Metro Exodus With And Without Ray Tracing
Metro Exodus performance assay: RTX, ray tracing, and DLSS benchmarked
Nvidia's GeForce RTX cards take been a target for criticism since they launched last year, and while the RTX 2060 finally brings pricing down into the potentially affordable range, at $350 it's however a high-cease card. With but one ray tracing enabled game launched final year (Battlefield v), and 1 other game with DLSS support (Last Fantasy 15), the two marquee features accept gone largely unused. It's not unfair to say that Nvidia has a lot riding on the Metro Exodus railroad train, every bit it will be the get-go publicly bachelor game with both RTX ray tracing and DLSS support. I'll dig into the details of both technologies and what they do—and don't exercise—for Metro Exodus in a moment, only let'south cover some other details first.
If you haven't played any of the previous Metro games—and particularly if you didn't endeavor playing them when they were brand new—you might not realize that the series has a well-deserved reputation for pushing hardware to its limits. Some might fifty-fifty argue that the developers looked at Crysis and said, "Yeah, we can make a game that runs like a turtle at maximum quality, even on the fastest hardware available." Given that history, information technology'south not too surprising to run into Exodus existence i of the outset games to utilize ray tracing.
Metro Exodus provides nearly everything we'd expect from a modern PC release, sort of. Getting at some items will require manual intervention—hence the yellow marks. You tin can select ultrawide (21:9) and even doublewide (32:9) resolutions, but the field of view doesn't automatically conform. The default beliefs tin give you lot a severely stretched view for wider aspect ratios, but there'due south some aid bachelor.
Go into your 'Documents\Saved Games\Metro Exodus' folder and under the saves, you should be able to find a user.cfg file. Edit that and you can input whatever custom resolution, likewise as tweak the r_base_fov setting. The default is 60, but since there's no multiplayer support, hacking the config file and using a wider FOV isn't cheating and appears fully supported. (I tried 3840x1080 and it worked, though you'll become black bars on loading screens and some text in the UI can become cut off.)
Modern support is a red mark equally usual. With no official support for modding in the outset two games, plus a reportedly hard engine to work with, I don't anticipate Exodus to do whatever better. In that location's no toggle HUD feature either, but in that location is a photograph way. It's possible there's a setting in the config file that will disable the HUD likewise, though I didn't find one in my initial look.
Basically, you get resolution back up, a framerate that can be fully unlocked, controller support, and the ability to customize the key mapping. At least most of the limitations can exist worked around.
<em>Swipe left/right for boosted images</em>
Metro Exodus settings overview
A discussion on our sponsor
As our partner for these detailed performance analyses, MSI provided the hardware we needed to test Metro Exodus on a bunch of different AMD and Nvidia GPUs, multiple CPUs, and several laptops—meet below for the full details, forth with our Performance Analysis 101 article. Thank you, MSI!
The graphics settings Metro Exodus exposes are a fleck odd. I gave Metro Exodus a green in our features list, by and large because it'southward just the second game to have public ray tracing and DLSS support—the first to have both—and it actually fabricated it into the shipping release. (I was skeptical that would happen, afterward waiting for over five months at present for the Shadow of the Tomb Raider patch.) That's the good news, but if you lot don't have an RTX card, there are only a few settings you tin tweak.
As with the previous Metro games, things like ambient occlusion, texture quality, etc. are all missing. There are 9 graphics settings to tweak, only ii of those are simply for RTX cards, and two more than don't impact operation or image quality much. Allow's speedily run through the settings and briefly list what each does, every bit Metro Exodus doesn't provide any caption.
Quality: This is a single setting that appears to comprehend all of the normal 'advanced' options you see in other games. This affects post-processing, anti-aliasing, texture and shadow resolution, lighting, shadows, and more. As expected, information technology has a massive affect on overall operation as well as prototype quality. Going from ultra to low will boost framerates by up to seventy-80 percent (depending on your GPU and other settings), while going from ultra to extreme will driblet performance about xx percent. Annotation that enabling RTX effects is but possible if Quality is ready to medium or to a higher place.
