Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090

Godfall is one of the biggest games that supports AMD's new DLSS competitor, FSR -- so let's crank it to 8K and bench some GPUs!

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5 minutes & 41 seconds read time

Introduction

AMD has finally launched its DLSS competitor with its new FidelityFX Super Resolution, and while I covered FSR in greater detail here -- I've left the benchmarks to take my time with them and start with Godfall at 8K.

Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090 104

Godfall debuted on both PC and PlayStation 5 in November 2020, and while it isn't one of the best games on the market it is a game that AMD has Godfall at the top of its list for FSR and all-things ray tracing with Radeon. An update for Godfall quickly after release adding ray tracing for Radeon RX 6000 series GPU owners, and then GeForce RTX gamers received ray tracing support in Godfall in February 2021.

But the game really stood right into the spotlight when AMD launched FSR and so begins the 8K benchmarking of Godfall, on the very best GPUs that money can sometimes not even buy right now: NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 3090 and AMD's flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards.

I'm already into the swing of benchmarking at 8K on other graphics cards, including previous-gen Radeon RX 5700 XT, Radeon RX Vega 64, GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, and GeForce GTX 1080 Ti all at the insane 7680 x 4320 resolution. That'll be some interesting stuff to see, but you're not going to be playing Godfall at 8K... well, most people won't -- but I'm here for the numbers and nerding out, so let's dive into this.

I've been benchmarking 8K for a while, but now that we're at the point where we have 10-16GB of VRAM on the latest graphics cards -- as well as upscaling technology with AMD FSR and NVIDIA DLSS -- is more than enough to handle 8K gaming.

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Godfall Graphics Settings + Enabling FSR

Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090 408
Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090 409

I'm running Godfall at 7680 x 4320 which is the full native 8K resolution, with everything else cranked up as high as it can go.

I've got the Epic preset on, which sets everything to Epic -- view distance, shadow quality, anti-aliasing, texture detail, visual effects, post-processing, foliage quality -- motion blur is disabled. I've got lens flare enabled because I'm a J.J. Abrams fan, and then Ray Tracing enabled, of course.

Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090 15

FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) has multiple different modes it runs at: Performance, Balanced, Quality, and Ultra Quality. Each of these modes will render a different resolution, scaled down from the display's native resolution. 8K gaming is virtually impossible at native, especially when you really want to be gaming at 60FPS at the minimum.

FSR set to Performance in Godfall will render the game at 3840 x 2160 (4K) while outputting to the native 7680 x 4320 (8K) resolution -- but running the game at Ultra Quality will render the game at 5908 x 3323.

  • FSR off - 7680 x 4320
  • FSR @ Performance - 3840 x 2160
  • FSR @ Balanced - 4517 x 2541
  • FSR @ Quality - 5120 x 2880
  • FSR @ Ultra Quality - 5908 x 3323

8K is demanding AF but FSR is helping out a great deal here... and it looks great in the process. But now we'll move right into the numbers.

Test System Specs

Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090 226

ASUS has been a huge help for my GPU test beds with the latest ROG Strix 43-inch gaming monitors sitting in front of me for 80 hours or more per week, offering 43-inch 4K 120/144Hz greatness for my productivity, and gaming.

Not only do we have the ASUS ROG monitors, but ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair VIII HERO motherboards as well. AMD sent over the new Zen 3-powered Ryzen 9 5900X processor which gives us a 12-core, 24-thread beast of a CPU that handles 8K gaming perfectly.

Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090 1167

Sabrent has been a gigantic help as well, providing kick ass Rocket 4 Plus and RocketQ NVMe PCIe M.2 SSDs -- with wicked-fast PCIe 4.0 storage with a huge 4TB in capacity -- as well as a huge 8TB SSD to store all of the games installed, and we all know how crazy big games are getting.

Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090 1165

Anthony's GPU Test System Specifications

I've recently upgraded my GPU test bed -- at least for now, until AMD's new Ryzen 9 5950X processor is unleashed then the final update for 2020 will happen and we'll be all good for RDNA 2 and future Ampere GPU releases. You can read my article here: TweakTown GPU Test Bed Upgrade for 2021, But Then Zen 3 Was Announced.

Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090 201Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090 222
Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090 211Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090 224

Graphics Comparison - 8K vs FSR @ Performance

FSR off vs FSR @ Performance.

FSR off + vs FSR @ Performance + Zoomed In.

Graphics Comparison - 8K vs FSR @ Balanced

FSR off vs FSR @ Balanced.

FSR off vs FSR @ Balanced + Zoomed In.

Graphics Comparison - 8K vs FSR @ Quality

FSR off vs FSR @ Quality.

FSR off vs FSR @ Quality + Zoomed In.

Graphics Comparison - 8K vs FSR @ UltraQuality

FSR off vs FSR @ Ultra Quality.

FSR off vs FSR @ Ultra Quality + Zoomed In.

Benchmarks - 8K

Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090 102

8K is utterly punishing when rendering natively with the Radeon RX 6900 XT capable of only 12FPS average, versus the GeForce RTX 3090 at a much better 18FPS average. But then we begin the FSR benchmarks, and AMD begins to better compete.

We'll start with FSR on Ultra Quality mode, where the Radeon RX 6900 XT is doing much better here with 26FPS -- actually not that bad, and playable at least -- the RTX 3090 is just ahead with 28FPS. Meanwhile, FSR on Quality sees the Radeon RX 6900 XT at 32FPS and the RTX 3090 at 38FPS average.

FSR on Balanced has the RX 6900 XT at 42FPS average, while the RTX 3090 is at 44FPS average -- and the best performance comes from the Performance preset of FSR of course, with 51FPS from the RX 6900 XT and 52FPS from the RTX 3090.

Very commendable performance, AMD is on equal footing at 8K with FSR -- bringing its competitor from 18FPS to 51FPS at the same visual quality as its flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT. NVIDIA would be stuck at 18FPS with native 8K if it wasn't for FSR, and with it -- the RTX 3090 is just 1FPS faster than the RX 6900 XT.

Final Thoughts

After a few days of benchmarking and testing Godfall at 8K with FidelityFX Super Resolution on the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT and NVIDIA GeForce RT 3090 graphics cards, has made me not just start testing the rest of the stacks of GPUs that I have here -- but also other games with FSR at 8K.

Godfall Benched at 8K and FSR: Radeon RX 6900 XT vs GeForce RTX 3090 105

FSR is already working its magic in its first incarnation, so I'm keen to watch it evolve and test it throughout that time like NVIDIA's magic DLSS technology. They work in slightly different ways, but FSR is a fantastic first step for AMD and its journeys into upscaling technology.

I can't wait to see where things are with the next-gen RDNA 3 architecture and a new FSR, where image quality and performance will be even better -- much, much better because we'll have next-gen Radeon GPUs in 2022 that will change the graphics card game completely.

Godfall with ray tracing and FSR set to Performance is impressive on the Radeon RX 6900 XT with 8K playable at 51FPS average, up from just 12FPS average with FSR disabled at the native 8K resolution. NVIDIA is only a single frame per second faster at 52FPS average with FSR set to Performance.

51FPS average on the Radeon RX 6900 XT average at 8K with FSR on Performance... not too damn bad at all. Onwards to benching the rest of the GPUs and then more games at FSR -- especially at 8K.

Buy at Amazon

Godfall: Deluxe Edition - PlayStation 5 Deluxe Edition

TodayYesterday7 days ago30 days ago
$19.00$18.72$18.74
* Prices last scanned on 3/17/2024 at 7:53 pm CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.

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