First episode ended with positive results for owners of older GeForce GTX models. In timid and for the time being few attempts to master hybrid rendering, developers do not get greedy with DXR effects and allow their quality to be adjusted sufficiently to extend the life of a powerful past-generation GPU. As a result, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti can compete with the GeForce RTX 2060 in terms of performance in ΠΈ , delivering confidently high frame rates in 1080p. But the benchmark results made it clear that this was only a temporary state of affairs. The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is admitted to this game as a poor relative.
Will GPUs, lacking specialized ray tracing features, be able to survive in the next wave of designs? In order to answer this question, we will not make predictions based on the results of games that have already been released. To update the driver with support for DXR on Pascal GPUs and low-end Turing family chips, test versions of two upcoming hybrid rendering projects, Atomic Heart and Justice, were published. In addition, the 3DMark Port Royal benchmark and the Reflections demo on the Unreal Engine 4 provide an opportunity to lift the curtain on the future of computer games. These tests are far beyond the capabilities of Pascal and will decide the future of today's best video cards - the GeForce RTX series.
Test stand, testing methodology
| Test stand | |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i9-9900K (4,9GHz, 4,8GHz in AVX, fixed frequency) |
| Motherboard | ASUS MAXIMUS XI APEX |
| RAM | G.Skill Trident Z RGB F4-3200C14D-16GTZR, 2Γ8 GB (3200 MHz, CL14) |
| ROM | Intel SSD 760p, 1024 GB |
| Power supply unit | Corsair AX1200i 1200W |
| CPU cooling system | Corsair Hydro Series H115i |
| Chassis | CoolerMaster Test Bench V1.0 |
| Monitor | NEC EA244UHD |
| Operating system | Windows 10 Pro x64 |
| NVIDIA GPU software | |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 | NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready Driver 419.67 |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 10/16 | NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready Driver 425.31 |
The average and minimum frame rates are derived from an array of individual frame render times created using the OCAT utility. The 3DMark Port Royal test provides its own average frame rate statistics.
The average frame rate in the charts is the reciprocal of the average frame time. To estimate the minimum frame rate, the number of frames generated in each second of the test is calculated. From this array of numbers, the value corresponding to the 1st percentile of the distribution is selected.
Test participants
The following video cards took part in performance testing:
- ;
- ;
- ;
- ;
- ;
- ;
- );
- );
- ;
- );
- ).
Atomic Heart
The benchmark for the upcoming game Atomic Heart does not contain any settings other than the ability to enable frame scaling with , and the maximum screen resolution is 2560 Γ 1600 pixels. Ray tracing is always active here. Due to the fact that the Atomic Heart engine uses DXR to render two different effects - shadows and light reflections (including multiple ray tracing between multiple mirror surfaces), the test scene is a serious challenge even for Turing-based accelerators with dedicated RT cores. NVIDIA's older models (GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti) are well above 60 fps at 1080p, while the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 are stuck in the 45-55 FPS range. In contrast, at 1440p, even the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti didn't reach the 60 FPS threshold, with the GeForce RTX 2060 results dropping below 30 FPS.
The final version of Atomic Heart will certainly allow you to adjust the quality of DXR effects to reduce the load on the GPU. In addition, the developers still have a few months to comprehensively optimize the engine. But in its current form, the game clearly surpasses the capabilities of any accelerators on Pascal GPUs. All the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is capable of is 26 FPS at 1080p and 15 FPS at 1440p, not to mention the less powerful devices of the GTX 10 series.
With such a high load as in Atomic Heart, even GeForce GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti video cards, devoid of specialized ray tracing units, have an advantage over most models of the previous generation. Both new mid-range accelerators outperform the GeForce GTX 1080 - we have never seen such a defeat of the Pascal architecture. But be that as it may, in order to develop an acceptable frame rate, the absolute computing power of the TU116 chip is still completely insufficient.
