Call of Duty: Vanguard (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Cyberpunk 2077 (DX12) v.1.61

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

F1 22 (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Far Cry 6 (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Forza Horizon 5 (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Hitman 3 (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

The Callisto Protocol (DX12)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Vulkan Game Performance Charts

Doom Eternal (Vulkan)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Wolfenstein: Youngblood (Vulkan)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

DirectX Raytracing Game Performance Charts

Cyberpunk 2077 (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

F1 22 (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Far Cry 6 (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Forza Horizon 5 (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Hitman 3 (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

The Callisto Protocol (DXR)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Vulkan Raytracing Game Performance Charts

Doom Eternal (Vulkan Ray Pipeline)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Quake II RTX v.1.6.0 (Vulkan Ray Query)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Wolfenstein: Youngblood (RTX)

2160p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

1440p – Avg FPS & P1 FPS – Higher is better

Main Performance Gaming Summary Charts

Here are the summary charts of 19 games, six hybrid, and three non-synthetic tests. We note and specify the main in-game display, graphics, AA, and scaling settings on the performance summary charts below. The benches were run at 2560×1440 and at 3840×2160.

We compare three graphics cards and list them listed in order starting with the TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC (yellow text), the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER, and the EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK. All results, except for 3D Mark Fire Strike, Time Spy, and Port Royal hybrid tests, show average framerates, and higher is better. Minimum framerates are next to the averages in italics and a slightly smaller font. Minimum framerates are expressed by the 1% percentile FPS (P1), and higher is better.

Here are the hybrid and non-synthetic benchmark results.

DLSS Benchmarks

In this section, we compare the performance in some games with Quality DLSS on and off, and also compare performance with Quality DLSS 2 with our RTX 3080 and 2080 Ti cards versus Quality DLSS 3 (DLSS 2 + Frame Generation) using our RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC to check if the massive performance improvements advertised by Nvidia are real.

No DLSS vs. Quality DLSS 2

Looking at the chart above, we see substantial performance improvements in all tested games using Quality DLSS 2 with our three cards compared to not using DLSS.

At 2160p and using Quality DLSS, the 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC is the only card of our three we compare to exceed the 30FPS barrier in Cyberpunk 2077 (DXR), to reach the 60FPS one in Hitman 3 (DXR), and to exceed 60FPS avg in Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DXR).

No DLSS vs. Quality DLSS 2 & 3

Nvidia talks about 2x and up to 2.4x performance improvements when using DLSS 3 in games supported by the RTX 4070 Ti. In our case, we saw that their promo ads are consistent with reality.

We see an impressive +159% (2.6X) performance improvement between having DLSS 3 on and off in The Witcher 3 (DXR) v4.0, another +107% (2.1X) in F1 22 (DXR), +72% (1.7X) in Spider-Man: Remastered (DXR), and +91% (1.9X) in A Plague Tale: Requiem.

The previous results using DLSS 3 show us the notable advantage and performance leap in the most demanding and current ray-traced games, which comes from having an Ada Lovelace graphics card, especially in the case of the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC.

Considering the image quality results from a 2160p native resolution, we saw that overall, Quality DLSS 3 looks just as good as Quality DLSS 2 in all games we tested, with only some minor artifacts visible in certain situations. From a 1440p native resolution, we see similar results, except The Witcher 3 v.4.0, as the game with DLSS 3 enabled showed a blurrier image than Quality DLSS 2 in this scenario.

Averaged Framerates & Relative GPU Performance

Averaged Game Framerates

We averaged the aggregated FPS avg of all games and testing scenarios, and we represented the total game average FPS for each tested graphics card by the following chart:

On average, the TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti is approximately 17% faster than the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER and 66% faster than the EVGA RTX 2080 BLACK. So, although the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC offers a substantial performance improvement in games over the EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK baseline performance, the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC delivers a far less impressive step up over the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER.

RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC Relative Performance

Considering the calculated total game average FPS and the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC as 100% performance, we can situate relatively the two other cards we compare. So, based on our total game average FPS of each card, the relative GPU performance of the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER is approximately 86% (14% less performance than the RTX 4070 Ti, on average), and the relative GPU performance of the EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK is 60% (40% less performance than the RTX 4070 Ti, on average).

Let’s see our final thoughts and verdict on the RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC.

Final Thoughts & Verdict

This has been an enjoyable exploration comparing the new ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition with the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER and EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK. The TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti is a quality card with a sober aesthetic, minimal RGB lighting, an excellent cooling system, and room for moderate additional overclocking.

The RTX 4070 Ti TUF GAMING OC performed solidly above the RTX 3080 and well above the RTX 2080 Ti. While the TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC is not a notable upgrade for existing RTX 3080 users, it certainly is for RTX 2080 Ti users and any Turing users considering upgrading their gaming rig. However, at $849.99 and for users coming from an RTX 3080, the TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC is still a reasonably priced option to consider as a decent GPU refresh, especially if you want to enjoy significant performance improvements in DX12 and ray-traced games and the massive performance gains that DLSS 3 brings to gamers.

The TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition especially shines at 1440p resolution delivering high to very-high framerates in every recent game and 3D API scenario we tested, and also has the power to play most games over 60FPS at 2160p, where until now, a 3080 fell short of delivering a smooth 60 FPS experience in the most demanding games.

All in all, the ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition is a decent refresh in terms of performance for RTX 3080 owners who want to upgrade to the latest architecture to maximize its graphics power for a reasonable price or even a big step up at a good price for Turing users who also like to enjoy the ray tracing and Nvidia DLSS enhancements of the new Ada-Lovelace micro-architecture.

Let’s Play!

***

Rodrigo González (aka RodroG) is the current BTR lead reviewer and an enthusiast gamer. He is especially interested in shooter games, open-world role-playing games, and software and hardware benchmarking. He is the author of the NVIDIA WHQL Driver Performance Benchmarks Series and founder and moderator of the r/allbenchmarks community on Reddit.

BTR recently received a RTX 4090 Founders Edition (FE) from Nvidia and we have been testing it for the past ten days by using 45 pancake and VR games plus GPGPU benchmarks. In addition, although the RTX 4090 is not a workstation card, we have added workstation SPEC benches and selected popular creative and synthetic apps. Although this new flagship Ada Lovelace card arrives with multiple new features including DLSS 3, this review will focus on testing raw performance, not upscaling.

The RTX 4090 is touted as a beast in every way by Nvidia as the fastest video card for gaming with up to 4X the performance of the Ampere flagship or up to 2X the performance without using DLSS 3. The RTX 4090 boasts 83 Shader-TFLOPS, 191 RT-TFLOPS, and 1.3 Tensor petaFLOPS. It achieves over 1 TB/s memory bandwidth using 24 GB of GDDR6X memory. Its 72 MB L2 cache offers a 12X improvement over the RTX 3090 Ti.

We will focus on RTX 4090 raw performance as well as consider whether the new RTX 4090 Founders Edition at $1599 delivers a good value as a compelling upgrade from the RTX 3090 which launched at $1499 two years ago. We will also compare performance with the RX 6900 XT. In addition to gaming, VR, and SPECworkstation3 GPU results, we have added creative results using Geekbench, the Blender 3.3.0 benchmark, and complete Sandra 2020 and AIDA64 GPGPU benchmark results plus some pro applications including Blender rendering and OTOY OctaneRender.

We benchmark using Windows 11 Pro Edition 2H22 at 2560×1440 and at 3840×2160 using Intel’s Core i9-12900K and 32GB of T-FORCE DELTA RGB 6400MHz CL40 DDR5 2x16GB memory on an ASUS ROG Maximus Apex motherboard. All games and benchmarks are the latest versions, and we use the latest GeForce Game Ready press drivers for games and for testing pro apps, and Adrenalin 22.10.1 for the RX 6900 XT benching.

Let’s first take a quick look at the RTX 4090 Founders Edition before we go to the test configuration

The RTX 4090 Founders Edition Unboxing

Just like as with all RTX 3000 Founders Edition cards, the RTX 4090 comes in a similar “shoebox” style where the card inside lays flat at an slight incline for display. However, the RTX 4090 box is much thicker and probably close to 50% larger.

The system requirements, contents, and warranty information are printed on the bottom of each box. The RTX 4090 requires an 850W power supply unit – 100W more than the RTX 3090 – and the case must have space for a 304mm (L) x 137mm (W) x 61mm (H) three-slot card. However, it easily fits in our Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower. The extra thick packing of the box protects the card. Inside the box and beneath the card are warnings, a quick start guide, and warranty information, plus the PCIe Gen5 power cable adapter to quad PCIe 8-pin cables that will be required to connect the RTX 4090 to most PSUs.

The RTX 4090 Founders Edition exudes a premium and solid feel from its industrial design. It is a very heavy 3-slot card and we use two thumbscrews to lock it down, taking care not to damage our PCIe slot.

The power connector adapter requires three or four molex cables from the PSU to operate; the fourth cable is for overclocking. Newer PSUs may offer the new PCIe Gen5 single cable connector instead of a bulky quad cable.

Turning the card over, we see a similar design of the Ada Lovelace FEs to the Ampere cards with a fan also on the other side.

The IO panel has a very large air vent and four connectors. The connectors are similar to the Founders Edition of the RTX 3090. Three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors are included, and the HDMI 2.1 connector allows for 4K/120Hz or 8K/60Hz over a single HDMI cable.

The other end offers a removable plate for enthusiasts to use a support bracket.

The RTX 4090 Founders Edition is a beautiful card with a very unique industrial style, and it’s larger than the RTX 3090 which is itself an imposing card. However, the larger Ada Lovelace card tends not to heat up like the RTX 3090 and it is also much quieter under full load. It looks great installed inside a case.

Disassembly appears to be very difficult and should give pause to any enthusiast who may have custom watercooling in mind. In fact, we think that watercooling is a waste for the Founders Edition as it doesn’t have any thermal issues.

Let’s check out our test configuration.

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-12900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)..
• ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Apex LGA1700 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-Force Delta RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• Valve Index, 90Hz
• Gigabyte RX 6900 XT GAMING OC, GV-R69XTGAMING OC-16GD 16GB, factory clocks
• RTX 3090 24GB Founders Edition, factory clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• RTX 4090 24GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• 2 x T-Force Cardea Ceramic C440; 2TB PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD (one for AMD/one for Nvidia)
• T-Force M200 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C Portable SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan; 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• BenQ EW3270U 32? 4K HDR 60Hz FreeSync monitor
• LG C1 48″ 4K OLED HDR 120Hz display/TV

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce press drivers for the RTX 3090 and RTX 4090, and Adrenalin 22.10.1 for the RX 6900 XT.
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the Nvidia control panel.
• High Quality textures, all optimizations off in the Adrenalin control panel
• VSync is off in the control panel and disabled for each game
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are Ultra Preset or highest with 16xAF always applied – no upscaling is used except for five DLSS games tested using the Quality preset.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font where higher is better. The minimums are expressed by 1% lows (99th-percentile) in FPS
• Windows 11 Pro edition; 22H2 clean install for GeForce and Radeon cards on separate identical NVMe SSDs. DX11 titles are run under the DX11 render path. DX12 titles are run under DX12, and seven games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX

Games

Vulkan

• Sniper Elite
• DOOM Eternal
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
• Wolfenstein Youngblood
• World War Z
• Strange Brigade

DX12

• Spiderman: Remastered
• F1 2022
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Elden Ring
• God of War
• Dying Light 2
• Forza Horizon 5
• Call of Duty: Vanguard
• Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
• Far Cry 6
• DEATHLOOP
• Chernobylite
• Resident Evil Village
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
• Hitman 3
• Godfall
• DiRT 5
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Watch Dogs: Legions
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Death Stranding
• Borderlands 3
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
• Battlefield V
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider

DX11

• Overwatch 2
• Total War: Warhammer III
• Days Gone
• Crysis Remastered
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Grand Theft Auto V

VR Games

• Assetto Corsa: Competizione
• Elite Dangerous
• F1 2022
• No Man’s Sky
• ProjectCARS 2

Synthetic

• TimeSpy & Time Spy Extreme (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• VRMark Blue Room
• AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 3.3.0 benchmark
• Geekbench
• Sandra 2020 GPGPU Benchmarks
• SPECworkstation3
• SPECviewperfect 2020
• Octanebench
• FrameView benching tool
• OCAT benching tool

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.

Unfortunately, we did not have time to check out overclocking, but temperatures and noise levels are lower than the RTX 3090 FE. We plan to follow this review up with a VR review, an overclocking review, and a DLSS 3 review.

Let’s check out performance using 41 pancake and 5 VR games plus Workstation and creative benches on the next page.

Performance summary charts & graphs

Main Performance Gaming Summary Charts

Here are the summary charts of 41 games and 6 synthetic tests. The highest settings are always chosen, ray tracing is enabled for all games that offer it, and the settings are listed on the chart. The benches were run at 2560×1440 and at 3840×2160 as it is pointless to test at 1920×1080 with such a powerful card. In fact, we see CPU bottlenecking at 1440P for certain games.

Three cards are compared and they are listed in order starting with the RTX 4090, the RX 6900 XT, and the RTX 3090. We do not have a RX 6950 XT or a RTX 3090 Ti and no other cards are in this class.

All results, except for synthetic scores, show average framerates, and higher is better. Minimum framerates are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font. Minimum framerates are expressed by the 99th-percentile (1% lows) and higher is better.

The RTX 4090 offers an overall 160% to 180% improvement over the RTX 3090’s baseline performance (at 100%) depending on the resolution and individual game, and in several examples it offers nearly a 200% improvement!

All of the games that we tested ran well on the RTX 4090. Although some games show less of a performance increase than others due to being CPU bound even at 1440P, it is a blowout and the RTX 4090 FE wins every game benchmark over the RTX 3090 and RX 6900 XT – it crushes the former Ampere and RDNA2 flagships. This is achieved with no upscaling whatsoever!

The RTX 4090 is the first single-GPU card that is truly suitable for 4K/60+ FPS using ultra/maxed-out ray traced settings for most modern demanding games without any upscaling, and it’s probably even solid for 4K/120 FPS using Quality DLSS which has equivalent or better visuals than the native image.

Next we look at five RTX/DLSS enabled games, each using maximum ray traced settings and the highest Quality DLSS.

RTX/DLSS Benchmarks

The RTX 4090 FE maintains its performance dominance over the RTX 3090 FE and pulls even further away when Quality DLSS is enabled.

Using Quality DLSS, we can see that the RTX 4090 will take advantage of an LG C1 4K/120Hz panel using the most demanding ray traced modern games. From testing DLSS 2 exhaustively, we note that the Quality setting at 4K is visually equal to or better than the native image.

We only had a little time to check out DLSS 3 which upscales far better than DLSS 2 and looks just as good. We believe that DLSS 3 will prove especially advantageous for the less powerful upcoming Ada Lovelace cards and will devote an upcoming review to it.

Next, we look at VR performance.

VR Games

For this review we benchmarked the Valve Index and set the SteamVR render resolution to 150% (2758×2740) which is considered ideal, if overkill, to compensate for lens distortion, and it’s well above our usual benchmarking render resolution at 100%. This higher render resolution gives the visuals exceptional clarity. The Index is still considered one of the best overall headsets due to its outstanding tracking and solid feature set, and we are going to compare the performance of the RX 4090 versus the RX 3090 at each game’s Ultra/Highest settings.

IMPORTANT: BTR’s charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom) if it wasn’t locked to either 90 FPS or to 45 FPS by the HMD. In the case of unconstrained FPS, measuring just one important performance metric, faster is better.

Let’s individually look at our 5 sim-heavy VR games’ performance using FCAT VR. All of these games were benchmarked at 150% SteamVR resolution as we compare the stock-clocked RTX 4090 FE with the stock RTX 3090 FE using the Valve Index and FCAT VR.

First up, Assetto Corsa Competizione.

Assetto Corsa: Competizione (ACC)

BTR’s sim/racing editor, Sean Kaldahl created the replay benchmark run that we use for both the pancake game and the VR game. It is run at night with 20 cars, lots of geometry, and the lighting effects of the headlights, tail lights, and everything around the track looks spectacular.

Just like with Project CARS, you can save a replay after a race. Fortunately, the CPU usage is the same between a race and its replay so it is a reasonably accurate benchmark using the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.

iRacing may be more accurate or realistic, but Assetto Corsa: Competizione has some appeal because it feels more real than many other racing sims. It delivers the sensation of handling a highly-tuned racing machine driven to its edge. We test the VR Ultra preset.

VR Ultra

Here are the ACC FCAT VR frametimes using VR Ultra.

