According to some initial tests, it looks like Battlefield 5 performance gets cut in half when Nvidia RTX is enabled. RTX is Nvidia’s platform with ray tracing technology. The function is designed to make rendering light more realistic in a virtual 3D scene and is usually found in cutscenes but it’s now being used in real time.
TechPowerUp completed some tests switching the option on after the latest update for Battlefield 5 enabled it. The findings indicated that the game took a massive hit with RTX and Battlefield 5 performance halved when in use.
The tests began using one of the new beasts on the market: the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card with GeForce 416.94 WHQL drivers on Windows 10. The findings showed that when RTX was enabled under the “Ultra” setting, things got pretty ugly. When running at 1080p, the frame rate dropped by nearly 50 percent.
Additionally, the GeForce RTX 2080 was said to take a 60 percent cut to the frame rate at 1080p. The frames were said to drop from 138 frames per second to around 54 frames per second. Also, if you’re looking to play at 4K UHD, the drop renders the game nearly unplayable leaving you with only 22 frames per second in some cases.
It’s a bit unusual that arguably the best graphics cards on the market wasn’t able to run the game at 1080p 120Hz with the ultra RTX setting. Thankfully, there are lower settings or degrees of RTX that you can choose if you want a smoother experience. TechPowerUp also explained it only really brought small differences to the game and that RTX on low was almost indistinguishable to RTX on ultra.
Reportedly the raytracing only really kicks in on reflective surfaces, which Battlefield 5 doesn’t have too many of. Reflections are said to look amazing but you won’t find them often and chances are you’re not going to be hunting for mirrors while avoiding bullets flying across your screen.
