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[DegustatoR]

I guess that would explain The Talos Principle 2 better results especially at lower resolutions ...

I don't see anything in particular being "better" there. Top performing cards in 1080p are likely completely CPU limited there.

 

[Lurkmass]

I don't see anything in particular being "better" there. Top performing cards in 1080p are likely completely CPU limited there.

If it was a CPU bottleneck then performance should keep scaling beyond the i3 10100 since there are far stronger CPUs out there but that is not the behaviour that we're seeing with the CPU results ...

The common denominator in performance behaviour between the graphics vendors of various UE5 titles appears to be virtual shadow mapping ...

 

[DegustatoR]

If it was a CPU bottleneck then performance should keep scaling beyond the i3 10100 since there are far stronger CPUs out there but that is not the behaviour that we're seeing with the CPU results ...

Their CPU results should be taken with a huge grain of salt (GPU's too but to a lesser degree). But even if they are accurate they don't tell us anything about how CPU limited the 7900XTX is, and if there is a CPU limit AMD h/w tend to do better with it in D3D12 which explains the results you see in low resolutions.

The common denominator in performance behaviour between the graphics vendors of various UE5 titles appears to be virtual shadow mapping ...

Or a million of other things which the developers using the engine can optimize or change differently depending on their target platforms, sponsorship agreements and general knowledge.

 

[GhostofWar]

A more solid winning formula is for them to push UE5 developers into using virtual shadow maps ...

I think one of the remnant 2 updates added an option to disable vsm, you could test your theory there.

 

[DavidGraham]

It seems like the relationship between Remnant 2/Immortals and why Lords of the Fallen has a somewhat mediocre showing on AMD might be down to the latter not using virtual shadow mapping. A more solid winning formula is for them to push UE5 developers into using virtual shadow maps ...

Or you are basing your theory on a sample of two: Remnant 2 (which lacks Lumen) and Immortals (which is funded by AMD), against a sample of 6 (The Lords of the Fallen, The Talos Principle 2, Fort Solis, Fortnite, Desordre and Jusant). All of these games use Virtual Shadow Maps except for The Lords of The Fallen. So your theory doesn't hold up against hard data.

Additional data points include the game Satisfactory, in which you can disable and enable Lumen at will, with Lumen disabled the 7900XTX has the upper hand over the 4080, but once Lumen is enabled, the table turns. Even the gap between the 4090 and 7900XTX grows larger, from 28% with Lumen off to 57% with Lumen on.

Layers of Fear is another data point as well, but with Hardware Lumen.

 

[Lurkmass]

Or you are basing your theory on a sample of two: Remnant 2 (which lacks Lumen) and Immortals (which is funded by AMD), against a sample of 6 (The Lords of the Fallen, The Talos Principle 2, Fort Solis, Fortnite, Desodre and Jusant). All of these games use Virtual Shadow Maps except for The Lords of The Fallen. So your theory doesn't hold up against hard data.

Additional data points include the game Satisfactory, in which you can disable and enable Lumen at will, with Lumen disabled the 7900XTX has the upper hand over the 4080, but once Lumen is enabled, the table turns. Even the gap between the 4090 and 7900XTX grows larger, from 28% with Lumen off to 57% with Lumen on.

Layers of Fear is another data point as well, but with Hardware Lumen.

Nobody cares about junk like Fort Solis and it'll be be forgotten into oblivion just like that recent Lord of the Rings game you brought up before. Also the developers haven't explicitly disclosed whether that they use VSM in Jusant. Desodre is a single person using an RTX fork of UE5 which sure as hell isn't at all representative with how most UE5 content is developed ...

Also meh on updates or low effort remasters/remakes especially ones that only use a single major graphical feature of the newest iteration of UE. I suspect more good things to come in the future and sweeter too as well since none of the bigger UE5 projects (not even Lords of the Fallen) has used HW ray tracing so far. Everyone should welcome the days where no one vendor aren't 3+ performance tiers behind their competitor anymore ...