Here are the details are reported by FCAT-VR:

The RTX 3090 delivered 46.26 unconstrained FPS with 7884 (62%) synthesized frames with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 delivered 78.63 unconstrained FPS together with 6346 (50%) synthetic frames but with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The ACC racing experience is better with the RTX 4090. However, the only way that the RTX 4090 can play on VR Epic is to lower the SteamVR render resolution to 100% as it is best to have no synthesized frames.

Next, we check out Elite Dangerous next.

Elite Dangerous (ED)

Elite Dangerous is a popular space sim built using the COBRA engine. It is hard to find a repeatable benchmark outside of the training missions.

A player will probably spend a lot of time piloting his space cruiser while completing a multitude of tasks as well as visiting space stations and orbiting a multitude of different planets. Elite Dangerous is also co-op and multiplayer with a dedicated following of players.

We picked the Ultra Preset and we set the Field of View to its maximum. Here are the frametimes.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR:

The RTX 3090 delivered 137.33 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthesized frames with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 delivered 236.17 unconstrained FPS together with no synthetic frames and with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing Elite Dangerous at Ultra settings is not perceptibly different on either video card but the RTX 4090 has a lot more performance headroom to increase the render resolution or to use a higher resolution headset like the Reverb G2 or the Vive Pro 2.

Let’s look at our newest VR sim, F1 2022.

F1 2022

Codemasters has captured the entire Formula 1 2021 season racing in F1 2022, and the VR immersion is good. The graphics are customizeable and solid, handling and physics are good, the AI is acceptable, the scenery is outstanding, and the experience ticks many of the necessary boxes for a racing sim.

Here is the frametime plot for F1 2022.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RTX 3090 delivered 117.16 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthesized frames but no dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 delivered 192.66 unconstrained FPS together with no synthetic frames and with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing F1 2022 using the Ultra preset is not very different on either video card but the RTX 4090 has more performance headroom to increase the framerate to 120Hz or to use a higher resolution headset.

Next we check out No Man’s Sky.

No Man’s Sky (NMS)

No Man’s Sky is an action-adventure survival single and multiplayer game that emphasizes survival, exploration, fighting, and trading. It is set in a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, which includes over 18 quintillion unique planets using its own custom game engine.

The player takes the role of a Traveller in an uncharted universe by starting on a random planet with a damaged spacecraft equipped with only a jetpack-equipped exosuit and a versatile multi-tool that can also be used for defense. The player is encouraged to find resources to repair his spacecraft allowing for intra- and inter-planetary travel, and to interact with other players.

Here is the No Man’s Sky Frametime plot. We set the settings to Maximum which is a step over Ultra including setting the anisotropic filtering to 16X and upgrading to FXAA+TAA. Since DLSS is available for RTX cards and the Quality setting improves performance without impacting image quality, we used it.

Here are the FCAT-VR details of our comparative runs.

The RTX 3090 delivered 109.88 unconstrained FPS with 198 (3%) synthesized frames but no dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 delivered 183.68 unconstrained FPS together with 4 synthetic frames and with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing No Man’s Sky using the highest settings is not very different on either video card but the RTX 4090 has far more performance headroom.

Let’s continue with another VR game, ProjectCARS 2, that we still like better than its successor even though it is no longer available for online play.

Project CARS 2 (PC2)

There is a real sense of immersion that comes from playing Project CARS 2 in VR using a wheel and pedals. It uses its in-house Madness engine, and the physics implementation is outstanding. We are disappointed with Project CARS 3, and will continue to use the older game instead for VR benching.

Project CARS 2 offers many performance options and settings and we prefer playing with SMAA Ultra rather than to use MSAA.

We used maximum settings including for Motion Blur.

Here is the frametime plot.

Here are the FCAT-VR details.

The RTX 3090 delivered 113.60 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized frames and no dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 delivered 209.53 unconstrained FPS together with no synthetic frames and with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing Project CARS 2 using maximum settings is similar for both video cards but the RTX 4090 has far more performance headroom to increase the framerate to 120Hz or to use a higher resolution headset like the Vive Pro 2 or Reverb G2.

Amazing. Although all of these maxed out VR benchmarks were run at SteamVR’s 150% render resolution (2758×2740), the RTRX 4090 only broke a sweat playing ACC.

Unconstrained Framerates

The following chart summarizes the overall Unconstrained Framerates (the performance headroom) of our two cards using our 5 VR test games. The preset is listed on the chart and higher is better.

The RX 4090 FE delivers far higher unconstrained frames for all VR benchmarks over the RTX 3090 FE in this important performance metric. However, unconstrained framerates are just one metric that has to be taken together with the frametime plots to have any meaning. It is clear that the RTX 4090 is ready for higher resolution headsets than the Valve Index. We’ll follow up this review with an expanded VR review using the Reverb G2 and Vive Pro.

Creative, Pro & Workstation Apps

Let’s look at Creative applications next to see if the RTX 4090 is a good upgrade from the RTX 3090 or RX 6900 XT. We test starting with Geekbench.

GeekBench

GeekBench is an excellent CPU/GPU benchmarking program which runs a series of tests and times how long a GPU (in this case) takes to complete its tasks. It benchmarks OpenCL, Vulcan, and CUDA performance

OpenCL, Vulcan, and CUDA Performance

RTX 6900 XT

First, OpenCL performance.

Next we test the RTX 6900 XT using Vulcan.

The 6900 XT does not run CUDA, so we move on to RTX 3090 performance.

RX 3090

First, OpenCL performance.

Next we test the RX 3090 using Vulcan.

Finally, RTX 3090 CUDA performance.

We move on to RTX 4090 performance

RX 4090

First, OpenCL performance.

Next we test the RX 4090 using Vulcan.

Finally, RTX 4090 CUDA performance.

The summary charts below show the comparative performance scores.

Again, the RTX 4090 performance is outstanding.

Next up, Blender benchmark.

Blender 3.3.0 Benchmark

Blender is a very popular open source 3D content creation suite. It supports every aspect of 3D development with a complete range of tools for professional 3D creation.

For the following chart, higher is better as the benchmark renders a scene multiple times and gives the results in samples per minute.

Blender’s benchmark performance is highest using the RTX4090, and often the amount of time saved is substantial over using the next fastest card, the RTX 3090.

Next, we look at the OctaneBench.

OTOY Octane Bench

OctaneBench allows you to benchmark your GPU using OctaneRender. The hardware and software requirements to run OctaneBench are the same as for OctaneRender Standalone.

We run OctaneBenc 2020.1.5 for Windows and here are the RTX 3090’s complete results and overall score of 671.17

We compare the score and results for the RTX 4090 – almost double the RTX 3090 score with 1261.64

Here is the summary chart comparing the RTX 4090 with the RTX 3090 overall scores.

The RTX 4090 is a beast of a card when used for rendering.

Next, we move on to AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks.

AIDA64

AIDA64 is an important industry tool for benchmarkers. Its GPGPU benchmarks measure performance and give scores to compare against other popular video cards.

AIDA64’s benchmark code methods are written in Assembly language, and they are well-optimized for every popular AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and VIA processor by utilizing the appropriate instruction set extensions. We use the Engineer’s full version of AIDA64 courtesy of FinalWire. AIDA64 is free to to try and use for 30 days. CPU results are also shown for comparison with the RTX 4090 GPGPU benchmarks.

Here is the chart summary of the AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks with the RTX 4090, the RTX 3090 and the RX 6900 XT side-by-side.

Generally the RTX 3090 is faster at almost all of AIDA64’s GPGPU benchmarks than the other cards. So let’s look at Sandra 2020 next.

SiSoft Sandra 2020

To see where the CPU, GPU, and motherboard performance results differ, there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2020. SiSoftware SANDRA (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a excellent information & diagnostic utility in a complete package. It is able to provide all the information about your hardware, software, and other devices for diagnosis and for benchmarking. Sandra is derived from a Greek name that implies “defender” or “helper”.

There are several versions of Sandra, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. 20/21-R16a is the latest version, and we are using the full engineer suite courtesy of SiSoft. Sandra 2020 features continuous multiple monthly incremental improvements over earlier versions of Sandra. It will benchmark and analyze all of the important PC subsystems and even rank your PC while giving recommendations for improvement.

With the above in mind, we ran Sandra’s intensive GPGPU benchmarks and charted the results summarizing them. The performance results of the RTX 4090 are compared with the performance results of the RTX 3080, and the RX 6900 XT.

In Sandra GPGPU benchmarks, the RTX 4090 is much faster than the RTX 3090 and it distinguishes itself in every area – Processing, Cryptography, Financial and Scientific Analysis, Image Processing, and Bandwidth.

Next up, SPEC benchmarks.

SPECworkstation3.1 Benchmarks

All the SPECworkstation 3 benchmarks are based on professional applications, most of which are in the CAD/CAM or media and entertainment fields. All of these benchmarks are free except for vendors of computer-related products and/or services.

The most comprehensive workstation benchmark is SPECworkstation 3. It’s a free-standing benchmark which does not require ancillary software. It measures GPU, CPU, storage and all other major aspects of workstation performance based on actual applications and representative workloads. We only tested the GPU-related workstation performance as checked in the image above.

Here are our raw SPECworkstation 3.1 raw scores for the RX 6900 XT:

Here are our raw SPECworkstation 3.1 raw scores for the RTX 3090:

Finally, here are our SPECworkstation 3.1 raw scores for the RTX 4090:

Below are the SPECworkstation 3.1 RTX 4090 results summarized in a chart along with the two competing cards, the RTX 3090, and the RTX 6900 XT. Higher is better since we are comparing scores.

The RTX 4090 is not a workstation card, yet it uses brute force to win most of the benches against the other two cards. The Radeon scores unbelievably high in snx-03, however, and we have no explanation for this result.

Finally, we benchmark using SPECviewperfect GPU benches.

SPECviewperf 2020 GPU Benches

The SPEC Graphics Performance Characterization Group (SPECgpc) has released a 2020-22 version of its SPECviewperf benchmark that features updated viewsets, new models, support for up to 4K display resolutions, and improved set-up and results management. We use the highest available 3800×2120 display resolution for highend cards.

Here are SPECviewperf 2020 GPU RTX 4090 benchmarks summarized in a chart together with our two competing cards.

Although we see different architectures with different strengths and weaknesses, the RTX 4090 is a beast in these SPEC benchmarks.

The RTX 4090 doesn’t offer any certifications for professional applications and it is not expected. It is likely that in workstation specific benchmarks, there will be cases where a Quadro board will outperform the RTX 4090 GeForce card. This is why professionals pay much more for Quadro than for any GeForce with otherwise equivalent raw performance.

After seeing the totality of the benches, many creative users will probably upgrade their existing systems with a new RTX 4090 series card based on the performance increases and the associated increases in productivity that they require. The question to buy the RTX 4090 or the RTX 3090 should be based on the workflow and requirements of each user as well as budget. Time is money to a professional depending on how these apps are used. Hopefully the benchmarks that we ran may help you decide.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

Final Thoughts

This has been a very enjoyable exploration evaluating the new Ada Lovelace RTX 4090 FE versus the RTX 3090 FE and Gigabyte RTX 6900 XT Gaming OC. The RTX 4090 performed brilliantly performance-wise. It totally blows away its other competitors as it is much faster. The RTX 4090 at $1599 is the upgrade from the $1499 RTX 3090 since the RTX 4090 gives at least a 160% (1.6X) improvement over its baseline performance. If a gaming enthusiast wants the very fastest card – just as the RTX 3090 was for the past two years (until the up to 10% faster RTX 3090 Ti was released), and doesn’t mind the $100 price increase – then the RTX 4090 is the only choice for intensive gaming and high resolution VR headsets.

The RTX 4090 is the flagship gaming card that can also run intensive creative apps very well, especially by virtue of its huge 24GB framebuffer. But it is still not a Quadro. These cards cost a lot more and are optimized specifically for workstations and also for professional and creative apps.

For RTX 3090 gamers who paid $1499 and who have disposable cash for their hobby, the RTX 4090 Founders Edition which costs $1599 is the card to maximize their upgrade. And for high-end gamers who also use creative apps, this card may become a very good value. Hobbies are very expensive to maintain, and the expense of PC gaming pales in comparison to what golfers, skiers, audiophiles, and many other hobbyists pay for their entertainment.

We cannot call the $1600 RTX 4090 a “good value” generally for gamers as it is a halo card although it provides more than 1.6X the performance of a RTX 3090. Of course, a RTX 3090 can be currently found at many etailers for under $1000 and a RTX 6900 XT for less than $700. Value is in the eye of the beholder, and the RTX 4090 delivers on its raw performance promises.

In addition, DLSS 3 brings a great future value to the new 4000 series as it has already received support from many of the world’s leading game developers, with more than 35 games and applications announcing support including game engines, including Unity, Unreal, and Frostbite Engine. If a game already uses DLSS 2 Super Resolution, upgrading to DLSS 3 is a relatively simple process that will make both Super Resolution and Frame Generation available. DLSS 3 leverages the same integration points as DLSS 2 (color buffer, depth buffer, engine motion vectors, and output buffers) and Nvidia Reflex, making upgrades from these existing SDKs easy for devs using the DLSS 3 Streamline plugin.

We will follow up with a DLSS 3 review since what we have experienced so far is extremely promising especially for upcoming less powerful Ada Lovelace cards.

Conclusion

We are very impressed with the RTX 4090 raw performance after spending more than 100 hours testing it over the past few days. It offers exceptional performance at Ultra 4K and and it even supports smooth playable gaming at 4K/120Hz using Quality DLSS and may be used for 8K gaming. It currently stands alone as the fastest video card in the world.

The Founders Edition of the RTX 4090 is well-built, solid, good-looking, and it stays cool and quiet even when overclocked – the card does not get hot like the RTX 3090 and it is much quieter under load. The RTX 4090 Founders Edition offers a big performance improvement over any previous Founders Editions in every metric.

Pros

• The RTX 4090 is the fastest video card in the world
• The RTX 4090 at $100 more than the RTX 3090 launched at is at least a 1.6X+ jump in raw performance
• The RTX 4090 offers an overall 160% to 180% improvement over the RTX 3090’s baseline performance (at 100%) depending on the resolution and individual game, and in several examples it offers nearly a 200% improvement!
• 24GB of fast vRAM and a fast core allow for 4K/120Hz gaming and it’s also very useful for intensive creative apps
• Ray tracing is a game changer in every way and DLSS 2 is pure magic. DLSS 3 looks to be even more of a game changer
• Ada Lovelace improves over Ampere with AI/deep learning and ray tracing to improve visuals while also increasing performance with DLSS 2 and especially with DLSS 3
• The RTX 4090 Founders Edition design cooling is quiet and efficient; the GPU in a well-ventilated case stays much cooler and quieter than the RTX 3090
• The industrial design is eye-catching and it is solidly built

Con

• Price. At $1600, the RTX 4090 is not a good value for gaming except as a multi-purpose halo card or for bragging rights

The Verdict:

If you are a gamer who also uses creative apps where saving time is important, you may do yourself a favor by upgrading to a RTX 4090. For high-end gamers with disposable income, the RTX 4090 is a true 4K/120Hz video card for most modern games and it offers the highest performance as an upgrade from a RTX 3090 delivering from 160% to nearly 200% improvement in raw performance power.

Stay tuned, there is a lot more on the way from BTR. Next up, we will more extensively test the RTX 4090, RTX 3080, and RX 6900 XT in VR using the Vive Pro 2 and Reverb G2 with an ETA of early next week. We also plan to follow up with an RTX 4090 overclocking review and a DLSS 3 deep dive. Stay tuned to BTR!

Happy Gaming!

UPDATE: I shared my data with John Peddie Research and they posted their own take on the RTX 4090 focusing on averages and easy-to-read charts including their famous Pmark overall comparison.

After spending many hours completing the Spider-Man Remastered main story, and being unable to tear ourselves away from the screen, BTR’s editors recommend it as a great game with a few flaws. Rodrigo, Mark, and Mario have collaborated to produce this review, each of us playing it for 20 or more hours. We cover the gameplay, updated performance with Thursday’s patch, and IQ (image quality) which includes ray tracing and testing AMD’s and NVIDIA’s upscaling solutions.

Spider-Man Remastered was released originally as a PS4 exclusive in 2018 and two years later remastered for PS5. Sony then gave it a complete makeover when they ported it to PC complete with ray traced reflections, and together with all the DLC, it was released ten days ago on August 12, 2022. Sony worked quickly to patch the game six days later, significantly improving ray traced performance while addressing bugs. We have tested the performance of 11 ray tracing capable NVIDIA and AMD cards because reflections add a lot of value to playing the game much like Control does. Since Spider-Man: Remastered is a fast-paced game, it’s important to keep framerates high.

