Directive 8020 Benchmarks Path Tracing and DLSS 4
DSOGaming reports that Supermassive Games released Directive 8020, an Unreal Engine 5 title that supports Path Tracing and DLSS 4 on PC. DSOGaming's early tests used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32 GB DDR5-6000, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 on Windows 10 with the GeForce 596.49 driver. At native 4K DSOGaming measured a minimum of 77 FPS and an average of 83 FPS without hardware ray tracing enabled; enabling Ray Tracing dropped averages to 63 FPS (DLSS 4 Quality), while Path Tracing pushed averages into the 30s. DSOGaming also reports the game forces DLSS 4 Super Resolution when Path Tracing is enabled and disables DLAA. Frame Generation (MFG) improves playability: DSOGaming recorded MFG X4 reaching roughly 120 FPS with Path Tracing and near 200 FPS with Ray Tracing in the tested scene.
What happened
DSOGaming reports that Supermassive Games released Directive 8020, a game built on Unreal Engine 5 that exposes Path Tracing, Ray Tracing (Software and Hardware Lumen), and DLSS 4 on PC. DSOGaming's benchmark run used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32 GB DDR5-6000, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, Windows 10 64-bit, and the GeForce 596.49 driver.
Measured performance (reported)
DSOGaming reports that at native 4K with default (Software Lumen) settings the tested starting area ran with a minimum of 77 FPS and an average of 83 FPS. With Ray Tracing enabled and DLSS 4 Quality, averages fell to 63 FPS with minimums near 55 FPS. Enabling Path Tracing reduced averages into the 30s at 4K with DLSS 4 Quality, per DSOGaming. The site also reports that the game forces DLSS 4 Super Resolution when Path Tracing is enabled and that DLAA is disabled in that mode.
DSOGaming measured the impact of NVIDIA's frame generation settings: with Path Tracing and DLSS 4 Quality, MFG X2 produced roughly 62-65 FPS, MFG X3 about 91-96 FPS, and MFG X4 about 120 FPS. For Ray Tracing at 4K and DLSS 4 Quality, DSOGaming recorded roughly 110-117 FPS with MFG X2, 155-166 FPS with MFG X3, and 195-211 FPS with MFG X4.
Editorial analysis - technical context
Industry observers note that Path Tracing remains far more GPU-intensive than rasterization or typical hardware ray tracing workflows, which is consistent with DSOGaming's measurements showing a steep drop to the 30s at 4K on a top-end GPU. Frame generation (MFG) and temporal upscaling features like DLSS 4 Super Resolution are increasingly necessary to restore interactive framerates when enabling full path-traced rendering.
Context and significance
For practitioners, DSOGaming's results reinforce a broader pattern: enabling advanced global illumination modes such as Path Tracing creates a significantly higher GPU load compared with Software Lumen or Hardware Lumen ray tracing. This matters for engine integration, QA, and platform optimization work where target framerate and latency budgets are strict.
What to watch
- •Broader scene coverage and built-in benchmark runs from multiple hardware vendors to validate how representative the starting-area measurements are.
- •Developer settings or updates that might allow running Path Tracing at native resolution without forcing DLSS 4 Super Resolution.
- •Comparative results on different GPU architectures and driver revisions to see how Path Tracing optimizations and MFG improvements evolve.
Scoring Rationale
The piece provides useful, hands-on GPU performance data for `Path Tracing` and **DLSS 4**, which matters to graphics engineers and infrastructure teams. The single-source, scene-limited tests limit broader generalizability, keeping the score in the mid-range.
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