NVIDIA GeForce RTX Ray Tracing In Battlefield V Explored Pre And Post Patch
by
Shannon Robb
—
Friday, December 14, 2018, 11:41 AM EDT
Image Quality and Performance Analysis
The images below are side by side comparisons of each RTX quality setting in the post-patch Battlefield V environment. They are representative of what you would all see running the game on a GeForce RTX card today...
Scene 1 - Vehicle mirror reflection
Here we see a perfectly reflective surface -- a mirror. The one thing you will see is that with RTX/DXR disabled the mirror is a muddy mess with basically just blotches of color and no real definition or real reflection. With RTX on, however, objects in view are shown in the reflection.
Scene 2 - Object reflections in ice
Here is our first glimpse at RTX reflections with some noticeable culling. As you can see, the ultra and high settings look pretty similar, though medium and low show the difference between the .5 and .9 smoothness factor in a major way (refer to the previous page to the smoothness explanation). This particular reflection is a good example of how the different quality settings affect the image. With the medium or low settings, huge sections of the ice have a basic matte look, with only a few pixels showing the tan color of the propane tank reflected. As you would expect with GeForce RTX off, the ice is fully matte and shows no hint of any reflections.
Scene 3 - Near and far field terrain reflections
This is yet another area where the culling effect is prevalent, but at a much larger scale. With ultra and high, you can see the reflection of the red building farther down the road. The adjacent cylindrical tank can also be seen, creating a quite realistic reflection for ice patches on a roadway. Move to medium or low and again you can see that much of the ice is matted with only small patches showing the red building's color reflection. You can also notice the tan cylinders' reflections are barely present. This once again is the smoothness difference for the reflective surface of the ice being factored in. With RTX off it is more of the same with the ice being fully matte and not giving any real reflection effect.
Scene 4 - Vehicle explosion and flame reflections
Explosions are the easiest way to really light up a scene and show the effects of RTX technology. As you saw previously, ambient light sources were relied on to light objects and show their reflective capabilities. In the case of explosions with RTX on ultra or high though, you can see a full field of reflection and refraction. And we're not just about a simple large blot of color either, but tonal difference and actual flickering to match the state of the flame. This is probably one of the most impressive RTX capabilities thus far as it is glaring and easy to identify versus the point source lighting of non RTX reflections. Moving to medium and low we see similar effects. While the previous reflection scenes showed minimal changes at this setting, you can now see the actual areas where the smoothness is defined. As you can see, there are fewer and smaller areas of reflection at the the lower image quality settings. They still add a bit more realism than the RTX off solution, but it is a drastic reduction in the number and areas of reflection.
Now that you've seen what it all look like, how does RTX impact performance?
RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 Battlefield V performance at 1440p
Please note, only the RTX 2080's post patch numbers are included here at 1440p, because the day one performance was low enough that we only tested it at 1080p. As you can see here the RTX 2080 Ti saw an uplift of 21% in average framerate from day one to the patch. The RTX 2080 now shows post-patch performance matching the performance day one of the RTX 2080 Ti. Also worth noting is the fact that on the DXR Low setting, we saw a significant increase in the minimum framerate for the 2080 Ti (20.78%), which pulls it up into the 70 FPS range and means it'll exceed 60 FPS for the most part across the board.
RTX 2080 and RTX 2070 Battlefield V performance at 1080p
At 1080p we tested all three GeForce RTX cards and include the RTX 2070 in the graph above. While the RTX 2080 was a capable performer at 1440p post-update we wanted to include it here in the 1080p section as well to illustrate the difference in performance from the day one update.
We see benefits across the board here with the most noteworthy being the increases in minimum framerates. At 1080p with Ultra mode enabled on the RTX 2070 we saw an increase of 62%, which pushes the minimum frame rate to 47FPS, whereas previously it was at 29. This is a huge uplift, and as anyone who has gamed on a rig that struggles to hit 60FPS consistently can attest, once you drop below 30 FPS the experience is severely impacted. Many consider 60 FPS the acceptable minimum for smooth gaming, but in reality the 2070 is definitely playable at 1080p with DXR ultra and that is welcome news at this early stage. The average FPS results showed some nice uplifts as well with up to a 21% performance improvement at ultra.