Upscaling, Image Quality, and Performance

Spider-Man: Remastered features anti-aliasing solutions, SMAA, TAA, and NVIDIA’s DLAA as well as DLSS and AMD’s FSR 2.0 as upscaling solutions to improve framerates while maintaining image quality (IQ). DLAA is an NVIDIA-developed superior AI-enhanced form of TAA which has the best native render/display resolution visuals and is the best way to play on very powerful top RTX-powered PCs. As upscaling solutions, the Quality DLSS images are better than Quality FSR 2.0 with the camera in motion and with DLSS Quality being as good as the native 4K visuals and slightly sharper. Unfortunately, there is no sharpening slider and the overall images are too sharp.

FSR 2.0 is AMD’s latest iteration of FidelityFX Super Resolution. FSR improves performance by first rendering frames at a lower resolution and then by using an open-source spatial upscaling algorithm with a sharpening filter in an attempt to make the game look nearly as good as at native resolution. So far, there are 110+ available and upcoming games supporting FSR 1.0 and FSR 2.0. Although FSR 2.0 is a solid improvement over 1.0, it is still outclassed by DLSS, especially with the camera in motion.

More than three years ago, NVIDIA introduced real-time RTX ray tracing together with AI-powered Deep Learning Supersampling (DLSS). To play at high settings requires the use of AI super-resolution or DLSS which provides better than a game’s postprocessing AA together with improved performance. Spider-Man: Remastered uses ray tracing with DLSS or FSR 2.0 to improve performance, and we will compare the current performance and IQ of eleven AMD and NVIDIA ray tracing capable cards using the latest 516.94 GeForce and 22.8.1 Adrenalin drivers.

Performance Options and Test bed

Mark’s testing platform is an Intel Core i9-12900K, an ASUS ROG Maximus Apex Z690 motherboard, and 32 GB of T-Force DDR5 at 6400MHz on a recent clean install of Windows 11 Pro Edition. He compares image quality using DLSS versus FSR 2.0 and also using native TAA (and also DLAA for RTX cards), and we chart the performance of eleven current NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon ray tracing capable cards:

• RTX 3090
• RTX 3080 Ti
• RTX 3080
• RTX 3070 Ti
• RTX 2080 Ti
• RTX 3070
• RTX 3060 Ti
• RTX 3060
• RX 6800 XT
• RX 6800
• RX 6700 XT

First, are compared ray traced reflections On versus Off in an indoor scene using completely maxed out settings and the very highest ray tracing options.

Ray Tracing On versus Off (Native 4/Maxed settings)

[twenty20 img1=”28514″ img2=”28513″ offset=”0.5″ before=”Ray traced reflections On” after=”Ray traced reflections Off”]

All of our images use maxed-out 4K settings with Very High ray tracing.

TAA vs. DLSS

Here are mostly uncompressed JPEG 4K images comparing No DLSS/Native/TAA (left) with Quality DLSS (right) using a slider.

[twenty20 img1=”28517″ img2=”28518″ offset=”0.5″ before=”Native/TAA 4K” after=”Quality DLSS 4K”]

We don’t recommend that RTX gamers play without DLSS at 4K. The DLSS image quality is equal or better/sharper than native/TAA – and especially with the camera in motion – although there are some very slight differences that can be seen with some minor DLSS specular aliasing issues visible on some surfaces and on rain drops. DLSS is perfect for 4K, but DLSS settings don’t scale well on 1440p and lower resolutions due to low GPU usage and high CPU limitation when using it.

TAA vs. DLAA

DLAA is an NVIDIA-developed superior IA-enhanced form of TAA which keeps native render/display resolution that only works on GeForce. However, DLAA comes with a small FPS cost, but the image quality is better than native 4K + TAA.

[twenty20 img1=”28518″ img2=”28519″ offset=”0.5″ before=”TAA ” after=”DLAA”]

If you have a powerful enough RTX-powered PC to run it, DLAA is the best choice for the ultimate image quality, especially at 1440p and 1080P.

DLSS vs. FSR 2.0

FSR 2.0 is AMD’s latest iteration of FidelityFX Super Resolution. FSR improves performance by first rendering frames at a lower resolution and then by using an open-source spatial upscaling algorithm with a sharpening filter. Its advantage is that it works on all cards, not just Radeons. Its disadvantage is that even the highest Quality FSR 2.0 setting does not maintain the high visual fidelity that Quality DLSS does, especially with the camera in motion.

[twenty20 img1=”28520″ img2=”28517″ offset=”0.5″ before=”4K Quality FSR 2.0″ after=”Quality DLSS 4K”]

FSR 2.0 is perfect for Radeons playing at 4K, but it doesn’t scale well on 1440p and lower resolutions due to Spider-Man: Remastered’s low GPU usage and high CPU limitation when using it.

There isn’t really a lot of visual difference that can be shown by screenshots.

Next, we check out the performance of eleven RTX cards using 3840×2160, 2560×1440, and 1920×1080 resolutions using up to three levels of DLSS with the goal of averaging close to 60 FPS while still using completely maxed-out settings.

Eleven Video Cards’ Performance Compared Using Maxed-out or the Very High Preset

First of all, no video card can play with fully maxed out settings at native 4K with TAA (or DLAA) and keep framerates above 60 FPS. The RTX 3090 cannot manage it, and most likely, neither can the RTX 3090 Ti. Here are the fully maxed-out settings (left) compared with the Very High Preset (right).

The Very High Preset uses High Reflections and Geometry details but using fully maxed-out settings they are set to Very High. In addition, the Object range increases from 6 to 10, and we also increased the Field of View. However, please note that we also increased the Anisotropic Filtering from 8X to 16X for all of our benching.

Let’s look at the performance of our 11 tested ray tracing capable video cards. All of the following charts show average framerates (FPS) in Bold and 1% FPS percentile minimums next to them in slightly smaller italized font.

4K Highest Setting Video cards – RTX 3080 Ti & RTX 3090

Only three cards can generally play at maximum settings at native 4K with TAA or DLAA.

The RTX 3090 and 3080 Ti are no-compromise video cards (together with the RTX 3090 Ti which we don’t have) that provide the best 4K Spider-Man Remastered experience. But none of them can handle fully maxed-out 4K settings without using DLSS. Quality DLSS provides an image quality experience that is arguably as good as native 4K with DLAA and better than native 4K with TAA.

We managed to play using native 4K and DLAA playing on an LG C1 120Hz G-SYNC OLED display with drops to the mid-50 FPS that did not impact our gameplay fluidity too badly. However, using Quality DLSS significantly improved the fluidity of the gameplay and did not impact the visuals during play. There is no reason to use FSR 2.0 even on its highest Quality setting with RTX cards as DLSS has better image quality with the camera in motion and the DLSS performance is a bit higher.

At maxed-out 4K, the RTX 3080 Ti also averages above 60 FPS with DLSS Performance but it drops into the lower 50s FPS for the 1% minimum lows. Dropping the settings from maximum to use the Very High preset allows RTX 3080 Ti players to enjoy framerates above 60 FPS even with native 4K/DLAA, but Quality DLSS provides a better and more fluid experience without compromising image quality.

1440p allows RTX 3090/3080 Ti gamers to enjoy even higher framerates and take advantage of 120Hz displays.

Other 4K video cards

The RTX 3080, RTX 3070 Ti, the RX 6900 XT, the RX 6800, and the RX 6800 are also able to play using the Very High preset by using DLSS or FSR 2.0. Unfortunately, we don’t have an RX 6900 XT to test.

The RTX 3080 can just manage 4K with TAA but not with DLAA which provides a superior image. It is far better to use Quality DLSS to not only enjoy superior visuals to TAA but to experience fluid framerates.

The RX 6800 XT requires Quality FSR 2.0 to achieve fluid framerates at 4K.

The RX 6800 performs similarly to the RX 6800 XT and can manage 4K/Very High above 60 FPS using FSR 2.0.

The following video cards perform well at 1440p.

1440P Video Car ds

The RTX 3070 Ti cannot play at Very High 4K without Balanced DLSS. It is best suited for 1440p since DLSS settings don’t scale well on 1440p and lower resolutions due to low GPU usage and high CPU limitations.

The RTX 3070 performs just below the RTX 3070 Ti in Spider-Man Remastered, and although it cannot play at all well at 4K/maxed, the same recommendations for 1440P apply as above.

The last generation flagship RTX 2080 Ti also can easily manage 1440P with native DLAA but it may be better to use DLSS Quality for much higher framerates and better fluidity while swinging through the city

The RTX 3060 Ti can handle native 1440p although Quality DLSS provides an IQ alternative that is equal but with more fluid framerates.

The RX 6700 XT can manage native 1440p/Very High but using Quality FSR 2.0 allows for higher framerates. It is also an excellent 1080P card since FSR 2.0 settings don’t scale well on 1440p and lower resolutions due to low GPU usage and high CPU limitations.

The RTX 3060 requires Quality DLSS to play at 2560×1440, but it is also well-suited as a 1080P card because of the same DLSS issues at lower resolutions due to low GPU usage and high CPU limitations.

DLSS and FSR 2.0 make a huge difference to the playability of Spider-Man: Remastered at either the highest visual quality settings or using the Very High preset at 4K. DLSS Quality has no IQ disadvantages whatsoever while FSR 2.0 makes minor visual differences while gaming. Both upscaling methods are highly recommended at 4K over using TAA except at 1440p and lower resolutions due to low GPU usage and high CPU limitation when using them, especially while swinging through the city.

Now let’s look at Rodrigo’s deep dive using the RTX 3080 and RX 6700 XT. The following is again in his words.

Rodrigo’s Deep Dive using the RTX 3080 and RX 6700 XT

Mark benchmarked the cards at “maxed-out” 4K and Very High 4K while I concentrated on 1440p “maxed-out” settings using an AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER, and on 1080P ‘”Very High (16xAF)” settings with a reference AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT.

My testing platform is a recent install of Windows 11 64-bit Pro Edition, an i9-12900K with stock clocks, an ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard, and 32GB of T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE DDR4 3600MHz CL14.

I use CapFrameX for capturing and analyzing the relevant performance numbers obtained from our custom benchmark sequence. I always perform consecutive runs until detecting three valid runs (no outliers) that can be aggregated by CapFrameX using the following method:

• • Aggregate excluding outliers:
    • Outlier metric: Third, P0.2 (0.2% FPS percentile).
    • Outlier percentage: 3% (the % the FPS of an entry can differ from the median of all entries before counting as an outlier).

WQHD (1440p) Performance Analysis Using an RTX 3080

We showcase Spider-Man: Remastered performance at 2560×1440 (1440p) or WQHD display resolution using an AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER graphics card at stock clocks.

In this section our “Maxed-out” graphics settings are as follows:

When needed for testing, we set ray-tracing reflection resolution and geometry detail settings in tandem and independently of any graphics quality preset or settings.

Graphics Quality Presets – Performance scaling

The charts below show the performance of each of the game’s graphics presets in terms of average FPS numbers for the raw performance, P1 and P0.2 metrics for frametimes consistency, and the corresponding performance scaling progression when we move between presets.

The above results showed how well and progressively the game scales performance on 1440p resolution when going from “Very High” preset to “Very Low” in terms of both IQ and GPU workload levels. Although we saw significant raw performance improvements when moving from the “Very High” preset to the “Very Low” preset, the frametime consistency or stability kept similar across all graphics presets. Also, moving from the “Very High” to “High” preset gives you the highest FPS avg gain.

The following charts support these findings and show that the graphics preset with the worst frametime stability and frame-pacing is the “Very High” preset, comparatively.

We next present our ray-tracing and NVIDIA DLAA vs. TAA results using an RTX 3080 at 1440p resolution.

Ray-Tracing Performance – Settings & DLAA vs. TAA

Here we see the high FPS cost of enabling real-time ray traced reflections in Spider-Man Remastered, up to about 42% less raw performance. We also see that, while the difference when using DLAA or TAA is relatively minor when using “Maxed” settings and “Very High” ray-tracing settings, this difference increases significantly with “High” ray-tracing settings and notably when ray-tracing is off.

The charts above show that while the ray-tracing “Very High” scenarios showed the worst frametime consistency or stability, the ray-tracing “High” settings scenarios were the most consistent or stable. Besides, although the differences in frametime variances were minor, we saw that the “High” ray-tracing scenario with DLAA had overall the best frame-pacing and “very high” ray-tracing with TAA the worst.

Our NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR 2.0 results using an RTX 3080 at 1440p resolution are next.

NVIDIA DLSS Performance – Settings

We see that while the performance gain is notable when we turn on DLSS scaling (up to about 21%), the relative raw performance gains are smaller overall when we move from the “DLSS Quality” setting to “DLSS Balanced” and from “DLSS Balanced” to “DLSS Performance” mode. That’s why we consider that in terms of performance and image quality, it makes little sense to use a setting other than DLSS Quality when you play at 1440p resolution.

In this regard, our tests also showed that using any DLSS setting is consistently associated with low GPU usage and CPU-boundedness. This situation is especially noticeable when our Spider-Man is outdoors and swinging between buildings.

Based on the charts above, we also see that using DLSS with ray-tracing gives significant performance gains in frametime consistency or stability and frame-pacing.

AMD FSR 2.0 Performance – Settings

The charts above show a similar performance scaling trend as we saw with DLSS settings. While we see a notable performance boost as soon as we enable AMD FSR 2.0 scaling (up to about a 20% gain), we found minor performance changes when swapping between FSR 2.0 modes. Also, the frametime consistency or stability was better using the AMD FSR 2.0 scaling method.

The next charts support these findings and show that you get a better frame-pacing when using AMD FSR 2.0 scaling settings.

Therefore, DLSS and FSR 2.0 scaling methods can also help smooth out your gaming experience in this game.

Below are our DLSS vs. FSR 2.0 performance comparisons

DLSS vs FSR 2.0 Performance

Although the game’s performance scaling behavior is overall the same using NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR 2.0 technologies, we consider NVIDIA DLSS the best AI-enhanced scaling method in terms of IQ when using an RTX graphics card.

We also don’t see significant performance differences in frametime consistency or frame-pacing between DLSS and AMD FSR 2.0 settings.

Full HD (1080p) Performance Analysis Using a Reference RX 6700 XT

Next is our in-depth Spider-Man: Remastered performance analysis at 1080p or Full HD display resolution using a reference AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT card with stock clocks.

In this section our “Very High (16xAF)” graphics settings are as follows:

When needed for testing, we set ray-tracing reflection resolution and geometry detail settings in tandem and independently of any graphics quality preset or settings.

Graphics Quality Presets – Performance scaling

Using our reference RX 6700 XT graphics card at 1080p resolution, we see overall the same performance scaling trend as we found with our AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER. That is, a higher performance improvement when we move from the “Very High” to “High” preset, but lower average FPS gains when we move to the rest of the graphics quality presets.

“High” is the steadiest graphics quality preset, and “Very High” is the less smooth one using our reference RX 6700 XT at 1080p resolution. Also, all presets show an overall similar frame-pacing.

We next present our ray-tracing performance charts using a reference RX 6700 XT at 1080p resolution.

Ray-Tracing Performance – Settings

Here we see again the high FPS cost of enabling ray traced reflections in Spider-Man Remastered, up to about 44% less raw performance at 1080 resolution using our reference RX 6700 XT. Going from ray-tracing “High” settings to ray-tracing “Very High” shows a 17% loss in FPS avg, a 32% FPS avg decrease going from no ray-tracing to “High” ray-tracing settings, and a 44% reduction going from no ray-tracing to “Very High”ray-tracing settings.

From the charts, we also see that “High” ray-tracing is overall the steadiest testing scenario. Here the frame-pacing was similar in all tested configs.

AMD FSR 2.0 Performance – Settings

Again, the FSR 2.0 Quality setting provides the best performance and image quality benefits. Our tests using any FSR 2.0 scaling setting also showed low GPU usage and CPU-boundedness, consistently. This situation is especially noticeable when our Spider-Man is outdoors and swinging between buildings.

Here we see that using any FSR 2.0 scaling setting helps us significantly improve frametime consistency or stability and frame pacing slightly.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

Conclusion

Spider-Man: Remastered is an immersive, outstanding, and really fun game that gives a great cinematic experience while telling an extraordinary story. We are especially impressed by its visuals coupled with the large free performance increase that DLSS and FSR 2.0 brings for PC gamers.

If you like Spider-Man movies and/or the comics, Remastered is a must-play game that is better than the films. And if you are looking to play the game with the best framerates and the very highest image fidelity, then choose DLSS or FSR 2.0 depending if you are a GeForce or Radeon gamer. Spider-Man: Remastered is the kind of deeply immersive game that makes a player forget everything – food, chores, work, and even pain.

All of BTR’s three editors agree that Spider-Man: Remastered is a very good game that deserves at least an 8.0/10. Recommended!

