Raytracing: 3D Mark Port Royal is here - "for any DirectX Raytracing GPU", DLSS patch coming soon

QUELLE: UL BENCHMARKS

09.01.2019 at 12:41 clock by Thilo Bayer - UL benchmarks (formerly Futuremark) has as announced the real-time Raytracing benchmark scene Port Royal for the 3DMark published. Raytracing is used for the representation of reflections and shadows, in the demo there is also a dynamic global illumination via real-time photon mapping. Port Royal is for "any DirectX Raytracing GPU" thought - so far only Nvidia has appropriate hardware.

As previously announced, UL Benchmarks (better known under its predecessor name Futuremark) has enhanced and released its 3D Mark benchmark suite with a real-time raytracing test. Port Royal (not to be confused with the Port Royale game series) was developed by UL with the participation of AMD, Intel, Nvidia and Microsoft to implement the DirectX Raytracing API as perfectly as possible and show what future games might look like. Integrated in Port Royal are not only the RT reflections known from Battlefield 5, but also RT shadows. In addition, in the Port Royal demo (not counting the Graphics Score) there is also a dynamic global illumination via real-time RT photon mapping. The benchmark runs in WQHD resolution, ie 2,560 x 1,440 pixels. Multi-GPU systems are also supported.

Port Royal: For "any DXR graphics card"
Port Royal should run on all graphics cards with DXR support and requires Windows 10 version 1809 (October update). At the moment, only Nvidia offers graphics cards based on Turing (RTX 2060, RTX 2070, RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti). As with any new technology, there are "limited options" for early adopters according to UL. But UL reckons with more cards for 2019 that support DirectX raytracing - this can only mean AMD, but their raytracing plans are not yet known. UL states in the Release Notes to Port Royal that as anti-aliasing technique TAA (temporal anti-aliasing) is used. However, Nvidia already showed the benefits of DLSS in the 3D Mark in its CES keynote. DLSS should not only look better than TAA, but also be calculated much faster. A demand from Nvidia has revealed that DLSS will be "replenished soon".

Who buys the 3DMark now (price at Steam aktuell: 24.99 Euro), gets the Port Royal scene with it. If you already own the 3DMark, you can buy the scene individually for 2.49 Euro. It is not possible to start Port Royal in the 3DMark Basic Edition or in the 3DMark Steam demo.