Elden Ring Ray Tracing Upgrade Test - Is It Worth It? - PS5 vs Xbox Series X vs PC

foreign 's release developer from software ads Ray tracing to PlayStation 5 Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game with updates 1.09 it landed suddenly and without much fanfare really besides the patch note details and I'd dare say a year on the discourse has moved on from Elden Ring's essential need for Ray tracing with the outstanding issues in console and PC performance are more of an urgent point to address but I'm getting ahead of myself the key points on patch 1.09 PS5 series X and PC all get ray Trace shadows and Ray traced ambient occlusion and yes if you're wondering alas Xbox series s misses out entirely here with zero RT support on PS5 answers X then this appears as a new on off toggle only available when the existing quality mode is enabled and meanwhile PC gets four quality settings for Ray tracing low medium high and maximum where each preset affects RT shadows and AO quality in combination and the last point the patch notes state that Elden Ring's frame rate and resolution may be affected when enabling the feature which let's be honest means it most likely will affect the frame rate and resolution but more on that later foreign [Music] software's credit having such a big visual feature added long after a Soul's title's release is a bit of a surprise a welcome one not since the scholars of the first sin revamp of Dark Souls 2 have we seen much of a change to a Souls game's aesthetic after launch but just how drastic is this Ray tracing upgrade over Elden Ring's original visuals its regular shadows and ambient occlusion is the move to Ray tracing really a significant enough upgrade for PS5 and series X users after a year-long wait and then lastly of course we have to talk about its performance impact switching away from the existing quality and frame rate modes on Console like on PS5 here to the ray tracing mode how greatly is playability affected and on a PC running at equivalent settings to a console on an RTX 2070 in this case how greatly does Ray tracing affect the game's frame rate there let's find out foreign first things first let's see the benefits starting with the PS5 version we're running the quality mode without Ray tracing on the left side and then with Ray tracing mode enabled on the right now the difference isn't always immediately obvious but it stands out most in bright outdoor areas and to be clear other visual settings like textures foliage draw distance and the use of screen space Reflections stay exactly in place there's no RT Reflections here in other words which is a shame but what we do get is high grade RT Global Shadows produced via from software's Dynamic time of day system so pick a spot outdoors with a long Suncast Shadow be it from swaying branches or buildings and Ray tracing now creates a naturally diffused look the edges of Tree Shadow shut off best with a regular quality mode uses an approximate approach that gives a sharp hard outline to every shadow Ray tracing instead now simulates an object's distance of the ground as with real life the further that object is from the ground the softer the resulting shade becomes and the more diffuse its edges are on the flip side the Arty Shadows from our Samurai character here naturally create sharp outlines since he's obviously placed much closer to the ground [Music] Ray Trace Shadow's work then and it's wonderfully effective in Eldon ring be it the long stretching tree Shadows at dusk around Khalid or the swaying branches around the stormhill gates the result is much more natural they're diffused softer where they need to be and then harder harsher where it naturally applies now there are drawbacks in this stormhill gate shop for example notice how the refresh the update on the Swain Tree Shadow animation is lure with Ray tracing enabled the regular old Shadows on ps5's quality mode stay in sync with the gameplay frame rate which to be fair is still far from 60fps however on the ray tracing mode these Shadows update at half or third intervals of the game's overall 60 hertz refresh which for the rare instance you do see animating Shadows rendered from an object far away like this it creates a slight disconnect thankfully it doesn't apply to most objects or characters close by where the Shadows update at the usual rate and as an aside it's a huge shame that even with Ray tracing included there's no Shadow casting from torches or bonfires even walking directly around these torches there's just no Shadow being cast which is a real missed opportunity foreign [Music] moving on the second part of the ray tracing upgrade is the addition of Ray traced ambient occlusion in effect Shadows for confined spaces the corners of dungeons the roots of grass Tufts and bushes are now more accurately simulated with ambient shade and better still it replaces the rather to be frank low quality screen space ambient occlusion approach Elden ring used on console and PCs standard which you may have noticed creates an odd silhouette artifact an obvious Light patch around a character it's at its worst as you walk right in front of elements where ssao is applied notably patches of grass and so with Ray tracing enabled it's problem solved ambient shading is applied to Grass bushes and all the rest of it regardless of whether it appears within screen space even if your character walks right in front of it the shading stays put and the result is a thicker more consistent layer of shading with Ray tracing enabled [Music] again there are some downsides here for one I've noticed that raytraced AO and shadows are not always in effect for Elden Ring's cutscenes this introduction to Margaret that fell early on for example defaults back to Conventional Shadow techniques at points now this might explain the frame rate results which we'll get to later on