Motion Blur: Sets the quality of motion blur to low, medium, or high. This has very little effect on performance. (You can disable motion blur completely in the config file if you prefer.)
To a higher place is one of the amend scenes showing the difference between ray tracing and traditional rendering from Metro Exodus. Note nonetheless that even the ray traced version has many oddities, like why doesn't the gun or guitar or cup cast a shadow, other than on itself? That's because GI isn't necessarily concerned with casting shadows, but rather the default brightness from a single global light source. Right click and open the ii images in a new tab if you want to compare the full resolution images.
Ray Tracing: For Nvidia RTX cards, enables or disables ray tracing—in this example, ray tracing is just used for global illumination (GI). In that sense, it's almost the contrary of Battlefield 5, which used ray tracing exclusively for reflections. GI helps to light upwardly the scenes, and without GI you often get areas that are either likewise bright. Anyway, it can have a articulate impact on visuals in some areas of the game (especially in buildings and such), but many algorithms be that already practise a decent chore at approximating GI. Either way, ray tracing can be prepare to off, loftier, or ultra on an RTX carte du jour. The high setting drops framerates almost xxx percentage while the ultra setting drops framerates about forty percent (depending on your GPU, resolution, and other settings).
DLSS: Also for Nvidia RTX cards, this enables or disables the use of DLSS. Information technology's not clear what resolution is used prior to DLSS existence applied, just the visual difference at 1080p didn't experience equally great as at 4k. Enabling this can heave performance almost xx-40 percent if yous're using ray tracing, but yous tin can also use DLSS without ray tracing and go a fifteen-30 per centum boost to framerates—both come at the cost of paradigm allegiance and blurriness, withal. DLSS can merely be enabled at 1440p and higher up for the RTX 2080/2080 Ti, or 1080p and above for the RTX 2060/2070.
Another comparing, this fourth dimension with and without DLSS. Correct-click and open each image in a new tab to meet the full resolution images, where the fuzziness is far more credible. If you're wondering what the above scene looks like without ray tracing, we take that every bit well (opens in new tab) .
HairWorks: Enables higher quality fur and hair on sure creatures. HairWorks is role of Nvidia's GameWorks library, but it will run on AMD GPUs as well. Turning this off improves performance by half-dozen percent on Nvidia GPUs and 14 percent on AMD GPUs—at to the lowest degree in the criterion scene (which has a hairy bunny at the start).
Advanced PhysX: Another formerly Nvidia exclusive engineering, we don't hear much about PhysX these days—probably because other physics libraries are more popular. This will piece of work on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs, though turning it off did not affect framerates (in the benchmark at least).
Tessellation: Add depth (more polygons) to otherwise flat geometry. Turning this setting off increases performance by x-13 percentage.
1 more comparison: HairWorks on vs. HairWorks off. It's only used for fur as far as I can tell, or at least that's one readily visible difference. Wait at the beautiful little bunny!
Texture Filtering: There are only ii options, 4x anisotropic filtering and 16x AF. It'southward difficult to see the visual improvement going beyond 4x in most games, Exodus included, and turning this down to 4x has no meaning effect on performance.
Shading Rate: This setting determines how many shaders are run per pixel, with 100 existence the normal 1:1 ratio. It has a range of 0.4x-four.0x, with 0.5x beingness somewhat similar l per centum resolution scaling except just practical to pixels (not geometry or other elements), while 2.0 is sort of like 2x supersampling for shader calculations. This can take a significant impact on performance as well as visual quality. Setting this to 0.5x improves performance by 18-24 percent, while increasing this to two.0x decreases performance 25-30 pct—I didn't even endeavour maxing it out at 4.0x. About people should get out this setting at 1.0, though the low preset in the benchmark utility sets it to 0.5.