 

[DavidGraham]

Nobody cares about junk like Fort Solis and it'll be be forgotten into oblivion just like that recent Lord of the Rings game you brought up before

You were the one who brought Lords of the Fallen in this thread, no one else did.

And I see more of the hand waiving attitude in the face of hard data, you chose a sample of 2 vs a sample of 6+ and counting. That's hardly technical.

By your logic, Immortals of Aveum is a shitty game as well, a low effort AA title that no one plays or cares for. Remnant 2 isn't using an important UE5 feature (Lumen), so should be discarded as well. So what are you arguing about again?

I suspect more good things to come in the future and sweeter too as well since none of the bigger UE5 projects (not even Lords of the Fallen) has used HW ray tracing so far

So far, none of your predictions have came true, so I wouldn't bet on it. Half of the released Lumen UE5 games so far are using HW Lumen: Fortnite, Layers of Fear, Desordre, Immortals are planning a HW Lumen update, there is also The Fabled Woods and Ant Ausventure.

Fort Solis, The Lords of The Fallen and The Talos Principle 2 aren't using it. But who knows, things might change in the future.

Epic is extensively optimizng HW Lumen to work with Nanite for RT shadows and GI, they also want to increase performance on more capable hardware. So I expect RT capable GPUs to increase their performance tremendously once that happens.

 

[Lurkmass]

You were the one who brought Lords of the Fallen in this thread, no one else did.

You brought up Gollum just to put the vendor you seethe in a really bad light. Nothing more to be said ...

By your logic, Immortals of Aveum is a shitty game as well, a low effort AA title that no one plays or cares for. Remnant 2 isn't using an important UE5 feature (Lumen), so should be discarded as well. So what are you arguing about again?

Immortals didn't sell well but it was a decent AAA game. Meanwhile Fort Solis is about as good as Redfall from this year so why is the former more worthy than the latter for testing purposes ?

At least Remnant 2 is new project and managed to include at least one more major graphical feature (Nanite & VSM) while you keep harping on about a lightning system update for last generation assets as a realistic showcase of the engine. It's almost as bad as legitimizing those RTX remix remasters as real world content ...

So far, none of your predictions have came true, so I wouldn't bet on it. Half of the released Lumen UE5 games so far are using HW Lumen: Fortnite, Layers of Fear, Desodre, Immortals are planning a HW Lumen update, there is also The Fabled Woods and Ant Ausventure.

Neither Layers of Fear or Desodre are AAA projects. The developers behind Immortals did not specifically promise a HW lumen update ...

Epic is extensively optimizng HW Lumen to work with Nanite for RT shadows and GI, they also want to increase performance on more capable hardware. So I expect RT capable GPUs to increase their performance tremendously once that happens.

How can Epic even further optimize HW Lumen if they refuse to use vendor specific extensions like SER, OMM, DMM while there's no sign of Microsoft standardizing more DXR functionality ?

 

[DavidGraham]

You brought up Gollum just to put the vendor you seethe in a really bad light. Nothing more to be said

It's a game just like any other. I bring Gollum in the context of RT enabled titles. We are not reviewers here, we evaluate games based on their tech, not review scores. You brought Lords of the Fallen to the discussion thinking the 7900XTX will have a large lead over the 4080 in this game, you were wrong, just like when you were wrong when you brought Assassin's Creed Mirgae to the discussion for that very same purpose. Now you are discarding them because they no longer fit your criteria. Be consistent with your own methodology.

Meanwhile Fort Solis is about as good as Redfall from this year so why is the former more worthy than the latter for testing purposes ?

Again, this is your subjective opinion.

At least Remnant 2 is new project and managed to include at least one more major graphical feature (Nanite & VSM) while you keep harping on about a lightning system update for last generation assets as a realistic showcase of the engine. It's almost as bad as legitimizing those RTX remix remasters as real world content ...

This is a tech forum, we harp about visual and technical upgrades to our games, not about checklist features or review scores.

You excluded games without the complete UE5 features, you excluded Lords of the Fallen because it lacks Virtual Shadows, you excluded Jusant because it might lack it too, by your logic you should also exclude Remnants 2 because it lacks Lumen entirely, be consistent with your own logic.

