Ray Tracing & DLSS with the GeForce RTX 3080

With Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 out the door, information technology's time we have a deep swoop into ray tracing and DLSS performance in one case again. Nosotros've already taken a comprehensive look into how the card performs in general and gave you a teaser of what to expect with RTX operation, only today we're going to show you just how fast the RTX 3080 is for these special furnishings in a wider range of games.

We'll exist placing particular focus on comparing the RTX 3080 confronting the RTX 2080 Ti just because that was the fastest GPU you could get before for ray tracing, but for good measure out you volition too meet results for the RTX 2080 and 2070. As you'd expect, nosotros plan to discuss RTX on versus RTX off, which is the main talking point when it comes to ray tracing in particular.

First, let'due south go through some of Nvidia's claims about the RTX 3080's RTX capabilities and some of the changes they've made to the Ampere architecture versus Turing. The two large ones come up in the grade of updated, next-generation RT and Tensor cores...

On the RT side, Nvidia says that Ampere is using a 2d-generation RT cadre, which packs three main improvements. The showtime is double the ray-triangle intersection throughput, this isn't the only thing that an RT core can do and is simply part of the ray tracing picture, but it's the office that's received a speed up.

Non everything is faster in this RT core versus Turing, only we do go a big improvement to ray-triangle intersection. Ampere likewise supports improved concurrent processing, and introduces support for hardware accelerated ray-traced motion blur.

Ampere also brings united states of america upwardly to a third-generation Tensor core design, with Turing being the second-gen and Volta the showtime-gen. While the Ampere SM features one-half the tensor cores per SM, each tensor core is faster, so the overall SM delivers the same performance at minimum, or 2x the performance in some workloads compared to Turing, depending on the information blazon. There's as well support for new data types with Ampere.

While these are sort of the low-level changes Nvidia has made to Ampere, there are questions marks as to how these improvements volition translate into existent-globe game performance. In Nvidia's launch presentation, they spent a lot of time comparison the RTX 3080 to the RTX 2080 or RTX 2080 Super in ray traced workloads, showing a one.5 to 1.8x improvement between those two parts. But these gains aren't simply coming from the 2nd-gen RT core and 3rd-gen Tensor core design, the RTX 3080 besides but features more RT cores, and then we'll unpack today whether these ray tracing improvements are down to a beast force approach of calculation more RT cores, or whether the RT cores themselves are faster.

All our criterion information was captured using a GPU examination rig comprising a Ryzen nine 3950X and 32GB of low latency DDR4-3200 retentivity in a dual rank configuration.

Benchmarks

We'll offset with the oldest ray tracing game in our line-up, Metro Exodus. This is an interesting one because the game only supports DLSS, not DLSS 2.0, and so the image quality y'all proceeds from the feature is lackluster to put it lightly. What nosotros're interested in here is whether the RTX 3080 is a capable card for native resolution ray tracing, because we can't imagine you lot will want to play with DLSS enabled in this title.

There's good stuff and bad stuff to run into in Metro. The good is that the RTX 3080 is faster than the RTX 2080 Ti for ray tracing at 4K. Nosotros're seeing a 30% functioning improvement, which makes the game somewhat playable at 4K using the Ultra preset with ray tracing.

Cards like the RTX 2080 and especially the 2070 expect very slow in comparison, certainly those GPUs are nowhere almost fast plenty for 4K gaming in Metro with everything turned on.

Nevertheless, there's still an enormous operation difference between ray tracing enabled and disabled. With the RTX 3080, there is a 61 percent operation drop with RT enabled, which is equivalent to the performance drib seen when you plow on ray tracing with the RTX 2080 Ti. This suggests that while the 3080 is faster for ray tracing overall, that'south down to simply being a faster card; the RT cores aren't any meliorate at accelerating ray tracing in this game, equally the operation delta between on and off is the aforementioned between Ampere and Turing.

At 1440p we first to come across some of the limitations of the Ryzen 9 3950X test system, but the takeaway is largely the same.

There'south all the same a large operation departure between RT on and off, however the RTX 3080 is merely faster overall. While the 2080 Ti was more than of a 60 FPS carte du jour at 1440p with ray tracing, the 3080 starts to push up into college refresh rates, which is a welcome improvement. It also demolishes the RTX 2080 at 1440p with a 92% operation boost with RT enabled.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider includes ray traced shadows, only sticks to an older implementation of DLSS, and so those results are merely shown hither for interest'due south sake, DLSS is bad hither, too, so it's not worth using.