MSI provided all the graphics hardware for this testing, including the latest GeForce RTX cards. All of the GPUs come up with pocket-size factory overclocks, which in most cases better performance by around 5 percentage over the reference models.
My master testbed uses the MSI Z390 1000000 Godlike (opens in new tab) motherboard with an overclocked Cadre i7-8700K (opens in new tab) processor and 16GB of DDR4-3200 CL14 retention from G.Skill (opens in new tab). I've also run additional tests on other Intel CPUs, including a stock Cadre i9-9900K (opens in new tab), Cadre i5-8400 (opens in new tab), and Core i3-8100 (opens in new tab). AMD'south Ryzen vii 2700X (opens in new tab) and Ryzen 5 2600X (opens in new tab) processors (also at stock) employ the MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC (opens in new tab), while the Ryzen five 2400G (opens in new tab) is tested in an MSI B350I Pro Air-conditioning (because the M7 lacks a video outputs). All AMD CPUs besides used DDR4-3200 CL14 RAM. The game is run from a Samsung 860 Evo 4TB SATA SSD (opens in new tab) on desktops, and from the NVMe OS drive on the laptops.
I've used the latest Nvidia 419.17 and AMD nineteen.2.two drivers for testing, and updated the results. Earlier testing doesn't show markedly different performance. Future driver updates and patches could change things, of course, just there'due south not much I tin do well-nigh that.
Metro Exodus: how we tested
PC GAMER METRO EXODUS TESTBED
There are quite a few wrinkles to iron out earlier we get to the benchmarks. First things beginning, while Metro Exodus supports ray tracing and DLSS, the benchmark utility that I'chiliad using for these results currently has a bug that causes DLSS to not work. It works in the game, only not in the benchmark. So why not just skip the benchmark and do everything manually? I could, but after doing some testing, I found that the benchmark tends to be more demanding than nigh areas of the game that I've encountered (though admittedly I'1000 non that far forth in the game—just to the beginning train stop area).
I like using publicly bachelor benchmarks when possible, as information technology allows others to compare results, so I'm sticking with the benchmark utility (found in the game'south installation binder). However, I did do some in-game testing of DLSS for reference. I won't include those figures in the charts, since they're from a different test sequence, only enabling DLSS improved performance by upwardly to 40 percent. It also appears to cause excessive blurriness at higher resolutions, so if yous were hoping DLSS would work something similar the following, be prepared for some disappointment.
Nvidia does give a disclaimer well-nigh DLSS quality as well, but it feels a little disingenuous. "Our supercomputer never sleeps. It is constantly doing more grooming to meliorate operation and prototype quality. When we reach a large milestone, we send out an update then gamers can become the latest and greatest. Information technology's possible that a new set of performance and paradigm improvements will become available later on review and around the fourth dimension the game launches."
Sure, information technology's possible, simply after seeing the current state of DLSS paradigm quality, I'm left feeling more than than a little skeptical. Fundamentally, there'due south only so much that tin can be done to fill in 'missing' information. Deep learning algorithms have proven incredibly robust at performing certain kinds of work, and I don't doubt that DLSS can improve epitome quality at the same resolution compared to no DLSS. Merely having seen the results in Final Fantasy 15 and now Metro Exodus, it feels much more than like DLSS is there to brand ray tracing viable by reducing the target resolution, non because it tin can meet or exceed the quality of other forms of anti-aliasing.
Also note that a DLSS update has apparently come out since my initial testing. Things may have improved somewhat, but having looked at both Battlefield 5 and Metro Exodus, with and without DLSS, I remain of the opinion that the non-DLSS looks better. Then once again, I besides think TAA often adds too much blur. YMMV.
Metro Exodus doesn't include whatever presets equally such, but the criterion tool does have low, normal, high, ultra, and extreme presets defined, along with RTX (which is ultra plus high ray tracing with DLSS enabled). I've tested at 1080p using the five presets, plus 1440p and 4k using the loftier preset. I've as well tested with ray tracing enabled at all three resolutions, only using the 'high' settings rather than ultra, and without DLSS.