Justice
The Chinese MMORPG Justice cannot without reservations be called the game of the future, because it was launched last year. But in the near future, the developers intend to implement ray tracing effects in Justice and have released a separate benchmark to evaluate their performance. Unlike the other benchmarks in today's roundup, Justice's engine isn't heavily loaded with DXR effects to bring any GPU to its knees, with the exception of the older Turing family. Ray Tracing is used here to render single reflections in specular surfaces, shadows, as well as refraction of light in a liquid medium (caustics). In addition, ray tracing aside, Justice is a fairly undemanding game, as any World of Warcraft rival should be. And with the ability to turn off ray tracing in Justice, we baselined our test participants' performance and measured the percentage impact of RT on framerate.
The data obtained is quite consistent with the picture that we observed in other projects with relatively undemanding DXR effects (Battlefield V and Shadow of the Tomb Raider). Ray tracing equally impacts game performance at three different screen resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 2160p) unless there is dedicated ray trajectory logic on the GPU die. So, the "green" video cards of the past generation in most cases lose from 74 to 79% of the average frame rate (only the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti got off with 63% in 1080p mode). New products based on the TU116 chip (GeForce GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti) turned out to be in a better position due to the progressive organization of shader ALUs and suffered only 62-65% FPS.
And of course, accelerators based on Turing chips with RT cores showed the best results. At 1080p, the performance of GeForce RTX series graphics cards suffered only 18-27%, at 1440p - by 21-32, and at 2160p - by 31-33%. Notice how much the flagship model stands out in this group - the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti suffered noticeably less loss compared to the RTX 2060, RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 at resolutions below 2160p. However, the new GPUs owe their outstanding results at relatively low resolutions not only to the Turing architecture, but also to the fact that without DXR effects, the frame rate in Justice is limited by the CPU speed at 126-127 FPS.
In absolute framerate terms, ray-traced Justice is a breeze for all GeForce RTX-branded graphics cards at 1080p and 1440p screen resolutions. The GeForce RTX 2060 is 3 fps off the critical 60 FPS at 1440p, but the older models have confidently crossed that line. But in 4K mode, even the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti did not reach 60 FPS, while the RTX 2060 dropped below 30.
There is not a single device among video cards based on Pascal chips that can bring Justice to the 60 FPS level. GTX 10 series accelerators are chained to 1080p mode, and even then only three older models (GTX 1070 Ti, GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti) meet the minimum criterion of 30 FPS in their capabilities. The same applies to the GeForce GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti, although, to the credit of NVIDIA's new products, we have to admit that in the Justice test they again performed no worse than the GeForce GTX 1080.
| Justice | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1920 Γ 1080 | ||
| RT Off | RT On | |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE (11 GB) | 100% | -18% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 FE (8 GB) | 100% | -20% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 FE (8 GB) | 100% | -21% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 FE (6 GB) | 100% | -27% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (6 GB) | 100% | -65% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 (6 GB) | 100% | -64% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11 GB) | 100% | -63% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8 GB) | 100% | -74% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (8 GB) | 100% | -74% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB) | 100% | -77% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) | 100% | -77% |
| Justice | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2560 Γ 1440 | ||
| RT Off | RT On | |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE (11 GB) | 100% | -21% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 FE (8 GB) | 100% | -30% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 FE (8 GB) | 100% | -33% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 FE (6 GB) | 100% | -32% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (6 GB) | 100% | -65% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 (6 GB) | 100% | -64% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11 GB) | 100% | -76% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8 GB) | 100% | -77% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (8 GB) | 100% | -77% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB) | 100% | -78% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) | 100% | -79% |
| Justice | ||
|---|---|---|
| 3840 Γ 2160 | ||
| RT Off | RT On | |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE (11 GB) | 100% | -31% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 FE (8 GB) | 100% | -23% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 FE (8 GB) | 100% | -33% |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 FE (6 GB) | 100% | -33% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (6 GB) | 100% | -63% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 (6 GB) | 100% | -62% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11 GB) | 100% | -77% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8 GB) | 100% | -78% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (8 GB) | 100% | -77% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB) | 100% | -78% |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) | 100% | -79% |
Source: 3dnews.ru