Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Ti review: ray-tracing performance

Control, Metro Exodus, Battlefield 5.

Review by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry

Published on June 6, 2022

We normally test new AMD and Nvidia graphics cards in three games with RT enabled: Control, Metro Exodus and Battlefield 5. Each has a different interpretation and implementation of RT features, so we should get a good idea of how the RTX 3090 Ti handles a range of RT workloads.

Control

Two extra RT cores translate into only two percent extra performance for the 3090 Ti - less than the amount of fat you'll find in many milk cartons. At 70fps, the game is still eminently playable on the 3090 Ti, but the same experience can be had on basically anything faster than an RTX 3080; no need to spend triple the price on a 3090 Ti. AMD's RX 6900 XT manages a little over 40fps in the same test, giving the 3090 Ti a 76 percent lead here - probably the biggest margin we'll see, given AMD's historical woes in both RT and Control specifically.

Control: DX12, High, High RT, TAA

Metro Exodus

Metro Exodus exhibits a greater performance lead for the RTX 3090 Ti, with the new card beating its older brother by a solid seven percent. Again, we're looking at a massive delta between Nvidia and AMD, with the 3090 Ti winning its matchup by 57 percent.

Metro Exodus: DX12, Ultra, Ultra RT, TAA

Battlefield 5

Battlefield 5 shows another widening of the 3090 Ti to 3090 performance gap, with a nine percent lead for the Ti fighter here. Given that we saw the smallest delta in the most RT-heavy title, Control, it seems safe to assume that the 3090 Ti performs worse pound-for-pound in RT titles than in rasterised ones, which is contrary to what I would have expected.

Battlefield 5: DX12, Ultra, Ultra RT, TAA

So RT performance isn't the killer application that makes the 3090 Ti suddenly worthwhile over the 3090 - but that was never the point, really. Let's see how everything adds up in our conclusion.