Mediator: Analyze our RTX options. Between ray tracing and DLSS

AverageReviewed on these pages this week, is the new creature of Bloober Team, a midsize software house that has once again published a headline that is able to split both the critics and the audience in two.

But the software house’s skills in recreating the disturbing atmosphere are not in question, especially with this valid horror adventure that focuses on a strong narrative element reinforced with full support for RTX Technologies And making it strange through the dynamics of a specific game that sees the hero move simultaneously between two different realities.

Ray tracing effect

The most heated criticism against The Medium relates to the failure to promise a newer-generation graphics segment, but the apparent gaps in the animation certainly do not jeopardize the excellent detail of some settings or atmosphere. Additionally, the main mechanics of the game, which take advantage of the possibility of controlling the protagonist in two worlds divided into a split screen to overcome some obstacles, explain some of the slowdowns related to the need for the devices to present two different realities simultaneously, each with its own origins. Which also doubles the weight Ray tracing When this is set to max.

But there are also times when liquidity collapses in standard mode, with only one fact on screen, which highlights the lack of optimization that is in our opinion the biggest technical weakness of the PC version of the Bloober Team title, which is ironically more steadfast on the Xbox Series X even if We talked about the locked frame rate at 30fps in 4K and a different implementation of ray tracing. On the PC, in fact, as there is currently no support for the Radeon RX 6000, the lighting technology has higher quality effects as well thanks to GeForce RTX that takes advantage of DLSS, an NVIDIA-based AI upgrade to offset the weight of the ray tracing used to recreate it. High-quality reflections, refractions and ambient occlusion. But by combining The Medium’s already large weight with some optimization issues, the technology’s impact on performance remains high even with DLSS activated. It’s no coincidence that the GeForce RTX 2080 is recommended to play at 1440p at 30fps for the nearly unattainable RTX 3080 aiming at 4K at 30fps.

Before talking about performance, which in our case was achieved directly with the GeForce RTX 3070, let’s focus on the effects on the graphic display of Two settings for ray tracing That affects both the active effects and the specific performance of certain functions. With setup in normal mode, physics-based lighting is managed in single screen mode only, when the protagonist moves in one reality, both reflections and ambient closures, giving objects more realistic shadows and greater roundness. By adjusting ray tracing in Ultra mode, the two effects also extend to Dual Screen mode, when the hero simultaneously moves in the worlds, with the addition of reflections on transparent surfaces and general improvements to the quality of the refractions being made. More clearly.

The importance of DLSS

Despite the improvements the animation is clearly not that interesting, some of the less inspiring scenarios and limitations of the semi-fixed camera still need to be accommodated. Also in some scenes with massive foliage, reflections are disabled, but the game undoubtedly benefits from ray tracing, which gives us Great views In a mixture of glass, mirrors, puddles and highly detailed scenarios. All this, however, has a lot of weight that weighs down the graphics engine’s already volatile performance. And here comes DLSS, NVIDIA’s deep learning-based upgrade that takes advantage of the Tensor cores in the GeForce RTX.

L ‘DLSS implementation On The Medium it does not reach the quality seen with the Control, but the performance on the 32-inch screen is definitely good with the technology rendered to the highest quality. Slight blurring can be seen on text and graphics, but this is hard to perceive while working in the face of the often obvious benefits in terms of framing. Obviously, these increase by bringing the DLSS to medium, but blurring becomes a bit more pronounced to become clearly visible in low mode, where the gain is among other things present in scenes where fluidity is at a minimum.

Performance with GeForce RTX 3070

With GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition, in this case along with a Ryzen 7 3700X and 16GB memory from 3600MHz, we started from 4K To assess actual improvements by cutting out the CPU as much as possible. By doing so, during a sequence in which we found that we were controlling the protagonist in two different realities, the frame rate dropped to 27 fps even though ray tracing was disabled. But we didn’t enable DLSS either, leaving image optimization in the hands of Temporal Anti-Aliasing which, by activating Ray tracing in ultra mode, Added weight on hardware by folding performance up to 19fps. However, these recovered with the upgrade based on deep learning that allowed us to touch 25fps in high quality, 28fps in medium quality, and 30fps in low quality. So it’s enough to play even in Ultra-HD, considering we’re talking about a graphical adventure with near-steady width, albeit with some lag and low image quality.

Then we stayed at 1440 pixels, The reference resolution of the GeForce RTX 3070, which allowed us to play at 30 fps without DLSS, 35 fps with DLSS as a maximum, 38 fps with DLSS in medium quality and 40 fps in low quality, up to 80 fps / 100fps in defined sequences in a single reality, even if only indoor. But while the title has always been playable, being part of a genre that doesn’t require particularly high frames to be fun, we sought a compromise that would make the sometimes annoying changes in fluidity less obvious.

Then we tried to play with Beam tracking standard mode, Abandon some reflections to reach 37 fps with TXAA, 43 fps with DLSS at maximum quality, 45 fps at medium quality and 46 fps at low quality, and discover low-end optimizations, thanks to the basic rendering that has a limit CPU, but an undoubtedly more enjoyable experience. But we expect that between corrections and improvements, even for DLSS, things will change in the near future, ensuring at least less than 1440p at 60fps with a card capable of digesting titles more easily with a much higher yield.