Earlier today, FromSoftware released a Ray Tracing Patch for Elden Ring. FromSoftware has used Ray Tracing in order to enhance the game’s shadows and ambient occlusion. As such, we’ve decided to benchmark these RT effects and share some comparison screenshots.
For these benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, and the GeForce 531.26 drivers.
Elden Ring does not feature any built-in benchmark tool. Thus, we’ve decided to use the starting open area. This area has a lot of vegetation and its RT effects can tax most of the GPUs.
At 1080p/Max Settings/Max RT, our RTX3080 and RTX4090 were able to provide a smooth gaming experience. As we’ve already reported, the game does not support any upscaling technique like DLSS 2 or FSR 2.0, something that would have helped a lot.
At 1440p/Max Settings/Max RT, the only GPU that can provide a constant 60fps experience is the RTX4090. And as for native 4K/Max Settings/Max RT, the RTX4090 was once again able to provide a smooth gaming experience.
For comparison purposes, here is the performance of these three GPUs without any Ray Tracing effects.
Below you can find some comparison screenshots between RT On (left) and RT Off (right). The good news is that you don’t need a magnifying glass to see the visual improvements. The RT screenshots look more natural and less flat. However, the performance hit is quite big. Add to this the fact that there is no DLSS/FSR support, and you got yourself a pretty demanding RT implementation.
What’s really disappointing here is that there is no support for RTGI. FromSoftware should have gone all in and used Ray Tracing for Global Illumination. I mean, people are already complaining about the performance hit of the game’s RT, so why not blow everyone’s PC with RTGI, RT Shadows and RTAO?
All in all, Elden Ring’s Ray Tracing effects are demanding and do not justify their performance hit. Still, if you can brute force your way, you can go ahead and enable them. Let’s now hope that FromSoftware will add support for DLSS 2 or FSR 2.0 via a future update!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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You should really consider using the FPS unlocking mod as both your CPU and GPU are being VASTLY underutilized when locked to 60FPS, even at 4K.
Interesting, so unlocking the framerate in this game improves peformance?
I’m not entirely sure if performance will improve on weaker hardware by unlocking the FPS, but according to benchmarks from techpowerup, an RTX 3080 10GB can do 60FPS minimum at 4K without RT. For CPU, an 11th gen Intel CPU, a Ryzen 3700X or better can maintain 60ps (also according to techpowerup’s benchmarks).
Why should he download load a mod to go in a games favor when the developers didn’t care to go in there own favor to begin with. I think not dude. STOP enabling From Software my guy. John is doing exactly what he should do, show the game for the piece of sh*t it is intended to be.
You’re usually on point but you missed bigly here. Pretty much everyone by now knows fromsoft sucks at programming. John’s running benchmarks so of course he should unlock the FPS to show max potential of the hardware being tested, even if it needs to be done through a mod.
And mods don’t enable bad developer practice. Giving them money in the first place does. If I bought the game you could’ve blamed me partly for it but I didn’t, so take it up with the mindless consoomers that preorder (or buy at launch) unoptimized messes like this.
I didn’t saw his comment at first since he had me blocked, but based on your reply i was certain it was nigchalice with his usual rant against mods and lo and behold. Seriously, i think some modder cucked him, he always does this whenever someone sugests a mod that improves the game in any way.
lol does he really? That’s hilarious. Also, what did you do to get him to block you?
Yes, everytime someone mentions a mod that improves a game he makes a rant saying that “IT’S NOT THEIR JOB TO FIX/IMPROVE THE GAME”, typical nig behaviour that expects companies/government to fix everything for them.
“Also, what did you do to get him to block you?”
Not sure, probably when Cyberpunk 2077 was still fresh and he was a major CDProjekt fanboy, he used to interact with me. Or maybe it was his EGS hatewagon and how i used to say their free games are nice. Now he hates CDProjekt, but it just goes to show how being ahead of the curve makes people hate you.
Regarding Elden Ring, i’s kind of a mixed bag, From Soft deliver some of the best games currently, but they do come with technical problems and a minor SJW pandering, so you have to balance that if you want to support them or not.
FromSoft are easily the best programmers around in the game industry though. You aren’t actually so unintelligent that you thought their games are locked at 60 fps because they don’t know how to unlock it? Really, you are that dumb? Seriously?
Its entirely on purpose locked, because the combat mechanics are tied to your framerate. Dodge for example has a specific amount of i-frames, if you let players have a variable framerate your dodge helping you or not would be wildly inconsistent.