At native 4K using the highest quality settings, the RTX 3080 gets closer to being a 4K threescore FPS card with ray tracing enabled. A 34% functioning improvement on the 2080 Ti is decent, slightly college than the xxx percent gain nosotros get in this title without RT enabled. There'southward no doubt the 3080 is much faster than the 2080, nosotros're seeing 76% higher operation and this is key because the 2080 was not powerful enough for ray tracing at 4K.

At that place's nonetheless a large gap between RT on and off. The RTX 3080 sees a 41% drop to frame charge per unit with RT enabled, compared to 43% with the RTX 2080 Ti, so the 3080 is virtually 5% faster at accelerating ray tracing in SoTR. That'southward not a meaning improvement though, and so you'll all the same have to cull between loftier frame rates, or ray tracing in this game.

At 1440p, the RTX 3080 is 35% faster than the 2080 Ti with ray tracing enabled, compared to 28% faster with RT disabled. Both cards see a ~forty% drop to functioning with ray tracing enabled. At this resolution, information technology's a choice between maxing out a 144Hz monitor with the 3080, or playing with decent but lower frame rates with ray tracing.

Control is where things first to get much more interesting, because now DLSS 2.0 becomes a cistron.

Just looking at native 4K gaming with and without ray tracing to brainstorm with, the RTX 3080 is 44% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti using the max quality settings, which includes both ray traced reflections and ambient apoplexy. This is a larger margin than the previous two games, and with a 125% lead on the RTX 2080, the 3080 is a beast for 4K ray tracing even though the overall frame rate is a bit low. This is the start menu that makes RT playable in this game at this resolution.

The 3080 sees a 36% driblet to functioning when ray tracing is enabled, versus 39% on the Turing-based 2080 Ti. This suggests the 3080 is nearly 8 pct better at accelerating ray tracing in this title.

Simply, yous're far more likely to exist playing Control with DLSS two.0 enabled, equally that provides near equivalent image quality to native 4K. Here all Nvidia cards tested are actually faster with ray tracing and DLSS enabled, compared to running at a native resolution without ray tracing, which is an ideal scenario where DLSS tin can be used to compensate for the added furnishings.

However, in our stance that'south far too simplistic of a comparison. Every bit you tin also apply DLSS without ray tracing, the more accurate exploration is DLSS without ray tracing versus DLSS with ray tracing, because we don't actually meet why you'd run at a native resolution in this game. Most Nvidia GPU owners will be choosing betwixt the high frame rates with DLSS, or the prototype quality offered with DLSS + ray tracing. When DLSS works this well, it's a given you want to turn that on first, so tweak the other settings to hit the performance you are after.

When looking at DLSS results, the RTX 3080 is xl% faster than the 2080 Ti with both ray tracing and DLSS enabled, and 85% faster than the 2080. The 3080 sees a 34% hit to frame rate when you enable ray tracing with DLSS already enabled, while the 2080 Ti sees a 37% hit. This is like to the RT on vs off numbers at native resolution.

The RTX 3080 was 71% faster when enabling DLSS without ray tracing, and 75% with ray tracing. The RTX 2080 Ti was 73% faster without ray tracing, and 80% with ray tracing. This is using the highest quality DLSS option at this resolution.

There'southward not too much else to say when running Control at 1440p. The performance hitting due to enabling ray tracing is a little less severe at this resolution at around 30%, and overall operation is quite impressive with the RTX 3080.

The RTX 2080 was only a 1440p 60 FPS card with ray tracing and DLSS enabled, whereas the RTX 3080 is a true 1440p high refresh option.

Next upwards is Wolfenstein: Youngblood and what nosotros have here are ii split sets of information for the RTX 3080. The beginning set is with the game's current code, and the other, labelled "allow async present", is performance with an upcoming patch that is designed to better utilize Ampere's asynchronous compute capabilities (especially for ray tracing).

Without the improvements to asynchronous compute, the RTX 3080 offers a 37% improvement to performance over the RTX 2080 when both DLSS 2.0 and ray traced reflections are enabled. But that increases to a much larger 54% when allow async present is enabled on the RTX 3080.

We also meet over 2x the functioning of the RTX 2080, taking respectable 4K lx FPS performance correct up into the realms of high refresh rate 4K.

While increased asynchronous capabilities are nice, in that location's withal that performance driblet yous tin expect between running the game just with DLSS, and with DLSS plus ray tracing.