The developers behind Immortals did not specifically promise a HW lumen update ...

Yes they did, they even detailed the process.

The biggest change from software to hardware Lumen is that it goes from 200m to 1000m. There's a surprising secondary problem when you start adding light sources from five times the distance away, which is you're now getting reflections of lights from five times the distance away. Lumen really, really likes to handle reflections on everything, and we have a lot of lights, so now you start playing with other parameters to stop having too many reflections on all your shiny materials. Julia's team loves shiny materials, we have a lot, so it's a constant balance between having too few and too many reflections. If you optimise in the wrong direction, it either becomes muddled or it becomes like a glitter sparkle fest, neither of which are awesome. So we're threading the needle really tightly to [balance frame-rate and visual fidelity]. That requires a lot of testing, and you can't break other things while doing that.

Our current min spec is a RX 5700 XT and RTX 2080. I assume the updated specs are somewhere in people's hands; we've actually been able to lower minimum specs a little. We've been pushing really hard to drop that down well outside of anything that supports RTX. The side effect of that, obviously, is we need to make sure that software [Lumen] on PC does not go bad as we begin to optimise for hardware [Lumen].

Inside Immortals of Aveum: the Digital Foundry tech interview

Ahead of the launch of Immortals of Aveum, Alex Battaglia and Tom Morgan spoke with Ascendent Studios' Mark Maratea, Julia Lichtblau and Joe Hall about the game

www.eurogamer.net

How can Epic even further optimize HW Lumen if they refuse to use vendor specific extensions like SER, OMM

That's their plan, they announced it here. They specifically talk about enabling 60fps for Hardware Lumen on consoles, and enabling using Ray Traced shadows with Nanite.

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[troyan]

How can Epic even further optimize HW Lumen if they refuse to use vendor specific extensions like SER, OMM, DMM while there's no sign of Microsoft standardizing more DXR functionality ?

Maybe they should just use modern features. But then a console developer cares only about consoles. And when the graphics IP is 10 years old we only get outdated solutions for modern problems.

 

[Lurkmass]

It's a game just like any other. I bring Gollum in the context of RT enabled titles. We are not reviewers here, we evaluate games based on their tech, not review scores. You brought Lords of the Fallen to the discussion thinking the 7900XTX will have a large lead over the 4080 in this game, you were wrong, just like when you were wrong when you brought Assassin's Creed Mirgae to the discussion for that very same purpose. Now you are discarding them because they no longer fit your criteria. Be consistent with your own methodology.

@Bold It really isn't and even technical media tries to stay relevant by covering more pertinent material. Most of them aren't going to go out of their way to consistently benchmark purely ray traced content or the games you desire included in the set ...

Again, this is your subjective opinion.

You can dream on as much as possible all you want for Fort Solis to be a part of the main benchmark set but we all know most of the press aren't even going to bother again ...

This is a tech forum, we harp about visual and technical upgrades to our games, not about checklist features or review scores.

You excluded games without the complete UE5 features, you excluded Lords of the Fallen because it lacks Virtual Shadows, you excluded Jusant because it might lack it too, by your logic you should also exclude Remnants 2 because it lacks Lumen entirely, be consistent with your own logic.

Some software are more worthwhile than others for incorporating as regular coverage so just deal with the likely reality of fact that Fort Solis, Desordre, and Layers of Fear will be tossed aside by the wider community ...

I never excluded Lords of the Fallen. You're just clearly displeased by my hypothesis about the game's performance behaviour between vendors in comparison to other UE5 content and it's astonishing that was enough to provoke a straw man response out of you ...

Yes they did, they even detailed the process.

You can only hope that they won't come back empty handed as is the case now this year with Atomic Heart, Redfall, or Diablo IV ...

That's their plan, they announced it here. They specifically talk about enabling 60fps for Hardware Lumen on consoles, and enabling using Ray Traced shadows with Nanite.

