Ray tracing and DLSS/FSR performances:
Let’s now take a look at the five games we have selected which support Ray Tracing and DLSS as well as for some the FSR from AMD and the new XeSS technology from Intel 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 five DirectX 12 games that we will test with Ray Tracing and DLSS, FSR or XeSS are :
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DLSS)
- Watch Dogs: Legion (DLSS)
- Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DLSS)
- Far Cry 6 (DLSS – FSR)
- Cyberpunk 2077 (DLSS – FSR)
- Hitman 3 (DLSS – XeSS)
No change for this new series of games since we stay in the 2160p definition. Depending on the card, we will use DLSS for NVIDIA and either FSR or XeSS for AMD models. If FSR is not available in a game, then we will use XeSS on our AMD card.
So even though our KFA2 RTX 4080 SG is intended for DLSS 3 which we will discuss on the next page, we also wanted to measure the gain of this RTX 4080 in DLSS 2 against the previous generation.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider:
First one we add to this comparison that supports Ray Tracing and DLSS 2.0. Three levels of Ray Tracing are offered in the game (medium – high – ultra) and the four levels of DLSS (performance – quality – balanced – ultra performance). For our benchmarks, we opted for ” ultra ” graphics quality, ” ultra ” Ray Tracing and ” performance ” DLSS.
With Ray Tracing activated in ultra, an average of 86 FPS is already achieved. With DLSS, our average is 170 FPS, so there is no difficulty to enjoy 2160p with Ray Tracing activated. A small remark, Shadow Of The Tomb Raider has been implemented with XeSS, which allows AMD cards to benefit from this technology.
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, ” ultra ” Ray Tracing and ” performance ” DLSS.
The Ray Tracing in Watch Dogs Legion makes all the cards suffer except for our sample of the day with an average of 45 FPS. The activation of DLSS 2 performance will boost the FPS to an average of 97 frames per second.
Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition:
Third game that supports DLSS 2.0. We have dedicated an article to it. 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 DLSS in ” performance ” mode.
We continue with the greedy games and even if our RTX 4080 exceed 50 FPS, we are still far from the symbolic bar of 60 FPS. The DLSS allows a gain of nearly 95%.
Far Cry 6:
The latest game we add to this section since it supports DXR as well as SFR proposed by AMD. For our benchmarks, we opted for Ultra graphics quality, we enabled both DRX options as well as FSR in ” performance ” mode.
In Far Cry 6, FSR is the only choice available to boost FPS after enabling Ray Tracing. All our cards can benefit from it, regardless of the manufacturer. The FSR is to the advantage of AMD cards, which manage to outperform our RTX 4000 for the first time when it is activated.
Cyberpunk 2077:
A new game that we have added and that proposes in its parameters 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. Here, an average of 29.3 FPS is obtained. The DLSS 2 in performance mode allows a considerable gain with an average of 83.4 FPS. We will see later in the article that it is still possible to achieve a greater gain with DLSS 3.
Hitman 3:
The last game has also been added since it is now compatible with DLSS, FSR and XeSS technology. Depending on the model of the tested card, we opt for one of these three technologies. For our benchmarks, we opted for “high” graphics quality, ” enabled ” Ray Tracing and ” performance ” DLSS/Xess.
We find an already usual situation with a second place in this last game. The DLSS brings once again a very important gain.
So Ray Tracing with the RTX 4080:
On our six games tested, our RTX 4080 manages to exceed 60 FPS with Ray Tracing enabled and without needing DLSS. For the other three, DLSS brings its FPS gain ensuring fluidity within the game in 2160p.
With Ray Tracing enabled, our RTX 4080 performs 39.2% better than the RTX 3080 Ti and 20.6% better than the RTX 3090 Ti, which is far from trivial.
