Shadow of the Tomb Raider DXR Performance Analysis

Shadow of the Tomb Raider RTX and DLSS The latest Tomb Raider game is finally an RTX enabled game! When Nvidia launched their RTX equipped graphics cards, we were treated to some very sexy technical demos, but not many real games to play. We've already done our RTX performance testing on the properly fantastic Metro: Exodus here. Although we followed that up with a Metro: Exodus re-test and even threw in a Battlefield V RTX re-test too, due to performance updates in the games and their drivers. You can read that one here too. Ray Tracing Battlefield used RT for reflections, Metro used it for global lighting, and now Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses a little bit of both. However, the key RT feature here is how it's used to make shadows. Of course, that's quite fitting given the name of the game. So, let's see what kind of performance impact we can expect. I would like to add right now, however, that as with other RTX games, we expect driver updates to drastically improve this games performance over the next few weeks. I guarantee it. GPUs Featured ASUS Strix RTX 2060Aorus Xtreme RTX 2070EVGA XC Ultra RTX 2080Gigabyte RTX 2080 Ti Trailer Game Description Experience Lara Croft’s defining moment as she becomes the Tomb Raider. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara must master a deadly jungle, overcome terrifying tombs, and persevere through her darkest hour. As she races to save the world from a Maya apocalypse, Lara will ultimately be forged into the Tomb Raider she is destined to be. Survive and Thrive In the Deadliest Place on Earth: Master an unforgiving jungle setting in order to survive. Explore underwater environments filled with crevasses and deep tunnel systems.Become One With the Jungle: Outgunned and outnumbered, Lara must use the jungle to her advantage. Strike suddenly and disappear like a jaguar, use mud as camouflage, and instill fear in enemies to sow chaos.Discover Dark and Brutal Tombs: Tombs are more terrifying than ever before, requiring advanced traversal techniques to reach them, and once inside they are filled with deadly puzzles.Uncover Living History: Discover a hidden city and explore the biggest hub space ever found in a Tomb Raider game. System Requirements Minimum OS: Windows 7 64 bitCPU: Intel i3-3220 or AMD equivalentMemory: 8GB RAMGraphics: Nvidia GTX 660/GTX 1050 or AMD Radeon HD 7770DirectX: Version 11Storage: 40 GB available space Recommended OS: Windows 10 64-bitCPU: Intel Core i7 4770K, 3.40 Ghz or AMD Ryzen 5 1600, 3.20GhzMemory: 16GB RAMGraphics: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB or AMD Radeon RX 480 8GBDirectX: Version 4K and DXR? Unfortunately, they have not provided this information. However, we can assume a Ryzen 7 or comparative Intel Core i7 and above with 16 to 32GB of RAM, and a Radeon VII (for 4K) or RTX 2060 (for DXR) and above. Graphics Card Test System Motherboard – Aorus Z390 Gaming MasterProcessor – Intel Core i9-9900K (Stock)RAM – Crucial Ballistix Gaming 32GB (4 x 8GB) 3000 MHzCPU Cooler – Noctua NH-D15SPower Supply – Be Quiet Power Zone 1000WMain Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GBChassis – Thermaltake Core P5 TGOperating System – Windows 10 64-bitMonitor – AOC 28-Inch 4K Gaming Monitor Gaming To gauge performance levels which are easily reproduced time after time, by both ourselves and our readers, we now stick strictly to games default profiles. With our previous reviews, we used the “Medium or Normal” preset. However, as GPUs get faster, we’ve now moved that up to “High” profiles for all games, at all resolutions. V-Sync is always disabled in our testing, as are FreeSync and G-Sync technologies or similar. Graphics card power usage set to optimised or balance, and the system power mode set to High Performance within Windows and the available GPU driver software. Identical settings are used for all resolutions unless otherwise stated. Shadow of the Tomb Raider was benchmarked using the game's built-in benchmarking tool. The high profile was used for frame rate testing with V-Sync off. Furthermore, the same test is then repeated with high Ray Tracing enabled, then once more with DLSS enabled. Please note that not all GPUs support DLSS at all resolutions, these will show as a "zero" score on their respective charts. DLSS DLSS results were run but then discarded for 1080p. The game either wouldn't run at 1920 x 1080p, as it changed to 1920 x 1200p instead. Furthermore, the performance was near identical to it being off, telling me the game doesn't support this resolution on all cards with DLSS. Plus, it looked like hot trash while running, and no one is doing this with their new RTX cards... so, I ditched 1080p DLSS testing. Furthermore, the RTX 2080 did great too, scoring above 60 FPS even at 4K with the same settings. Even at 1080p and 1440p, it's performance is well suited to high frame rate displays. 