After AMD with the Radeon-RX – 6800 – Series finally an opponent for NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX – 3000 series, we can also look at a game in direct comparison with the associated ray tracing effects for the first time. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is this title in question and uses the DXR interface to calculate shadows and ambient lighting.

In addition to the pure Ray tracing performance we will also look at the fundamentally possible FPS for some current cards. The focus is of course on the new series from AMD and NVIDIA.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was developed by Treyarch and Raven Software. The in-house “IW Engine”, which was version number 3.0 for Call of Duty: Black Ops, is used. It is not known whether and to what extent there will be improvements. The predecessor also used ray tracing to calculate shadows and ambient lighting. The reflections that are otherwise present everywhere are still not found here. Instead, the developers rely on the classic Screen Space Reflections.

Let’s first take a look at the settings:

There the rendering resolution and output resolution can be set separately. Downscaling or upscaling is therefore possible directly in the game. In addition, V-Sync can be deactivated in the game and in the menu. There are also different texture and model qualities and an HD texture and model pack, which must be downloaded directly from the Battle.net client. The reflections are realized using Screen Space Reflections.

Light and shadow quality can also be selected in different stages without ray tracing acceleration. Sun shadows, local shadows (or better contact shadows) and surrounding obscuration, i.e. the lighting situation of the scene, are calculated using ray tracing. We will now examine some of the settings in more detail with regard to their influence on performance.

We did the first tests with a GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition and Radeon RX 6800 XT made on the graphics card test system and looked at what influence the quality settings have on performance. In the above gallery you can see the corresponding display quality.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War – Quality Presets

3. 840 x 2. 160 – Raytracing Off

94. 6 XX

87.1 XX

94. 6 XX

88. 3 XX

92. 3 XX

86. 2 XX

91. 9 XX

83. 3 XX

90. 4 XX

83. 3 XX

89. 6 XX

81.1 XX

89. 2 XX

82. 0 XX

87. 4 XX

80. 2 XX

87. 3 XX

79. 5 XX

84. 5 XX

73 .5 XX

Frames per second

More is better

If you only change the texture and model quality, the performance for both cards is reduced from the smallest to the largest setting by only 10%. These settings are not necessarily the decisive ones, but they have a major influence on the quality. It is advisable to select the higher settings here.

DXR-Raytracing

For the ray tracing settings you can choose between Off, Medium, High and Ultra. The following gallery is intended to show the differences:

Since you can really not see the differences well, we have made some direct comparisons:

When making comparisons, you should pay particular attention to areas that are actually displayed much too brightly and are only darkened by means of ray tracing. Static shadow maps cannot cover every detail and so the dynamic ray tracing calculation can enable a much more realistic representation.

Contact shadows of objects lying on the table or on the wall hanging are also much clearer and more realistic. They are calculated depending on the angle of incidence and the distance from the light source and are not static. All screenshots for the ray tracing comparison can be downloaded here in full resolution and uncompressed for a better representation.

The influence of the DXR settings on the performance is like follows:

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War – DXR-Presets

3. 840 x 2. 160 – Ultra

87. 4 XX

80. 2 XX

84. 5 XX

73. 5 XX

65. 3 XX

60. 9 XX

62.8th XX

58.1 XX

59. 3 XX

55. 5 XX

52. 9 XX

48. 6 XX

48. 5 XX

46. 6 XX

42. 7 XX

41. 0 XX

Frames per second

More is better

Here you should keep in mind that Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was created in cooperation with NVIDIA and that there was an optimization here that, in case of doubt, did not take place with hardware from AMD.

The NVIDIA hardware loses around a quarter to a third of its performance due to the DXR. With AMD hardware, we speak of halving the FPS in the worst case. A GeForce RTX 3000 is even faster than a Radeon RX with full DXR settings 6800 XT in the lowest DXR Settings.

DLSS

Deep Learning Super Sampling is exclusively for GPUs from NVIDIA available. The following gallery shows the differences in the display without DLSS regarding quality, balanced, power and ultra-performance.

There are no recognizable differences beyond the options “Quality” and “Balanced” Differences in the presentation. You only see a slightly reduced quality from “performance”. This becomes even clearer for “ultra-performance”. Uncompressed and in full resolution you can find the screen shots in this archive.

The influence on the performance is as follows:

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War – DLSS-Presets

3. 840 x 2. 160 – Ultra – GeForce RTX 3080 FE

153. 7 XX

137.8th XX

121.8th XX

105.1 XX

106.8th XX

97. 3 XX

92. 0 XX

85. 4 XX

59. 3 XX

55. 5 XX

Frames per second

More is better

The quality”- We are already gaining termination of DLSS 50 % at FPS. For “balanced” we speak of 080%, ” Performance “it can already double. With “Ultra-Performance” the displayed FPS are more than doubled.

