RTX and DLSS

Being an RTX card I also like checking out the performance of some of Nvidia’s features. Namely the ray tracing performance and the performance improvements you can see by using DLSS combined with the tensor cores. In most of the tests, I’m really only comparing a few of the RTX cards as well as a GTX 1080 Ti for comparison. But in the 3DMark Port Royal test, I have been tracking ray tracing performance in all of the RTX cards as well as a few of the GTX cards introduced into the mix as well. Here the RTX 3070 XC3 Black did manage to gain on the Founders Edition slightly, but it wasn’t enough to catch up to the RTX 2080 Ti at all.

Next, I wanted to check out the performance in Metro Exodus which I do our normal testing in as well. The RTX only performance of the XC3 Black gained 1 FPS which was enough to overtake the 2080 Ti. But with RTX and DLSS on the 2080 Ti still had an edge. Just a much smaller one with the nearly 2 FPS jump from over the Founders Edition. The same goes for the DLSS only test which saw a jump of 3 and a half FPS but was still 4FPS behind the 2080 Ti. More importantly, this test gives you an idea of how DLSS, even if you don’t want to run RTX can give a performance increase. But it nearly catches you back up to non-RTX performance when you run them together. The XC3 Black came in at 50.61 FPS with the same settings but both RTX and DLSS off.

In Wolfenstein: Youngblood I tested at 4k with the highest detail setting. For this one, I just wanted to see the performance difference between having DLSS on or off while running RTX. The XC3 Black went from 70 FPS off to 111 with DLSS set to the middle balanced setting. This was 4 FPS over the Founders Edition with DLSS and 6 higher without which is impressive in itself!

Next, I tested using a benchmark based on the game Boundary. For this one, I wanted to see how all of the different DLSS settings would perform, including turning it off completely. You can see that you go from 14.8 FPS without it up to 26.3 on the highest detail. Up to 32 FPS on the balanced DLSS setting and then 38.2 on the performance setting. Each was a slight improvement over the Founders Edition. But overall it shows that you can go from unplayable to a range that isn’t smooth but is playable.

The last tests were done in a benchmark based on the game Bright Memory. Here I wanted to check out the performance difference between different RTX settings. The very high detail performance was the same as the Founders Edition, but in the rest, the XC3 Black did improve over it. You can also see how running mid-range RTX settings can get you 8 FPS over the high detail or if you need it the low setting has a big jump of 18 FPS over the very high setting.