DICE Prepares "Battlefield V" RTX/DXR Performance Patch: Up to 50% FPS Gains

[btarunr]

EA-DICE and NVIDIA earned a lot of bad press last month, when performance numbers for "Battlefield V" with DirectX Raytracing (DXR) were finally out. Gamers were disappointed to see that DXR inflicts heavy performance penalties, with 4K UHD gameplay becoming out of bounds even for the $1,200 GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, and acceptable frame-rates only available on 1080p resolution. DICE has since been tirelessly working to rework its real-time raytracing implementation so performance is improved. Tomorrow (4th December), the studio will release a patch to "Battlefield V," a day ahead of its new Tides of War: Overture and new War Story slated for December 5th. This patch could be a game-changer for GeForce RTX users.

NVIDIA has been closely working with EA-DICE on this new patch, which NVIDIA claims improves the game's frame-rates with DXR enabled by "up to 50 percent." The patch enables RTX 2080 Ti users to smoothly play "Battlefield V" with DXR at 1440p resolution, with frame-rates over 60 fps, and DXR Reflections set to "Ultra." RTX 2080 (non-Ti) users should be able to play the game at 1440p with over 60 fps, if the DXR Reflections toggle is set at "Medium." RTX 2070 users can play the game at 1080p, with over 60 fps, and the toggle set to "Medium." NVIDIA states that it is continuing to work with DICE to improve DXR performance even further, which will take the shape of future game patches and driver updates.



A video presentation by NVIDIA follows.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[birdie]

NVIDIA haters:

NVIDIA sucks.
NVIDIA is ripping everyone off.
NVIDIA is a monopoly.
DXR sucks.
DXR performance sucks.
RTX buyers are alpha testers for DXR/Vulkan RT.

Except, DXR is brand new; currently used in just one game; it's the first implementation ever; we're already seeing impressive gains with just one patch and devs have promised that performance is gonna get even better.

And ... programmable shaders, which are used in close to 100% of modern games, were also first introduced by NVIDIA in 2000 and they have a similar history.

 

[pky]

DICE has since been tirelessly working to rework its real-time raytracing implementation so performance is improved.

It just works!

 

[Vayra86]

Impressive, now lets see them do that optimization on a less big budget, high exposure title.

Until then... this is no guarantee for the end performance of RTX. If it only works proper after meticulous optimization and Nvidia devs stepping in, it still won't be consistent or useful. But maybe it really is a learning process we're seeing unfold live in front of our eyes.

 

[Gasaraki]

Thanks DICE. When Digital Foundry did an analysis of ray tracing on BF5, I knew patches would be released to fix the performance issues.

 

[Steevo]

A 2080Ti can do medium settings at 4K 60fps, so they turned down the number or precooked certain things in the new patch.

 

[Vayra86]

A 2080Ti can do medium settings at 4K 60fps, so they turned down the number or precooked certain things in the new patch.

They certainly did do things with quality to get here. I haven't seen a single sharp reflection across the whole video. Its a blurry mess. Still a small improvement over non-RT, but only when you look for it. One noticeable aspect is increased DoF on the weapon. You can see this @ 0:43

Even the weapon itself looks like a lower quality version

 

[B-Real]

up to 50% - then there is the frozen lake scene with less than 15% jump. At least with this patch, maybe a 1200$ 2080Ti can push 40-45 fps with Ray Tracing with DXR in 4K. I want to buy 2 of them.

NVIDIA haters:

NVIDIA sucks.
NVIDIA is ripping everyone off.
NVIDIA is a monopoly.
DXR sucks.
DXR performance sucks.
RTX buyers are alpha testers for DXR/Vulkan RT.

Except, DXR is brand new; currently used in just one game; it's the first implementation ever; we're already seeing impressive gains with just one patch and devs have promised that performance is gonna get even better.

And ... programmable shaders, which are used in close to 100% of modern games, were also first introduced by NVIDIA in 2000 and they have a similar history.

Ye-ye, defend them. That's what you can only do.

"Except, DXR is brand new; " That's what green guys did with Vulkan etc. in the case of AMD.

 

[Vayra86]

up to 50% - then there is the frozen lake scene with less than 15% jump. At least with this patch, maybe a 1200$ 2080Ti can push 40-45 fps with Ray Tracing with DXR in 4K. I want to buy 2 of them.


Ye-ye, defend them. That's what you can only do.

"Except, DXR is brand new; " That's what green guys did with Vulkan etc. in the case of AMD.

Well hey, if they get the performance hit out of the game and still do reflections, that is a win, we have to admit that I think. Even with a lower quality it still does add to the picture. The next hurdle is what it costs to implement it in that way and how it compares to the old fashioned alternatives. If there is one thing these framerates show, it is that at the current RT core counts, its viable, and that is NOT what we've seen before today.

 

[Src]

They certainly did do things with quality to get here. I haven't seen a single sharp reflection across the whole video. Its a blurry mess. Still a small improvement over non-RT, but only when you look for it. One noticeable aspect is increased DoF on the weapon. You can see this @ 0:43

View attachment 111764

Even the weapon itself looks like a lower quality version

View attachment 111765

They clearly stated that they fixed quality presets, so that means there is also a proper medium setting, not "sharp" ultra also for medium. Ultra looks the same for me.

 

[Vayra86]

They clearly stated that they fixed quality presets, so that means there is also a proper medium setting, not "sharp" ultra also for medium. Ultra looks the same for me.

