Control RTX: A information to ray tracing and what it’s worthwhile to get one of the best efficiency

Remedy’s eerie telekinetic shooter Control is indisputably one of many greatest RTX ray tracing games you may play on PC proper now. It’s additionally one of the crucial demanding. Indeed, whereas Remedy just lately revised their Control PC requirements, saying you now solely want an Nvidia RTX 2060 graphics card for taking part in with ray tracing switched on versus the loopy costly RTX 2080, I’ve discovered that even Nvidia’s new RTX 2080 Super card struggles to hit a constant 60fps on High at 1920×1080 with all Control’s RTX bells and whistles turned on.

As such, I assumed I’d put collectively this Control RTX ray tracing information to inform you precisely what sort of efficiency you may count on from every of at the moment’s Nvidia RTX playing cards, each with and with out ray tracing, in addition to what every ray tracing impact really does and whether or not it’s really value preserving switched on – as a result of we wouldn’t need anybody’s graphics playing cards throwing a giant hissy match now, would we?

Control RTX: Ray tracing choices

First, let’s take a fast take a look at the ray tracing choices which can be in Control. Hidden away on the backside of the Display tab within the Options menu, there are 5 completely different ray tracing choices accessible, and two predefined presets: Medium and High.

Medium solely covers ray traced reflections and ray traced clear reflections, whereas High does each of these plus oblique subtle lighting, contact shadows and particles. You can, in fact, decide and select which results you need as effectively, leading to a Custom preset, or simply flip it off altogether.

Of course, the extra results you have got switched on, the larger the toll it’s going to take in your graphics card’s total efficiency. Let’s take my RTX 2060 outcomes for example. Playing at 1920×1080 on High, the RTX 2060 managed a median of 60fps with none ray tracing turned on, however this dropped to round 45fps with ray tracing set to Medium and 35fps with ray tracing on High.

That’s a efficiency drop of 25% for Medium, and 42% for High. I ought to be aware that a median of 45fps was nonetheless completely playable in my eyes, however 35fps was positively on the verge of getting a bit chuggy.

I might suggest attempting to have a minimum of the pair of ray traced reflection choices switched on, although, if solely as a result of the game’s workplace block setting has the shiniest flooring, glass panels and door indicators on the planet and it might be a disgrace to not see them at their very best. Have a take a look at the screenshots beneath (click on to enlarge) to see what I imply.

 
Without ray tracing, the indicators and flooring look fairly flat and a bit, effectively, office-blocky. Switch on reflections, nevertheless, and the labours of our janitor good friend Ahti are lastly made plain. Just take a look at that squeaky clear sheen on these flooring. Now that’s what I name a ship-shape federal facility that’s been buffed and polished to inside an inch of its life.

I’m additionally a giant fan of the clear reflection settings, too. This applies a really related impact to issues like wall indicators and all these many a whole lot of glass panels dividing its dinky cubicles and spectacular board rooms, giving them that very same, freshly cleaned shine that will make Mr Muscle proud. Indeed, the primary time I caught my very own reflection within the cafeteria’s wall map working towards me I really did a little bit of a double take. So this is what ray tracing is all about, I assumed to myself. It’s a small, simply missable impact in screenshots, certain, however scorching rattling did it flip my head after I noticed it in movement.

Throw diffuse lighting within the combine and also you get deeper, extra pure trying shadows (see alongside the underside of the wall close to the air vents and the massive plant to Jesse’s proper).

Contact shadows and particles, nevertheless? They’re much more refined – even perhaps too refined to be actually value bothering with. The former’s a bit extra noticeable while you’re in a room with numerous chairs and tables – see screens beneath – however even I struggled to see what the particles possibility was doing even after I’d wrecked a whole room’s value of workplace furnishings.

 
As a consequence, I reckon you’ll most likely be completely high-quality leaving each of those choices switched off, as I’m simply not satisfied they actually make as a lot of a noticeable influence as both the reflections or the oblique diffuse lighting.

Of course, the truth that they’re not very noticeable means you additionally don’t actually acquire an enormous quantity by turning them off. Indeed, in my very own testing, I solely noticed a median enhance of round 2fps after I didn’t have ray traced contact shadows and particles enabled, which to my drained eyes a minimum of didn’t make the slightest little bit of distinction in any way to my total notion of how clean it was. Consequently, it’s most likely protected to imagine that our pal oblique diffuse lighting is the choice taking on the majority of that further efficiency hit over Medium ray tracing.

Control RTX: How to get one of the best settings

Is there a approach, then, to nonetheless have ray traced oblique diffuse lighting by fidgeting with a few of Control’s different settings? Well, I might say you would simply activate DLSS, Nvidia’s magic performance-boosting AI gubbins, however proper now that possibility seems to be utterly and completely damaged. In my assessments a minimum of, it’s both made completely no distinction to Control’s efficiency, or it’s made it rather a lot worse. Hopefully it’s within the strategy of being fastened, however for now, we’ll need to make do with switching off different settings to assist enhance efficiency.

Unfortunately, Remedy haven’t given us an enormous variety of choices to play with right here, as what you see above is actually the extent of Control’s high quality settings. There are additionally solely three presets: Low, Medium and High, which supplies us even much less wiggle room to make a tangible influence.

Still, if we take 1920×1080 High as a bottom line, then one option to nudge that body charge counter up a teensy bit is by switching off SSAO, reducing the Texture Resolution to High, and choosing MSAA x2 as a substitute of x4. This ought to assist push up your common body charge by one other couple of frames.

It’s additionally doable to eke out one other body or two by reducing the Texture Filtering to Medium, as even the full-blown Medium high quality preset places this all the way in which all the way down to Low.

Apart from that, although, turning down any of the opposite high quality settings right here would just about land us in straight up Medium territory, so it’s possible you’ll simply need to chew the bullet and say goodbye to oblique diffuse lighting until you’ve acquired a extra highly effective RTX card at your disposal.

Control RTX: Ray tracing efficiency

Speaking of which, let’s get onto the playing cards themselves. I’ll be doing a extra in-depth graphics efficiency evaluation with non-RTX graphics playing cards subsequent week, however for now, click on the hyperlinks beneath to see what every Nvidia RTX card makes of Control, in addition to what sort of compromises you’re going to need to make to get these all essential ray tracing results.

• Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti