Metro Exodus Settings and APIs Tested

[AlphaAtlas]

Metro Exodus is out today, and reviewers are largely praising it a solid single-player shooter, while some Twitch streamers are frustrated by the game's performance. Gamer's Nexus already took a close look at the game's RTX settings and their visual impact, but raytracing isn't the only option players can turn on and off on the PC. Mirroring our own API testing in Battlefield V, Gamer's Nexus took a look at the performance differences between the DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 APIs, as well as the various performance presets the game offers. Critically, they also compared the in-game benchmark to real world gameplay performance. As we've noted in previous articles, canned benchmarks don't necessarily represent the experience users will get when they actually play the game.

Check out the performance analysis video here.

Metro: Exodus RTX benchmarks are now here. In this one, we benchmark RTX on the 2080 Ti, 2080, 2070, and 2060, along with tests of built-in benchmarks vs. gameplay. This testing looks at Metro: Exodus with RTX in various states -- on/off, high/ultra -- and also looks at non-RTX graphics scaling in the game. Our benchmarks show the change in performance from low to extreme settings, for DX11 vs. DX12, and more. Interestingly, the usability of the built-in benchmark is one of the more philosophical topics in the content, as we talk about when it would be (or wouldn't be) a useful tool for performance testing.

 

[Toconator]

Good video, very pertinent. thx for the linkage AA . I agree with Steve's assessments about RTX and am going to sit on my 1070Ti for awhile yet and even if a RTX card falls from the sky in my lap I'll just turn RTX off. Hell I'm considering a higher refresh monitor which I wouldn't need for RTX atm. As for Exodus I'm a bit put off by them yanking it off Steam. Geez we've got GoG, Uplay, Origin/EA, Steam … like we need ANOTHER platform, profile, passwords etc. just to play. I've got the other 2 redux versions of Metro on Steam, I'll wait .

 

[Stoly]

I read somewhere (Guru3d I think, maybe techspot) that the internal benchmark is actually more taxing that actual gameplay so they used it because it was a worst case scenario

 

[Shaten]

I still want to know if the end game performance on the Radeon 7 scales as the benchmark suggest it would.

I hear him saying it, but don't see graphs to prove it....

 

[thenapalm]

Man, I sure would be pissed if I bought an RTX card and only had two ray-traced games plus a benchmark in the ~5 months since launch.

This is coming from someone who has been all nvidia since 2004.

 

[andrewaggb]

I'm curious what nvidia thinks the performance hit should be. Is 40% expected or do they expect it'll eventually be 20% or 10%? Bad performance + mixed experiences (sometimes better with it on sometimes better with it off) isn't a glowing recommendation. I don't want ray tracing to fail so I'm really hoping we see a great implementation soon. But maybe we need a game designed to support it from the start and better hardware. If that's the case I guess we are at least a year or two away.

 

[Snowdensjacket]

Man, I sure would be pissed if I bought an RTX card and only had two ray-traced games plus a benchmark in the ~5 months since launch.

This is coming from someone who has been all nvidia since 2004.

I love how all you people get butt hurt for us. Thanks buddy I really need you to feel butt hurt that I bought a new graphics card to upgrade my out dated one and I get neat new bleeding edge features to test out as well.

 

[Bigshrimp]

It's too bad I can't buy this game on Steam. Poor developers.

 

[Dayaks]

I read somewhere (Guru3d I think, maybe techspot) that the internal benchmark is actually more taxing that actual gameplay so they used it because it was a worst case scenario

It’s in this video as well. I am really impressed with how well it does really. RTX at 4k is within a stones throw.

1440p the 0.1% low is 70 fps / 100 fps average for ultra/rtx high. Impressive!!

 

[Krenum]

It's too bad I can't buy this game on Steam. Poor developers.

Yep, between you and me they're missing out on $100 bucks.

 

[Mchart]

With Ultra, and RTX High, and either with DLSS enabled or using the pixel shader @ 70% the game is above 60FPS on a 2080ti @ 4k.

 

[Kor]

I've been playing a little myself. 3440x1440 on Ultra with RTX High (No DLSS, unsupported for Ultra Wide), perfectly smooth. This is an RTX implementation I can genuinely get behind, the lighting is very transformative which is a stark contrast to BFV's reflection usage.

Digital Foundry put out their tech analysis for the PC version today.

 

[Maddness]

Yep, between you and me they're missing out on $100 bucks.

The sadist part is you're really missing out on a superb game. This would have to be one of the best FPS I have played in years.

 

[Krenum]

The sadist part is you're really missing out on a superb game. This would have to be one of the best FPS I have played in years.

Eh, I'm sure it is. Have plenty of other games to play in the meantime.

 

[lostin3d]

After going to GN and reading/watching this review along with about a dozen others I bit the bullet and joined epic to get this. If it wasn't for the exclusive thing and my budget I would've pre-ordered a long time ago.