Second screenshot I posted shows ultra vs ultra, and you cannot deny that weapon isn't the same.

 

[phanbuey]

Second screenshot I posted shows ultra vs ultra, and you cannot deny that weapon isn't the same.

IMO this is a marketing/PR driven reaction. They just want to show that RTX is not what it is - Great tech that will take 2 generations to mature... And that it's usable now!

Those shots u posted say it all. They just had the engineering teams crank down a whole load of stuff to get the fps up.

 

[Src]

Weapon isn't the same that's true, but also this is far from important piece of the game. I'm looking forward to the actual real world difference.

 

[R0H1T]

Thanks DICE. When Digital Foundry did an analysis of ray tracing on BF5, I knew patches would be released to fix the performance issues.

It's not full RT RT anyway, that'll probably bring the whole game to a screeching halt.

 

[stimpy88]

"RTX 2070 users can play the game at 1080p, with over 60 fps, and the toggle set to "Medium." - Wow, sucks when you ONLY spend a paltry $600 on a graphics card for middle of the road performance at reduced detail settings at 1080p...

So now we have the oxymoron that is, we now have next gen Ray-Traced graphical fidelity, the holy grail if you will, paired with medium detail textures and effects resembling games from 2012. Welcome to the future indeed.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Ehhh this should have been done BEFORE launch...

 

[Vayra86]

Ehhh this should have been done BEFORE launch...

Agile development. Definition of ready was probably 'it runs'.

 

[The Quim Reaper]

If its a 50% increase it will be due to visual downgrades at Ultra Settings, not some magical performance optimisation.

 

[M2B]

Second screenshot I posted shows ultra vs ultra, and you cannot deny that weapon isn't the same.

Maybe they're doing this to make the surface of the weapon more reflective or something? (or make it easier to reflect things on the weapon)

 

[The Terrible Puddle]

The game is already a flop anyway

 

[Vayra86]

Maybe they're doing this to make the surface of the weapon more reflective or something? (or make it easier to reflect things on the weapon)

What I am seeing is a major reduction in material quality. Definition is sacrificed to make the reflection cheaper to implement. The amount of different surfaces on the weapon is visibly lower. The scratches and other wear on the weapon were almost entirely removed, because it is expensive to bounce rays off of, most likely.

I think we should be aware that this implementation of DXR is a mixed bag of rasterization with an RTRT layer on top. There are two broad ways to implement quality differences: the way you use the rays themselves, and adjustments to the materials they are used on. Lowering model quality will have a positive effect on the RT performance. So while the RT spec may have remained unchanged, the performance is extracted by using lower quality assets underneath.

In brief: DXR may well have the knock-on effect that each preset also alters the other game graphics quality settings. Either while being honest about it, or not. I'd be most curious about the actual power draw differences with pre- and post-patch content. What are those CUDA cores doing right about now? And are they still idling?

 

[Steevo]

What I am seeing is a major reduction in material quality. Definition is sacrificed to make the reflection cheaper to implement. The amount of different surfaces on the weapon is visible lower. The scratches and other wear on the weapon was removed, because it is expensive to bounce rays off of, most likely.

I think we should be aware that this implementation of DXR is a mixed bag of rasterization with an RTRT layer on top. There are two broad ways to implement quality differences: the way you use the rays themselves, and adjustments to the materials they are used on. Lowering model quality will have a positive effect on the RT performance. So while the RT spec may have remained unchanged, the performance is extracted by using lower quality assets underneath.

So Nvidia, forcing DICE to make the quality lower to raise it again in a vain attempt to make it look good, now with 50% more of the thing, not the details though, those are extra or only for AMD cards.

"Nvidia, the way its meant to be blurred."

 

[M2B]

So Nvidia, forcing DICE to make the quality lower to raise it again in a vain attempt to make it look good, now with 50% more of the thing, not the details though, those are extra or only for AMD cards.

"Nvidia, the way its meant to be blurred."

As Vayra said, In fact they are doing this to make RT implementation less demanding, they don't artificially increase the performance by hurting the rasterization side of things cause it won't work this way.
I mean, with the exact same amount of decrease in the level of detail of matterials you won't see a 50% performance increase WITHOUT ray tracing in use.
but it's impossible to find out how much of an impact those decreases can cuase in the normal rasterization performance.

 

[Steevo]

As Vayra said, In fact they are doing this to make RT implementation less demanding, they don't artificially increase the performance by hurting the rasterization side of things cause it won't work this way.
I mean, with the exact same amount of decrease in the level of detail of matterials you won't see a 50% performance increase WITHOUT ray tracing in use.
but it's impossible to find out how much of an impact those decreases can cuase in the normal rasterization performance.

I bet, they could turn RTX off and try.... I dunno, benchmarking, then update and see what effect it has with the same benchmark. But maybe that is crazy talk, since I bet no one would be able to figure out how to do that.

Or even just trying it with 1080Ti, but I don't think Nvidia would allow that.

They could also take screenshots and compare quality of output, but that technology doesn't exist yet.

 

[Vya Domus]

So basically it's a mixture of lowering down the effects even further and fixing performance issues that didn't even had anything to do with DXR in the first place such as the horrendously placed vegetation and particle emissions. The choice of showing off the improvements is also unusual , what's up with the scenes that barley even have reflective materials ?