The RTX 2080 Ti saw a 36% drop to frame rate, the RTX 3080 without the new game patch saw a 32% drib, and with the new patch we saw a 29% drop. All the same, that makes the RTX 3080 24% better at accelerating both ray tracing and DLSS than the RTX 2080 Ti, which is a healthy proceeds.

The gains aren't as significant at 1440p in this title, with the 2080 Ti and 3080 providing similar acceleration capabilities.

Overall, the RTX 3080 is a significant 41% faster than the 2080 Ti with ray tracing, DLSS two.0, and "let async present" enabled, but we're not getting the 54% gain we saw at 4K.

Fortnite is one of the latest titles to include ray tracing support, and it actually features quite a number of settings including shadows, reflections, ambience occlusion and global illumination. This comes at a hefty price, peculiarly at 4K. Fifty-fifty with DLSS enabled, if you lot plow on all RTX effects with an RTX 3080 GPU, you're facing a reduction from 135 FPS, downwards to just 42 FPS. The game is unplayable with ray tracing and no DLSS at this resolution.

If y'all decide to only use reflections on the maximum setting – with reflections beingness the almost noticeable effect in the game – the performance striking is less savage, dropping downwardly to just 70 FPS.

Still, with the 3080, turning on reflections to maximum will halve your frame rate, while yous'll see just a third of the frame rate with all effects enabled. The same is seen with the RTX 2080 Ti, at least with merely reflections enabled. A drop from 104 FPS with DLSS enabled, to 51 FPS with ballsy RT reflections, is a huge hit. However, the RTX 3080 is 37 percentage faster than the 2080 Ti at ray tracing reflections in this title, so that'southward a solid event for this new generation. The RTX 3080 is also 80 percent ahead of the 2080.

At 1440p, the departure betwixt RT on and off is even more severe than it was at 4K. The RTX 3080 is good for 212 FPS with DLSS enabled and no ray tracing, simply drops beneath 100 FPS with ballsy reflections, and 76 FPS with all ray tracing effects.

For a fast paced game, that's an enormous operation striking. While the RTX 3080 is faster than other RTX GPUs in this championship, in our opinion the performance level with ray tracing doesn't warrant turning it on over playing at super high frame rates by simply taking advantage of DLSS ii.0.

We're going to wrap upwards with a await at titles that just include DLSS 2.0, and then we can see how the RTX 3080 fares when ray tracing is not in the motion-picture show.

In Expiry Stranding, the RTX 3080 receives a salubrious performance boost from DLSS 2.0 at 4K, with 31% higher frame rates. Meanwhile, the 2080 Ti sees a 33% heave, and the 2080 gets a 38% heave. Nosotros know that DLSS performance gains are better at lower resolutions based on our previous investigations, so this suggests that both Turing and Ampere have like DLSS acceleration capabilities and we've seen that from previous charts, too.

What this ways in do is that with DLSS enabled, the RTX 3080 is 27% faster than the 2080 Ti in Death Stranding, while without DLSS, the 3080 is 29% faster. You're still getting that class-above operation with the 3080, native 4K performance is similar to what the 2080 Ti can practise at 4K with DLSS which is impressive.

At 1440p we come across more limitations with what DLSS can do, with the 3080 there's but a 7% performance gain, compared to 21% with the 2080 Ti. In the terminate, the 3080 ends up just vi% ahead of the 2080 Ti. This may be related to a possible bug with Decease Stranding and DLSS with lower resolutions, at 1080p functioning is actually worse with DLSS enabled, but just with Ampere. It'south possible this volition be patched or improved.

F1 2022 was recently updated to include DLSS 2.0 back up. At 4K using the Ultra High quality preset, the 3080 can benefit from DLSS only every bit information technology did on Death Stranding, with a xx percent performance proceeds. This allows information technology to be 34 percent faster than the 2080 Ti with DLSS enabled, although the acceleration gains are similar for DLSS between Turing and Ampere.

At 1440p, both the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 3080 evangelize a ~9% operation gain when enabling DLSS. We're seeing very high frame rates here, although information technology'southward clear DLSS sees diminishing returns the higher the frame rates are. Non that I remember anyone will complain near getting 200 FPS at 1440p with this new Ampere GPU.

What Nosotros Learned

The GeForce RTX 3080 is the fastest GPU on the market for ray tracing, and the operation on offer brings proper ray tracing capabilities to a new tier of apply cases (yes, the RTX 3090 is fifty-fifty faster, but honestly we don't come across many gamers buying it over the 3080).

