Ray tracing and DLSS/FSR performances:
Let’s now take a look at the six games we have selected that support Ray Tracing as well as DLSS and for some of them AMD’s FSR as well as Intel’s new XeSS technology which is supported by Shadow Tomb Raider and Hitman 3. As we have already reminded you, if the DLSS remains the property of NVIDIA, the FSR and the XeSS can be used with all cards from AMD, Intel and even NVIDIA.
The six DirectX 12 games that we will test with Ray Tracing or DirectX Ray Tracing and DLSS, FSR or XeSS are :
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DLSS – XeSS)
- Watch Dogs: Legion (DLSS)
- Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DLSS)
- Far Cry 6 (DLSS – FSR)
- Cyberpunk 2077 (DLSS – FSR)
- Hitman 3 (DLSS – XeSS)
Of course, we had to make a choice and as we started with heavy Ray Tracing, we settled for 1080p definition. So yes, some games will also go to 1440p, but for the most part, the number of FPS does not reach 60 FPS. Remember that Intel ARCs do not support DLSS. Our assumption is that there should be some balance between image quality and technologies like DLSS, FSR and now XeSS.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider:
First that we add to this comparison and that supports Ray Tracing and DLSS 1.0. Three levels of Ray Tracing are offered in the game (medium – high – ultra) and only one level of DLSS. For our benchmarks, we chose Ultra graphics quality, ” ultra ” Ray Tracing and DLSS enabled. The good news is that this game is now XeSS compatible and we were able to use it in “Balanced” mode for our Intel and AMD GPUs.
Even with Ray Tracing enabled, our Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC does just fine as the average is over 78 FPS. Enabling XeSS offers a gain in FPS for a smoother rendering.
Watch Dogs Legion:
Second game, Watch Dogs Legion supports Ray Tracing and DLSS 2.0. It is one of the most demanding games of the moment. Three levels of Ray Tracing are offered in the game (medium – high – ultra) and four levels of DLSS (performance – quality – balanced – ultra performance). For our benchmarks, we opted for Ultra graphics quality, ” high ” Ray Tracing and ” balanced ” DLSS.
The Ray Tracing in Watch Dogs Legion makes all the cards suffer and therefore automatically our sample of the day. We are finally not far from 60 FPS. As this game only offers DLSS, it is impossible to achieve a gain in FPS like on the three NVIDIA cards.
Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition:
Third game and supports DLSS 2.0. Three levels of Ray Tracing are offered in the game and four levels of DLSS (performance – quality – balanced – ultra performance). For our benchmarks, we opted for Ultra graphics quality, ” high ” Ray Tracing and ” quality ” DLSS.
We continue with the greedy games but our Predator BiFrost Intel ARC A770 OC does almost as well as the RTX 3070 FE. The gain here from the new drivers is clearly visible.
Far Cry 6:
The latest game we add to this section as it supports DXR as well as SFR offered by AMD. For our benchmarks, we opted for Ultra graphics quality, we enabled both DRX options as well as FSR in ” quality ” mode for the three definitions: 1080p, 1440p and 2160p.
We had already noticed a gain in rasterization under Far Cry 6 and this is confirmed when Ray Tracing is activated. It is once again an excellent score.
Cyberpunk 2077:
New game we just added that offers in its settings the activation of DLSS but also FSR. For our benchmarks, we have chosen a “high” graphic quality, an ” ultra ” Ray Tracing and a ” balanced ” DLSS/FSR.
This is the most demanding game where our cards have a hard time keeping up. We will most likely set the Ray Tracing back to “high” for our next update. We did not post our scores with the two AMD cards because for some reason we had a performance bug in our previous test and did not get a chance to test them again.
Hitman 3:
New game also added as this one now supports XeSS in addition to DLSS. We have received access to a beta version which should be officially released soon. We talked about this game in more detail on page four of our article. For our benchmarks, we opted for “high” graphics quality, ” enabled ” Ray Tracing and ” balanced ” DLSS/Xess.
As soon as the game is more optimized and takes advantage of the XeSS technology specific to Intel cards, our two specimens can take full advantage of the gain brought by XeSS. So you’ll be perfectly comfortable in 1080p to enjoy the combination of Ray Tracing and XeSS.
No Ray Tracing in 1440p with ARCs?
We decided that as long as our six games didn’t pass the 60 FPS mark, we didn’t think it was necessary to post the performance in 1440p. So yes, Ray Tracing is possible in 1440p with the A770 but only in certain games like Far Cry 6, Shadow of Tomb Raider and Hitman 3. We can simply say that if the game is XeSS compatible, then yes, you can imagine playing in 1440p with Ray Tracing enabled and combined with XeSS.
