Ray tracing in Battlefield V – significantly better performance with the new update

In mid-November, game developer DICE launched the first major update to its new Battlefield V. The update implemented support for DirectX Raytracing, which in practice meant that the game engine could render realistic reflections using ray tracing together with compatible graphics hardware such as Nvidia’s RTX series.

Upon release, the editors were able to quickly establish that ray tracing entailed a real performance penalty when it was activated, which was also something many worried about before the launch. It was also clear that the actual implementation felt early and not completely finished, with settings that were not activated properly and unmotivated frame rate drops in the game’s single player mode.

Since then, however, the diligence’s light has shone on DICE, where the developer together with Nvidia has worked hard to optimize the implementation of ray tracing in Battlefield V. The fruit of the work has been included in the latest update to the game, which was fittingly released during the day in a package along with new maps for both single and multiplayer modes.

According to the developer, the update will improve the frame rate by up to 50 percent when ray tracing used and also improve the stability in this mode. In addition, it has been filed on scenarios where a lot of trees and vegetation are present – something that could previously give real dips on certain maps in the game’s single player mode.

The single player mode was something we ourselves encountered huge performance problems with, and therefore it felt appropriate to put the new update to the test to see what improvements have been made. We use the same test configuration as the previous article, with the exception of the new graphics driver Geforce 417.22.

The test loop is performed once again in the game’s single player mode War Stories and the map Tirailleur. The sequence consists of a walk through a forest area with generous amounts of water accumulation on the ground – something that previously turned out to give huge performance losses when ray tracing was activated.

Even before we started the measurements, a real subjective upsurge of flow was noticed in the game’s single player mode with ray tracing activated. This observation was also reflected in the performance measurements, where the real image frequency drops on the Tirailleur map are a memory only after the latest update.

The combination of the general optimizations as well as specifically targeted measures in scenarios with a lot of vegetation gives enormous impressions with ray tracing set to the “Ultra” level of detail on this map. In many cases, this is almost a doubling of the frame rate compared to the previous update, which for example gives the Geforce RTX 2080 Ti the opportunity to keep an average above the 60 FPS line.

With the detail mode for ray tracing set to “Low”, good performance gains are again visible, although not quite as dramatic as with “Ultra”. For the current entry-level card in the RTX family, Geforce RTX 2070, the new update is 47 percent better performance, which pushes the card up just below the golden frame rate of 60 frames per second.

Summary thoughts

With the results in hand, it is clear that there is a lot for game developers to learn about optimization and implementation of new graphics techniques such as ray tracing in real time. Historically, this does not come as a direct surprise either, as new technologies always have a learning curve and a little bit trial and error before finding the right level visually versus the performance impact.

While we saw really impressive performance gains after the update, it should be mentioned that this scenario is an extreme case that suffered from really serious performance problems in the past. Therefore, one should not expect a doubling of frame rate in, for example, the title’s multiplayer mode ray tracing activated, although there are probably good opportunities for performance gains there as well.

In summary, ray tracing in Battlefield V still a very heavy-handed story, but with the new update there is enormously much more potential to get a fully acceptable frame rate in both single and multiplayer modes. We look forward to seeing what further optimizations can bring from both the developers’ and Nvidia’s side.

Do you notice any performance gains with the new update and ray tracing? Share in the comment thread!