Metro Exodus at 1440p Ultra on a 5600XT 6GB GPU? No problem!
20Been playing some Metro Exodus lately. Picked it up on Steam for $15 CAD and it came with the new enhanced PC version too! Do keep in mind the enhanced version REQUIRES a GPU with Ray Tracing support to even run. So do mind what version you download when you buy it as you get both and they're completely separate downloads (apx 55GB and 65GB respectively)
Funny thing is I own the first two games but never could get into them. I love the premise and they looked great but there was just something about them and I couldn't get into them for more than an hour or so. They felt sluggish. I struggled to run them on appropriate settings for what I felt was adequate hardware at the time. Like they just weren't very well optimized or something. They did later released the Redux versions and I believe they were free downloads to anyone who bought the originals. So technically I have those and they might actually run better. But I honestly can't even remember if I tried the Redux version.
This one's different. It seems to be very well optimized as I was quite surprised to find out my humble little Radeon RX 5600XT 6GB GPU could run this game on Ultra settings at 1440p and average ~60FPS! Mind you that's without RT (even the base game supports RT, the enhanced version requires it) but IMHO it still looks amazing. The lighting is still impressive, light from the outside sky peering into abandon buildings looks great! Sure some scenes do look a little better with RTGI and certainly they're more accurate too. But being more accurate doesn't always mean better looking. I understand baking lighting and all that means more work for the devs. But they had to do it if they wanted the game to run on most hardware (and consoles like the PS4 and XBONE!) and so fake lighting can look good as long as the devs put the work into it. This game is a perfect example of that. In many (not all) side by sides I thought the non-RT version looked as good or even better. Not as accurate sure. But it looked good nonetheless. RT and other more real-world light simulation is the future. No doubt. But at least for now. It's not necessary.