Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War PC Performance Review & Optimisation Guide

Ray Tracing Performance – Is Ultra Ray Tracing Worth it?

On our RTX 2080 Ti graphics card, we can see that ray tracing and DLSS make for a powerful combination, but that doesn’t mean that ray tracing doesn’t have a huge performance cost. 

With our Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti, we noted a drop in average framerate from 54 FPS to 42.3 FPS, though it is worth noting that setting ray tracing to high has little further performance impact on Nvidia’s RTX 2080 Ti. This performance impact can be countered by using DLSS, and given the large impact that ray tracing has on some locations, we think the feature is worth using, especially in conjunction with DLSS. 
  

  

Depending on your location, ray tracing can have a huge impact on the look of Black Ops: Cold War. Just look at the shrubbery in the scene below.  

(Ray Tracing Off VS Medium Ray Tracing)
  

Should you use Ultra ray tracing? 

The quick answer here is no. While image quality does improve, it doesn’t do so to a large enough extent for the move from Medium to Ultra to be worth it. That said, the move from Medium to High can be small enough to be worth using, even if the performance and graphical impacts are minor. 

(Medium Ray tracing VS High Ray Tracing)