Stay tuned to BTR!

Happy Gaming!

After spending 18 hours over two sessions completing the Ghostwire: Tokyo main story, and being unable to tear ourselves away from the screen until it was completed, we will recommend it as a great game with a few flaws. It’s an epic universal story about family, regret, loss, and letting go told from a Japanese viewpoint that is absolutely worth playing. Its story, intense immersion, and authenic cultural representation could only have come from a Japanese studio. However, this review will focus on DLSS scaling performance because it cannot be played at 4K using maxed-out ray traced settings with excellent image quality (IQ) on any video card without it.

Although the game consists of typical open world fetch quests, a player is not treated like a tourist. The quests take on cultural significance, delving into mythology and religion that are a part of Japanese society and superstitions. Tokyo comes alive at night although the player is the only living human. Ghostwire: Tokyo even features Japanese audio as default by using English subtitles which add to the immersion much as watching a great Japanese film is best experienced. We did not bother with the English dub since the Japanese voice acting and emotion is top-notch.

The Ghostwire: Tokyo premise is that the city is under the control of a dangerous occultist allied with “visitors” who have caused the entire population of the Shibuya district to vanish. Playing as Akito, the player is still alive only because he has allied with a spirit detective (KK) inside him that provides supernatural abilities against dangerous ghostly and spirit foes. Akito uses a combination of upgradeable elemental powers and can even grapple onto Tengu demons to glide through the sky. The gameplay is unlike a usual FPS, since when an enemy loses most of their health, their core is exposed and the player uses takedown moves to permanently destroy them.

Gameplay & Mechanics

Although it is open world, Ghostwire: Tokyo uses a mist and fog mechanic to keep the player from venturing into locked areas of the map. Akito unlocks sections by completing side objectives and must purify shrines using Kuji-kiri inspired hand gestures to cast spells to disperse the fog opening up more areas of the map, while gaining access to new side quests and objectives. Various elemental powers including wind, fire, and water blades magic and upgrades are unlocked using XP, currency, and other resources. Akito may also save the souls of the vanished residents before they are permanently lost.

The side quests in the game often have some light narrative or humor attached to them that uncover the unfinished business of various spirits that are unable to move on to the afterlife. One of Akito’s side quests is to find toilet paper for one spirit locked in a bathroom stall that refuses to move on otherwise.

Ghostwire: Tokyo offers multiple difficulty settings, from a story mode to very challenging. There are varied environments that range from the streets of Tokyo at night, to the wide outdoors, and to exploring underground. There is no built-in benchmark but the game exhibits similar performance from one area to another, and there are individual settings available from the menu to fine tune performance.

An anytime save supplements autosave and is particularly helpful to proceed as there are many tough enemies and difficult boss fights to survive. The NPC enemies generally present good variety although some of them are quite repetitious with only minor variability.

Although it is a PlayStation PS5 console port, Ghostwire: Tokyo has incredibly detailed characters with awesome visuals that place it at the apex of the very best cinematic experiences. Ray traced reflections are featured and eveything reflects accurately in the puddles on the streets adding to a player’s immersion. However, a player cannot see their own reflections, so it is not the same as Control, although other NPCs cast reflections that are accurately traced as they move.

To progress, a gamer needs to be good at fighting, and there are a lot of side quests and souls to save, as well as XP to earn for character development. Great voice acting and music enhance a player’s experience. However, this review will not focus on reviewing the game; rather it will focus narrowly on DLSS as a means to increase framerates without compromising image quality as the game is impossibly demanding using maxed-out settings.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is basically a DX12 PS5 Pro version with unlocked framerates for the PC, and it looks better than most of the next generation console games. The PC version includes ray traced reflections, shadowing, great lightning and intense colors, enhanced screen space reflections, and ambient occlusion. The PC version also offers higher framerates and perhaps higher textures than the console version.

BTR’s benchmark is not only representative of the game and generally more demanding than the boss battles, but the runs vary from each other by less than one percent. The boss battles don’t seem to depend on ray traced reflections which otherwise can severely impact framerates

DLSS, Image Quality, and Performance

BabelTechReviews pre-purchased a copy of Ghostwire: Tokyo from Green Man Gaming at a 20% discount before it launched on Friday last week with no expectations. It received mixed reviews but with very high praise for its depiction of Tokyo. We started it with a very bad toothache that didn’t allow us to concentrate on anything else yet we were completely blown away by this game and could barely tear ourself away from it. The game was so enjoyable and immersive, the pain receded into the background as we finished the main storyline in two marathon sessions.

Ghostwire: Tokyo features NVIDIA’s DLSS as well as AMD’s FSR, but there is really no comparison – the DLSS images are much better with DLSS Quality being at least as good as the native 4K visuals and slightly sharper. Although DLSS exhibits more ghosting on raindrops than native 4K, the overall effect is superb and makes them look even more real.

More than three years ago, NVIDIA introduced realtime RTX ray tracing together with Deep Learning Supersampling (DLSS). To play at high settings requires the use of AI super resolution or DLSS which provides better than a game’s postprocessing AA together with improved performance. Ghostwire: Tokyo uses ray tracing and DLSS to improve performance, and we will compare the current performance and IQ of eleven NVIDIA RTX cards using the latest 512.15 driver.

Performance Options

Although Ghostwire: Tokyo is a well-done PlayStation port, it has more limited options than most games developed primarily for the PC. The game is limited to 30 FPS on the PS5 using the highest settings and ray tracing. Playing on PC gives slightly higher graphics fidelity together with a potential for higher and thus more fluid framerates. We benchmarked using maximum settings including Motion Blur (Cinematic), but we played with it on High and we also used SSAO for Global Illumination instead of the much more demanding SSGI.

We played and benchmarked using two different displays – a 48″ LG C1 120Hz 3840×2160 display and a 32″ 60Hz BenQ 4K display. Our PC is a 12900KF Intel CPU at stock settings on an ASUS ROG Maximus Apex motherboard with T-FORCE DELTA 16GB x 2 DDR5 6400 CL40, and a 2TB 5,000 MB/s T-Force C440 NVMe SSD for C:Drive plus a 1TB T-Force A440 7,000MB/s NVMe SSD as storage for loading the game. Tokyo: Ghostwire loads very quickly from a fast SSD. We played for 18 hours using a RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition and then benchmarked and played for many more hours benching with ten more RTX cards.

We are going to compare image quality using three levels of DLSS versus using no DLSS, and we chart the performance of eleven current NVIDIA GeForce RTX cards:

• RTX 3080 Ti
• RTX 3080
• RTX 3070 Ti
• RTX 2080 Ti
• RTX 3070
• RTX 3060 Ti
• RTX 2080 SUPER
• RTX 2070 SUPER
• RTX 3060
• RTX 2060 SUPER
• RTX 2060

DLSS

NVIDIA’s DLSS creates sharper and higher resolution images with dedicated AI processors on GeForce RTX GPUs called Tensor Cores. The original DLSS 1.0 required more work on the part of the game developers and resulted in image quality approximately equal to TAA. DLSS 2.0 and later versions use an improved deep learning neural network that boosts frame rates while generating crisper game images with the performance headroom to maximize settings and increase output resolutions. Since it uses DeepLearning, it continues to evolve and improve.

NVIDIA claims that DLSS offers IQ comparable to native resolution while rendering only one quarter to one half of the pixels by employing new temporal feedback techniques. DLSS 1.0 required training the AI network for each new game whereas DLSS 2.0 trains using non-game-specific content that works across many games.

DLSS generally offers RTX gamers four IQ modes: Quality, Balanced, Performance and Ultra Performance, These settings control a game’s internal rendering resolution with Performance DLSS enabling up to 4X super resolution. In our opinion – for Ghostwire: Tokyo specifically – the Quality DLSS IQ looks somewhat better than 4K, and even Performance DLSS is very well implemented. We would prefer to drop DLSS from Quality to Performance rather than adjust other settings or drop the resolution, and Balanced DLSS is an excellent in-between choice.

Ghostwire: Tokyo’s own anti-aliasing doesn’t address temporal anti-aliasing like DLSS does. We will next focus on image quality and DLSS on versus off, followed by benchmarking and charting DLSS performance using eleven RTX cards.

DLSS On versus Off

Native 4K without DLSS is 3840×2160 for both the Render and the Output Resolution and it is especially demanding on a video card using maximum settings.

Using the magic of AI and RTX Tensor cores, Quality DLSS upscales a 2560×1440 render resolution to 4K with no loss of image quality as we shall see in the following section.

No DLSS vs. Quality DLSS

Here are mostly uncompressed JPEG 4K images images comparing No DLSS/Native (left) with Quality DLSS (right) using a slider.

[twenty20 img1=”27043″ img2=”27047″ offset=”0.5″ before=”NO DLSS” after=”QUALITY DLSS”]

We don’t recommend playing without DLSS. The DLSS image quality is equal or better/sharper than native although there are some very slight differences that can be seen with some minor DLSS specular aliasing issues visible on some surfaces.

No DLSS vs. Balanced DLSS

Balanced DLSS uses a Render Resolution of 2228×1254 to upscale to 4K and the AI must fill in more pixels than with Quality DLSS.

Here is 4K (native) with no DLSS on the left compared with a similar image on the right using Balanced DLSS.

[twenty20 img1=”27043″ img2=”27041″ offset=”0.5″ before=”NO DLSS” after=”BALANCED DLSS”]

Again the images are comparable although Balanced DLSS loses a tiny bit more detail than Quality DLSS.

No DLSS vs. Performance DLSS

Performance DLSS requires that a Render Resolution of 1920×1080 be upscaled to 3840×2160 which means the AI must use just one-quarter of the original pixels for its 4K reconstruction. This will result in a further slight loss of detail.

Here is the comparison of 4K (left) with Performance DLSS (right)

[twenty20 img1=”27043″ img2=”27045″ offset=”0.5″ before=”NO DLSS” after=”PERFORMANCE DLSS”]

There is a small loss of detail in some areas but the Performance DLSS upscaled image quality is still excellent and we doubt that anyone would notice the differences while actually playing the game, and they are even difficult to see in the above screenshot slider comparison.

Next, we check out the performance of eleven RTX cards using 3840×2160, 2560×1440, and 1920×1080 resolutions using up to three levels of DLSS with the goal of averaging close to 60 FPS while still using completely maxed-out settings.

Performance

Ghostwire: Tokyo is a visually beautiful but extremely demanding game using maximum settings, and its impossible to play at native 4K with maxed out settings on any current generation video card without slowdowns. Quality DLSS is our goal since it’s visuals are equivalent to not using DLSS. Balanced DLSS may requires a slight visual sacrifice, and Performance DLSS is still acceptable while gaming because most players are generally not exploring the gameworld with a magnifying glass looking for visual flaws.

Although there are very difficult boss battles with multiple enemies on screen at once, as long as a player can maintain average framerates above 55 FPS, the experience is sufficiently fluid as long as the minimums (1% lows) stay around 50 FPS. If a GSYNC or a GSYNC compatible display is used, it is generally not a problem for the lows to dip occasionally into the upper-40s FPS. Below that, fluidity may be compromised, and it is better to lower the graphics settings or use a lower quality DLSS setting. Ultra Performance DLSS is not recommended unless framerates cannot be increased by any other method – it is better to lower settings first as it was primarily developed for 8K gaming.

Using Ghostwire: Tokyo’s highest settings, we compare performance without DLSS versus Quality, Balanced, and Performance DLSS using eleven current RTX cards at 1920×1080, 2560×1440, and 3840×2160.

For Better Performance Consider SSAO Instead of SSGI

SSGI has the highest visual fidelity for ray tracing. However, it takes a solid hit over using SSAO and may not even be noticeable when traversing Tokyo. It is up to the player to decide if they want maxed out settings at all costs or will settle for something slightly “less perfect” visually.

Here are two screenshots comparing SSGI with SSAO using DLSS Quality at 4K:

[twenty20 img1=”27047″ img2=”27049″ offset=”0.5″ before=”SSGI” after=”SSAO”]

The ray traced lighting is more perfectly rendered using SSGI over SSAO. Is it enough to lose performance? Each gamer will have to decide about the visual tradeoff for performance.

All of the following charts show average framerates (FPS) in Bold and 1% FPS percentile minimums next to them in slightly smaller italized font.

Here is RTX 3080 Ti performance using SSGI compared with performance using SSAO.

Using SSAO instead of SSGI makes approximately a 10% improvement in performance and it scales similarly for all RTX cards tested. We played the game using SSAO and did not notice significant enough visual diffencies while playing to use SSGI. However, the following benchmarks use all settings fully maxed-out including SSGI.

4K Video cards – RTX 3080 Ti & RTX 3080

Only two RTX cards can generally play at maximum settings using DLSS at 4K.

The RTX 3080 Ti is a no-compromise video card that provides the best 4K Ghostwire: Tokyo experience. It absolutely can not handle maxed out 4K settings without using DLSS. Fortunately, DLSS scales superbly in this game.

A 4K gamer may choose to use Quality DLSS but must accept a framerate hit without some other setting compromises. We played at 4K but used SSAO instead of SSGI using an RTX 3080 Ti FE and managed very well using Balanced DLSS and G-SYNC displays with drops to about 50 FPS that did not impact our gameplay fluidity even during the most demanding boss battles.

If a RTX 3080 Ti gamer chooses 1440P, DLSS Quality is still a must.

At maxed out 4K, the RTX 3080 averages above 60 FPS with DLSS Performance but drops into the upper-40s FPS for the 1% minimum lows. 1440P is the ideal target resolution for this card using DLSS Quality.

1440P Video Cards – RTX 3070 Ti / RTX 3070 / RTX 3060 Ti / RTX 2080 Ti / RTX 2080 Super

The following five video cards perform well at 1440P.

The RTX 3070 Ti cannot play at maxed-out 4K without DLSS Performance. However, DLSS Quality allows for a high quality maxed-out 1440P experience with excellent averages and drops into the upper-50s.

The RTX 3070 performs below the RTX 3070 Ti in Ghostwire: Tokyo, and although it cannot play well at 4K/maxed, the same recommendations for 1440P apply as above.

The RTX 3060 Ti requires Balanced DLSS to play smoothly at 1440P.

The last generation flagship RTX 2080 Ti is not recommended for 4K without dropping settings, but it can manage 1440P with DLSS Quality if the player doesn’t mind framerate drops into the upper-40s. The experience is acceptable, but it may be better to use DLSS Balanced or Performance.

The RTX 2080 Super performs below the RTX 2080 Ti in Ghostwire: Tokyo and we recommend Performance or Balanced DLSS for 1440P although Quality may be acceptable.

1080P – RTX 2070 Super / RTX 3060 / RTX 2060 Super / RTX 2060

The following four cards work best with 1080P although the fastest two can just manage 1440P.

The RTX 2070 Super plays acceptably at 1440P with Performance DLSS. However, it would also be an excellent 1080P card using DLSS Quality for those who prefer higher framerates.

The same applies to the RTX 3060 as above.

The RTX 2060 Super performs below the RTX 3060 and should primarily be used for 1080P.

The RTX 2060 is the entry level RTX card and it is best suited for 1080P using Performance or Balanced DLSS as Quality performance is somewhat marginal.

DLSS makes a huge difference to the playability of Ghostwire: Tokyo at the highest visual quality settings, and DLSS Quality has no IQ disadvantages whatsoever while Balanced and Performance DLSS make little to no practical visual differences while gaming. It is highly recommended!

DLSS gains a large percentage of performance over not using it, and it looks at least as good depending on the level. It is really “free performance” without compromise. We see a RTX 3080 Ti playing Ghostwire: Tokyo fluidly with maximum settings at 4K using Performance DLSS whereas it’s a slideshow without it. DLSS isn’t perfect, occasionally adding some very minor artifacting and potentially losing a little fine detail, but overall all three DLSS settings look great with the camera in motion.

Any algorithm that doesn’t use AI such as FidelityFX Super Resolution on its highest setting simply cannot match the image quality of Quality DLSS and there is every good reason for a GeForce RTX gamer to use DLSS for Ghostwire: Tokyo.

Conclusion

Ghostwire: Tokyo is an immersive, outstanding, and really fun game that gives a great cinematic experience while telling an extraordinary story. We are especially impressed by its visuals coupled with the large free performance increase that DLSS brings for RTX gamers.

If you’re as fascinated by Japanese culture as much as this editor and wish to see it authentically, accurately, and lovingly represented, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a must-play game. And if you are looking to play the game with the best framerates and the very highest image fidelity, then choose DLSS. Ghostwire: Tokyo is the kind of deeply immersive game that makes a player forget everything – food, chores, work, and even pain. It is highly recommended!

