Crytek's Hardware-Agnostic Raytracing Scene Neon Noir Performance Details Revealed

[Raevenlord]

Considering your reaction, you certainly remember Crytek's Neon noir raytracing scene that we shared with you back in march. At the time, the fact that raytracing was running at such mesmerizing levels on AMD hardware was arguably the biggest part of the news piece: AMD's Vega 56 graphics card with no dedicated raytracing hardware, was pushing the raytraced scene in a confident manner. Now, Crytek have shared some details on how exactly Neon noir was rendered.

The AMD Radeon Vega 56 pushed the demo at 1080p/30 FPS, with full-resolution rendering of raytraced effects. Crytek further shared that raytracing can be rendered at half resolution compared to the rest of the scene, and that if they did so on AMD's Vega 56, they could push a 1440p resolution at 40+ FPS. The raytraced path wasn't running on any modern, lower-level API, such as DX12 or Vulkan, but rather, on a custom branch of Crytek's CryEngine, version 5.5.





Crytek said that RTX support will be implemented, which should improve performance on NVIDIA graphics cards, allowing for up to 4K, full-screen resolution rendering and effects. RTX shouldn't allow for more features, but rather, for improved performance and quality level of already-implemented ones. There is some interesting information on Crytek's blog post on their current raytracing implementation, the choice to integrate the technology based on object "glossiness" level rather than a full-blown solution for improved performance, and mixing voxel and raytracing workloads for the best possible optimization. Take a look at the source link.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[dj-electric]

Waiting for downloadable demo...

 

[xkm1948]

So turns out no matter what engine you use, there is no getting around the requirement of computation power.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

So turns out no matter what engine you use, there is no getting around the requirement of computation power.

Fairy dust works just as well though there seems to be a shortage so yes, gpu power will have to suffice until then

 

[Xzibit]

Its always been about computational grunt.

Crytek further shared that raytracing can be rendered at half resolution compared to the rest of the scene

We already knew this is a trade off since BFV RTX was released. RT was scaled based on settings.

Ultra is at 40 per cent resolution, high at 31.6 per cent, medium at 23.3 per cent and low at 15.5 per cent

 

[ZoneDymo]

Bright future

 

[Anymal]

It was 4k/30fps , no 1080p.

 

[moproblems99]

So turns out no matter what engine you use, there is no getting around the requirement of computation power.

Gee, imagine that. More computations require more power. Who would have thought?

 

[londiste]

It was 4k/30fps , no 1080p.

What was?
Neon Noir demo runs at 1080p/30 on Vega 56. 4K was rather widely misreported for some reason - due to Youtube video having 2160p as an option maybe.

 

[TheGuruStud]

So, 1080p/60. Damn, sounds familiar... lolololol

 

[moproblems99]

So, 1080p/60. Damn, sounds familiar... lolololol

$300 vs $700 lolololol

 

[TheGuruStud]

$300 vs $700 lolololol

Indeed, that's the best part and soon to be even cheaper.

 

[Fiendish]

As many suspected it's NOT the silver bullet to "kill" RTX. Here's hoping AMD will at least spring for some kind of dedicated BVH transversal acceleration hardware soon, since the "pure compute" approach definitely isn't going to cut it.

 

[moproblems99]

Indeed, that's the best part and soon to be even cheaper.

In fairness, I would expect NV cards to have a similar level of performance. I only skimmed the article and didn't see any mention. Didn't read the source.

 

[RH92]

So, 1080p/60. Damn, sounds familiar... lolololol

1080p/30 you mean ..... lolololo

In other words there is no magic you need hardware acceleration for raytracing !

 

[InVasMani]

1080p/30 you mean ..... lolololo

In other words there is no magic you need hardware acceleration for raytracing !

It sounds like 1080/60 should be possible if using the half scene rendering like 1440p/40+ utilizes. I sounded like 1080/30 is full scene ray tracing rather than half scene unless I'm mistaken.

 

[londiste]

It sounds like 1080/60 should be possible if using the half scene rendering like 1440p/40+ utilizes. I sounded like 1080/30 is full scene ray tracing rather than half scene unless I'm mistaken.

Someone in a Reddit thread had an interesting comment to CryTek's story in terms of performance. Rephrased:
You know what else does 1080p/30? GTX1080 in Battlefield V with Ultra DXR reflections.

Graph from Nvidia (taken from TPU's news piece):

In fairness, I would expect NV cards to have a similar level of performance. I only skimmed the article and didn't see any mention. Didn't read the source.

I would expect Nvidia cards to perform worse. I assume CryTek takes advantage of RPM and FP16 on Vegas.

 

[RH92]

You know what else does 1080p/30? GTX1080 in Battlefield V with Ultra DXR reflections.

