Elden Ring screenshots-6
PC Performance Analyses

Elden Ring Ray Tracing Benchmarks & Comparison Screenshots

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Earlier today, FromSoftware released a Ray Tracing Patch for Elden Ring. FromSoftware has used Ray Tracing in order to enhance the game’s shadows and ambient occlusion. As such, we’ve decided to benchmark these RT effects and share some comparison screenshots.

For these benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, and the GeForce 531.26 drivers.

Elden Ring does not feature any built-in benchmark tool. Thus, we’ve decided to use the starting open area. This area has a lot of vegetation and its RT effects can tax most of the GPUs.

Elden Ring - DSOGaming Custom Ray Tracing Benchmark - Native 4K - NVIDIA RTX 4090

At 1080p/Max Settings/Max RT, our RTX3080 and RTX4090 were able to provide a smooth gaming experience. As we’ve already reported, the game does not support any upscaling technique like DLSS 2 or FSR 2.0, something that would have helped a lot.

Elden Ring Ray Tracing On Benchmarks

At 1440p/Max Settings/Max RT, the only GPU that can provide a constant 60fps experience is the RTX4090. And as for native 4K/Max Settings/Max RT, the RTX4090 was once again able to provide a smooth gaming experience.

For comparison purposes, here is the performance of these three GPUs without any Ray Tracing effects.

Elden Ring Ray Tracing Off Benchmarks

Below you can find some comparison screenshots between RT On (left) and RT Off (right). The good news is that you don’t need a magnifying glass to see the visual improvements. The RT screenshots look more natural and less flat. However, the performance hit is quite big. Add to this the fact that there is no DLSS/FSR support, and you got yourself a pretty demanding RT implementation.

Elden Ring Ray Tracing On-1Elden Ring Ray Tracing Off-1 Elden Ring Ray Tracing On-2Elden Ring Ray Tracing Off-2 Elden Ring Ray Tracing On-3Elden Ring Ray Tracing Off-3 Elden Ring Ray Tracing On-4Elden Ring Ray Tracing Off-4

What’s really disappointing here is that there is no support for RTGI. FromSoftware should have gone all in and used Ray Tracing for Global Illumination. I mean, people are already complaining about the performance hit of the game’s RT, so why not blow everyone’s PC with RTGI, RT Shadows and RTAO?

All in all, Elden Ring’s Ray Tracing effects are demanding and do not justify their performance hit. Still, if you can brute force your way, you can go ahead and enable them. Let’s now hope that FromSoftware will add support for DLSS 2 or FSR 2.0 via a future update!