Revisiting Battlefield V Ray Tracing Performance

[Julio Franco]

After a less than encouraging debut of real-time ray tracing in Battlefield V, Nvidia and DICE have been working together to optimize the game's implementation of DXR. The improvements come in the form of new graphics drivers and a game patch, which collectively Nvidia claims can improve performance as much as 50%. We put those claims to the test.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1759-ray-tracing-benchmarks-vol-2/

 

[Xallisto]

Well they would have known better than to have made claims that were anything other than 100% true after that shocking Turing release, sloppy sales quarter and not to mention lowest stock price for years.

The last thing they would have needed we're more scandalous headlines about them being disingenuous.

 

[Nero7]

Maybe it will be ready in February for Metro but I wouldn't count on it.

It will take a new console generation to bring things trully forward. No game developer is gonna put efforts into a graphical effect that only a miniscule amount of players on only one platform can use. Especially not when the vast majority of gamer is satisfied with trash graphics from Fortnite.

Sometimes I wonder if PC games are even allowed to look better than console games anymore. Just look at Just Cause 4.

This GPU generation should be skipped.

 

[meric]

Even that little reflection on the gun is gone now ))

 

[JaredTheDragon]

And this is exactly what everyone in CGI has been saying since well before the RTX lines emerged. The processing power isn't anywhere near "ready" for realtime. We've already had GPU-based raytracing for well over a decade, with Vray-RT, Redshift, and Octane. They work great - for PREVIEW viewport rendering, where we can then adjust lights, shaders, and composition of the scene more rapidly than with the older DX or OpenGL previews (especially in Maya) or even the IPR modes in mental ray, Vray, and Arnold.

And all of that is BEFORE the RT cores emerged. There simply isn't enough of them and they just aren't powerful enough yet for realtime raytracing. Reflections alone aren't "realtime raytracing" by a long shot. Refractions, shadows, volumetrics, importance sampling, global illumination, blurry reflections/refractions - all of these things are missing from Nvidia's toys so far. It was and is just a gimmick. And the RT cores do almost nothing to speed up Vray-RT, Octane, or Redshift yet. It's almost hilarious that Nvidia would make such a leap off the cliff, into nothing.

 

[Brahman05]

Still am curious about sli benchmarks, and also power draw post patch as pre patch it was an indicator that the cuda cores were being underutilizedbby the lack of rt cores feeding it data.
With somthing like this I am certainly willing to bandwagon. Will I be screwed by pricing, lack of support and lack of content? Like a truckstop lot lizard. But game developers aren't going to make the tech so by pushing the issue Nvidia is waaaay ahead of the game, pushing the issue. So far ahead that AMD's statement of 'we will have it when it's ready' is possible, but still crap to me. They got nothing close. Period.
What Nvidia needs to do is find a game developer (cd project red and cyberpunk 2133!! HINT) send some developers of their own over there, and bling out the game for them. Add all their new and old tech; dlxr, ray tracing, hdr, physx, the whole kit and kabootle, and say, 'this is how its done folks' that game would be pretty beyond anything out by quite a big margin, and would get some developers to pick their jaws up off the ground and re-think using some of this. OR, retrofit an existing game/engine with all the same. I have not officially played The Witcher 3 because I own all 3 and am about to start playing the 2nd one soon, in order, the first was alright..., but have like 8 hours of recorded time for 3 just for sightseeing, in the first area only even. Wow the industry that way.
Bandwagoning may suck sometimes, but when this tech is more the norm and 4k 144hz hdr gsync panels only cost $500 I'll post screenshots of all the comments by people bashing it now and smile.....

 

[kvorshk]

Well you must only be a gamer that really has no idea how technology works. Its obvious from your hald knowledge response. AMD already does real time ray-tracing. NVidias tech is no further along the AMD's RT cores do nothing for increasing rendering speed with working with MAX or MAYA. And I have seen nothing at all saying it helps with blender. But hey you must not realize what pieces of hardware actually do all that jazz.

 

[PEnnn]

Still not worth it. I am not paying big money just to see a barely noticeable difference. And those RTX cards are not that stable according to many reports anyway.

Let the miners buy this crap.

 

[amghwk]

For a card they hyped so much about ray-tracing, and for that bloody price, for the 2080Ti, people should be getting 60fps at 4K Ultra settings with ray tracing enabled. If this card can't do this yet, it's not worth the prohibitive asking price.

 

[designgears]

Even that little reflection on the gun is gone now ))

I keep seeing people do this, comparing side by side stuff that has different stuff in the scene each time because it's not static. The reflection is a lot less in that screenshot because the explosion that happened is smaller. You're just being biased and overlooking the comparisons where that is reversed.

 

[Evernessince]

Is the draw distance affected by the patch? It'd be pretty easy to get better performance if they lowered each setting's draw distance.