Nvidia has essentially achieved this by brute forcing the design: relative to the RTX 2080, there's more SMs, mode more CUDA cores, more than memory bandwidth, and more than RT cores. This makes the RTX 3080 a much faster card than the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti overall, and past extension this means the bill of fare is also faster in games with ray tracing enabled.

This allows for 2 major upgrades compared to Nvidia's previous flagship GPU. The large one is 4K gaming with ray tracing enabled. In a lot of titles, the RTX 2080 Ti was barely fast enough for 4K 30 FPS ray tracing, peculiarly in games that didn't support DLSS two.0. No PC gamer wants to play at 30 FPS -- let alone those spending hundreds of dollars in a GPU. This has inverse with the RTX 3080, which often approaches 60 FPS and certainly delivers very playable performance in graphically gorgeous games like Command with DLSS and even Metro Exodus without DLSS.

The RTX 3080 is too a much more capable ray tracing choice at 1440p. The RTX 2080 Ti was mostly a 60 to lxxx FPS card at 1440p with ray tracing in the near graphically intensive games. The RTX 3080 pushes upward into the realms of high refresh rate 1440p with ray tracing, and if yous're coming from the RTX 2080 which struggled at this resolution, the 3080 will be a night and day upgrade.

Nosotros were less impressed past the acceleration provided past the 2nd-gen RT cores and third-gen Tensor cores. There's still a pregnant performance striking when enabling ray tracing, with a 30 percentage drib in frame charge per unit beingness a fairly typical result. And so while you might become say 65 FPS with ray tracing enabled, generally that aforementioned game volition run at over 100 FPS without information technology.

With Ampere, there's still that selection between the visual effects of ray tracing, or performance. In some games like Control, ray tracing provides plenty of a visual upgrade that you may want to accept the functioning hit. In other games, the upgrade is not as significant, so taking a twoscore-50 FPS hit can be hard to consume. That's no unlike from previous generations, it's just that the 3080 is a faster GPU overall.

Our tests likewise show that ray tracing acceleration in the RTX 3080 isn't overly better than the 2080 Ti's, with less than a x% speed up to RT acceleration separating the two. In a best-case scenario like Wolfenstein: Youngblood at 4K which received an Ampere-specific patch to amend operation, the RTX 3080 is 25% better at ray tracing acceleration. Ideally, nosotros'd need to run into a 50% or even 100% improvement to RT acceleration before the RTX on and off gap feels more adequate with today's effects.

Because Ampere is only a modest improvement over Turing for acceleration, there'due south still question marks over whether this card will exist sufficient for the next few years of ray tracing. Most of today'due south games use simply one or 2 effects, and use them sparingly. If games start going all out on ray tracing effects – like what we meet with Fortnite – the gap between RTX on and off will abound essentially. More acceleration with more powerful RT cores will be required to proceed upwards. Of course, this is all speculation most the future, so nosotros'll have to see what happens with the next few years of games.

Every bit for DLSS 2.0, information technology can certainly provide a sizable operation uplift at the same visual quality and in the best of cases, can fully compensate for the losses when enabling ray tracing. Nosotros just wished it was present in more and more titles. DLSS two.0 doesn't seem to harness 3rd-gen Tensor cores to evangelize even more performance than previous cards, at least on electric current implementations.

With the launch of the RTX 3080, the discussion around ray tracing is very different than it was with the RTX xx serial. Previously, we slayed Nvidia for overpromising and under delivering considering ray tracing and DLSS were two major features they used to sell first-gen RTX GPUs. Nvidia was hoping the poor value of the 2080 versus the 1080 Ti would be overshadowed by how amazing ray tracing is and how it was a must-purchase characteristic. Two years later, there are still few games that support ray tracing, even fewer with ray tracing at release, and Nvidia had to totally overhaul DLSS to make it useful.

With the RTX 3080, we're in a totally different position. The card offers much amend value than the previous generation, thanks to serious gains to full general game operation and lower prices. This makes ray tracing more of a bonus characteristic – the way it should have been earlier. It'southward much easier to overlook the small option of games with ray tracing when in all the other games you are getting twenty to 30% more performance than a 2080 Ti for $500 less.

From here, nosotros call up information technology's going to exist smooth sailing for ray tracing. The hardware is more capable, we'll see more than games with better ray tracing effects, new generation consoles will support it, and we'll likewise see competition from AMD, and eventually Intel GPUs on the PC.