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Epic Games does not intend to make RT Shadows compatible with Nanite. They intend for RT shadows to complement VSM. VSM is always going to be used for nanite meshes since acceleration structure builds will never be fast enough and I'd like to see Nvidia try to spend dark silicon for accelerated BVH construction. RT Shadows are meant to handle other cases such as multiple shadow casting lights and area shadows for simpler meshes ...

Maybe they should just use modern features. But then a console developer cares only about consoles. And when the graphics IP is 10 years old we only get outdated solutions for modern problems.

Nvidia should just go make their own game engine instead of constantly baiting or mooching off Epic Games to support all of their proprietary technologies. I sincerely wish them all the best of luck in trying to court developers to their dumpster fire that is the "RTX branch" since there's no one loony enough out there to use it for any serious work ...

 

[DavidGraham]

Most of them aren't going to go out of their way to consistently benchmark purely ray traced content

Nobody needs to nowadays, the verdict has been cast already, for any serious RT or PT work AMD is a no go, they are so far behind it's not even funny. Bechmakring is just a curiosity at this point to see whether AMD is 2x or 3x behind.

Desordre, and Layers of Fear will be tossed aside by the wider community

Oh those games have been benchmarked already, Desodre in particular is gathering good interest for it's technical prowess with it's Path Tracing rendering.

Everyone should welcome the days where no one vendor aren't 3+ performance tiers behind their competitor anymore ...

Yeah, anytime now, whenever that vendor steps up their hardware/software and produce a working tech that isn't generations behind. Instead of constantly producing the cheaper, less effective solutions, or even the buggy solution that bans players from playing their games.

I never excluded Lords of the Fallen

You excluded Jusant because it lacks Virtual Shadows, so you inadvertently excluded Lords of the Fallen, because it lacks Virtual Shadows as well. Once more stay consistent.

Epic Games does not intend to make RT Shadows compatible with Nanite

Since you are not a representative of Epic, and since your speculation contradicts their clear statement, I will regard this quote as another piece of personal opinion/prediction that will probably fail the test of time like the rest of the previous predictions.

You can dream on as much as possible all you want for Fort Solis to be a part of the main benchmark set

We not interested in forming a benchmark suite, we are individuals collecting data points, which you seem to ignore and insist on doing speculations and personal opinions.

It's almost as bad as legitimizing those RTX remix remasters as real world content ...

Is this a court of law or something? They are real content whether you like or not. They are visual upgrades pushing the limits of technology and achieveing unprecednted visual heights that are only achievable on PC, as it should be.

If your favorite vendor is incapable of producing acceptable performance or image quality in these contents then it's the fault of the vendor, not the content.

 

[Lurkmass]

Nobody needs to nowadays, the verdict has been cast already, for any serious RT or PT work AMD is a no go, they are so far behind it's not even funny. Bechmakring is just a curiosity at this point to see whether AMD is 2x or 3x behind.

Will the verdict matter if most AAA game studios are moving on to UE5 of which thus far has largely failed to produce new higher budget projects with hardware ray tracing ?

Oh those games have been benchmarked already, Desodre in particular is gathering good interest for it's technical prowess with it's Path Tracing rendering.

It'll be a one-off event either way since AAA games are still the standard to measure against ...

You excluded Jusant because it lacks Virtual Shadows, so you inadvertently excluded Lords of the Fallen, because it lacks Virtual Shadows as well. Once more stay consistent.

Keep grasping for some more straw mans. I didn't mention Jusant because it's simply not a AAA game ...

Since you are not a representative of Epic, and since your speculation contradicts their clear statement, I will regard this quote as another piece of personal opinion/prediction that will probably fail the test of time like the rest of the previous predictions.

It must've went over your head but here's what Kevin Ortegren (lead rendering programmer) said in the presentation itself ...

The last point here is an overall goal we've had for a while and that is to reduce the number of bespoke shadow techniques and integrate them into more of a coherent stack. We have something like 20+ shadow techniques and concepts in the engine. Anything from capsule shadows, per-object instance shadows, or distance field shadows. Virtual shadow maps cover many of them but not all so we'd like to have a more comprehensible shadow tech stack and where techniques complement each other and share data and caching structures where applicable.