Either way, I have to question why Nvidia is putting so much stock into this one game. Can we honestly expect every game studio to have a good RTX implementation and receive support from Nvidia if needed? If the past is any indicator, that's a no.

 

[wiyosaya]

<...>Either way, I have to question why Nvidia is putting so much stock into this one game.<...>

To me, nVidia seems to expect that their marketing engine will hypnotize everyone into going out and parting with their hard-earned money to buy their card. Without serious competition from AMD, nVidia seems to be in the same zone sIntel still seems to be in even though AMD has seriously caught up to sIntel.

While some are buying the RT enabled cards, my bet is that nVidia will not sell as many as they would like to unless they substantially drop the price.

 

[Sausagemeat]

Ray tracings early days are far more gracious and have higher frame rates than the infancy of anti aliasing. It’s interesting watchIng it unfold and this time the effects are genuinely mind blowing. Give it some time and it will develop and mature. Kudos to Nvidia for investing billions and their time in the tech.

 

[FPSChris]

Is it just me, in the video you can clearly see the foliage at 40 seconds on pre patch is greater than post patch. Look at the leaves on the floor, more in pre patch than post patch.

 

[Pastuch]

Raytracing--smaytracing.... Graphics won't make this game fun. I'm rank 42 right now and it's the worst Battlefield game ever made (Other than BF1). I miss BF4, BF3 and BF:BC2 so bad. The only reason I play BF5 is because my clan is playing it but it's horribly boring already.

 

[Ray Marden]

The patch is better than nothing.

But it's still the 4K gaming card that is unplayable at 4K with its signature feature turned on.

And these are the cards that have a high rate of defect, that have a greatly inflated price tag, and are coming on the heels of massive price gouging over the past year or more...

At this point, I would love havig any company pound Nvidia into the ground.

 

[BarbiePC]

Does DXR gets better performance in SLI ? I can't find any answer about this...

 

[EndRessentiment]

Ray tracings early days are far more gracious and have higher frame rates than the infancy of anti aliasing. It’s interesting watchIng it unfold and this time the effects are genuinely mind blowing. Give it some time and it will develop and mature. Kudos to Nvidia for investing billions and their time in the tech.

Investing billions? You're making it sound like they're giving to charity. It's only a scheme for bigger profits, and I wouldn't be surprised if the appeal of "NEW STUFF" works. With the current prices on RTX and the issues they are causing, the RTX and its Ray Tracing is much more a cash grab than anything else.

 

[Sausagemeat]

Investing billions? You're making it sound like they're giving to charity. It's only a scheme for bigger profits, and I wouldn't be surprised if the appeal of "NEW STUFF" works. With the current prices on RTX and the issues they are causing, the RTX and its Ray Tracing is much more a cash grab than anything else.

No they invest billions to turn a profit. But I’d still rather they did it. You make it sound like turning a profit is a bad thing! Would you rather no one bothered inventing new techs?

Every product these companies make from AMD, to Nvidia is a “cash grab”. I say stop complaining about prices, no one is forcing you to buy any of these cards and no company is entitled to sell you one at a low price.

RTX is enjoying better early days than anti aliasing did and many other techs. In a few years time Nvidia will have learnt how to make better RTX products. You can’t exoect to get access to the latest techs if you aren’t prepared to pay the premiums for them.

 

[EndRessentiment]

Every product these companies make from AMD, to Nvidia is a “cash grab”. I say stop complaining about prices, no one is forcing you to buy any of these cards and no company is entitled to sell you one at a low price.

RTX is enjoying better early days than anti aliasing did and many other techs. In a few years time Nvidia will have learnt how to make better RTX products. You can’t exoect to get access to the latest techs if you aren’t prepared to pay the premiums for them.

Sound like: "Every company wants profit, so this is business as usual". That first paragraph is simply a case of false equivalence. I don't see how you can't accept that there's variation in the degree of how much companies make profit/overcharge. It's undeniable, period.
Next to that, it should be obvious that some products are very overpriced while others are actually a good deal for your money. Some of the high-end Intel processors and RTX fits this bill. However, hardly any AMD product atm does. So don't equate things that aren't even similar.
Some companies can get away with charging very high prices, and they do. Others don't, either because they can't or because they won't. Of course you can speculate what other companies would do in that position, but that's just speculation.

As to anti-aliasing: I guess so. But did that technology get paired with very expensive GPU's from NVIDIA competitors like AMD? Only then is this example relevant.

 

[Sausagemeat]

Sound like: "Every company wants profit, so this is business as usual". That first paragraph is simply a case of false equivalence. I don't see how you can't accept that there's variation in the degree of how much companies make profit/overcharge. It's undeniable, period.
Next to that, it should be obvious that some products are very overpriced while others are actually a good deal for your money. Some of the high-end Intel processors and RTX fits this bill. However, hardly any AMD product atm does. So don't equate things that aren't even similar.
Some companies can get away with charging very high prices, and they do. Others don't, either because they can't or because they won't. Of course you can speculate what other companies would do in that position, but that's just speculation.