Why non become for ultra or extreme? The latter is like shooting fish in a barrel to write off, since it bumps the shading rate to 2.0x—a course of supersampling that's likewise demanding for any current GPU to really handle. Looking at the high, ultra, and extreme options, there'south likewise a relatively modest departure in image quality, so I've opted for the loftier setting at higher resolutions so that they're potentially within accomplish of some of the GPUs. But if you're wondering, even the RTX 2080 Ti but gets 49 fps at 4k ultra, and that drops to 31 fps with ray tracing at ultra likewise, and so no i is probable to really play at that setting using current hardware.
2 final items to betoken out. First, Metro supports both the DX12 (information technology's required if you lot want to utilize ray tracing and/or DLSS) and DX11 APIs. For these tests, I'm only looking at DX12 performance, though I did check DX11 fashion as well. I can't speak to every possible GPU, but at least on the GPUs I checked, in that location wasn't any benefit to running in DX11 fashion—that may not exist true of older generation graphics hardware, withal. The second point is that Metro Exodus is an Nvidia promoted game—you can get a free lawmaking with the purchase of an RTX graphics carte from certain retailers. As usual, that means there are potentially better optimizations for Nvidia than AMD, only there's not much to practise about it other than run the benchmarks.
Metro Exodus graphics card benchmarks
Starting with the graphics carte du jour benchmarks, all testing was conducted using an overclocked i7-8700K processor, in order to reduce any other potential bottlenecks. (CPU benchmarks are downwardly below, or will be soon enough.) Even though I wouldn't normally include testing of every 'preset,' the criterion utility makes it relatively painless so I have seven different charts. The results of my testing also back up the Metro Exodus arrangement requirements, which are quite bulky. Plenty of GPUs can do 30fps or more than, particularly at 1080p low, but for 60fps at 1080p medium and to a higher place, you'll need a reasonably high-end graphics card.
Equally I mentioned at the beginning, Metro games have a well-earned reputation for being quite enervating. Metro Exodus doesn't intermission with tradition, meaning fifty-fifty relatively strong GPUs can struggle, and upkeep GPUs aren't going to maintain 60fps at 1080p, not even close. The depression preset even drops the shading rate to 50 percent, pregnant one-half as many pixels and some clear loss of visual allegiance.
If you're hoping for 60fps average at minimum quality, y'all'll need at least an RX 570, and if y'all want to keep minimum fps to a higher place lx, you'll need a GTX 1070 or improve. Low-end integrated graphics solutions basically won't do well in Exodus, bold they tin run it at all. AMD'south Vega eleven somehow manages to but squeak past the defended GTX 1050 GPU (probably because of the lack of VRAM on the 1050), plugging along with a 40fps average, merely minimums are in the 20s. Budget cards like the RX 560 and GTX 1050 Ti come in just shy of 50fps, though yous tin certainly play the game at 20-thirty fps in a pinch.
The normal setting puts shading rate at 100, which along with the increase in the quality setting immediately results in a large boost in prototype quality and a large hit to performance—midrange and budget GPUs lose well-nigh half of their performance. I'd be interested in seeing Metro Exodus implement variable rate shading—a technique where fewer shaders are used on 'uncomplicated' surfaces but more on 'complex' areas, which can supposedly boost performance 15-25 pct. That's some other feature Nvidia talked about with its Turing compages, though, so it wouldn't help older GPUs.
Getting average fps above 60 at the normal/medium setting is still possible with the upper midrange graphics cards like a GTX 1070 or RTX 2060, but simply the RTX 2080 Ti (and almost the RTX 2080) keep minimums at or above 60. At to the lowest degree this isn't a multiplayer twitch shooter where high framerates are really important—kick dorsum and relax a flake, and 30fps or college is usually fine (especially if you have a G-Sync/FreeSync brandish).
