GPU Ray Tracing Performance Comparisons [2021-2022]

[DavidGraham]

Things are advancing rapidly and I love it. Half life 2 next?

Someone dropped HL2 maps into Portal RTX, without proper calibrations or work, but the results give us a preview of sorts of what's to come.

 

[troyan]

Its incredible. And every object has a realistic shadow. Shows how much light can improve graphics even when these assets are nearly 20 years old.

 

[Kaotik]

But what's up with the slow lighting? It takes seconds for lighting to normalize after firing few bullets in the dark room

 

[troyan]

A few more screenshots from another HL2 map:







RTX Remix will the next big thing in PC gaming. Lets hope nVidia will support it the right way.


/edit: Comparision between HL2 and HL2 map in Portal RTX: https://imgsli.com/MTM4ODE0

 

[Putas]

Shadows are nice, but all those old games in path tracing suffer from too much brightness.

 

[TopSpoiler]

Portal with RTX Nsight Graphics GPU Traces with SER on/off.
RTX 4090 w/ 350W PL, Native 4K, Turned off DLSS, FG and Reflex.

SER off:


SER on, Integrate Indirect Pass only (default):


SER on, Integrate Indirect Pass + Gbuffer Pass:


You can see the performance of [TraceRays 1] segment improves twice(!).

 

[arandomguy]

The Portal RTX Remaster and Nvidia's RTX Remix should also be looked at from the development side. As this seems to pushing the development benefits of moving to towards ray tracing which is the potential development side benefits.

We don't know know exactly how much development resources went into it but it's at least seems financially viable enough to release at as a free mod with on an indirect promotional benefit for the stakeholders. Whereas if you look at a more conventional remaster they are much larger projects akin to developing new commercial games and requiring sales at least somewhat in similar scope to be viable.

Could a conventional remaster (and still based on rasterization) achieve the same subjective visual fidelity at much lower hardware performance cost? Sure, but the business side of it likely means it isn't viable to pursue in the first place.

 

[DegustatoR]

Someone is mildly butthurt again over me torturing his sacred cow.

I think that the only one being butthurt here is the person who decided to come into a "RT performance comparison" thread to tell us all how they don't care about RT.

 

[DavidGraham]

Literally the entire point of UE5 is to bring complex lighting to multi-million poly models. Apparently you think that's "nothing new" because we can add shadows to perhaps 500 poly props in a nearly 20 year old game.

But UE5 created new problems too: Lumen needs Nanite to work with good performance, without it Lumen will be too slow. Even VSM are needed for good performance.

With this UE5 is sacrificing a lot things: destructible and deformable objects are gone, so this wouldn't work in a game about wrecking havok with physics. Also Direct Illumination, proper shadows and reflections are sacrificed in several ways.

I am sure Epic will continue patching up their work to alleviate this though, they want engine leadership, and solving these issues is important for that.

 

[JoeJ]

But what's up with the slow lighting? It takes seconds for lighting to normalize after firing few bullets in the dark room

It's the 'realtime' lie. They call it that, although it's actually just 'interactive'. : )

 

[Clukos]

SER Disabled

SER Enabled

More than twice as fast here, like @TopSpoiler saw, this is just with DLSS. Makes me wonder how Cyberpunk perf will be affected once they implement SER, even without the new settings.

 

[Subtlesnake]

But UE5 created new problems too: Lumen needs Nanite to work with good performance, without it Lumen will be too slow. Even VSM are needed for good performance.

With this UE5 is sacrificing a lot things: destructible and deformable objects are gone, so this wouldn't work in a game about wrecking havok with physics. Also Direct Illumination, proper shadows and reflections are sacrificed in several ways.

I am sure Epic will continue patching up their work to alleviate this though, they want engine leadership, and solving these issues is important for that.

I agree. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. I am just disputing the claim that Epic is bringing nothing new to the table.

No, but it looks outstanding in the open world area while running at 150FPS+ on my 4090. Does this here looks like "CGI quality assets" to you:
View attachment 7734

Would this be a $50 game people would refund it immediately.

Because Fortnite is an e-sports game that has had Nanite + Lumen bolted on, not a game built from the ground up with these technologies. Nanite enables super high fidelity models; it doesn't magically create them. This is a more representative video of what UE5 can do:

 

[troyan]

I agree. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. I am just disputing the claim that Epic is bringing nothing new to the table.


Because Fortnite is an e-sports game that has had Nanite + Lumen bolted on, not a game built from the ground up with these technologies. Nanite enables super high fidelity models; it doesn't magically create them. This is a more representative video of what UE5 can do:

Metro Exodus EE is an actual game build around a best in class lighting model compatible with Tessellation. So you saying that we can not use Fortnite as a comparision because it is a e-sports game?! Stop making excuses for regression. Battlefield 5 implemented Raytracing and it runs now with nearly 150 FPS (not Rotterdam) on my 4090 in 3440x1440 and these reflections are above what you see in Fortnite.

 

[Henry swagger]

People love overrating unreal engine 5 .. proprietary engines from AAA DEVELOPERS are way more advanced than unreal engine

 

[BRiT]

Thread Reply-Ban issued for user which obviously had no intention other than to produce noise. Initial Posts and responses were cleaned up,

Thanks to those who reported the issues.

 

[Subtlesnake]

Metro Exodus EE is an actual game build around a best in class lighting model compatible with Tessellation. So you saying that we can not use Fortnite as a comparision because it is a e-sports game?! Stop making excuses for regression. Battlefield 5 implemented Raytracing and it runs now with nearly 150 FPS (not Rotterdam) on my 4090 in 3440x1440 and these reflections are above what you see in Fortnite.

AFAIK Battlefield 5 *only* has ray traced reflections. Metro Exodus EE uses rasterization for primary rays combined with diffuse RTGI and ray traced reflections (https://www.4a-games.com.mt/4a-dna/in-depth-technical-dive-into-metro-exodus-pc-enhanced-edition).

In any case the point of contention is whether Epic is solving any new problems, not whether Fortnite is a great looking game or worth the money or whatever. I contend that Nanite + Lumen is solving the problem of combining CGI quality models with complex traced lightning. Fortnite can't be used in this comparison because it's not built on CGI quality models. (Seriously just compare your image with the video I posted). And furthermore hero lighting in a multiplayer game is designed to highlight key items, not be 100% realistic. If the light from a pickup is blocked by the environment the user may miss that pickup.

 

[DavidGraham]

The amazing Portal RTX.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1600930005550129152

 

[PSman1700]

Its scary how amazing such an old game can look beyond badically anything else released today.

 

[TopSpoiler]

Makes me wonder how Cyberpunk perf will be affected once they implement SER, even without the new settings.

I think the efficiency of SER in Portal with RTX stands out because the small maps and simple geometries minimizes the BVH traversal overhead. Modern games like CP2077 won't get that level of improvement.

 

[DegustatoR]

I think the efficiency of SER in Portal with RTX stands out because the small maps and simple geometries minimizes the BVH traversal overhead. Modern games like CP2077 won't get that level of improvement.

I dunno about that. Intuitively speaking modern games which are highly likely to be more shading limited than traversal limited are bound to get more from SER than older games with simple shading. But it can be both ways I guess.