Rodrigo is hard at work on his GeForce 512.15 driver performance analysis. We also have a performance review on deck of the first virtual reality (VR) game to feature both DLSS and ray tracing, followed by a super-fast 7,400MB/s SSD ready for review. Stay tuned to BTR!

Happy Gaming!

Myst (2021), by Cyan Worlds Inc, is the latest remake of the iconic 1990s puzzle-adventure game. Myst was rebuilt to play in PC VR and for flatscreen gamers. Powered by Unreal Engine 4, the pancake game features gorgeous advanced ray traced graphics and support for both AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technologies to boost performance. Unfortunately, the VR edition does not support ray tracing or FSR, so we will focus on DLSS as the game is especially demanding on the Epic Preset with a Vive Pro/Valve Index class VR headset and much more so with a Pro 2.

We offer a review of Myst‘s PC VR graphics performance using the latest AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.9.2 driver with the RX 6800 XT/RX 6800/6700 XT/RX 6600 XT, and the latest GeForce Game-Ready 472.12 driver with the RTX 3080/3080 Ti/3070/3060 Ti/3060. We will also make suggestions for setting the best balance of visuals to performance for each card.

BTR received a Steam Myst key from NVIDIA. It is available as a $29.99 Steam game that is playable as a pancake game or in VR on multiple HMDs including the Valve Index, Vive HMDs, and Oculus Rift HMDs, but not for WMR like the Reverb G2. This isn’t a game review, but rather we are concentrating on its performance as measured by FCAT-VR using nine video cards on their latest drivers at factory settings.

Here are the cards that we benchmarked Myst with the very latest drivers from NVIDIA (472.12) and from AMD (21.9.2):

• RTX 3080 Ti (12GB Founders Edition, on loan from NVIDIA)
• RTX 3080 (8GB Founders Edition, on loan from NVIDIA)
• RTX 3070 (8GB Founders Edition, on loan from NVIDIA)
• RTX 3060 Ti (8GB Founders Edition, on loan from NVIDIA)
• RTX 3060 (12GB Founders Edition, on loan from NVIDIA)
• RX 6800 XT (16GB Reference Edition, on loan from AMD)
• RX 6800 (16GB Reference Edition, on loan from AMD)
• RX 6700 XT (12GB Red Devil, on loan from PowerColor)
• RX 6600 XT (8GB Red Devil, on loan from PowerColor)

BTR’s testing platform is an Intel Core i9-10900K at 5.0/5.1GHz, an EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard and 16GB of T-Force XTREEM DDR4 at 3866MHz on Windows 10 64-bit Pro Edition. We benchmark using a Vive Pro which gives identical results to the Valve Index as well as using the Pro 2 for our top cards.

Settings

Myst has 4 basic in-game user settings: Low, Medium, High, and Epic Presets. There aren’t a lot of visual differences between Epic and High, but dropping to Medium is noticeable, and Low is rather low.

The Supersampling Method in the pancake version allows for either FSR or DLSS, but DLSS is the only option available in the VR game. And there are four levels of DLSS choices: Quality, Balanced, Performance, and Ultra Performance.

• Quality DLSS is upscaled the least and it offers the highest image quality above the Balanced mode and is indistinguishable from the native resolution.
• Balanced offers higher performance than Quality and offers a great balance of visuals to performance.
• The Performance mode offers higher performance than the Balanced mode with only slight visual differences in motion.
• The Ultra Performance mode offers the highest performance increase but it is upscaled the most.

There are also multiple individual settings that may be changed by the user although we are just concentrating on preset performance.

DLSS versus FSR

AMD does not have a direct competitor to DLSS although they offer FSR which also improves performance.

FSR improves performance by first rendering frames at a lower resolution and then by using an open-source spatial upscaling algorithm with a sharpening filter in an attempt to make the game look nearly as good as at native resolution. NVIDIA’s DLSS is a more mature temporal upscaling solution that uses AI/Deep Learning. With DLSS, data is accumulated from multiple frames and combined into a final image with AI reconstruction running on RTX Tensor cores.

In contrast, FSR is a post-process shader which also makes it easy for game developers to implement across all graphics cards. So far, there are about a dozen pancake games that use it and we have tested three games that use FSR. Although Ultra FSR is not the equal of DLSS – and especially not of DLSS 2.0 Quality which rivals and sometimes improves on the native image – it is still a very solid non-AI/temporal upscaler that provides good performance improvements.

Ultra FSR is more than a standard Lanczos implementation plus sharpening and it brings good value to Radeons and for all video cards for higher “free” performance with a minimal hit to visuals. The issue is that FSR has not been implemented into any VR game yet. We hope that AMD and the Cyan developers will bring native FSR to Myst as they have done for the pancake version since using the OpenVR_FSR mod brings very inconsistent results.

The maximum meaningful resolution for VR is approximately one and a half times the native display resolution of the headset since the runtime warps the image to correct for optics’ warping, and a 1.5x rendered resolution results in pixels matching the native headset resolution at the center of the headset’s viewing area. But for complex games played on demanding headsets (especially like the Reverb G2 or the Vive Pro 2), the render resolution should probably be set lower than 1.5x.

Generally, the render resolution has the biggest impact on a game’s performance so it can consistently render frames at least as fast as the refresh rate of the headset which is usually 90 FPS. The render resolution should be selected to ensure consistently delivered framerates above 90 FPS, and it’s independent of the headset resolution. Of course, a minimum render resolution is needed to deliver a quality VR experience that varies from headset to headset.

DLSS Scaling

There are two scaling stages in the VR pipeline. When both are enabled, they work together to produce the final frame. When NVIDIA DLSS is enabled, it reduces a game’s render resolution by a predetermined scaling factor. Afterward, the driver uses AI to scale the rendered resolution to the original requested runtime. From an example NVIDIA gives, if the requested render resolution is 1848 x 1872 per eye, and DLSS is running in Performance mode, the game will render to 924 x 936 per eye, and DLSS will scale it back to 1848 x 1872.

The VR runtime takes the frame rendered by either the game or generated by DLSS and scales it to approximately 1.5x the native headset resolution to compensate for optics and image warping. This scaling is usually part of the lens distortion compensation. So when DLSS is supported in VR you want to maximize the scaling done by DLSS and minimize the scaling done by the runtime to maximize performance.

Whenever you enable DLSS you change the render resolution of the game and its performance. It’s important to keep this in mind when finding the ideal configuration. NVIDIA gives another example that a configuration that can maintain 90 fps at 982 x 1000 with DLSS off will likely maintain 90 fps at 1424 x 1408 with Quality DLSS, 1720 x 1774 with Balanced DLSS, 1960 x 1984 with Performance DLSS, and 2704 x 2736 with Ultra-performance DLSS. It is up to the end user to determine the best balance of visuals to performance, remembering that 90 FPS is the minimum target framerate.

Performance

Myst has very good to excellent VR visuals, and it generally runs well on BTR’s flagship i9-10900K with a variety of video cards depending on the settings. The map where we had universal issues was in Channelwood where there was considerable microstutter for all cards, and we have concluded that it is not currently representative of the game’s VR performance.

Unfortunately, Myst is very challenging to benchmark in VR because the maps are relatively small requiring a lot of turns, so we use a 60 second benchmark run over one of the more visually demanding maps in the game in the Selentic age.

Myst should not be played with constant reprojection, synthetic frame synthesis, or with Motion Smoothing applied. Continually delivering frames at half the HMD’s optimum rate refresh by using Motion Smoothing tends to cause artifacting and it may even cause some upset or even VR sickness for the gamer.

All nine video cards were tested by FCAT-VR using the in-game presets which include Ultra, High, Medium, and Low. Of course, we did not test a RTX 3080 Ti on Low settings nor did we test a RX 6600 XT on Epic settings, but we tried to keep the settings realistic and close to optimal for each card with a goal of a steady 90 FPS being delivered to the headset without requiring synthetically generated frames.

It is important to remember that BTR’s charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which show what a video card could deliver (headroom) if it wasn’t locked to 90 FPS by the HMD. In the case of unconstrained FPS which measures one important performance metric, faster is better. Also, please note that FCAT-VR does not differentiate between dropped and synthesized frames for cards tested with the Pro 2 as it does not use SteamVR’s Motion Smoothing.

Vive Pro at 100% SteamVR render resolution (2016×2240)

Lets start by testing the video cards that appear to run best at Low or Medium settings using the Vive Pro at 100% SteamVR render resolution.

Low/Medium Settings

The first card we test is an RX 6600 XT and is the only card we tested that requires the Low preset. Unfortunately, from our earlier testing, we discovered it is a relatively weak card for VR – unlike the rest of the RX 6000 series. We originally tested Myst with Adrenalin Software 21.8.2 but found that the latest driver, 21.9.2, improves performance so we retested all AMD cards using it.

RX 6600 XT 8GB

Here is the frametime plot of the RX 6600 XT comparing Medium with Low settings.

Here are the details.

The RX 6600 XT really struggles at Medium settings delivering 102.60 unconstrained frames, and it requires 1344 (25%) frames to be synthesized while dropping 17 frames and delivering 17 Warp misses.

It does better on Low settings by delivering 112.05 unconstrained frames, dropping 6 frames with 6 Warp misses, and requiring 248 (5%) to be synthesized. However, at even the Low setting, microstutter is still noticeable. It may be a driver issue exacerbated by the RX 6600 XT’s limited bandwidth when used with a non-Ryzen PC.

Next up we test the RX 6700 XT.

RX 6700 XT

Here is the frametime plot of the RX 6700 XT tested at the High and Low preset.

The RX 6700 XT cannot handle either the High or Medium preset without synthesizing frames. Here are the details.

On the High preset, the RX 6700 XT delivers 98.45 unconstrained frames, but it drops 13 frames and delivers 13 Warp misses. In addition, it requires 1540 (28%) frames to be synthesized, and microstutter is evident while playing.

It does better with the Medium preset but our goal is an absolute minimum of delivering 90 FPS, so we had to drop to the Low Preset. On Low it delivered 154.70 unconstrained frames with no dropped frames or Warp misses and it only required 11 frames to be synthesized for a good VR experience. Playing on the Medium preset is a possibility for players who can tolerate synthetically generated frames.

Next we test the cards that can mostly handle High settings.

High Settings

The first High preset card we test is an RTX 3060.

RTX 3060

The RTX 3060 can handle High setting only if DLSS is used. Otherwise it would require using the Low/Medium preset. Here is the frametime plot.

Here are the details.

On the High preset without DLSS, the RTX 3060 delivers 69.54 unconstrained frames, and although it drops no frames nor delivers any Warp misses, it requires 2631 (50%) of its frames be synthesized. However, even without DLSS, microstutter is not evident while playing, unlike with the RX 6600 XT.

The RTX 3060 does much better with 105.61 unconstrained frames on the High preset with Balanced DLSS – with no dropped frames or Warp misses but with 219 (4%) synthetic frames. It is very playable and the Balanced DLSS image quality is very good.

However, since our goal is a minimum of delivering 90 FPS without synthetic frames, we also tested Performance DLSS. On the High preset it delivered 116.22 unconstrained frames with no dropped frames or Warp misses and it only required 2 frames to be synthesized for a very good VR experience.

It should be noted that Performance DLSS compromises VR visuals very slightly, so High/Balanced DLSS is a real possibility for players who don’t mind if some frames are synthesized or if they are willing to drop some individual settings.

Next we check the performance of the RX 6800.

RX 6800

Here is the frametime plot of the RX 6800 run at the Epic and High preset.

Here are the details.

The RX 6800 cannot handle the Epic preset as it delivers 92.55 unconstrained frames but it drops 17 frames and delivers 17 Warp misses and it requires 2222 (41%) of its frames to be synthesized, and microstutter is evident.

Myst gameplay becomes smooth using a RX 6800 at the High preset, delivering 127.81 unconstrained frames with no Warp misses or any frames dropped, but it requires 15 synthetic frames.

Next we test the performance of video cards that can play at the High to Epic Preset

High/Epic settings

The first card we test is a RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition.

RTX 3060 Ti

Here is the frametime plot of the RTX 3060 Ti run at the Epic preset with no DLSS, Quality DLSS, and with Balanced DLSS.

Here are the details.

The RTX 3060 Ti struggles at the Epic preset with 82.73 unconstrained FPS, and although it doesn’t drop frames or deliver any Warp misses, it requires 2562 (49%) of its frames to be synthesized. It does much better with Quality DLSS and doesn’t compromise image quality with 108.36 unconstrained FPS, dropping no frames or having any Warp misses, but it still requires 149 frames (8%) to be synthesized.

Using Balanced DLSS on the Epic Preset, the RTX 3060 easily hits its target of a locked-on 90 FPS with 122.61 FPS with one dropped frame, one Warp miss, and 3 synthetic frames. The ‘Balanced’ visuals are still very good although some players may prefer to play on the High preset with Quality DLSS with some synthesized frames.

The next card we test is a RX 6800 XT.

RX 6800 XT

Here is the frametime plot of the RX 6800 XT run at the Epic and High preset.

Here are the details.

Using the Epic preset, the RX 6800 XT delivers 107.42 unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses but it requires 314 (6%) of the frames to be synthesized.

Using the High preset, it delivers 154.15 unconstrained FPS, dropping no frames nor having Warp misses but requiring 7 frames to be synthesized. It would be acceptable to play with a mix of mostly Epic settings with a few High settings if the goal is a minimum of 90 FPS with zero synthetic frames.

Next up, the RTX 3070.

RTX 3070

Here is the frametime plot of the RTX 3070 run at the Epic preset.

Here are the details.

The RTX 3070 cannot meet our goal of 90 FPS without synthetic frames by using the Epic preset without DLSS. It delivers 99.17 unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses, but it requires 1353 (26%) frames to be synthesized.

Using Epic with Quality DLSS, the RTX 3070 delivers 124.39 unconstrained frames with no dropped frames or Warp misses, but it requires 7 frames to be synthesized. There is no reason not to use Quality DLSS as the image quality is the equivalent of playing without it and the VR experience is excellent.

The next Epic preset card we test is an RTX 3080. But this time, using Quality DLSS, we attempt using the Epic preset with 150% SteamVR render resolution.

The Epic Preset with 150% SteamVR Render Resolution

RTX 3080

Here is the frametime plot of the RTX 3080 run at the Epic preset at 100% SteamVR render resolution, first with no DLSS and then at 150% render resolution with Quality DLSS.

Here are the details.

The RTX 3080 is suitable for using with the Epic preset with no DLSS, delivering 117.72 unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses, but it requires 10 frames to be synthesized.

It is not playable without synthesizing mass frames on the Epic preset with 150% render resolution without DLSS but it does great using Quality DLSS. It delivers 119.48 unconstrained FPS only requiring 8 frames to be synthesized and it neither drops frames nor has Warp misses. However, the visuals and clarity become noticeably better using SteamVR’s 150% render resolution with Epic/Quality DLSS than by using Epic at 100% without DLSS.

Next up, the RTX 3080 Ti.

RTX 3080 Ti

Here is the frametime plot of the RTX 3080 Ti run on the Epic preset comparing 100% with 150% SteamVR render resolutions with Quality DLSS on versus off.

Here are the details.

The RTX 3080 Ti can easily handle the Epic preset without DLSS at 100% SteamVR render resolution delivering 138.07 unconstrained FPS with no Warp misses or dropped frames, although 4 frames were synthesized. However, increasing the SteamVR render resolution to 150% drops the unconstrained framerate to 100.23 FPS, and without DLSS, it requires 942 (18%) of its frames to be synthesized although again, no frames are dropped.

Using Quality DLSS at 150% render resolution, the RTX 3080 Ti delivers 135.71 unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses, and only 1 frame was synthesized. There is no reason not to use Quality DLSS at 150% render resolution as its Epic preset visuals are far superior to not using DLSS at 100%.

Next we test our two fastest cards, the RTX 3080 and the RTX 3080 Ti with a much more demanding headset, the Vive Pro 2. Please note that FCAT-VR does not distinguish between synthesized and dropped frames using the Pro 2 since it uses the Vive Console’s Motion Compensation (which we do not use) instead of SteamVR’s Motion Smoothing.

Vive Pro at 100% SteamVR render resolution (3184×3184)

High/Epic Presets

RTX 3080

Here is the frametime plot of the RTX 3080 using the Epic preset with the Vive Pro 2. This time we test the Epic and High presets but find that we cannot use Quality DLSS without requiring synthetic frames as the Pro 2’s render resolution is so high.

Here are the details.

The RTX 3080 on Epic without DLSS delivers 51.97 unconstrained FPS with 1 Warp miss, and it drops or requires 1914 (43%) frames to be synthesized. Using Performance DLSS which compromises visuals slightly using the same settings, it manages 95.78 unconstrained frames with only 8 dropped or synthesized frames.