Virtual shadow maps are clearly here to stay based off of his statements and RT shadows is not a true replacement for them as you misinterpreted ...

We not interested in forming a benchmark suite, we are individuals collecting data points, which you seem to ignore and insist on doing speculations and personal opinions.

Well I AM interested in what will actually go into the benchmark suite because that's what everyone will look at ...

Is this a court of law or something? They are real content whether you like or not. They are visual upgrades pushing the limits of technology and achieveing unprecednted visual heights that are only achievable on PC, as it should be.

If your favorite vendor is incapable of producing acceptable performance or image quality in these contents then it's the fault of the vendor, not the content.

Why not go and insist on your drivel to the reviewers and see if they'll even give a damn about entertaining a bunch of irrelevant tech demos that aren't even AAA games ? Nearly everyone knows they're not going to seriously take some indie puzzle game built off a fork of UE5 or a port of an iOS game that uses some translation layer to implement a bunch of RT effects as a rubric to compare against between the different hardware vendors ...

 

[DavidGraham]

Will the verdict matter if most AAA game studios are moving on to UE5 of which thus far has largely failed to produce new higher budget projects with hardware ray tracing ?

Just don't say most, so far we have had several developers indeed, and all of them are work in progress, most developers have yet to show anything though. Thus you can't claim they failed to support hardware ray tracing. Most didn't say much yet. And just like AA UE5 games, some will do and some won't. STALKER 2 already announced support for hardware RT, so did ARK: Survival Ascended, Legend of Ymir and Black Myth Wukong just to name a few.

It'll be a one-off event either way

Why would it be a one off event? It's the work of a single guy, it's impressive as it is, and many more can be done with more personnel.

Well I AM interested in what will actually go into the benchmark suite because that's what everyone will look at ...

Yet you continue to discard games left and right, you are only interested in benchmarking the games that show AMD hardware isn't weaker than NVIDIA. And you are borderline despising and talking down on games for any technical achievements that lie outside your console view! This is very strange indeed.

Virtual shadow maps are clearly here to stay based off of his statements and RT shadows is not a true replacement for them as you misinterpreted ...

I understood well. Epic is heavily invested in their RT architecture, they are looking to make Nanite ray traceable, which covers shadows, lighting and reflections. They want Nanite to be feature complete. They want 60fps for HW Lumen, so they will optimize BVH updates further. Hardware RT shadows for Nanite is a crucial feature for them. As RT shadows works with all content, while VSMs don't work well with non Nanite content (which covers lots and lots of dynamic objects). RT shadows also allow for lots of shadow casting lights, and will benefit from the mentioned improvements to BVH optimizations. They also want higher quality reflections, and scaling up Lumen for higher end use cases.

In the end, they talk about reducing the number of shadow techniques they have in the engine (more than 20!), so they will focus on using RT shadows and VSM Shadows, and that's it. They could combine them when suitable. That's as far as that goes. You should watch the whole talk well.

entertaining a bunch of irrelevant tech demos that aren't even AAA games

Cyberpunk, Alan Wake 2, Minecraft RTX (and the likes) are not techdemos, they are AAA games. They are already used in benchmarks.

And why are obssessed with reviewers? Enthusiasts don't consider reviews a gospel, reviews are just a snapshot of reality. Enthusiasts right now already know that if you want something truly next gen in both visuals and performance then NVIDIA is the way to go. It's even reflected in the marketshare numbers. NVIDIA GPUs offer a superior clear cut experience to consoles, whether in AAA titles utilizing heavy RT and PT, old titles remastered with PT, or in the superior upscaling quality. Right now NVIDIA has simply no alternative.

Nearly everyone knows they're not going to seriously take some indie puzzle game built off a fork of UE5 or a port of an iOS game that uses some translation layer to implement a bunch of RT effects as a rubric to compare against between the different hardware vendors ...

Well, PCGamesHardware already used Lego Builder’s Journey, as well as Cyberpunk and Dying Light 2 in their 7900XTX review. Comptoir-Hardware used Portal RTX, Quake 2 RTX, and other household RT titles. They used MineCraft RTX in the past too. Tomshardware uses Minecraft RTX and Bright Memory Infinite regularly. Digital Foundry uses Control, Cyberpunk and Dying Light 2. In fact all of these sites do test these last 3 games on a regular basis.