HDR 4k TV- check
2080TI RTX/DLSS-check
Home theater supporting Dolby Atmos-check
Latest OS with all updates-grudgingly check
Credit Card bill for all-Writing checks thru spring!

I don't know if it's because of HDR or something else but DLSS looks beyond awful. I already witnessed the blur effect with BFV but it's different with Metro. For me it doesn't just blur or smear it totally jacks the gamma to max and turning down in game gamma doesn't help. Spent most of the day tweaking and ultimately lowered the res to 1440p, turned off DLSS, v-sync full, motion blur low, and literally set everything to extreme/ultra/max etc. Game plays amazingly well in 1440p 60+fps. Just like what GN experienced. I'm even using RTX at Ultra and it looks pretty awesome. At first I wasn't impressed by the graphics but by the time I got out of Moscow things really started to pop. Game lost a little sharpness in going 1440p from 2160p but nothing compared to the nightmare of DLSS. BTW it was a 50GB download for me. At 1440p vram isn't likely to be an issue for any RTX but at 4k it was holding ~7GB.

edit: Just a little more Epic stuff for those holding off, their servers hit around 270mbps for me. I dl'd on 2 different machines and both were 250-272mbps range. I've got a 400mbps connection. Not bad, not great, but hey I guess that's a 1st world problem since it only took about a half hour. More DXR stuff, it's really interesting watching the ligthing effects change as the sun and weather change especially when having a conversation with a character. The facial textures are definitely reaching a new level here-finally.

 

[DrDoU]

The sadist part is you're really missing out on a superb game. This would have to be one of the best FPS I have played in years.

Sumbitch as soon as I get home I am downloading and playing. Apparently there’s not to many problems with Epic store.

 

[Maddness]

Sumbitch as soon as I get home I am downloading and playing. Apparently there’s not to many problems with Epic store.

Just speaking from my own view, I've had no issues related to the Epic Launcher.

 

[Mchart]

After going to GN and reading/watching this review along with about a dozen others I bit the bullet and joined epic to get this. If it wasn't for the exclusive thing and my budget I would've pre-ordered a long time ago.

HDR 4k TV- check
2080TI RTX/DLSS-check
Home theater supporting Dolby Atmos-check
Latest OS with all updates-grudgingly check
Credit Card bill for all-Writing checks thru spring!

I don't know if it's because of HDR or something else but DLSS looks beyond awful. I already witnessed the blur effect with BFV but it's different with Metro. For me it doesn't just blur or smear it totally jacks the gamma to max and turning down in game gamma doesn't help. Spent most of the day tweaking and ultimately lowered the res to 1440p, turned off DLSS, v-sync full, motion blur low, and literally set everything to extreme/ultra/max etc. Game plays amazingly well in 1440p 60+fps. Just like what GN experienced. I'm even using RTX at Ultra and it looks pretty awesome. At first I wasn't impressed by the graphics but by the time I got out of Moscow things really started to pop. Game lost a little sharpness in going 1440p from 2160p but nothing compared to the nightmare of DLSS. BTW it was a 50GB download for me. At 1440p vram isn't likely to be an issue for any RTX but at 4k it was holding ~7GB.

edit: Just a little more Epic stuff for those holding off, their servers hit around 270mbps for me. I dl'd on 2 different machines and both were 250-272mbps range. I've got a 400mbps connection. Not bad, not great, but hey I guess that's a 1st world problem since it only took about a half hour. More DXR stuff, it's really interesting watching the ligthing effects change as the sun and weather change especially when having a conversation with a character. The facial textures are definitely reaching a new level here-finally.

There is a known bug with having DLSS enabled while in HDR right now. You can get around it by turning DLSS off, and turning down shader scaling to about 70% which results in a similar performance gain if playing at 4k.

 

[lostin3d]

There is a known bug with having DLSS enabled while in HDR right now. You can get around it by turning DLSS off, and turning down shader scaling to about 70% which results in a similar performance gain if playing at 4k.

Good to know. I had a feeling it had to do with the HDR/DLSS combo. I'll experiment tomorrow with the 70% shader setting but at I have say that even 1440p looks great on my Sony Z9D 65'. That panel adjusts remarkably well at that resolution.

 

[Mchart]

You'd be better doing 4k @ the 70% scaling unless you're set on having raytracing at ultra instead of high. It's doing shader scaling versus normal scaling (geometry/models are rendered at 4k still) , so it should look a little better then just pushing normal 1440p up to 4k.

 

[thenapalm]

I love how all you people get butt hurt for us. Thanks buddy I really need you to feel butt hurt that I bought a new graphics card to upgrade my out dated one and I get neat new bleeding edge features to test out as well.

Come now! You're more than welcome to be butthurt too, don't let me steal all the thunder! There's no need to be so upset and defensive when so few games support the main selling point of the cards. I'm confident more rays just dying to be traced will be released in the very near future.