Without using DLSS, the RTX 3080 performs better on the High preset over Epic, delivering 83.72 unconstrained FPS, while dropping or synthesizing 1952 (39%) frames and suffering 1 Warp miss. Using the same settings with Balanced DLSS, it gives 97.86 unconstrained FPS with 1 Warp miss, and dropping or synthesizing 10 frames.

It is a toss up between using Epic/Performance DLSS and High/Balanced DLSS. Next we check the performance of the RTX 3080 Ti.

RTX 3080 Ti

Here is the frametime plot of the RTX 3080 Ti using the Pro 2 at 100% SteamVR render resolution.

Here are the details.

Although NVIDIA’s top gaming card produces no Warp misses, the RTX 3080 Ti cannot handle the Epic preset without DLSS as it delivers 55.08 unconstrained FPS, and it drops or requires 2049 (45%) frames to be synthesized. Using Quality DLSS, it still falls short of our 90 FPS minimum goal, delivering 91.71 unconstrained FPS but it still drops or synthesizes 656 (13%) frames.

Using the same settings but with Balanced DLSS, the 3080 Ti delivers 98.54 frames with only 8 dropped or synthesized frames. We would suggest playing either Epic/Balanced DLSS or with Quality DLSS and a mix of Epic and High settings to stay above 90 FPS for an awesome visual experience on the Pro 2.

Conclusion

After spending many hours playing and benchmarking Myst 2021 in VR with nine video cards, we have concluded that it is a decently-optimized game that delivers reasonably good performance with very good VR visuals that really draws the player into its world. The map where we had universal issues was in Channelwood where there was considerable microstutter and we have concluded that it’s not representative of the game.

The Radeons that are normally equivalent to their GeForce counterparts in pancake gaming are somewhat held back by microstutter, but far more so by not having a DLSS competitor for VR. All of the competing GeForce cards were able to deliver similar visuals but with much higher performance by using Quality or Balanced DLSS. And using DLSS is the only way to play Myst at 100% SteamVR render resolution with a Pro 2 without synthesizing frames. DLSS works great for the three VR games that we have tested, and we highly recommend its use.

We hope that AMD and the Cyan devs will bring native FSR support to Myst as they have done for the pancake version since using the OpenVR_FSR mod brings inconsistent results. We are still holding out hope since AMD told us, “FSR is not supported with VR in Myst at this time.”

Next up, expect Rodrigo to deliver a brand new 472.12 driver performance analysis shortly. And he is also working on a Myst pancake game performance review while we are working on a budget TeamGroup SATA SSD evaluation. Stay tuned to BTR.

Happy VR Gaming!

A new 12-minute trailer that debuted on GeForce.com gives gamers the first look at the ARPG Black Myth: Wukong gameplay. It is the first Unreal Engine 5 game to feature DLSS. As you travel through the world of Black Myth: Wukong, you can get a feel for the gameplay, story, cutting-edge visuals, and cutscenes.

Twelve years in the making, Game Science’s Black Myth: Wukong is an action role playing game based around the Monkey King mythology, and especially on the 16th Century Journey To The West novel. NVIDIA’s game developer support has worked with Game Science throughout the development of this highly anticipated game and there is a special emphasis on RTX features.

Set to release “by 2023”, the player controls Sun Wukong (AKA “the Monkey King”) to fight through his enemies using supernatural abilities acquired by Taoist practices.

Happy Gaming!

The Red Devil RX 6600 XT arrived at BTR for evaluation from PowerColor as a premium and overclocked 8GB vRAM-equipped 128-bit card with no manufacturer recommended (SEP/MSRP) pricing as yet although the base models start at a rather high $379 considering it is targeting 1080P. We have been exhaustively comparing it versus the $329 RTX 3060 EVGA Black 12GB and versus the $399 RTX 3060 Ti 8GB Founders Edition using 32 games, GPGPU, workstation, SPEC, and synthetic benchmarks.

We will also compare the performance of these competing cards with the RX 6600 XT’s bigger brother, the Red Devil RX 6700 XT (the reference card SEP is $479), and also with its predecessor the ASUS TUF Gaming X3 RX 5600 XT (at $309 which is $30 above AMD’s entry-level pricing of $279); and also with the RX 5700 XT Anniversary Edition ($499/$449 reference at launch).

The Red Devil RX 6600 XT is factory clocked higher than the reference specifications using its OC BIOS. While the reference Radeon RX 6600 XT offers a Game clock up to 2359MHz and a Boost clock of 2589MHz, the PowerColor Red Devil game clocks up to 2428MHz and boosts to 2607MHz. It also looks different from older generation classic Red Devils, arriving in a more neutral gray color instead of in all red and black. The Red Devil RX 6600 XT features a RGB mode whose LEDs default to a bright red which may be customized by PowerColor’s DevilZone software.

The Reference and Red Devil RX 6600 XT Features & Specifications

First let’s look at the Red Devil RX 6600 XT specifications:

Additional Information from PowerColor

PowerColor newest 6600 XT Red Devil card, is positioned to compete directly with the custom 3060 premium models.

• The card has 2 modes, OC and Silent. 145W / 135W Power target. There’s a bios switch on the side of the card. We designed this card to be very quiet, even on performance mode is considerably quieter most silent cards, but we also advise to try the silent mode as it’s truly whisper quiet, with a normal case with a optimal airflow, you most likely see the card run around 1000 Rpms under this mode.
• The board has 10 Phase VS the 6+2 Phase VRM design on the standard designs meaning is over spec’d in order to deliver the best
  stability and overclock headroom by having such VRM it will run cooler and last longer.
• DrMos and high-polymer Caps are used on our Design, no compromises.
• DUAL FAN, at this TDP there is no need of oversized 3 fan coolers, better sized and yet efficient cooling!
• Our cooler features 2 x 100mm ,all with two ball bearing fans with 4 heat pipes (4X6Φ) across the high density heatsink with large nickel plated base.
• RGB is enhanced, Red Devil now connects to the motherboard aRGB (5v 3 pin connector) for RGB Sync.
• Red Devil has Mute fan technology, fans stop under 60c!
• The ports are LED illuminated. Now you can see in the dark where to plug.
• The card back plate does not have thermal pads but instead we did cuts across the backplate for the PCB to breath, which under high
  heat scenarios is more beneficial than having thermal pads as the back plate can become a heat trap.
• Red Devil buyers will be able to join exclusive giveaway as well access to the Devil Club website. A membership club for Devil users only which gives them access to News, Competitions, Downloads and most important instant support via Live chat.

RX 6000 features

AMD has their own ecosystem for gamers and many unique new features for the Radeon 6000 series. However, the above slide from AMD does not mention two features – the Infinity Cache and Smart Access Memory.

Infinity Cache & Smart Access Memory

AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture includes the Infinity Cache which alters the way data is delivered to GPUs. This global cache allows fast data
access and increases bandwidth. This optimized on-die cache uses 96MB of AMD Infinity Cache delivering up to 2.5x the effective bandwidth compared to 256-bit 12Gbps GDDR6.

BTR uses Intel’s 10th generation flagship CPU, the i9-10990K which does not have this cache available so our results will probably be lower than what a gamer using a full Ryzen 5000 platform will achieve. In addition, we don’t have Smart Access Memory.

AMD’s Smart Access Memory is a new feature for the Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards that enables additional memory space to be mapped to the base address register resulting in performance gains for select games when paired with an AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processor or with some Ryzen 3000 series CPUs. Using PCIe, the Base Address Register (BAR) defines how much GPU memory space can be mapped. Without using Smart Access Memory, CPUs can generally access up to 256MB of GPU memory restricting performance somewhat.

NVIDIA has worked with its partners and with Intel to enable Resizable BAR which currently is enabled for the EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard but it only works for GeForce cards. When we tried to enable it for the RX 6600 XT, our PC refused to boot after following AMD’s instructions using a clean installation of Windows. So we disabled it and tested all of our video cards and games without Resizable BAR.

The Test Bed

BTR’s test bed consists of 32 games and 3 synthetic game benchmarks at 1920×1080 and 2560×1440, as well as SPEC, workstation, and GPGPU benchmarks. Our latest games include Chernobylite and F1 2021. The testing platform uses a recent installation of Windows 10 64-bit Pro Edition, and our CPU is an i9-10900K which turbos all 10 cores to 5.1/5.0GHz, an EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard, and 32GB of T-FORCE Dark Z DDR4 at 3600MHz. The games, settings, and hardware are identical except for the cards being compared.

First, let’s take a closer look at the new PowerColor Red Devil RX 6600 XT.

A Closer Look at the Red Devil RX 6600 XT

Although the Red Devil RX 6600 XT advertises itself as a premium 7nm 8GB vRAM-equipped card on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture which features 1080P and PCIe 4.0, the cover of the box favors stylized imagery over text.

The back of the box touts key features which now include HDMI 2.1 VRR, ray tracing technology, FidelityFX, and VR Ready Premium as well as states its 600W power and system requirements. AMD’s technology features are highlighted and the box features PowerColor’s custom cooling solution, Dual-BIOSes, RGB software and output LEDs, and a solid backplate with the Red Devil logo that also lights up.

Opening its very well-padded box, we see a quick installation guide, a RGB LED cable, and an invitation to join PowerColor’s Devil’s Club.

The Red Devil RX 6600 XT is a dual-fan card. Turning the Red Devil over (below) we see a solid backplate that features the devil logo that also lights up.

The Red Devil RX 6600 XT is a medium-sized dual-fan card (251mm long x 133mm tall x 54mm thick) in a 2 slot design which is quite handsome with PowerColor’s colors and even more striking with the RGB on.There is also a switch to choose between the default overclock (OC) BIOS and the Silent BIOS (above, right). Using the OC BIOS the card has a 145W power target and using the Silent BIOS it has a 135W power target. We didn’t bother with the Silent BIOS as the card is very quiet using the OC BIOS, but it is good to have in case a flash goes bad.

The Red Devil uses one 1×8-pin and 1×6-pin PCIe connections while the reference version uses 1×8-pin. We would suggest that with the current voltage limitations and low power draw, the extra connector is probably not really necessary even for overclocking unless the end user circumvents the power restrictions using MPT at their own risk. Looking at the edges, we can see it is all heatsink fins for cooling as is typical of Red Devil cards, and we expect it to run cool.

Above, the PowerColor Red Devil RX 6600 XT’s other end also lights up giving the card an aggressive look.

The Red Devil’s RX 6600 XT’s connectors include 3 DisplayPorts and 1 HDMI connector. There is an LED that illuminates this panel for making easier connections in the dark.

The Red Devil looks great when it is running in a PC.

The specifications look good and the Red Devil itself looks great with its default RGB bright red contrasting with the black backplate and its aggressively lit-up front end perhaps is stylistically reminiscent of an automotive grill or perhaps teeth. The end user may enhance and coordinate the RGB colors by connecting to the motherboard using a supplied aRGB (5v 3-pin) connector using the DevilZone RGB software.

Let’s check out its performance after we look over our test configuration and more on the next page.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-10900K (HyperThreading/Turbo boost On; All cores overclocked to 5.1GHz/5.0Ghz. Comet Lake DX11 CPU graphics)
• EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard (Intel Z490 chipset, v1.9 BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x), supplied by EVGA
• T-FORCE DARK Z 32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, dual channel at 3600MHz), supplied by Team Group
• Red Devil RX 6600 XT 8GB, factory settings and overclocked, on loan from PowerColor
• Red Devil RX 6700 XT 12GB, factory settings and overclocked, on loan from PowerColor
• ASUS TUF Gaming X3 RX 5600 XT 6GB, stock settings, on loan from ASUS
• Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB Anniversary Edition, stock AE clocks.
• EVGA RTX 3060 Black 12GB, stock clocks, on loan from EVGA
• RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition 8GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• 2 x 1TB Team Group MP33 NVMe2 PCIe SSD for C: drive; one for AMD and one for NVIDIA
• 1.92TB San Disk enterprise class SATA III SSD (storage)
• 2TB Micron 1100 SATA III SSD (storage)
• 1TB Team Group GX2 SATA III SSD (storage)
• 1GB T-FORCE Delta MAX SSD (storage), supplied by Team Group
• ANTEC HCG1000 Extreme, 1000W gold power supply unit
• Samsung G7 Odyssey (LC27G75TQSNXZA) 27″ 2560×1440/240Hz/1ms/G-SYNC/HDR600 monitor
• DEEPCOOL Castle 360EX AIO 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Phanteks Eclipse P400 ATX mid-tower (plus 1 Noctua 140mm fan)

Test Configuration – Software

• Adrenalin 2021 Edition 21.7.1 press drivers used for the RX 6600 XT and 21.7.2 used for the other Radeons except for 21.2.3 used for the RX 5700 XT.
• GeForce 471.41 for the RTX 3060 and the RTX 3060 Ti.
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the NVIDIA control panel; Vsync off.
• All optimizations are off, Vsync is forced off, Texture filtering is set to High, and Tessellation uses application settings in the AMD control panel.
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font where higher is better. Games benched with OCAT show average framerates but the minimums are expressed by frametimes (99th-percentile) in ms where lower numbers are better.
• Windows 10 64-bit Pro edition; latest updates. DX11 titles are run under the DX11 render path. DX12 titles are generally run under DX12, and multiple games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX

Games

Vulkan

• DOOM Eternal
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
• World War Z
• Strange Brigade
• Rainbow 6 Siege

DX12

• F1 2021
• Resident Evil Village
• Hitman 3
• Cyberpunk 2077
• DiRT 5
• Godfall
• Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Watch Dogs: Legion
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Death Stranding
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Borderlands 3
• Metro Exodus & Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
• Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
• Battlefield V
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Forza 7

DX11

• Chernobylite
• Days Gone
• Crysis Remastered
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Far Cry New Dawn
• Assetto Corsa: Competitione
• Grand Theft Auto V

Synthetic

• TimeSpy (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• Heaven 4.0 benchmark
• AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 2.931 benchmark
• Sandra 2021 GPGPU Benchmarks
• SPECworkstation3
• SPECviewperf 2020

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.

Next the AMD settings.

AMD Adrenalin Control Center Settings

All AMD settings are set so that all optimizations are off, Vsync is forced off, Texture filtering is set to High, and Tessellation uses application settings. All Navi cards are capable of high Tessellation unlike earlier generations of Radeons.

Anisotropic Filtering is disabled by default but we always use 16X for all game benchmarks.

Let’s check out overclocking, temperatures and noise next.

Overclocking, temperatures and noise

We spent a lot of time overclocking the Red Devil RX 6600 XT for this review. The Red Devil is factory clocked higher than the reference specifications using its OC BIOS. While the reference Radeon RX 6600 XT offers a Game clock up to 2359MHz and a Boost clock of 2589MHz, the PowerColor Red Devil game clocks up to 2428MHz and boosts to 2607MHz.

Above are the reference RX 6600 XT Wattman default settings which include leaving the power limit at default. The performance didn’t matter whether the power limit was set to default or higher even when overclocked. Although the Red Devil boosts to 2607MHz, we typically saw clocks at around 2575MHz and the GPU stayed cool. The fan speeds are not tracked by Wattman but they remained low and we could not hear them over our other case fans.

The Wattman auto overclock feature is useless as it gave an extremely low overclock so we used trial and error to find Red Devil’s maximum performance at the edge of stability. We settled on increasing the memory to 115% (2284MHz) and increasing the core clock by 7% (2776MHz) as below.

At maximum overclock, the clocks run from 2686MHz to a peak of 2720MHz, but this time the temperatures drop below 60C as the fan speeds increase. Even while overclocked to the max, the Red Devil remains very quiet and cool with power consumption just approaching 140W.

There is a small performance increase from overclocking the RX 6600 XT core by 7% and increasing the memory by 15%. Unfortunately, AMD has again locked all RX 6600 XT cards overclocking down in an attempt to maximize overall performance by limiting the voltage to 1150mV. We would also suggest that the RX 6600 XT is rather voltage constrained and the Red Devil could seriously benefit by more voltage. We suspect that some enthusiast gamers will use MPT (More Power Tool) and risk their warranty to gain a substantially higher Red Devil overclock although we cannot recommend it.

We believe that the Red Devil’s overclock will not degrade over time as its PCB components are fit to run all the time at the highest overclock settings – perhaps unlike entry level versions which are not engineered for ultimate maximum reliability.

Of course, many gamers will want to fine-tune their own overclock and undervolting is a possibility although at 140W the Red Devil RX 6600 XT is not a power hog. Check the overclocking chart in the next section for performance increases using ten key games.

Let’s head to the performance charts to see how the performance of the RX 6600 XT compares with five other cards.

