Metro exodus dlss and ray tracing: comparison and gaming experience

Metro Exodus is undoubtedly one of the most anticipated titles by fans of the saga and lovers of first-person shooting immersed in post-apocalyptic worlds. One of the great innovations that the creation of 4AGames brings is that it implements Nvidia RTX technology, with Ray Tracing and DLSS to experience realism at a new level.

But does RTX technology really deliver the results we expect? This will be what we will see in this article with Metro Exodus, so stay tuned because we started.

Index of contents

In case you don't know what Nvidia RTX is yet

Before going to see images of this comparison of Metro Exodus DLSS and Ray Tracing, we will have to know more or less what these two technologies of the new Nvidia cards consist of. So we can put ourselves in a situation and identify the differences between the catches.

Ray Tracing or ray tracing, is nothing more than trying to simulate by means of a graphic processor what our eyes see in reality. In the real world it is possible to see objects, their shape and colors, thanks to photons of light, and how they affect and reflect on them. What Nvidia's Ray Tracing does is simulate the behavior of light in games using computer algorithms and the RT cores of the GPU, and also in real time, that is, as they are generated at the same moment. When this system manages to do it with a 100% effectiveness, the games will look as we see the real world.

On the other hand, DLSS or Deep Learning Super Sampling, is a technology that provides the GPU with "intelligence". What is done is to use deep learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, based on mathematical matrices (tensors) to perform a more efficient real-time image rendering in video games, based on figures and objects that you already know. Translated into practice, DLSS is used to render the images of a game at a lower resolution and higher speed, and then rescale them to the real resolution, thus improving the performance (FPS) of games with Ray Tracing activated. DLSS is, so to speak, the new Antialiasing for gaming.

Metro Exodus stage and test equipment

We already know that these are two broad technologies and what they are capable of doing. Now we are going to see how our judgmental experience of this new title has been.

Metro Exodus proposes a post-apocalyptic environment located in Russia, where open-world scenarios full of details, ruins and abundance of snow are mixed where the incidence of light rays is an important point and will make the machine work. We also find the signature interior environments of the house, where rendering is a key point to provide us with this feeling of agony with low lighting and dirt everywhere.

To carry out these tests we have used the new Gigabyte AERO 15-X9, of which you will soon have its analysis. This equipment has an Nvidi to RTX 2070 Max-Q of 8 GB GDDR6 and an Intel Core i7-8750H CPU under 16 Gb of DDR4 RAM. In summary, we should have no problem with the performance of this game in 1080p and 2K. So we also take the opportunity to see the performance of these new RTX in portable equipment.

Metro Exodus DLSS and Ray Tracing experience

The comparison consists of screenshots at 1080p, 2K and 4K, with DLSS + RT activated, only RT, and captures without activated RTX technology. The quality of the game has been set to " High " with no custom extras. Likewise, the quality of the ray reasoning has been placed in " High ", although there is another Ultra option.

We also note that all the captures made for the comparison are stored in a shared file in Drive without any modifications made.

Drive file link

With that said, let's look at these images starting with 1080p resolution.

We have chosen this image because it represents very well what we want to test, a dark stage with a point of light that directly affects a detailed, dirty environment and a person.

It is taken in 1080p resolution and with the three options mentioned. If we start with the image without RTX, we see a clear difference in light management compared to the other two captures. It is clearly seen that there is no ray tracing, with a global and white light, which does not correspond to the origin of the light. This is how we have seen all the games so far, but it is clearly the one with the highest FPS rate, due to the lower graphic requirements.

We go to the second image, in which we have only activated Ray Tracing. We notice a more real light, illuminating only what should be illuminated and with the correct color temperature. We are facing a darker and reality-like scenario, but we see that the frames drop to 95, which is 33% less. In 1080p we can still play without problems, but in higher resolutions we will suffer a lot.

We come to the third image in which we have both options activated. The first thing we notice is a very noticeable impoverishment of the image quality, the rescaling of DLSS in 1080p is not a good thing and the finishes are very blurry. It is true that the lighting quality is maintained and that the FPS rate increases again to 116, but in environments with a lot of detail we suffer from the low resolution of the rendering with Deep Learning.

We moved to 2560x1440p resolution with an image in the same room, albeit with two points of light and objects in the foreground, background, and background, to better assess RTX and graphics engine performance.

Here we certainly notice fewer differences in DLSS performance and rendering quality. Again the illumination of the two captures with active RTX is better, and will be seen more clearly in the complete captures. But we see that the resolution in Capture 3 is quite a bit better, sharper, and quite similar to the others. The captures always degenerate somewhat the image, but in the real game we can confirm that the improvement in the rescaling with DLSS is better in general for 2K.

In addition, we see that the Frames rate between the first and third option is quite similar, although it is not a scene with too much graphic demand. Where it suffers the most is with RT and without DLSS, it is surely the option of better lighting and more image quality, but the performance drops a lot.

We went to 4K resolution, where we see exactly the same trend as in 2K, better definition in DLSS performance, and similar FPS between first and third capture. We are abroad with much more detail and the FPS, already 1080p down to 63.

Similarly, we see that rescaling in 1080p is the worst of all, with a rather blurred image and something to keep in mind because we are not mistaken, most players will use Full HD.

We also did not notice this great difference in the ray tracing, since the weather in Metro is not exactly good, and the sun shows little. White tones do not help either so the result is quite similar between the three images.

Finally we have made two captures with the game in Ultra quality graphics, both with RT and DLSS activated, as well as deactivated. We see that the difference in FPS is only 4 Frames and the general lighting is somewhat more detailed with active RTX technology. Also, the graphics quality is quite similar, so DLSS works well at high resolutions.

The difference between Ultra and High quality with RTX activated is 7 FPS, which is not a little. Obviously each one will be able to personalize this configuration until reaching the best balance that they see for their PC.

Conclusion and final words on this comparison

The conclusion that we can draw is quite clear, and that is to use Ray Tracing as almost mandatory to use DLSS and thus improve the frame rate per second. On lower graphics cards such as the RTX 2060 desktop and RTX notebook is a necessary configuration. That is, in 2K and 4K resolutions it is always recommended to RT + DLSS activated or deactivated together.

Although it is true that under Full HD resolutions, DLSS does not perform in the best possible way, with somewhat poor renderings and deterioration of the general definition of the game. However, titles with RT technology are playable in this resolution without major problems, so we can allow ourselves to disable DLSS if we see a poor quality, thus maintaining Ray Tracing and its benefits. Although we are sure that with some time the AI ​​will improve in low resolutions, since it takes advantage of the fact that in 4K there is more information data.

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That said, the new RTX also outperform the previous generation, so in games without RTX technology or that we do not want to activate them, we will also have great graphics gameplay in ultra without major problems.

Everyone can decide based on this experience or their own, the performance will vary depending on what card we have, what resolution and the rest of the hardware, of course. What opinion do you have in view of these captures? Is it what you expected from DLSS and RT?