Crytek has just released Neon Noir, a new hardware/API agnostic ray tracing benchmark. The benchmark was first shown back in March, in a video at GDC 2019, but it now freely available for users to try for themselves.

Neon Noir was developed on a “bespoke version of CRYENGINE 5.5”, while the ray tracing feature is based on the engine's Total Illumination. The benchmark is hardware/API agnostic, meaning that it's possible to run it on any modern mainstream AMD or NVIDIA GPU.

After running the benchmark, a score will be displayed with the result based on hardware performance and the chosen settings. The configurable settings are: resolution, RayTracing, Fullscreen, and Loop.

For the RayTracing setting, there are two options: Very High and Ultra. With both, it's possible to show “how the new technology can be adapted for different levels of performance by the developer or user”. With the Very High preset, there's an engine setting called ‘LowSpecMode' that is set to 1, while on Ultra it's set to 0. When set to 1, the resolution of the reflections in the scene are reduced. For example, when RayTracing is set to Very High, a scene rendered at 1080p will have its reflections rendered at 763p.

The system requirements to run Neon Noir are as follows:

• AMD Ryzen 5 2500X CPU/Core i7-8700
• AMD Vega 56 8 GB VRAM/NVIDIA GTX 1070 8 GB VRAM
• 16 GB System Ram
• Win 10 x64
• DX11

The benchmark comes with full Razer Chroma RGB integration, making Razer Chroma enabled hardware and peripherals sync with what happens on the benchmark scene. This Razer Chroma RGB integration will come later to CRYENGINE. The ray tracing feature will also come to CRYENGINE in 2020, and it will support Vulkan and DirectX 12.

Neon Noir can be downloaded HERE. To learn more about how Neon Noir was created, you can watch this video.

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KitGuru says: Are you downloading Neon Noir? What score did you get?

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