The most recent AMD Radeon GPUs could have wowed us in most of our sport benchmarks, however I’ve just lately been attempting them out with the brand new path tracing mode in Doom The Darkish Ages, and located that that is one space the place AMD nonetheless has a considerable sport of Nvidia catch-up to play. Path tracing is a extremely demanding type of pure ray tracing that makes gaming graphics look tremendous lifelike, and AMD says its newest GPUs can do it, however my check outcomes present that Nvidia has a giant higher hand right here.
As I discovered in my latest AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT evaluate, you do not want an Nvidia GPU to run Doom The Darkish Ages at first rate settings – even on the Extremely Nightmare settings, which incorporates quite a lot of ray-traced eye sweet, this funds AMD GPU will run the sport at 74fps. Nevertheless, path tracing is a special story. This superior type of ray tracing is not supported by many video games but, however it does make a considerable distinction to the lighting in a scene, making for a way more lifelike picture.
The picture above exhibits a scene with path tracing enabled, whereas the picture under exhibits the identical scene with out it. Each of them look good, however you’ll be able to see that path tracing provides an entire new stage of realism to the scene, wanting much less flat, and with the lighting affecting the colours and shadows of objects rather more realistically.
Path tracing is very demanding, although, and I wished to see what it is advisable run it. I firstly wished to see if this was an space the place Nvidia’s new RTX 5000-series GPUs provide a good step up in efficiency from their predecessors, however I additionally wished to see how AMD’s new GPUs dealt with it. In spite of everything, ray tracing is an space the place, till now, AMD has lagged behind Nvidia.
As you’ll be able to see within the graph above, path tracing is an absolute GPU killer on this sport in the event you do not enlist any assist from DLSS or FSR. Even the mighty Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 solely averages 55fps on this sport at 1,920 x 1,080. That is a superb 11fps in entrance of the RTX 4080, demonstrating the advantages of Nvidia’s newest RT cores, whereas the RTX 5070 averages 36fps.
Worryingly for AMD, although, each its 9070-series GPUs fail to common 30fps right here, regardless of the 9070 XT being significantly dearer than the RTX 5070 at present costs. I do not anticipate the 9070 XT to compete with the RTX 5080, after all, given the large worth distinction, however I’d anticipate it to beat the 5070.
With body charges this low, you really want to allow DLSS or FSR to make the sport playable, so I enabled each these applied sciences on the High quality setting to evaluate the impression. As you’ll be able to see within the graph under, the RTX 5080 then averages 90fps, with a 1% low of 74fps, which is stable in motion, and offers you some headroom to allow body gen too (extra on that later). In the meantime, the RTX 5070 nearly handles this sport at 60fps, however the 9070-series GPUs lag nicely behind.
To make issues worse for AMD, this sport does not assist its newest upscaling know-how, FSR 4, so you’ll be able to solely use an older model of FSR. It seems horrible, with blurriness, distortion, and noise across the edges of objects. As you’ll be able to see within the picture under, enjoying the sport with Nvidia DLSS 4 (which makes use of the brand new transformer mannequin), makes for rather more element and sharpness. If Doom The Darkish Ages provides assist for FSR 4, then that can assist AMD right here, however in the mean time, it is a clear win for Nvidia.
Then we come to border gen, which I do know is a divisive matter amongst players. My very own opinion is that body gen could be a useful gizmo within the field to present you a smoother body fee, however that it is solely value enabling in the event you’re already ranging from a good body fee within the first place. It will possibly’t repair a damaged body fee, and in some video games, it really works a lot better than others as nicely.
Maxing out the body gen on these 5 GPUs, you’ll be able to see that the brand new Nvidia playing cards speed up proper forward, and so they did really feel easy in motion too. I recorded the latency at 35ms on the RTX 5080, which is larger than the 25ms with out body gen, however it was nonetheless easily playable.
Once more, although, the AMD playing cards actually struggled right here, as FSR body gen does not work nicely on this sport in any respect. AMD is engaged on a type of AI FSR body gen in the mean time, however proper now the one choice is to make use of its present implementation, which leads to body charges leaping in all places in Doom The Darkish Ages. As you’ll be able to see, the 1% lows are nonetheless underneath 50fps on each GPUs because of this.
Transfer as much as 1440p, and Doom The Darkish Ages will nicely and really punish your GPU in the event you allow path tracing. Not one of many 5 GPUs I examined might obtain a good body fee with out DLSS or FSR enabled, as you’ll be able to see within the graph above.
Once more, nevertheless, the Nvidia GPUs deal with this workload higher than the AMD GPUs, and the sport is playable on the RTX 5080 in the event you allow DLSS on the High quality setting – will probably be even higher in the event you drop to the Balanced setting, which nonetheless seems first rate with the brand new DLSS transformer mannequin. I have not included the body gen outcomes for this decision, as solely two of the GPUs had a good sufficient start line to allow it, however you’ll be able to see how a lot AMD’s GPUs wrestle with this workload in the mean time.
Don’t be concerned in the event you personal an AMD GPU and wish to play Doom The Darkish Ages – it nonetheless seems incredible with out path tracing, and it runs easily on the brand new GPUs at Extremely Nightmare settings. Nevertheless, Nvidia has chalked up a really clear win right here, displaying that AMD nonetheless has an space the place it must catch up, in addition to the necessity to get FSR 4 into new video games.
That stated, there are additionally many cases the place our AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT evaluate confirmed that this GPU is rather more highly effective than the RTX 5070, and it additionally has 16GB of VRAM, which is turning into extra necessary within the newest video games. For those who’re searching for a GPU improve, check out our information to the perfect graphics card, the place we take you thru all our favourite choices at a variety of costs.
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