Most of know about Nvidia's new pet, RTX, even if we don't have a DirectX Raytracing-enabled card. Even for those of us lucky (or committed) enough to have a 20-series or 30-series card with RT cores, raytracing causes a massive hit to performance. Minecraft Bedrock Edition RTX is an excellent example of this. Of course, our tests will run on Firebolt, our trusty test rig packing a reference clock Nvidia 2080 Super, AMD Ryzen 7 3800X, and 32GB of DDR4-3200 CL16 driving a 1440p 144hz (unofficially) G-Sync compatible monitor. In Minecraft Bedrock we rock a stable 144fps with 32% GPU usage when raytracing is disabled, all the vanilla graphical fanciness, and a 64-chunk render distance. When we flip the DXR switch, we plummet to around 35-45fps, which is a stuttery nightmare on its own, without going in and out of FreeSync. Luckily, there is another switch in there that we should also flip, the one labelled 'Upscaling'. When you flip this, you enable DLSS 2.0, a proprietary Nvidia technology that is based on using deep learning in Nvidia's DLSS supercomputer to analyze games and determine some computationally efficient techniques that can be applied to a low resolution image to improve performance and/or visual quality without any perceptible sacrifice. Once Jensen's boys have determined what charms and enchantments will help with the game in question, DLSS is integrated into the game so that when enabled and the game is suffering from a GPU bottleneck (i.e. you aren't using an 8-year old Celeron at 1080p). When you enable this glorious countercurse to RTX's damage, Minecraft's framerate shoots up to a buttery 75-85fps and there is no perceptible change in visual quality. AMD, Sony, and Microsoft have to have something along these lines in the works for the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Without some AI magic, 10-12 TFLOPS running 4K60, let alone 8K60 or 4K120, is a pipe dream at best, even with generous speculation on the performance of RDNA2. Stay tuned for updates on the game industry's upscaling wizardry, the secret weapon that makes raytracing practical.
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DanielI'm a software engineer, volunteer IT support, amateur blogger, casual gamer, and tech enthusiast. I also love cars and the great outdoors. Archives
May 2021
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