Performance summary charts

Here are the performance results of 32 games and 3 synthetic tests comparing the factory-clocked 8GB Red Devil RX 6600 XT with the EVGA RTX 3060 Black 12GB (reference) and versus the RTX 3060 Ti FE 8GB at their factory set clocks. Three other cards are added for comparison in the Big Picture. The highest settings are used and are listed on the charts. The benches were run at 1920×1080 and at 2560×1440. Click on each chart to open in a pop-up for best viewing.

Most gaming results show average framerates in bold text, and higher is better. Minimum framerates are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font. The games benched with OCAT show average framerates but the minimums are expressed by frametimes in ms where lower numbers are better.

The Red Devil RX 6600 XT vs. the RTX 3060 & RTX 3060 Ti

The first set of charts show our three main competing cards. Column one represents the RTX 3060 EVGA Black (reference speed) version ($329) performance, column two is the Red Devil RX 6600 XT (no SEP/reference $379), and column three represents the RTX 3060 Ti FE ($399) performance.

The Red Devil RX 6600 XT is faster overall than the RTX 3060 EVGA Black (reference) version but it is still in the same class, trading blows depending on the games tested. Since we do not use Resizable BAR or have Smart Access Memory, we expect that some games would shift in favor of the Radeon using a Ryzen 5000 platform. However, it is outclassed by the $20 more expensive RTX 3060 Ti, winning no games against it.

Let’s see how the reference and Red Devil RX 6600 XT fit in with our expanded main summary chart, the “Big Picture”, comparing a total of six cards.

The Big Picture

Here is how the Red Devil 6600 XT fits into a larger chart with six cards. The ASUS RX 5600 XT is in column one, the RX 5700 XT (Anniversary Edition) is in column 2, the EVGA Black RTX 3060 is in column 3, the Red Devil RX 6600 XT is in Column 4, the RTX 3060 Ti FE is in column 5, and the Red Devil RX 6700 XT is in column 6.

We see that the RX 6600 XT is a fair upgrade from the RX 5600 XT, but it is hard to believe that AMD has increased the price by $100 over the last midrange 1080P generation. The RX 6600 XT basically trades blows with the RX 5700 XT which launched at $399. We have to wonder what AMD was thinking when they set their pricing so high.

Ray Traced Benchmarks

The Red Devil RX 6600 XT is next compared with our other two main competing cards when ray tracing is enabled in ten games. No DLSS or FSR technologies are used.

The RX 6600 XT gets outperformed overall when compared with the $50 less expensive RTX 3060 after ray tracing is enabled. However, AMD has recently introduced FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) which is their answer to NVIDIA’s DLSS.

FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR)

FSR improves performance by first rendering frames at a lower resolution and then by using an open-source spatial upscaling algorithm with a sharpening filter in an attempt to make the game look nearly as good as at native resolution. NVIDIA’s DLSS is a more mature temporal upscaling solution that uses AI/Deep Learning. With DLSS, data is accumulated from multiple frames and combined into the final image with the AI reconstruction component running on GeForce RTX Tensor cores.

In contrast, FSR is basically a post-process shader which also makes it easy for game developers to implement across all graphics cards and not just for Radeons. So far, there are about a dozen games that use it and we have tested three games that use FSR. Although Ultra FSR is not the equal of DLSS – and especially not of DLSS 2.0 Quality which rivals and sometimes improves on the native image – it is still a very solid non-AI/temporal upscaler that provides good performance improvements.

Ultra FSR is far more than a standard Lanczos implementation plus sharpening and it brings good value to Radeons (and for all video cards!) for higher “free” performance with a minimal hit to visuals. We were especially impressed with the Ultra FSR implementation in Chernobylite. Below is a performance comparison of Quality DLSS 2.0 versus Ultra FSR.

We see the RX 6600 XT improve its framerates using Ultra FSR to match the RTX 3060 which uses Quality DLSS in Chernobylite.

Again, we see solid performance improvements with Godfall and in Resident Evil Village using Ultra FSR.

Next we look at overclocked performance.

Overclocked benchmarks

These ten benchmarks were run with both Red Devil RX 6600 XT overclocked as far as it can go while remaining stable as described in the overclocking section. The Red Devil manually overclocked card results are presented first and the factory-clocked results are in the second column.

There is a reasonable performance increase from manually overclocking the Red Devil RX 6600 XT beyond its factory clocks from about 2% up to around 10%.

Let’s look at non-gaming applications next to see if the RX 6600 XT is a good upgrade from the other video cards we test starting with Blender.

Blender 2.931 Benchmark

Blender is a very popular open source 3D content creation suite. It supports every aspect of 3D development with a complete range of tools for professional 3D creation.

We benchmarked three Blender benchmarks which measure GPU performance by timing how long it takes to render production files. We tested our comparison cards using OpenCL for the Radeons and CUDA on GeForce – all running on the GPU instead of using the CPU.

For the following chart, lower is better as the benchmark renders a scene multiple times and gives the results in minutes and seconds.

OpenCL is not as well-optimized for Radeons compared with CUDA for GeForce.

Next, we move on to AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks.

AIDA64 v6.32

AIDA64 is an important industry tool for benchmarkers. Its GPGPU benchmarks measure performance and give scores to compare against other popular video cards.

AIDA64’s benchmark code methods are written in Assembly language, and they are well-optimized for every popular AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and VIA processor by utilizing the appropriate instruction set extensions. We use the Engineer’s full version of AIDA64 courtesy of FinalWire. AIDA64 is free to to try and use for 30 days. CPU results are also shown for comparison.

Here are the Red Devil RX 6600 XT AIDA64 GPGPU results compared with an overclocked i9-10900K.

Here is the chart summary of the AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks with five of our competing cards side-by-side.

The RX 6600 XT is a fast GPGPU card and it compares favorably with Ampere cards, being weaker in some areas and stronger in others, and it’s a solid improvement over the last generation RX 5600 XT. So let’s look at Sandra 2020 next.

SiSoft Sandra 2020

To see where the CPU, GPU, and motherboard performance results differ, there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2020. SiSoftware SANDRA (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a excellent information & diagnostic utility in a complete package. It is able to provide all the information about your hardware, software, and other devices for diagnosis and for benchmarking. Sandra is derived from a Greek name that implies “defender” or “helper”.

There are several versions of Sandra, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. Sandra 2021 is the latest version, and we are using the full engineer suite courtesy of SiSoft. Sandra 2020 features continuous multiple monthly incremental improvements over earlier versions of Sandra. It will benchmark and analyze all of the important PC subsystems and even rank your PC while giving recommendations for improvement.

We ran Sandra’s intensive GPGPU benchmarks and charted the results summarizing them.

In Sandra GPGPU benchmarks, since the architectures are different, each card exhibits different characteristics with different strengths and weaknesses. However, we see solid improvements of the RX 6600 XT over the RX 5600 XT.

SPECworkstation3 (3.0.4) Benchmarks

All the SPECworkstation3 benchmarks are based on professional applications, most of which are in the CAD/CAM or media and entertainment fields. All of these benchmarks are free except for vendors of computer-related products and/or services.

The most comprehensive workstation benchmark is SPECworkstation3. It’s a free-standing benchmark which does not require ancillary software. It measures GPU, CPU, storage and all other major aspects of workstation performance based on actual applications and representative workloads. We only tested the GPU-related workstation performance as checked in the image above.

Here are our raw SPECworkstation 3.0.4.summary and raw scores for the Red Devil RX 6600XT that were tested at 1900×1060.

Here are the Red Devil SPECworkstation3 results summarized and included in a chart of our five competing cards. Higher is better.

Using SPEC benchmarks, since the architectures are different, the cards each exhibit different characteristics with different strengths and weaknesses.

SPECviewperf 2020 GPU Benches

The SPEC Graphics Performance Characterization Group (SPECgpc) has released a 2020 version of its SPECviewperf benchmark last year that features updated viewsets, new models, support for both 2K and 4K display resolutions, and improved set-up and results management. We use 2K display resolution for midrange cards like the RX 6600 XT.

Here are the summary results for the Red Devil RX 6600 XT.

Here are SPECviewperf 2020 GPU Red Devil RX 6600 XT benchmarks summarized in a chart together with four other cards.

Again we see different architectures with different strengths and weaknesses. The Red Devil RX 6600 XT is significantly faster than the RX 5600 XT.

After seeing these benches, some creative users may upgrade their existing systems with a new card based on the performance increases and the associated increases in productivity that they require. The question to buy a new video card should be based on the workflow and requirements of each user as well as their budget. Time is money depending on how these apps are used. However, the target demographic for the Red Devil RX 6600 XT is primarily 1080P gaming for gamers.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

Final Thoughts

The Red Devil RX 6600 XT improves significantly over the RX 5600 XT and it trades blows with and overall it beats the RTX 3060 in multiple rasterized games. The Red Devil RX 6600 XT beats the last generation cards including the RX 5600 XT although it struggles with ray traced games compared with GeForce cards. We somewhat handicapped the RX 6600 XT by not being able to use Infinity Cache & Smart Access Memory and we expect that performance would be higher if we used a Ryzen 5000 platform.

FSR brings a great value to the RX 6600 XT as an alternative to DLSS, although it cannot quite match it in visual quality. We look forward to further improvements in FSR and hope many more games use it.

For Radeon gamers, the Red Devil RX 6600 XT is a good alternative to the RTX 3060 for the vast majority of modern PC games that use rasterization. However, the RX 6600 XT offers 8GB of GDDR6 to the 12GB of GDDR6 that the RTX 3060 is equipped with. The RTX 3060, although it has 12GB of vRAM, appears to be wasted for that card.

At its suggested price of $379, or $20 less than the RTX 3060 Ti, the reference RX 6600 XT offers much less value – if the GeForce can be found at all at SEP. PowerColor has promised that the supply of the RX 6600 XT will be plentiful, but we are skeptical. This same thing has been promised for Ampere cards where the stock is still trickling in and being purchased the instant it’s available from etailers that are not hesitating to mark the prices up to double the SEP.

We think that AMD has set pricing too high on the RX 6600 XT by about $50. If it sold for $329 like the RTX 3060, it would be a really good value. They seem to forget that the competing GeForce is much stronger in ray traced games – with over 60 games featuring DLSS – and that FSR is brand new with only a dozen games supporting it so far. At $100 more than what the RX 5600 XT launched at, AMD has jacked up the price of 1080P gaming – pandemic shortages or no shortages – and it is not a consumer friendly move. However, for practical terms – if the RX 6600 XT can be found at MSRP/SEP – it is a good value for now as most other competing cards are still selling for double MSRP.

PowerColor hasn’t set any pricing on the Red Devil RX 6600 XT allowing the resellers to set theirs. They claim that their margins are actually below their usual historical low double-digit (10-12%) for a new product. Unfortunately, it’s hard to recommend any card with no suggested price even though it is overclocked, very nicely equipped, and well-built over a well-designed reference version for $379. We wish that we could say that “PowerColor thinks their Red Devil is worth $30 more than the reference version” – and we would agree. But now there is no pricing frame of reference.

We recommend the Red Devil RX 6600 XT as a great choice out of multiple good choices, especially if you are looking for good looks with RGB, an exceptional cooler, and great performance for 1920×1080, PowerColor’s excellent support, and overall good value assuming that the stock and price stabilizes. We are convinced that PowerColor is an outstanding AMD AIB, and we never hesitate to recommend it to our friends. When we have a choice, we pick and have picked PowerColor video cards for our own purchases.

Let’s sum it up:

The Red Devil RX 6600 XT Pros

• The PowerColor Red Devil RX 6600 XT is much faster than the last generation RX 5600 XT by virtue of new RDNA 2 architecture. It beats the RTX 3060 in many raster games and is a great ultra 1080P card that can handle 1440P with lower settings.
• FSR is an awesome added value that can greatly improves performance without impacting visuals significantly.
• The Red Devil RX 6600 XT has excellent cooling and it is a very quiet card even when overclocked to its maximum
• The Red Devil has a very good power delivery system and dual-fan custom cooling design
• Dual-BIOS give the user a choice of quiet with less overclocking, or a bit louder with more power-unlimited and higher overclocks. It’s also a great safety feature if a BIOS flash goes bad
• FreeSync2 HDR eliminates tearing and stuttering
• Infinity Cache & Smart Access Memory give higher performance with Ryzen 5000 platform
• Customizable RGB lighting and a neutral color allow the Red Devil to fit into any color scheme using the DevilZone software program.

Red Devil RX 6600 XT Cons

• Pricing. $379 for a midrange 1080P card is $100 more than AMD’s RX 5600 XT. And PowerColor has set no SEP
• Weaker ray tracing performance than the RTX 3060

If they can be found at suggested pricing, the Red Devil RX 6600 XT is a good card choice for those who game at 1920×1080, and it represents a good alternative to the RTX 3060 albeit with weaker ray tracing performance. They are offered especially for those who prefer AMD cards and FreeSync2 enabled displays which are generally less expensive than Gsync displays; and Infinity Cache & Smart Access Memory are a real plus for gamers using the Ryzen 5000 platform.

If a gamer is looking for something extra beyond the reference version, the Red Devil RX 6600 XT is a very well made and handsome RGB customizable card that will overclock decently and last a long time without performance degradation.

The Verdict:

• PowerColor’s Red Devil RX 6600 XT is a solidly-built good-looking RGB card with higher clocks out of the box than the reference version and it overclocks decently. It trades blows with and overall beats the RTX 3060 in many rasterized games. Although we have no price, it is a kick-ass RX 6600 XT. Hopefully there will be some solid supply and the market pricing will normalize after the cryptocurrency pandemic ends (relatively soon!).

The Red Devil RX 6600 XT offers a good alternative to the RTX 3060 for solid raster performance in gaming, and it also beats the performance of AMD’s last generation by a good margin. However, everything will depend on pricing and availability.

This is what PowerColor boldly stated to us last week:

“There will be plenty of cards in the channel and we will have our base model Fighting that starts at 379$ at launch!

No Scalping prices, eTailers will have enough cards, if they raise the prices, someone else will sell for less.”

Good advice! We hope there is good availability, and if so, we can recommend the Red Devil RX 6600 XT even if it is sold even at AMD’s inflated SEP pricing because the competing cards are mostly unavailable for even double their MSRP. Do not reward scalpers or etailers who sell at inflated prices and who do not deserve our business. We can outwait them.

Stay tuned, there is much more coming from BTR. This weekend we will return to VR with a performance evaluation comparing the Red Devil RX 6600 XT with the RTX 3060. And stay tuned for Rodrigo’s upcoming 471.68 driver performance analysis!

Happy Gaming!

Related Links:

NVIDIA blog post on the two GDC demos.

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Happy Mobile RTX Gaming!!

While AMD is just now launching their DLSS competitor, NVIDIA’s latest GeForce Game Ready 471.11 driver already delivers support for RTX technologies in over 130 games, giving gamers high-quality graphics, improved performance, and lower system latency.

LEGO Builder’s Journey launches today with DLSS and ray tracing. Next week, June 29, DOOM Eternal gets an patch that enables DLSS and ray tracing. And Rust is the latest game to add DLSS on July 1st. All of these games are supported by GeForce 471.11 driver and Rodrigo will analyze its performance next week.

LEGO Builder’s Journey is enhanced by ray-traced ambient occlusion, global illumination, reflections, and shadows and accelerated with NVIDIA DLSS. It is the world’s first Unity game with ray tracing. LEGO Builder’s Journey is a geometric puzzle game set in a LEGO brick-based environment and DLSS improves performance by up to 92% in the game according to Nvidia.

DOOM Eternal adds ray-traced reflections and performance enhancing DLSS next week, July 29, in an major update and Rust gets DLSS two days later. This follows the addition of NVIDIA Reflex in May to Rust which reduced system latency by up to 38% according to NVIDIA. Check back here on July 1st for further details.

Game Ready Driver for DOOM Eternal and LEGO Builder’s Journey, launching June 22nd, also adds other features, including GeForce Experience Enhancements from NVIDIA’s press release:

• One-Click HDR Screenshot Capture for All GeForce Experience Supported Games: GeForce Experience has expanded game support for quick HDR screenshot capture from 300+ Ansel-supported games to now over 1000+ GeForce Experience Supported games. Press [Alt+F1] to save HDR screenshot in JXR format while playing on your HDR monitor. To review the shots, try the free HDR+WCG Image Viewer from the Microsoft Store
• New Freestyle Sharpen Filter: Added a new and improved Sharpen+ filter for Freestyle which uses depth to enhance quality
• FPS Counter: Based on feedback, NVIDIA made adjustments to the new FPS counter, to no longer show “N/A” when FPS is not available
• One-Click Automatic GPU Tuning: Improved the user experience by adding status messages during the tuning process
• The addition of GeForce Experience optimal settings for four new games, including:
  • Blade & Soul
  • CrossFire HD
  • Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV
• Offers the best experience for F1 2021.
• NVIDIA DLSS support for Vulkan API games is now available on Proton, enabling Linux gamers to use the dedicated AI Tensor Cores of their GeForce RTX GPUs to accelerate frame rates in DOOM Eternal, No Man’s Sky, and Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Support for DLSS-enhanced DirectX titles running via Proton will follow later this Fall.
• Support for 4 new G-SYNC Compatible gaming monitors: AOC AG274US4R6B, AOC AG254FWG8R4, ASUS VG28UQL1A, LG 32GN650/32GN63T (full specs on GeForce.com).