 

[troyan]

Nvidia should just go make their own game engine instead of constantly baiting or mooching off Epic Games to support all of their proprietary technologies. I sincerely wish them all the best of luck in trying to court developers to their dumpster fire that is the "RTX branch" since there's no one loony enough out there to use it for any serious work ...

Realtime Pathtracing exists and will be heavily used in the professionell market. UE5 has absolute no chance to survive here anymore. Their lighting system is outdated and inaccurate.

 

[DavidGraham]

I'm interessted why nVidia performs so much better here than in other UE5 games. The 4090 is more than 2x faster than the 6900XT...

In Robocop, the 4090 is 2.2x times faster than 6900XT.

RoboCop: Rogue City Benchmarks & PC Performance Analysis

Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it's time now to benchmark RoboCop: Rogue City and examine its performance on the PC.

www.dsogaming.com

In The Talos Priniciple 2 the 4090 is 2.2x times faster than 6900XT.

The Talos Principle 2 Benchmarks & PC Performance Analysis

The Talos Principle 2 uses Unreal Engine 5 so, it's time now to benchmark it and see how well it runs on the PC.

www.dsogaming.com

In Jusant the 4090 is 80% faster than 6900XT.

Jusant Benchmarks & PC Performance Analysis

Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it's time now to benchmark Jusant and examine its performance on the PC platform.

www.dsogaming.com

 

[DavidGraham]

Update on Assassin's Creed Mirage performance, based on the 4080S review, it is clear that this game now operates with equal performance at 4K on comparable hardware between vendors.

As for Unreal Engine 5 titles, most also presented with equal performance on avg at 4K, even in titles such as Immortals of Aveum and Remnant 2.

Geforce RTX 4080 Super im Test: High-End-Duell mit der Radeon RX 7900 XTX [Update]

Wie schlägt sich Nvidias Geforce RTX 4080 Super in traditionellen Spielen? Wir haben Raster-Benchmarks.

www.pcgameshardware.de

GeForce RTX 4080 Super im Test: Die einzelnen Spiele-Benchmarks mit und ohne Raytracing

GeForce RTX 4080 Super im Test: Die einzelnen Spiele-Benchmarks mit und ohne Raytracing / Gaming-Benchmarks in 3.840 × 2.160

www.computerbase.de

 

[Seanspeed]

IFS Reborn as Intel Foundry: Expanded Foundry Business Adds 14A Process To Roadmap

www.anandtech.com

Intel adds 14A to the roadmap.

They've also silently backtracked on 18A being High NA, with this being pushed to the 14A node, which they're saying is 'late 2026 for early risk production', so realistically probably late 2027 before it's put in any products.

 

[Kaotik]

IFS Reborn as Intel Foundry: Expanded Foundry Business Adds 14A Process To Roadmap

www.anandtech.com

Intel adds 14A to the roadmap.

They've also silently backtracked on 18A being High NA, with this being pushed to the 14A node, which they're saying is 'late 2026 for early risk production', so realistically probably late 2027 before it's put in any products.

They didn't actually backtrack anything, at least not now. At Intel Innovation last fall they said "High-NA EUV technology in development with 18A, production with "Intel Next"" (which we now know is 14A) so it wasn't even meant to be used in 18A production

 

[Seanspeed]

They didn't actually backtrack anything, at least not now. At Intel Innovation last fall they said "High-NA EUV technology in development with 18A, production with "Intel Next"" (which we now know is 14A) so it wasn't even meant to be used in 18A production

Ah well they backtracked on it earlier then. lol It was originally slated to be a High NA node I think back in 2021 when it was first announced.

I guess it kind of goes in hand with Intel saying they have the first 'prototype' High NA machine, while their original claim was that they'd have the first 'production' High NA machine, so perhaps this new tech isn't going as smoothly as expected in terms of getting online(hardly a surprise).