Moving to high quality, still at 1080p, comparatively the performance drop isn't quite every bit astringent as the move from low to medium, but most of the GPUs are already struggling. Mainstream cards like the 1060 6GB and 580 8GB are at 40fps, and it's only going to get worse from here. The RTX 2060 and to a higher place may average more 60fps, but minimums are much lower. The RTX 2080 Ti is the simply GPU to break 100fps, and minimums still dip beneath that marker in some of the more demanding areas of the game.
I've also run tests with ray tracing enabled (set to loftier, as the visual difference between high and ultra ray tracing is relatively pocket-sized). Ray tracing causes the RTX cards to lose anywhere from 20-35 pct of their performance. The RTX 2080 takes the greatest hit while the 2080 Ti (and Titan RTX) has the smallest drop. Enabling DLSS (which withal tends to look blurrier, though in move it's not too bad) should starting time most of the lost performance, but of course you can only enable DLSS at 1080p with the 2060 and 2070.
The downward screw continues with 1080p ultra. Now only the RTX 2070 and to a higher place can break 60fps boilerplate for Nvidia, and the Radeon Vii is the only AMD card to achieve that feat. The difference in epitome quality is relatively slight between high and ultra, so unless you lot accept a very fast GPU this is a good stopping point. But I'm non done…
Extreme quality is basically like ultra, merely even more than demanding. The shading rate is 200, and while there's no specific information on what the Quality setting does, information technology appears to increase texture resolution, shadow quality, and a few other bits. Anyway, this is 1 for future GPUs rather than today'south hardware. Extreme quality at 1080p is basically equally demanding as 1440p ultra or 4k high, and you'll want at least a 6GB GPU to fifty-fifty attempt to run it.
Stepping back to high quality but increasing the resolution, the Radeon Vii and up tin however average more than 60fps at 1440p high. Other than that, the rankings remains pretty much the same equally earlier.
For ray tracing, the 2080 Ti (and Titan RTX) nevertheless breaks 60fps as well, even without DLSS, while the other RTX cards autumn well below that mark. All of the RTX cards also drib 30 to 35 percentage of their performance past enabling ray tracing.
4k 60fps at high quality isn't actually within reach of most GPUs correct now—even a Titan RTX comes up just shy of that marker, though there are enough of areas in the game where it would suspension 60fps as well.
Turn on ray tracing and framerates drop well-nigh 35 percentage again. And if yous want to think about running the game in 10 years, 4k ultra and extreme are there to really push the limit. Over again, DLSS can better performance, merely the fuzziness it currently brings in my opinion is worse than just running at a lower resolution and letting your monitor stretch the paradigm to fill your screen. (Aye, I've tried both, and given the better overall experience with 1440p 144Hz with FreeSync or G-Sync, it'south a more popular solution regardless.)
Metro Exodus CPU performance
I take a agglomeration of CPU results that I'chiliad stuffing into a single gallery, so make certain to click through them. Lower resolutions and settings tend to make the CPU more than of a factor, just in my testing the CPU tends to exist less of a factor than in other games. Anyway, here are results, with and without RTX enabled (just not DLSS), using an RTX 2080. (Ray tracing was just enabled on the three high settings charts.)
<em>Swipe left/correct for additional benchmarks</em>
Interestingly, Intel's CPUs manage to outperform AMD'southward Ryzen processors pretty much beyond the range of testing. Clearly having more cores and threads isn't a priority for Metro Exodus. Even the lowly Cadre i3-8100 beats the Ryzen seven 2700X at 1080p depression by x percent, and the overclocked i7-8700K is as much every bit 40 pct faster.
Turn up the settings to 4k high and it's mostly splitting hairs, a 2 per centum lead for Intel chips (unless y'all count the Ryzen 5 2400G). Nearly probable Metro Exodus is hitting system resources in such a mode that cache latencies are more of a factor than in other games. Non being able to leverage AMD's additional CPU cores/threads tends to become hand in manus with that sort of beliefs.
