Ray tracing and DLSS/FSR performances:
Let’s now take a look at the seven games that we have selected and that support Ray Tracing and DLSS as well as for some of them AMD’s FSR and Intel’s new XeSS technology that 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 seven 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 3 – FSR)
- Hitman 3 (DLSS 3 – XeSS)
- Forza Horizon 5 (DLSS 3)
No change for this new series of games since we remain in the 1440p 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, you will find at first only 3 graphics cards because we had to update our 1440p Ray Tracing test at the last minute. Please note that the other cards used for the 1440p Ray Tracing tests will not follow in this definition. But we will completely update these graphics soon.
The DLSS 3: watch out for our results!
As you know, NVIDIA unveiled DLSS 3 when the RTX 4000 graphics cards were released, and in particular for the launch of the RTX 4090 version. So why a warning? Because NVIDIA now offers DLSS3 support on many games but it is only supported by RTX 4000. To put it simply, if we test a game that benefits from DLSS 3, our RTX 4070 will benefit from it but an RTX 3070 Ti will be satisfied with DLSS 2, hence the differences will be even greater.
We currently have three games that support DLSS 3 and we will increase this number in the coming weeks. You can find the list of supported games by following this link.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider:
First we add to this comparison and it 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 ” very high ” graphics quality, ” ultra ” Ray Tracing and ” balanced ” DLSS.
With the Ray Tracing activated in ultra, an average of 107 FPS is already reached. The addition of DLSS 2.3 allows our average to climb to 164 FPS, so there is no difficulty to enjoy 1440p 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. We can still judge the difference between the two technologies.
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 a very high graphics quality, a ” high ” Ray Tracing and a ” balanced ” DLSS.
The Ray Tracing in Watch Dogs Legion makes the cards suffer except for our sample of the day, as it gets an average of 69 FPS. Enabling DLSS 2 will boost the FPS to an average of 101 frames per second.
Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition:
Third game and supports DLSS 2.0. We have dedicated a file 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 chose ultra graphics quality, ” ultra ” Ray Tracing and DLSS in ” balanced ” mode.
We continue with the greedy games and it is only our RTX 4070 that manages to pass the 60 FPS mark. The DLSS in “balanced” mode allows here a gain of almost 62.4% to our sample of the day.
Far Cry 6:
Far Cry 6 supports DXR as well as the FSR proposed by AMD but not DLSS.
For our benchmarks, we have opted for an Ultra graphics quality, we have activated both DRX options as well as FSR in ” balanced ” 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 the AMD model which manages to outperform our RTX 4070 for the first time when it is activated.
Cyberpunk 2077:
New game we added that offers in its settings the activation of DLSS but also FSR.
For our benchmarks, we chose a “high” graphic quality, a “medium” 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 45.7 FPS is obtained. The DLSS 3, which we mentioned at the beginning of the page, offers a very important gain as you can see on our graph. Please note that at the time of this article, the 1.62 patch had just been released.
Hitman 3:
Hitman 3 now supports DLSS, FSR and XeSS technology. Depending on the model of the tested card, we choose one of these three technologies.
For our benchmarks, we chose “high” graphics quality, ” enabled ” Ray Tracing and ” balanced ” DLSS/Xess.
We find an already usual situation with our RTX 4070 dominating this graphic in the absence of the RTX 3080 which would have been in the same performance range. Although supporting DLSS 3, we were not able to judge a larger gap with the use of our RTX 4070.
Forza Horizon 5:
Latest game added to our panel as this one is now DLSS 3 compatible. For our benchmarks, we chose ” extreme ” graphics quality, ” enabled ” Ray Tracing and ” quality ” DLSS/Xess.
This new game, which also supports DLSS 3, shows its potential. With Ray Tracing enabled, our RTX 4070 is in second place, but with DLSS 3 enabled, the clear advantage goes to our sample of the day!
So Ray Tracing with the RTX 4070:
On our seven tested games, our RTX 4070 has no problems and apart from under Cyberpunk 2077, the average is always above 60 FPS. We could have tightened up the graphics options even more, but then the other cards would have been in big trouble. As we said, as soon as we get our hands on an RTX 3080, we will update these graphics.