1080p (Full HD), 1440p (2K), and 2160p (4K) As one would expect, the RTX 2080 Ti smashed through the testing with confidence at 1080p, 1440p, and 2160p. Even at 4K it was able to maintain an 80 FPS average, which is more than enough for silky smooth gameplay. Of course, this is with the high profile and RTX off. We'll get to the Ray Tracing and DLSS stuff in a moment. The more affordable RTX 2070 on the other hand, was much more adept at 1080p and 1440p than it was at 4K. Of course, the same is true of the RTX 2060, which only scored 44 FPS at 4K. That's still playable, but as I've said before, it depends if you foam at the mouth when someone mentions framerates below 60 FPS... You know who you are, ha! Ray Tracing Dialling up the shine and shadows with Ray Tracing certainly makes the game look impressive. However, it really takes the wind out of the sails of even the bigger and more expensive GPUs. When you understand just how insanely complex RT processing is though, I can't help but be impressed than anything about 1 FPS is possible these days, amazing stuff. For 4K, the 2080 Ti dropped down to just 46 FPS, almost half of the 80 FPS with it turned off. However, both the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti scored above 60 FPS at 1440p, which is fantastic to see; only 1.6% of Steam users even have a 4K monitor, 1440p and 1080p are significantly more popular. For 1080p, obviously the bigger cards did fine here. Overall though, all the cards smashed 1080p, and 1440p didn't slow down too much either. 4K is an enthusiast game, and the RTX 2080 and up is the way forward here. The RTX 2070 can easily be tuned for 1440p, which the RTX 2060 is best suited for 1080p with RT on. Ray Tracing and DLSS So the same tests as above here, however we enabled DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling). As I said on our methodology page, we dropped DLSS for 1080p, it either doesn't work or just looks like dog food. However, it's much more useful at 1440p and 4K. The RTX 2080 Ti for example went from 46 FPS to a magical 61 FPS at 4K. Meanwhile, the RTX 2070 went from 49 FPS to a much more impressive 56. That's VERY close to 60 FPS, and could easily be tweaked to fit. The gains are certainly there should you need them, as subjective as this feature may be, it does work. DLSS Only Perhaps you like RTX, you love the power, but rather than Ray Tracing, you want to simply boost FPS at whatever resolution? Then you'll be happy to see DLSS can be used on its own. This is unlike Metro, where DLSS was tied to Ray Tracing. The performance gains are pretty decent for the most part. The RTX 2080 Ti gained 14 FPS at 4K. However only 1 FPS at 1440p, suggestion the feature didn't work at this resolution on this card. The RTX 2070 went from 51 FPS to 62 FPS at 4K also, making that fast enough to pass the golden 60 figure. Even for those of you gaming on high refresh rate displays, being able to get the RTX 2080 Ti to 132 FPS will reap rewards for those 144 Hz monitors. Plus, this is at high settings, so no need to drop to medium for those FPS gains. ULTRA So with each one of these performance analysis we do, I like to throw in something unique to each. Given the... OK ish performance of 4K, I decided 1440p was the way to go here. So I dialled in each card with Ultra graphics and Ultra Ray Tracing. DLSS turned off, and decided to see what happened. Amazingly, only the RTX 2080 Ti got above 60 FPS, 71 FPS to be exact. The RTX 2080 came close at 54 FPS. That's 9 FPS fewer than we had with High settings. The more affordable cards did struggle, but hey, that was to be expected. Overview In my opinion, this update feels like it came far too late. I personally haven't played the game much at all, as I waited for the DXR update to land. Then I waited some more, I waited, I waited still... Then out of the blue, the update hit up this week! RTX games are thin on the ground, so as much as it should have been with us sooner, I'm relieved to see things moving on. I'm sure other gamers are plenty frustrated after the wait too. RT On Of course, it's here now, and for ray tracing enthusiasts like myself, it was (eventually) worth the wait. The game looks fantastic with Ray Tracing turned off. Hell, the game looks amazing with the medium graphics profile enabled! Ramping up to high and ultra, plus adding Ray Tracing gives it that truly next-gen edge that the developers should be proud of. Of course, I bet they are. Performance DXR is still new ground for developers, and there's evidence that they haven't gotten the hang of it yet. Battlefield V launched with terrible performance, but updates from Nvidia and the developers saw FPS climb steadily with each release since. The same happened with Metro. Furthermore, DLSS quality has been improving. Out of the DXR games on the market, Tomb Raider seems to be fairing the best. However, I fully expect we'll see huge FPS gains within weeks as we have done before. I'm still not sold on DLSS, but again, it's early days and I think the tech has a strong future for gamers. GPUs All our cards are some of the best in their respective classes. However, This wasn't a competition, as we knew the 2080 Ti was faster than a 2080, which is faster than the 2070, and so on. However, for 1080p gaming, the RTX 2060 and 2070 are great. Furthermore, 1440p did well on anything from the RTX 2070. However, for RT On and 4K gaming, you'll want to dig deep for the RTX 2080 Ti or get used to poor frame rates.

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