*snort* *snort* “Ssseriously?!?! Are you like, dumb?!?! You know they tied all the physics to the game’s framerate! Like, how can you not know this?!?!!?!! GAH!!” *snort* 🤓
Okay then, from could’ve just modified their code such that it’s NOT tied to frame rate, or at least modified the frame rate cap to something much higher. Lots of other developers do this, fromsoft has no excuse. Come on man, you didn’t create a new account just to show the world how empty your head is, did you?
Are you stupid? The combat mechanics are tied to the framerate, they intentionally lock it at 60 fps because all the effects of your attacks and dodges are tied to having specifically 60 fps.
You whiny little child.
So I’m the stupid whiny child when in 2022/modern day developers are still tying frame rates to physics? Then people are going in and undoing what a multimillion dollar company refuses to do? Please do us a favor and take a bath with a toaster. We don’t need people like you around here. Make sure you lather up really nice, I hear electricity loves suds.
Coudn’t you light a torch to see if there’s a difference?
Seems to be quite an upgrade in shadows and occlusion, everything looks to have more depth. Although would have been nice to see a torch lit in a dark area to see how it bounces light.
Indeed, John.
wouldnt it better to do this at day?
Now test it on amd cards you coward. Nvidia shill.
I think it’s more of being an amd shill to not show how poorly their cards perform with RT. Though the 7900 xtx should be in the ballpark of the 3080…
AMD is running this game just fine with RT, especially when FromSoftware only implemented RT Shadows.
I still getting stable 60FPS with RT enabled and maximum settings, all this ignoring the fact NVidia always performed poorly on Elden Ring due to CPU overhead.
So I must agree with John, where are the AMD benchmarks?
What’s the point when AMD RT performance is unplayable
unlock the fps…
The benchmarks are kind of pointless being capped at 60 like that. Just unlock it.
You do realize that this game like all from software games are locked at 60 FPS right? They don’t know how to make a games not FPS locked. Whatever is console norm is what they do.
Take two seconds to do some research next time man. Unlocking from soft games fps on pc is so easy maybe even you could do it.
Don’t need to do any research, with this type of benchmarking I don’t think mods should be used. That is giving the game an advantage it didn’t naturally have in the first place. Why should John make From Software look good when they didn’t care to make themselves look good. If From Software wanted the game to be unlocked they should’ve made it so. STOP ENABLING THESE DIRTY/NASTY developers.
Take a look at his profile pic and guess his IQ, for him it’s not that easy.
You should add a note that even the 4090 at 4k will dip below 60fps with RT maximum in certain places, which is ludicrous for the fastest GPU on earth.
Sh*t port with sh*t performance adds sh*t implementation of g*ytracing. This was as predictable as a sunrise.
Pauper Dog spoken.
Actually RT can be implemented better in games to perform better but developers don’t usually put in the time to implement it probably. I think Metro Exodus is the only one who really went all in. Cyberpunk upcoming patch will also. Just adding RT is not necessarily implementing it properly.
I don’t recall all the tech jargon but you can read up on it in tech forums on Ray Tracing.
I also like DLAA. Most games don’t have that either.
Why no results from AMD hardware? I realize they would be demoed by it but I would like to see by how much… And why not unlock the frame rate??? I play it currently locked at 4K/120fps. Very strange “benchmark” article here John. I usually like your stuff but this is a bogus article for sure.
You can get the same result using MXAO with reshade at 1/10th the performance cost
MXAO has unacceptable artifacts. If there’s smoke or fog, you can see MXAO shadows through it.
True, you just need to turn down intensity/distance setting to get it to work OK.
From Software adds raytracing but no upscaling options. Wow!
PC gamers paid a lot of money for extremely expensive “raytracing” GPU that offer no graphical benefits and plummets FPS.
Turning on raytracing makes the FPS plummet and it looks worse, with harsher unrealistic shadows and it adds buggy lighting artefacts. The grass also looks blotchy, as if the textures went through a compression algorithm.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8006068d621568b8ab0d4e31bed60b9f82939df122ec7ac28da692fe2db2fd44.jpg
Lots of PC gamers paid a lot of money for extremely expensive “raytracing” GPU.
Raytracing was used to hype these overpriced GPU.
In reality, raytracing offers no meaningful graphical benefits and plummets FPS.
That’s for sure. I own a 3090 and enable ray tracing effects if the game has DLSS, but I don’t really notice the difference ray tracing makes when I’m actually playing the game. Even reflections are something I don’t really notice when actually playing, even though reflections are perhaps the easiest thing to notice when it comes to the differences between RT on and RT off.
PC gaming at 60 fps in 2023. LOL.
Looks bad with RT.