Metro Exodus notebook performance
<em>Swipe left/right for additional benchmarks</em>
Given that Metro Exodus isn't particularly CPU express, our notebook GPU testing looks well-nigh equally expected. The desktop cards are faster than their mobile counterparts, by about 5-10 percent, at most resolutions. 1080p depression is the only exception, where the essentially higher clockspeeds of the desktop CPU announced to pay off, at to the lowest degree compared to the GTX 1070 and 1080 notebooks.
Equally far equally 60fps is concerned, only 1080p depression breaks that marker on the three notebooks. Move to 1080p and the normal preset and the GTX 1060 comes up short, and the same goes for the 1070 at 1080p high and higher up. Ouch. Only then, after the earlier GPU results, these mobile performance charts shouldn't exist as well surprising.
Metro Exodus: carrying the Crysis torch
I've spent a lot of fourth dimension kicking the tires of Metro Exodus to see how it runs, as well as how it looks. There are areas where the ray tracing effects look much meliorate, and other areas where you likely wouldn't fifty-fifty notice their presence. The performance hit is still quite steep, and that's merely to exercise ray traced global illumination.
Imagine how much more ray tracing ability nosotros'll need to do global illumination, reflections, refractions, shadows, and lighting at the same time. I'k even so optimistic for what ray tracing in games will hateful in a few years, just I totally get why so many are planning to skip the first circular of RTX hardware and wait for the inevitable 7nm sequel—hopefully with ii or 3 times the ray tracing functioning.
With my testing of Metro Exodus now complete (and I've retested with the latest updates and drivers, only for skilful mensurate), in that location's not much to say other than anything above the high preset is going to be out of reach of mere mortal PCs. Even with the silliness of a Titan RTX carte (which I borrowed from a Falcon Northwest PC that I'1000 testing), 4k high will dip below 60fps at times. Turn on ray tracing and DLSS and y'all'll notwithstanding be looking at 50-55fps averages for the more demanding areas of the game.
At that place are a few other oddities worth pointing out—similar the fact that at that place'due south no exclusive fullscreen fashion. Metro appears to run fullscreen, but if y'all capture a screenshot you'll speedily see that it's really running at your desktop resolution and simply stretching whatsoever lower resolution y'all select to fill the screen. That's peachy, but it is a bit unusual. And then again, Forza Horizon 4 and Shadow of War practice the same thing (as do enough of other games), and if you lot're actually worried virtually running at a 'native' 1080p while using a 1440p or 4k display, you lot can always alter the desktop resolution.
I more than departing shot at DLSS, running the latest 419.17 drivers and game updates as of Feb. 26, 2019. DLSS looks a lot similar doing bicubic upscaling from 2716x1528 to 4k and and then applying a soft mistiness filter in Photoshop. But don't worry, things could amend in the time to come!
Metro Exodus is very different from the previous games in some ways, and withal from a technical level there are similarities. Metro 2033 and Metro Last Calorie-free couldn't run at maximum quality on the hardware at the time, and the same holds for Metro Exodus. It'southward clearly congenital to push button beyond the capabilities of today's high-terminate PCs, and fifty-fifty tomorrow's futurity tech probably won't be able to max out the settings. But come up back in five or ten years, and it could end upwards looking meliorate than ever.
Will gamers be willing to give the Epic Shop a shot and upgrade their PC for Metro Exodus? That's probably request also much, and I suspect many will wait a fleck longer before they're willing to spring on this detail train. Just if yous already own an RTX bill of fare and are looking for something to show off its potential, this is at least a better attempt than Battlefield 5 (in my volume, anyhow).
Metro Exodus With And Without Ray Tracing,
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/metro-exodus-settings-performance-ray-tracing-dlss/
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