but yes as soon as the cutscene ends once gameplay resumes you get ray tracing back now another issue is related to increased Shadow pop in with Ray tracing enabled the limits of Ray traced ambient occlusion are different to screen space ambient occlusion and Elden ring appears to use a bvh structure that calculates Ray Trace Shadows at different points in the map it's often like an on off switch a binary toggle as we walk forward towards this enemy encampment so zooming in notice how Shadows under these barrels on the right switch on abruptly at a certain proximity to the player whereas they're factored into the scene much earlier using the regular ssao technique in the quality mode so something to bear in mind but on balance if you know where to look Elden ring does look all the better for having Ray tracing engaged foreign I've so far focused on PS5 just to dial into the ray tracing upgrades but what of series X and how do the consoles compare and what of the resolutions on each side using this Ray tracing mode well the answer to all of these is pretty straightforward side by side on patch 1.09 PS5 and series XR identical in practically every regard where Ray tracing is concerned with rt mode you get matching quality RT shadows and ambient occlusion and yes the range at which Shadows grass and geometry draw in remains identical too as for resolution they each share the same Target a native 2880 by 1620 being the Peak Resolution For The Ray tracing mode or in other words 75 scale on each axis of a 4K image now pixel counts to actually flag some variances where each console has examples of 15 60 p8 points suggesting Dynamic resolution scaling is an effect also interestingly the race racing mode on PS5 and series X runs at a lower overall resolution next to their quality modes which both typically push a pure 4K it's a sacrifice then a drop to 1620p in order to free up Hardware resource for Ray tracing foreign the next big question how does PC compare and in fact what's PC up to in general with its full Ray tracing presets to answer here they are laid out in a spectrum of quality on the far left Ray tracing is disabled on PC meaning Elden Ring's typical Shadows engage Instead at Max quality now you'll notice that for Suncast Shadows the low Ray tracing setting is a decent upgrade over Elden Ring's default Shadows however the medium high and maximum presets go one step further with more naturally diffused shadows and honestly up close there isn't much to split the end result on medium high or Max switching to a long distance shot though well this is where the top settings start to show a divide a full-time Zoom reveals ambient shading rendering at a greater distance with the high and maximum presets here fundamentally then the degrees of improvement are very fine once we move past the low RT setting now curiously the console Ray tracing setting like PS5 in this case squares up favorably to PC even on its Max setting in comparison the shadow draw is identical with PC maxed out the up close quality of sound car Shadows are a match too and in side by sides like this the big difference in effect isn't really related to the ray tracing at all rather it's just that the grass draws in at a higher setting on PC in this case reducing foliage popping in effect then PS5 answer his X run at equivalent to PC's height or Max Ray tracing setting from every test so far also interestingly even with this maximum Ray tracing setting we see a similar limit to console where there's this low Shadow refresh update around that stormhill gate area performance testing next the blunt truth is that Ray Trace shadows and ambient occlusion come at a considerable cost to PS5 and series X's frame rate it's so costly in fact that it's debatable whether it's worth enabling at all as nice as the results are I'll get to series X in a moment but for perspective first let's see the trade-off focusing in on PS5 we essentially have three main settings now on left we have the frame rate mode which runs at a dynamic 4K but drops to 1512p at lowest in order to push for 60fps and then in the middle is our 4K resolution quality mode dropping performance by as much as 15 to 20 frames per second in order to push for a crispr 4K image and lastly of course is our new Ray tracing mode on right this is presented as an offshoot to the Quality mode in the menus but really it's its own Beast running with a 1620p target with drops in resolution under and yes the frame rate in the ray tracing mode takes another hit beyond the quality mode by around 15 FPS again all of which means the three modes have a clear performance spread across the graph in a nutshell frame rate mode guns for 60fps Quality mode hangs closer to the 40 to 45 FPS range and Ray tracing mode hovers at just around the 30fps line the fact so much of Ray tracing mode runs at 30fps or just slightly above is far from ideal obviously at least for most open World Travel it doesn't give the RR compatible displays enough data to work with to create a perceptual smooth result though In fairness at times RT mode Rises well above 30 FPS if you know where to look The Hub area for example is much closer to 45 FPS and I've got to say the whole caled area benefits from being a more Barren sparsely laid out region where the ray tracing mode is surprisingly close to the Quality mode results there's a range to the readings in other words but for the bulk of play we're looking at a mode that may as well be running with a 30 FPS cap so long as the frame pacing is even even in that case though a 30 of his cap wouldn't save it the calip through the stormhill Section for example has PS5 dipping well below 30fps and all round sub 30fps drops are more likely with Ray tracing mode engaged [Music] one last point on Console it's worth noting Ray tracing mode runs at a similar frame rate during cutscenes to the Quality