Related links:

• Game Ready Driver article on GeForce.com
• LEGO Builder’s Journey RTX Launch Trailer
• DOOM Eternal RTX 3080 Ti Gameplay Video
• NVIDIA DLSS info on GeForce.com

Check back here next week as Rodrigo will post another exhaustive driver performance analysis of todays driver!

Happy Gaming!

Our friends at NVIDIA have made a series of major announcements at virtual GTC 2021 and today has real implications especially for VR. The first VR confirmed to use DLSS after it was added to the Unreal Engine 4 as a plugin, Into the Radius, shows strong performance gains. DLSS will pave the way for higher resolution headsets and even ray tracing for VR games.

Here is today’s press release:

GTC 2021 kicked off this week with a flurry of GPU news and announcements. Of interest to gamers, Unity will be natively supporting NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) in their popular game engine.

Unity Developers Can Easily Add DLSS to Add to Their Games

Developers’ ability to level up their games with the same cutting-edge technologies found in the biggest blockbusters got a lot simpler. Unity developers will soon be able to add NVIDIA DLSS to their creations in just a few clicks. Before the end of 2021, NVIDIA DLSS will be natively supported for the High Definition Render Pipeline ( HDRP) in Unity 2021.2.

At GTC 2021, Light Brick Studio demonstrated how stunning Unity games can look when real-time ray tracing and DLSS are combined. Watch their full talk for free here. You can also check out our developer interview with Unity’s Mathieu Muller, senior product manager for high-end graphics here.

NVIDIA DLSS uses advanced AI rendering to produce image quality that’s comparable to native resolution–and sometimes even better–while only conventionally rendering a fraction of the pixels. With real-time ray tracing and NVIDIA DLSS, Unity developers will be able to create beautiful real-time ray traced worlds running at high frame rates and resolutions on NVIDIA RTX GPUs. DLSS also provides a substantial performance boost for traditional rasterized graphics.

This comes hot on the heels of the announcement that DLSS support has been added as a plug-in to Epic’s Unreal Engine.

Learn from Experts at GTC 2021 Gaming Sessions

Anyone interested in learning more about computer graphics should take a look at the gaming-centric sessions at GTC 2021 in the attached PDF. It is free to sign up and attend!

NVIDIA introduced several new Software Development Kits (SDKs) at this year’s GTC 2021 that help developers make better games, and save precious time and money. Highlights include RTX Direct Illumination, to add millions of dynamic lights to environments with ease, RTX Global Illumination, to calculate and add realistic bounced indirect lighting, and NVIDIA Omniverse, a RTX-accelerated simulation and collaboration platform for 3D content creators, currently in open beta.

You can find a complete rundown here.

Related Links:

• NVIDIA DLSS coming to Unity Engine on the NVIDIA Developer blog
• GeForce.com article on NVIDIA DLSS coming to Unity Engine:
• Developer interview with Unity’s Mathieu Muller, senior product manager for high-end graphics on YouTube
• Light Brick Studio’s GTC talk by Mikkel Fredborg (must register first)
• GTC Game Development topics page
• GTC 2021 Graphics SDK round up on NVIDIA Developer blog
• NVIDIA DLSS Plugin and Reflex Now Available for Unreal Engine on the NVIDIA Developer blog

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Into the Radius by indie developer and publisher, CM Games (Creative Mobile) of Estonia, is one of the first VR games to use DLSS 2.0. It is a single player stealth survival adventure/exploration game which is set in the dangerous world of the Pechorsk Exclusion Zone that is basically “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. VR” with an incredible atmosphere and unforgiving gameplay.

BTR has been benchmarking Into the Radius since November 2020 as its performance demands on a video card are relatively high since is set in a huge open world with a decent draw distance, and the minimum recommended video card is a GTX 1070. For this review, we are going to max out its in-game settings and use FCAT VR to compare DLSS performance On versus DLSS Off using a Valve Index (Quality DLSS) at 90Hz and 120Hz as well as the much more demanding Reverb G2 (Quality and Balanced DLSS versus Off) at 90Hz.

BTR’s testing platform is an overclocked Intel Core i9-10900K, an EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard, and 32GB of Vulcan Dark Z DDR4 at 3600MHz on a recent install of Windows 10 64-bit Pro Edition using NVIDIA’s latest GeForce Game Ready Driver, 465.89.

It is important to be aware of VR performance since poorly delivered frames can make a VR experience unpleasant. It’s also important to understand how we accurately benchmark VR games using FCAT-VR as explained here. But before we benchmark Into the Radius, check out our Test Configuration below.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-10900K (HyperThreading/Turbo boost On; All cores overclocked to 5.1GHz/5.0Ghz. Comet Lake DX11 CPU graphics)
• EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard (Intel Z490 chipset, v1.3 BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x), supplied by EVGA
• T-FORCE DARK Z 32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, dual channel at 3600MHz), supplied by Team Group
• Reverb G2, on loan from HP
• Vive Pro, on loan from HTC/Vive
• RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition 11GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• RTX 3080 Founders Edition 10GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• 1TB Team Group MP33 NVMe2 PCIe SSD for C: drive
• 1.92TB San Disk enterprise class SATA III SSD (storage)
• 2TB Micron 1100 SATA III SSD (storage)
• 1TB Team Group GX2 SATA III SSD (storage)
• 500GB T-FORCE Vulcan SSD (storage), supplied by Team Group
• ANTEC HCG1000 Extreme, 1000W gold power supply unit
• Samsung G7 Odyssey (LC27G75TQSNXZA) 27? 2560×1440/240Hz/1ms/G-SYNC/HDR600 monitor
• DEEPCOOL Castle 360EX AIO 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Phanteks Eclipse P400 ATX mid-tower (plus 1 Noctua 140mm fan)

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 465.89 Game Ready drivers – no optimizations in the NVIDIA control panel
• Windows 10 64-bit Pro edition; latest updates v10.0.19042 Build 19042
• Latest DirectX
• Into the Radius is patched to it’s latest version at time of publication
• FCAT VR Capture (latest non-public Beta 04/02/21)
• FCATVR Analyzer (non-public Beta 18)
• SteamVR – latest non beta version at 100% resolution
• WMR – latest version at default

DLSS 2.0, Graphics Settings & IQ – Benchmarking the RTX 3080 Ti & RTX 2080 Ti with FCAT VR

Originally, there were no user options for changing individual graphics settings other than High, Medium, and Low presets. There is also a slider to drop or subsample the resolution down to 65%, or to increase the resolution to 110%. We picked High plus 110% resolution for the Valve Index (90Hz/120Hz) and 100% resolution for the more demanding Reverb G2 (90Hz).

DLSS 2.0 settings were added in last week’s patch and they now have options for Off, Quality, Balanced, Performance, and Ultra Performance.

DLSS 2.0

NVIDIA’s DLSS 2.0 creates sharper and higher resolution images using dedicated AI processors on GeForce RTX GPUs called Tensor Cores. The original DLSS 1.0 required more work on the part of game developers and resulted in image quality approximately equal to TAA. DLSS 2.0 uses an improved deep learning neural network that boosts frame rates while generating crisper game images with extra performance headroom to maximize settings and increase output resolutions.

NVIDIA claims that DLSS 2.0 offers IQ comparable to native resolution while rendering only one quarter to one half of the pixels by employing new temporal feedback techniques. Its goal is to achieve the same (or better) IQ (image quality) as a natively rendered frame of the same resolution more efficiently which allows the game’s framerate to increase. A pancake DLSS 2.0 game may internally render at 1080P and then use DLSS to upscale the image to 4K with a similar IQ/level of detail but render it much more quickly.

DLSS 2.0 generally offers RTX gamers four IQ modes: Quality, Balanced, Performance, and Ultra Performance. These settings control a game’s internal rendering resolution with Quality DLSS using the highest internal resolution and the best image quality (IQ), and Ultra Performance delivering a lesser IQ by using a lower internal resolution.

For example, the pancake game, Death Stranding, has implemented Performance DLSS 2.0, 1080p ? 4K; and Quality DLSS 2.0, 1440p ? 4K. However, we do not know exactly how DLSS 2.0 is implemented for VR. Last week, we asked NVIDIA for details and will update this review if/when we hear from them.

In our opinion, the Quality DLSS 2.0 Into the Radius implementation looks as good as without DLSS, and it’s somewhat better than Performance DLSS which appears a bit more blurry to us. We think that Quality DLSS 2.0’s larger hit to the frame rate is worth it over using Performance DLSS 2.0. We would prefer to lower other settings before we drop DLSS 2.0 from Quality to Performance. However, the in-between Balanced DLSS also looks very good to us – especially on the Reverb G2 – and we would not hesitate to recommend that VR gamers check it out and decide for themselves.

FCAT VR Performance Benchmarking the RTX 2080 Ti & RTX 3080 with FCAT VR

It is important to remember that BTR’s Frametime Plot charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom) if it wasn’t locked to either 90 FPS (or 120 FPS/Index) or to 45 FPS (or 60 FPS/Index) by the HMD. In the case of unconstrained FPS which measures just one important performance metric, faster is better.

Valve Index Performance – 90Hz & 120Hz at High/110% Resolution – Quality DLSS vs. Off

The RTX 3080 – High/110%, Refresh Rate at 90Hz

Here is the Frametime plot of the RTX 3080 run at High, 90Hz, and at 110% resolution.

Here are the FCAT VR details.

The RTX 3080 averages 209.47 Unconstrained FPS on High settings/110% resolution delivering the ideal 90 FPS cadence without DLSS and there were no dropped frames nor Warp misses, but it did require 4 synthetic frames with DLSS Off. It delivered 198.73 Unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses and 3 synthetic frames with Quality DLSS On.

There is no difference in IQ or performance in playing with DLSS On or Off, but the Unconstrained FPS with DLSS On seems strangely low compared with Off. So let’s increase the Index refresh rate from 90Hz to 120Hz which puts more of a demand on a video card.

The RTX 3080 – High/110%, Refresh Rate at 120Hz

Here is the Frametime plot of the RTX 3080 run at High, 120Hz, and at 110% resolution.

Here are the performance details.

At 120Hz, the RTX 3080 averages 194.39 Unconstrained FPS on high settings/110% resolution without DLSS and there were no dropped frames nor Warp misses, but it did require 10 synthetic frames with DLSS Off. It delivered 243.61 Unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses and 4 synthetic frames with Quality DLSS On.

There is no difference in performance even at 120Hz and we would try 144Hz except that Into the Radius is not an action game that requires it, so we tested next with a weaker video card, the RTX 2080 Ti flagship of the last generation.

The RTX 2080 Ti – High/110% Refresh Rate at 90Hz

Here is the Frametime plot of the RTX 2080 Ti run at High, 90Hz and at 110% resolution.

Here are the details.

At 90Hz, the RTX 2080 Ti averages 155.90 Unconstrained FPS on high settings/110% resolution delivering the ideal 90 FPS cadence without DLSS and there were no dropped frames nor Warp misses, but it did require 2 synthetic frames with DLSS Off. It delivered 191.84 Unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses and 2 synthetic frames with Quality DLSS On.

Again, there is no difference in IQ or performance in playing with DLSS On or Off so we increase the Index refresh rate from 90Hz to 120Hz.

The RTX 2080 Ti – High/110% Refresh Rate at 120Hz

Here is the Frametime plot of the RTX 2080 Ti run at High, 120Hz and at 110% resolution.

Here are the FCAT VR performance details.

At 120Hz, the RTX 2080 Ti averages 144.58 Unconstrained FPS on high settings/110% resolution delivering less than the ideal 120 FPS cadence without DLSS although there were no dropped frames nor Warp misses. However, without DLSS it required 938 synthetic frames (11%). It delivered 150.32 Unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses and only 96 synthetic frames were needed (1%) with Quality DLSS On.

Now we see a noticeable performance improvement using DLSS Quality using a RTX 2080 Ti when the Index panels’ refresh rate are increased to 120Hz with High settings at 110% resolution. So let’s see how these same two cards fare using the Reverb G2 at High 90Hz/100% resolution – and this time, we also add Balanced DLSS performance comparisons.

Reverb G2 Performance – High/100% Resolution (90Hz) – Quality & Balanced DLSS vs. Off

The RTX 3080 – High/100% (90Hz)

This time we leave our settings on high but drop the resolution from 110% used with the Index to 100%. The G2 refreshes natively at 90Hz with no higher option. We also benchmark the DLSS Balanced setting in addition to Quality and without DLSS (native).

Here is the G2 Frametime plot of the RTX 3080 run at High, 90Hz and at 100% resolution. Please note that synthetic frames are (most likely) reported as dropped frames by FCAT VR.

Here are the FCAT VR performance details.

The RTX 3080 averages 97.11 Unconstrained FPS on high settings/100% resolution without DLSS and there were no dropped frames nor Warp misses, but it did require 431 synthetic frames (6%) with DLSS Off. It delivered 99.29 Unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses but required 180 synthetic frames (3%) with Quality DLSS On. Using Balanced DLSS, the RTX 3080 averaged 102.90 Unconstrained FPS with no dropped, synthetic, or Warp misses, and only 26 frames needed to be synthesized.

We can see that DLSS provides a needed performance uplift for the Reverb G2 even with the RTX 3080. So next let’s see how the RTX 2080 Ti fares with the G2 at the same settings.

The RTX 2080 Ti – G2 High/100% (90Hz)

Here is the Frametime plot of the RTX 2080 Ti run at High, 90Hz and at 110% resolution.

Here are the FCAT VR details.

The RTX 2080 Ti averages 90.92 Unconstrained FPS on high settings/100% resolution without DLSS and there were no dropped frames nor Warp misses, but it did require 695 synthetic frames (9%) with DLSS Off. It delivered 96.69 Unconstrained FPS with no dropped frames or Warp misses but required 200 synthetic frames (3%) with Quality DLSS On. Using Balanced DLSS, the RTX 2080 Ti averaged 103.72 Unconstrained FPS with no dropped, synthetic, or Warm misses, and only 2 frames needed to be synthesized.

There is some inconsistency between runs performed at different times between the two video cards as the time of day quickly and constantly changes inside the Into the Radius game world, but the runs using the same card may be considered much more reliable and representative of relative performance. No matter how you look at it, DLSS improves performance without noticeably impacting visuals while playing.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

Conclusion: DLSS is Recommended!

Into the Radius is not a AAA game with a large studio behind it. It’s a huge open world indie game with a lot of content that is continually being improved by very passionate devs who appear to be responsive to their community. When it first released, Into the Radius had issues with bugs and physical interactions but the developers have continued to enthusiastically support it and optimize it for performance, and they promise to continue to develop it with an ambitious roadmap through Q2 2021.

Into the Radius will not appeal to everyone as it is a difficult and slow-paced stealth adventure exploration survival game where you will never be able to run through the zone with your guns blazing. It’s hardcore and very unforgiving, and it absolutely does not hold your hand. If you like adventure, love depth and physical realism, and don’t mind waiting for the devs to address any remaining performance and interaction issues, this game is a gem. For example, the latest DLSS patch broke WMR controllers settings and we had to use a community made set of bindings to interact with the G2 controllers properly.

We are pleased to see that the Into the Radius devs have chosen to implement DLSS 2.0 into their game. DLSS 2.0 is a miracle for pancake games and it appears that it also gives a solid performance uplift with VR in this game. Using Quality DLSS versus DLSS Off, it is very hard to see any IQ difference, and Balanced DLSS only appears to give the visuals a very slight blur. If you play Into the Radius and would like more performance, we recommend that you first try all four levels of DLSS for yourself instead of lowering settings or the in-game resolution.

Next up, Sean is hard at work on his ‘Sim Side: 2021 Test Suite Overview, Part 2’ (iRacing), and Rodrigo will also bring you a NVIDIA Resizable BAR performance analysis later this week! For the week after, we will bring you a very special unlocked video card overclocking review.

Happy Gaming!

UPDATED 04/09/2021 10:15 AM

We just got information from a CM Games Developer on how DLSS 2.1 is implemented:

“The presets and everything else is inside the DLSS plugin and we don’t have much control over it so it should be basically same parameters as for pancake games. Ultra performance takes something like 30% resolution, and goes upwards from there.”