As to anti-aliasing: I guess so. But did that technology get paired with very expensive GPU's from NVIDIA competitors like AMD? Only then is this example relevant.

The only thing that defines a product as overpriced is a lack of sales. If a product sells then it’s not overpriced. Period. I understand a lot of people don’t want to pay as much as a company might ask for a product but as long as that company still meets its sales forecasts then they don’t care. Why should they?

Of course by your logic AMDs Vega frontier edition was heinously overpriced. I would agree but it appears to be selling. Or at least it did when the mining craze was going strong.

I’m fed up with people whining on about high prices on luxury products. You aren’t entitled to them and if they are as overpriced as you claim then they won’t sell. Maybe instead of complaining about the companies you should complain at the people buying them for keeping the prices high? We are talking about high end graphics cards with bleeding edge technologies, absolute luxury products that nobody needs. We aren’t talking about housing or bread. No one cares if you can’t afford the most expensive graphics card.

 

[EndRessentiment]

The only thing that defines a product as overpriced is a lack of sales. If a product sells then it’s not overpriced. Period. I understand a lot of people don’t want to pay as much as a company might ask for a product but as long as that company still meets its sales forecasts then they don’t care. Why should they?

I guess scientology is selling for a fair price... As long as people are buying, there's never a scam eh...
I hope you see the problem there. There's a continuum between genuine scams and outrageous or at least (clearly) too high prices. That people are buying doesn't mean the price is justified, only if you pretend that no purchases whatsoever are significantly irrational... Sometimes, they are. (And no, this is not black and white. It's in degrees, which makes it harder to accept)

 

[Sausagemeat]

I guess scientology is selling for a fair price... As long as people are buying, there's never a scam eh...
I hope you see the problem there. There's a continuum between genuine scams and outrageous or at least (clearly) too high prices. That people are buying doesn't mean the price is justified, only if you pretend that no purchases whatsoever are significantly irrational... Sometimes, they are. (And no, this is not black and white. It's in degrees, which makes it harder to accept)

No you are wrong. The fact that people are buying it definitely does justify the price. Why should the manufacturer care otherwise?

I understand that the fact that others are buying it doesn’t justify the price for you. But if the manufacturer still sells the product despite you not buying it why should they care?

You seem to be under the delusion that you are entitled to cheaper graphics cards. Can I ask why do hold this entitlement?

 

[EndRessentiment]

No you are wrong. The fact that people are buying it definitely does justify the price. Why should the manufacturer care otherwise?

I understand that the fact that others are buying it doesn’t justify the price for you. But if the manufacturer still sells the product despite you not buying it why should they care?

You seem to be under the delusion that you are entitled to cheaper graphics cards. Can I ask why do hold this entitlement?

The manufacturer has no economic reasons for caring, I never pretended otherwise.

Your argument is oblivious to human nature and history. You're saying "it's the status quo, people agree with this all, so it can only be the case that this all makes perfect sense."
You're only pointing to the preferences people have, and mistaking that for justifying their preferences. Preferences people have can be very silly, or even dangerous. In the 17th century there was time a single pineapple could cost the equivalent of $8,000 today. People also supported many *****ic or awful things. Plenty of Europeans supported the war that became WWI, for example. Need I go on?

Entitlement has nothing to do with it, that's just pure projection on your part or worse. I'm not even slightly interested in buying high-end GPUs at the moment, given that I currently have no time for gaming. I'm not even sure why I'm responding to this irrelevant point of yours.

 

[Sausagemeat]

The manufacturer has no economic reasons for caring, I never pretended otherwise.

Your argument is oblivious to human nature and history. You're saying "it's the status quo, people agree with this all, so it can only be the case that this all makes perfect sense."
You're only pointing to the preferences people have, and mistaking that for justifying their preferences. Preferences people have can be very silly, or even dangerous. In the 17th century there was time a single pineapple could cost the equivalent of $8,000 today. People also supported many *****ic or awful things. Plenty of Europeans supported the war that became WWI, for example. Need I go on?

Entitlement has nothing to do with it, that's just pure projection on your part or worse. I'm not even slightly interested in buying high-end GPUs at the moment, given that I currently have no time for gaming. I'm not even sure why I'm responding to this irrelevant point of yours.

You have made no logical reasoning as to why Nvidia should be selling parts cheaper.

My conclusion is you just want to pay less. Of course we all want to pay less. But for some reason you are making out that it’s immoral for Nvidia not charge less because you have likened it as an “awful thing”.

Nvidia can charge what they like for a graphics card. It’s not immoral if they want to sell more expensive cards. They haven’t even made graphics cards more expensive as you get more for your money now than you ever have.