Rise of the Tomb Raider Graphics & Performance Guide

By Andrew Burnes on Thu, Jan 28 2016 Featured Stories, Guides, NVIDIA GameWorks

Rise of the Tomb Raider launches on Steam and the Windows Store today, sporting exclusive PC enhancements in addition to a bevy of other improvements, making Lara Croft's latest outing a graphical tour de force, just like 2013's Tomb Raider.

Crystal Dynamics' Foundation Engine returns for the sequel with upgrades galore. Physically Based Rendering gives materials a natural look under all conditions, HDR and adaptive tone mapping create stunningly bright zone transitions and highlights, deferred lighting with localized Global Illumination increases the realism of lighting, volumetric lighting adds God Rays and other shafts of light, dynamic color grading gives artists control over the appearance of individual areas, reactive water enables dynamic water ripples game-wide, physically correct forward lighting enables translucencies to be accurately lit, particle lighting enables particles to be dynamically lit by light from their surroundings, and Subsurface Scattering and Backscattering increases the quality of lighting on characters' skin.

Of the many additions, Crystal Dynamics' use of Side Effects' Houdini software is the most impressive. With this package highly realistic water effects and avalanches were created offline, recorded as Bink videos, and dynamically merged into real-time cutscenes to display visual effects that would be otherwise impossible to render. Less accurate effects could be rendered in real-time, though they wouldn't appear anywhere near as dramatic or thrilling.

As well as those enhancements, the PC release of Rise of the Tomb Raider also sees several game settings improved with new features and functionality, and the addition of entirely new settings. Not to mention the option to utilize NVIDIA technologies like DSR, G-SYNC, SLI, and Surround.

In this guide you'll see all of those effects in our screenshots as we examine Rise of the Tomb Raider'smany settings and PC-only upgrades. We'll also show comparisons that highlight their benefits, and reveal their relative performance cost at 1920x1080, the most popular PC gaming resolution. Furthermore, we'll reveal the GPUs you require for a max setting experience, and demonstrate how NVIDIA technologies can enhance your time in Rise of the Tomb Raider's stunning environments.

Guide Contents:

• System Requirements
• Rise of the Tomb Raider's PC-Exclusive Graphics Enhancements
• Graphics Settings
• Ambient Occlusion
• Anisotropic Filter
• Anti-Aliasing
• Bloom
• Depth of Field
• Dynamic Foliage
• Lens Flares
• Level of Detail
• PureHair
• Screen Effects
• Screen Space Reflections
• Shadow Quality
• Sun Soft Shadows
• Tessellation
• Texture Quality
• Vignette Blur
• Settings Wrap-Up
• NVIDIA Dynamic Super Resolution
• NVIDIA Surround
• G-SYNC: Eliminating Stutters & Tearing For The Ultimate Experience
• Game Ready Rise of the Tomb Raider Driver
• GeForce Experience: Optimal Playable Settings With A Single Click
• Overclocking
• 4K Screenshot Gallery
• Conclusion

System Requirements

The official Rise of the Tomb Raider system requirements recommend gamers equip their systems withGeForce GTX 970 or GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics cards for High-quality, 60 FPS gameplay at 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, respectively. These settings deliver an excellent level of detail, and at 60 FPS it's a super smooth experience free from stuttering and stalls, translating to fluid, responsive gaming. Learn more here.

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