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. My first test goes back to our synthetic benchmarks with 3DMark where I check out their Port Royal benchmark. This is the one test that does also have AMD Ray Tracing support which is great to get a look at how different cards including older non-RTX cards perform. The RTX 4070 Founders Edition came in just behind the 6950 XT on this test with the 3080 a little ahead of that. This put it in front of the 6800 XT and way out in front of last-generations 3070 Ti and 3070.

  3DMark also has added in a few feature tests, one being a look at DLSS performance. For this one, I have the resolution set to 4K and I test with all three versions of DLSS as well as with it off completely. All DLSS are set to their performance setting as well to keep the results comparable. This gives us a great look at the performance improvements that DLSS has given with DLSS 3 also including frame generation. The RTX 4070 Founders Edition comes in just behind the RTX 3080 here, no surprises there but to note it does have DLSS 3 support where last generation's cards can’t run it. The performance difference that DLSS gives for each generation is impressive really. Without DLSS at all the RTX 4070 Founders Edition ran at 23 FPS, doubling that with DLSS 1. Then almost tripling that for DLSS 2 and four times for DLSS 3.

I then jumped into game tests, this time with Watch Dogs: Legion. For this one, I wanted to get an idea of the performance you will see when taking advantage of Nvidia’s RTX and DLSS features. I tested at 4k with the ultra detail setting and with ultra being the setting for DLSS and RTX when they are on as well. I then test with no RTX or DLSS on and then with RTX DLSS on and off and on together. Here the RTX 4070 Founders Edition sits below the 3080 on the graph, but only because the graph is sorted by the no RTX or DLSS performance. The DLSS and combined DLSS and RTX numbers for the 4070 are both higher than the 3080, showing how the improved Tensor cores can help with performance. The test also shows how running RTX can affect performance with the original frame rate being 53 FPS but dropping down to 28 when RTX is turned on. DLSS helps negate that though, running it combined with RTX increases performance up to 89 FPS.

Next, I wanted to check out the performance in Metro Exodus which we have used for testing for a long time now. This test is similar as well with it set to 4K and Ultra detail, I use the included benchmark to test DLSS and RTX individually and then with them both on and both off to give us a look at overall frame rates depending on which direction you go. I should point out that this is using the Enhanced Edition where our normal benchmark uses the standard version for testing with AMD but that version DLSS no longer works. That said the RTX 4070 Founders Edition falls in between the 3080 and the 3070 Ti here and unlike with Watch Dogs DLSS doesn’t push it up past the 3080 for this game.

I also wanted to take a look at DLSS 3 performance as well a little more than my initial look at it with 3DMark’s benchmark. For this, I put Nvidias Frameview to the test to run a few benchmarks using the games that currently support DLSS 3. For games with a built-in benchmark, I ran the benchmark but used frameview so we could get the FPS and 1% lows and because some of the game's frame generation is messing up their in game FPS readouts. V-Sync was turned off on all of the tests because it currently causes problems with frame generation and all of the tests were done at 4K and 1440p with the highest detail settings including the highest RTX settings unless noted. DLSS 3 when there is an option was set to the performance setting as well. The first game tested was Cyberpunk 2077 and while the RTX 4070 isn’t designed for 4K use at all, the 4K performance in Cyberpunk gives us a great look at a way that DLSS 3 can help. When running at that high of a resolution and high detail settings including ray tracing the 4070 only runs at 15FPS with 8 FPS for its 1% lows. Turning DLSS 3 on including frame generation that jumps up to 72 FPS with 1% lows at 58. This takes unplayable performance and makes it playable and even smooth with the lows nearly at 60 FPS. The 1440p results were similar, taking the 4070 from 38 FPS up to 136 FPS which is a huge improvement. I also included a 1080p test where I ran at the low detail level just to get a look at the performance improvement in a situation that is CPU limited and while the improvement isn’t as big as we saw at 1440p you do jump from 176 FPS up to 319 FPS but in these CPU limited situations the 1% low performance will be lower than in other situations.

In F1 2022 I ran three tests. I tested with full DLSS, I did it again but turned off frame generation, and then tested with DLSS off and TAA on. Frame generation here was weird at 4K but seemed to work normally at 1440p. I ran this test multiple times with the same result, but at 4K turning frame generation on dropped performance. DLSS 3 alone did still help a lot however taking the 4K performance from 45 FPS and 28 FPS for the 1% lows up to 107 FPS with 73 FPS 1% lows. Taking playable but not smooth up into the smooth range. Once the frame generation issue is worked out that should step things up even higher like we see at 1440p. At 1440p the 4070 already does well at 88 FPS, but utilizing DLSS 3 doubles that for 176 FPS then frame generation adds on to the top for 215 FPS. For F1 22 the high frame rates combined with a high refresh monitor will make a big difference in the experience. 

In A Plague Tale turning frame generation on showed how much it can help a lot more with DLSS 3, The RTX 4070 Founders Edition base DLSS improved performance at 4K from 36 FPS up to 69 FPS but adding frame generation into the mix went from double the performance to triple the performance at 91 FPS. The combination of the two taking the performance from barely playable to smooth. At 1440p the 4070 started in the playable range at 67 FPS and 60 1% lows but still improved on that up to 109 with DLSS 3 and 158 with DLSS 3 and frame generation.

In the side scroller Forged in Shadow Torch, DLSS 3 helped take the detailed side scroller from 51 FPS at 4K up to 127 FPS at 4K and from 109 up to 194 FPS at 1440p. There is a wider gap between the average FPS and the 1% lows, but the performance improvement is still worth it.

Next up was Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed. The RTX 4070 Founders Edition improved from 72 FPS up to 107 FPS at 4K and from 113 up to 206 FPS at 1440p. At 4k this wasn’t enough to push the 4070 up into another class of performance but at 1440p it would be helpful if you had a high refresh rate monitor and you wanted to get the most out of it.

Last I took a look at Microsoft Flight Simulator and this is an interesting case because this is a well-known CPU-limited game. To keep things consistent the test used the landing test run over Sydney. With DLSS off at 4K the RTX 4070 averaged 42 FPS but DLSS 3 nearly doubled that up to 82 FPS taking 4K from playable but choppy up to playable and smooth. The improvement was similar at 1440p as well going from 71 FPS up to 136 FPS, we can see that there is some CPU limitation at 1440p with the 1% low gap on the DLSS 3 result not staying as tight as the non-DLSS result. That is even more noticeable at 1080p where the 4070 more than doubles performance even while being completely CPU limited going from 74 FPS up to 151 FPS.