mode and frame rate mode all signs point to Elden ring settings being fixed in place for cutscenes regardless of your selected mode and the ray tracing appears disabled too all of which makes sense given the synchronized frame rate line for most of the way through the cutscene though there are some odd variances but that's PS5 in the nutshell the result in the ray tracing mode is hardly ideal though honestly it's the price you'd expect to pay for extra visual features layered on top of an experience that was already sub 60 FPS I mean even the frame rate mode struggles to look at 60fps the biggest problem of course is the sub 30fps drops in the ray tracing mode though which do genuinely affect the game's playability switching to Xbox series X it's much the same story only slightly worse than PS5 the average frame rate on its Ray tracing mode is broadly similar to PS5 In fairness putting us at just around the 30 FPS line for traversal battles also drag it down to around the 30 FPS line but on balance siriusx is more prone to sub 30 FPS drops overall the cause isn't clear but in side-by-side comparison there's a trend towards PS5 running at around 5 FPS higher for long stretches which gives it a bit more GPU Headroom to avoid drops but still it's marginal and between the two most of players fixed around that middle 30fps line in fact I've noticed the biggest drops on series X relate to its Dynamic settings and resolution and there's a slight delay in the renderer keeping up with the action so for example looking to the sky takes us to the 45 FPS line and at this point the native resolution jumps to 1620p in the ray tracing mode while visual settings ramp up to a higher preset but if we look down sharply the renderer stays at those values though in facing a more complex scene there's a moment where it crashes below 30fps as it adjusts those settings again still the turnout for series X isn't radically different to PS5 otherwise and with so much play hovering around 30 FPS it's hard to recommend a final word on PC performance now rather than gunning for a bleeding edge PC setup we've settled on something more practical more affordable in terms of spec to get a better sense of Ray tracing's performance impact for most users so in this case we've set up a ryzen 5 3600 machine paired with 16 gigabytes of ddr4 RAM clocked at 3600 megahertz and an RTX 2070 GPU we're running at settings equivalent to PS5 and series X's quality mode as well but use maximum settings in cases where consoles use a hybrid setting and also in terms of resolution we're locked at 1800p as a kind of middle ground for image quality given there's no DRS option for PC the big variable here though is Ray tracing of course where the left side has it disabled and the right side puts it at high which again I think is The Sweet Spot in terms of performance cost versus results and the turnout well honestly much of play with without Ray tracing runs at 60fps making the Divide hard to pick out from those shots but once we emerge to Lim Grave's open world the cost is pretty clear with both dropping well under 60fps in practice then with Ray tracing enabled we're looking at an average of 33 FPS across this Lim grave test run versus 51 FPS with it disabled or to put it another way that's a 34.8 percent hit performance with Ray tracing enabled at high which means if you're on a less current GPU like the RTX 2070 you're being pulled well under 60fps worse still the ray tracing mode in our run anyway also introduces extra hitches stutters causing extra spikes on the frame time reading at worst going down to 180 milliseconds it's really not ideal and the bottom line is the PC release of Elden ring had bigger priorities ahead of Ray tracing I mean the frame rate is still capped at 60ps no matter what you do we still have no Ultra wide display support and if we're to have Ray tracing here and take such a big performance hit in the process why not introduce Technologies like nvidia's dlss or Andy's FSR to help me to get the impact of frame rate typically dlss or FSR go hand in hand with the addition of Ray tracing and games given it's so taxing but for Elden ring it's completely absent [Music] thank you the arrival of Ray tracing is a welcome surprise a purely additive feature and the upside is the presentation of Shadows and ambient occlusion are clearly improved with Ray tracing enabled on console and PC however it's hard to see this as the feature most elder ring fans truly wanted in the context of the game's sub 60fps performance on Console in light of the lacking PC features like running at frame rates above 60 FPS a DRS option or even support for ultrawide displays and in the context of the performance penalty Ray tracing inflicts on your Hardware without dlss or FSR Technologies to help it along it's really hard to celebrate a year on from Elden Ring's release and as great as the core game is we're still faced with all these Technical shortfalls and the fact Ray tracing is prioritized as a feature instead is a bit well baffling I mean don't get me wrong I'm glad to see the game's visuals getting attention and support for new technologies like Ray tracing is only a positive but with Elden Ring's huge commercial success I really you hope it's a sign of more efforts to come in areas where the game really needs it but that's all from me today if you did find this analysis useful or insightful in any way feel free to like or subscribe and don't forget to hit that Bell for instant notifications as any new video lands to get a high quality version of this video check out our Patron at digitalventry.net and to get in touch directly just use Twitter but for me for now thanks for watching

Channel: Digital Foundry

Views: 493,623

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Id: fFINDxwMjVU

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 30 2023