THE REAL COST

BattlefieldV is the first game released to feature real-time ray-tracing effects. Specifically, it has been used to add reflections, rather than go the whole hog and try every effect. It looks good; certainly, the carefully selected demo videos show some very cool effects. So, it all works—the next big question is: How much performance does this extra polish cost in frames per second?

Running on a pretty chunky test rig, sporting an i7-8700, a 5GHz gaming monster, the good news is that if you stick to lower resolutions, such as 1080p, it is all perfectly playable in single-player. The bad news is that the frame rate hit is not insignificant. An RTX 2080 Ti runs at over 140fps without RTX, and drops to around 90fps with all settings at maximum. The RTX 2070, as you might expect, takes more of a hit. It drops from around 120fps to a little over 60fps.

If you start to crank up the resolution, things get worse; running at 1440p, frame rates drop toward half. If you insist on going full 4K, you will discover that those RTX-powered reflections cost, as near as makes no odds, half your frame rate. Ouch!

Multiplayer, where frame rates are really important if you want to remain competitive, proved a little more troublesome. There are also some known bugs, which caused frame drops. On an RTX 2070, the game chugs along at 40–50fps, but did stutter. To be fair, those stalls happened without RTX enabled, too, so the wrinkles are not just down to ray tracing. We are expecting patches soon.

So, not nearly as bad as some have been forecasting, but by no means insubstantial. And this was on a heavyweight rig. However, it is an emerging technology, and this is the first game, so we can hope things will get better, but it is safe to say that ray tracing will put a considerable strain on your system. As ever, it’ll be a balancing act between frames rates, resolution, and graphics settings.