Ampere vs. Big Navi

Now let’s look at the performance of the graphics cards with AMD and NVIDIA GPU with and without ray tracing as well as with DLSS (only for NVIDIA) and get for them three resolutions give a glimpse into the performance offered by the cards.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

1. 920 x 1.0 80 Pixel – Ultra – DXR: High – DLSS: Balanced

222.8th XX

150 .3 XX

215. 9 XX

168. 6 XX

209. 0 XX

145. 2 XX

187. 3 XX

148. 6 XX

185.1 XX

137. 9 XX

181. 2 XX

120. 6 XX

172. 9 XX

134. 6 XX

170. 0 XX

108.1 XX

164.1 XX

109. 9 XX

163. 5 XX

111. 7 XX

159. 3 XX

124. 4 XX

155. 9 XX

120. 3 XX

155. 3 XX

116. 5 XX

142. 7 XX

117.8th XX

141. 3 XX

105. 3 XX

135.1 XX

112. 0 XX

125. 9 XX

99. 7 XX

125. 2 XX

101.1 XX

121. 0 XX

99 .3 XX

116.1 XX

94. 2 XX

109. 2 XX

93. 9 XX

103. 6 XX

85. 7 XX

97. 0 XX

82. 0 XX

95. 3 XX

80. 7 XX

82. 5 XX

70. 0 XX

Frames per second

More is better

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

2. 560 x 1. 440 Pixels – Ultra – DXR: High – DLSS: Balanced

166. 6 XX

133. 6 XX

166.1 XX

120. 0 XX

157. 0 XX

110.8th XX

154. 7 XX

129.8th XX

147. 6 XX

114. 0 XX

137. 7 XX

108. 4 XX

135. 3 XX

105. 3 XX

134. 9 XX

113 .9 XX

128.1 XX

102. 6 XX

119.1 XX

97. 9

XX

116. 9 XX

97. 9 XX

115.8th XX

94. 3 XX

108. 6 XX

88.1 XX

103. 2 XX

89. 6 XX

103.1 XX

84. 6 XX

96.1 XX

82. 7 XX

92.1 XX

78 .0 XX

89. 0 XX

74. 9 XX

81. 5 XX

69. 7 XX

81. 4 XX

68.1 XX

80. 9 XX

70. 6 XX

70.1 XX

60. 5 XX

69. 0 XX

60. 0 XX

64. 3 XX

56. 7 XX

55. 3 XX

48.8th XX

Frames per second

More is better

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

3. 840 x 2. 160 Pixels – Ultra – DXR: High – DLSS: Balanced

125.8th XX

107. 4 XX

109. 4 XX

90. 6 XX

101. 7 XX

85. 7 XX

88. 4 XX

71. 2 XX

87. 5 XX

75. 4 XX

86. 5 XX

70. 4 XX

85. 2 XX

73. 6 XX

76. 0 XX

63. 0 XX

73.8th XX

64.1 XX

72.8th XX

61.8th XX

69 .7 XX

58. 3 XX

63. 5 XX

53. 7 XX

63. 3 XX

56.1 XX

62. 3 XX

53.1 XX

58. 6 XX

49. 2 XX

54.8th XX

48. 3 XX

50. 7 XX

44. 5 XX

46.1 XX

37. 4 XX

44. 3 XX

40. 2 XX

45.1 XX

39. 6 XX

42. 4 XX

37. 0 XX

38. 7 XX

33.8th XX

38. 2 XX

31. 6 XX

33. 6 XX

30. 2 XX

28 .3 XX

25. 5 XX

Frames per second

More is better

The GeForce RTX 3080 is unsurprisingly the fastest card – across all resolutions away. The Radeon RX 6800 XT beats the GeForce RTX 3080 at least in 1080 p and 1164 p, in 4K the NVIDIA model is again ahead. A Radeon RX 6800 is always faster than a GeForce RTX 3070. As soon as ray tracing comes into play, the Radeon RX cards fall sharply, which then sometimes lets them fall far behind the GeForce competitors. The DLSS is only coming off 1440 p so really into the game and can bring the performance of the GeForce cards back to the previous level without these effects with the ray tracing effects. For a display in 4K this means for the GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 more than 100 FPS.

Assessment

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is and remains an action fireworks display. Where the story plays doesn’t really matter, it’s always about completing a specific mission objective so that at the end of the campaign the big bad guy can’t start a world war or a global pandemic. But the content shouldn’t be the focus of this article, instead it was about the technology.

Although the game already looks very good without the RTX effects, the hardware hunger persists within limits. 4K are even with a GeForce RTX 2020 Possible without any problems. However, one should distinguish between single player and multiplayer here. The multiplayer mode is usually a bit more demanding. A lot of the performance can be optimized via the graphics settings without the optics falling behind too much. The graphics engine knows how to convince from a technical and optical point of view.

The ray tracing effects are less noticeable than in games that use them to calculate reflections. Instead, shadows and the lighting situation are calculated. On the other hand, the effects in this form contribute to more immersion – at least more than some reflections. The benchmarks speak for themselves and allow an assessment of the performance for the various settings. If you want to activate ray tracing, you will generally be better off with graphics cards with NVIDIA GPU or you can compensate for the missing FPS with DLSS. The Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT, however, are also fast and absolutely on eye level without ray tracing.