The thing is we shouldn't even compare CryTek engine to DXR and especialy not DXR Ultra because of this :

"Crytek mentions that they dynamically switched from mesh-tracing to low-cost voxel tracing to allow the non-RTX GPU to deliver a solid 30FPS. It also didn’t implement shadows or AO and used the older SSAO ambient occlusion algorithm for ambient shadowing.

Furthermore, the Crysis developer has also confirmed that in contrast to NVIDIA’s RTX powered titles, the reflections, refractions in the demo were half resolution, thereby explaining the poor quality. "


Im not even sure you can compare it to DXR Low let alone Ultra !

 

[londiste]

The thing is we shouldn't even compare CryTek engine to DXR and especialy not DXR Ultra because of this :
"Crytek mentions that they dynamically switched from mesh-tracing to low-cost voxel tracing to allow the non-RTX GPU to deliver a solid 30FPS. It also didn’t implement shadows or AO and used the older SSAO ambient occlusion algorithm for ambient shadowing.
Furthermore, the Crysis developer has also confirmed that in contrast to NVIDIA’s RTX powered titles, the reflections, refractions in the demo were half resolution, thereby explaining the poor quality. "Im not even sure you can compare it to RTX Low let alone Ultra !

DXR is API. There are no shadows or AO in Battlefield V either. I do not remember what exactly the reflection resolution is in Battlefield V but I would assume it is not full resolution either. This is all normal part of optimizing the effects.

 

[RH92]

I do not remember what exactly the reflection resolution is in Battlefield V but I would assume it is not full resolution either.

'' Furthermore, the Crysis developer has also confirmed that in contrast to NVIDIA’s RTX powered titles, the reflections, refractions in the demo were half resolution ''

Maybe not in BF V ( haven't looked into it ) but fact is CryTek devs themselves admit that their engine offers less visual quality compared to RTX powered titles so yeah my point still stands you can't really compare the two .... Let's wait and see how RTX cards fair in this demo .

It sounds like 1080/60 should be possible if using the half scene rendering like 1440p/40+ utilizes.

Yes but considering the already low graphical quality at 1080p30 reducing even further the quality is the last thing you want to do imo , i mean why do you even raytrace at this point .....

 

[Xzibit]

'' Furthermore, the Crysis developer has also confirmed that in contrast to NVIDIA’s RTX powered titles, the reflections, refractions in the demo were half resolution ''

Maybe not in BF V ( haven't looked into it ) but fact is CryTek devs themselves admit that their engine offers less visual quality compared to RTX powered titles so yeah my point still stands you can't really compare the two .... Let's wait and see how RTX cards fair in this demo .



Yes but considering the already low graphical quality at 1080p30 reducing even further the quality is the last thing you want to do imo , i mean why do you even raytrace at this point .....

Thats what RTX is... Low quality. Its RT with a 1spp rate. How else you going to get RT RT.

Ultra is at 40 per cent resolution, high at 31.6 per cent, medium at 23.3 per cent and low at 15.5 per cent. So, the clarity of reflections reduces as you go down the settings chain

RTX cards should perform better once the RT cores off load the BHVs but as far as fidelity goes your not going to get 1:1 for RT RT not this gen nor anytime soon. It will still rely on cutting corners low sample rate, lower resolution and LOD and culling tricks.

 

[RH92]

Thats what RTX is... Low quality. Its RT with a 1spp rate. How else you going to get RT RT.

Im not saying RTX is super high quality , what im saying is that demo at 1080p30 is already lower quality than RTX hence why you can't lower the quality even more before it starts to become redundant .

 

[Xzibit]

Im not saying RTX is super high quality , what im saying is that demo at 1080p30 is already lower quality than RTX hence why you can't lower the quality even more before it starts to become redundant .

Not what the source says. They mention half-res when talking about 1440p not 1080p on Vega. Later on they mention the GTX 1080 running on half-res.

 

[kings]

So, bottom line, If we want somewhat decent RT performance, we need a card with dedicated hardware.

Shocker!!!

 

[RH92]

Not what the source says. They mention half-res when talking about 1440p not 1080p on Vega. Later on they mention the GTX 1080 running on half-res.

You are mixing up stuff ....

The point here is that in order to achieve 1080p30 on a Vega 56 CryTek team is already using lower graphical quality in their demo that what can be observed on most RTX powered games , for instance : '' All the objects in the Neon Noir Demo use low-poly versions of themselves for reflections,” Frölich says. “As a few people have commented, it is noticeable on the bullets'' that's not the case on RTX titles or at least not the case when RTX Ultra is enabled as far as il aware. With this in mind lowering even more the graphical quality of that demo in order to achieve higher framerates/resolution makes not much sense because you are already offering less graphical quality that the reference ( wich is RTX powered games ) at 1080p30 .

Hence why comparing the perf of the Vega 56 on that demo with the perf of Nvidia cards on RTX powered titles at 1080p makes litle sense .

Regardless CryTek team is basicaly confirming that in order to enjoy proper raytracing you need hardware support !