Published by Bethesda but developed by Machinegun Games and Arkane Studios Wolfenstein: Youngblood sees us return to the alternate past and assuming the roles of B.J. Blazkowicz's two daughters, well one at a time along with co-op play. This time we're looking at a 100% Vulkan powered game on the id Tech 6 engine that has been gaining popularity since it was able to let the DOOM 2016 title soar in framerates thanks to its post-launch Vulkan patch. That continued with the launch of Wolfenstein: The New Colossus but with additional features that added to the load but was still able to deliver great performance across the board.

This latest addition to the Wolfenstein saga will be supporting ray tracing at some point at a later date as they're still working on the feature. We'll be revisiting the game when that becomes available to see how the game handles, since the performance of this game already should lend it to be a great candidate for multiple RTX features to be shown off.

Testing Methodology

Testing Wolfenstein: Youngblood itself presents a problem, since the game has no built-in benchmarking tool, an easy issue to overcome, but also has quite a few variable settings that we disabled most of. The area that we tested took place immediately following the opening Zepplin mission just as you land on the shores of Riverside and follows a path directly to the first waypoint, passing many instances of multiple light sources, smoke, fog, and firefights as I was consistently shot at the entirety of the way. The results were taken from an average of three runs through this path. Settings were interesting as we changed to the Ultra Preset the commenced to disabling all but one of the 'variable' settings and that was ASYNC Compute. I am personally not a fan of settings that don't have at least an ON and OFF along with variable as it makes it difficult to nail down performance variables. We also limited the Lightmap aniso filter to x4 as the Radeon cards were limited to that, but the GeForce cards would allow x8 to be selected.

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Test System

Components	Z370
CPU	Intel Core i9-9900k @ 5GHz
Memory	16GB G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 3200
Motherboard	EVGA Z370 Classified K
Storage	Kingston KC2000 1TB NVMe SSD
PSU	Cooler Master V1200 Platinum
Windows Version	1903 with latest security patches

Graphics Cards Tested

GPU	Architecture	Core Count	Clock Speed	Memory Capacity	Memory Speed
NVIDIA RTX 2080ti	Turing	4352	1350/1635	11GB GDDR6	14Gbps
NVIDIA RTX 2080 SUPER FE	Turing	3072	1650/1815	8GB GDDR6	15.5Gbps
NVIDIA RTX 2070 SUPER FE	Turing	2560	1605/1770	8GB GDDR6	14Gbps
AMD Radeon VI	Vega 20	4096	1400/1750	16GB HBM2	1000MHz
NVIDIA RTX 2060 SUPER	Turing	2176	1470/1650	8GB GDDR6	14Gbps
AMD RX 5700	Navi	2304	1465/1625/1725	8GB GDDR6	14Gbps
NVIDIA RTX 2060 FE	Turing	1904	1365/168	6GB GDDR6	14Gbps
ZOTAC Gaming GTX 1660	Turing	1408	1530/1785	6GB GDDR5	8Gbps
NVIDIA GTX 1080 FE	Pascal	2560	1607/1733	8GB GDDR5X	10Gbps
NVIDIA GTX 1070 FE	Pascal	1920	1506/1683	8GB GDDR5	8Gbps
NVIDIA GTX 1060 FE 6GB	Pascal	1280	1506/1708	6GB GDDR5	8Gbps
AMD RX Vega 64	Vega 10	4096	1247/1546	8GB HBM2	945Mbps
AMD RX Vega 56	Vega 10	3584	1156/1471	8GB HBM2	800Mbs
MSI RX 580 Armor 8GB	Polaris 20	2304	1366	8GB GDDR5	8Gbps
Sapphire Nitro+ RX 570 4GB	Polaris 20	2048	1340	4GB GDDR5	7Gbps

Drivers Used

Drivers
Radeon Settings	19.7.3
GeForce	431.60

Notes on NAVI

We did test our latest pickup for the test suite here being the Radeon RX 5700, AMD's latest launch from the NAVI series featuring RDNA. The Radeon 19.7.3 Driver may be the latest from AMD and claims an up to 13% performance improvement in Wolfenstein: Youngblood and we did use that driver for all Radeon cards except for the RX 5700 which was wildly unstable. After multiple DDU and driver reinstall sessions, we were still met with near-instant crashes when running the game that would result in the screen blacking out and when it would recover the GPU core would be locked to the peak boost clock and running at 99% despite there being no actual load on the card. I reached out to several other people who had access to Navi based cards and this title and they were able to replicate the issue showing that it was not isolated to my system. In an effort to have the RX 5700 included in these results, we tested out the previous 19.7.2 drivers and found them to be perfectly stable, albeit with a recurring lighting artifact during the opening Zepplin mission had me worried the card might be in for a bad time. So, if the RX 5700 performance seems odd or lower than you expected, this is why.

UPDATE

AMD has released Radeon 19.7.5 to specifically address stability issues regarding Navi and Woflenstein Youngblood. I am currently out of town but when I get back I will revisit the RX 5700 with this driver.

Preset Scaling At 4K

Testing preset performance is a good way to see how the game scales by simply adjusting the presets rather than individual settings for a quick idea. While we did all our testing below you can see that this is a title that scales up greatly in performance as you drop the preset setting.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood has a very modest curve in FPS reduction as you move down the preset scale showing improvements as you reduce settings, not so much as it is concerning, but it does show the potential to boost a setup's performance just into the range you might be wanting without sacrificing too much eye candy. Going past Ultra shows very little change and is why we chose that as the starting point for our testing.

UHD 4K Preset Scaling

AVG FPS

1 Percent Lows

0.1 Percent Low

0

40

80

120

160

200

240

0

40

80

120

160

200

240

Mein leben 123

99

96

Uber 123

98

94

Ultra 125

102

97

High 128

106

102

Medium 135

109

105

Low 150

122

110

Intel Core Scaling Performance

While this test won’t tell just how many cores and threads the game can and will use, it does show how the game performs as you move up in cores and threads available. These were tested at the 1080p settings that we tested the rest of the results while pairing the CPU with the RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition.

In Wolfenstein: Youngblood we see a pretty consistent repeat with what we've been seeing in games recently. Scaling up to 6 cores is good, but past that point, there is only a little bit of an increase in the .1% lows showing they help smooth out impacts from the system itself. This is a good showing of leveraging more modern multi-core processors despite what UserBenchmark might think.

Core i9-9900K Core and Thread Scaling

AVG FPS

1 Percent Lows

0.1 Percent Low

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

8c/16t 295

216

189

8c/8t 294

215

190

6c/12t 294

218

182

6c/6t 294

205

167

4c/8t 285

206

161

4c/4t 283

175

141

2c/4t 213

125

108

2c/2t 0

0

0

Graphics Card Results

1080p

Standard 1080p Performance

AVG FPS

1 Percent Lows

0.1 Percent Low

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

RTX 2080ti FE 295

216

189

RTX 2080 SUPER 255

186

154

RTX 2070 SUPER 229

170

149

Radeon VII 224

167

152

RTX 2060 SUPER 199

149

141

RTX 2060 FE 180

133

123

RX Vega 64 171

126

118

RX 5700 167

129

123

RX Vega 56 157

119

84

GTX 1080 FE 137

102

99

GTX 1660 135

101

96

GTX 1070 FE 130

97

88

RX 580 8GB 115

90

69

GTX 1060 6GB FE 96

72

63

RX 570 4GB 79

57

48

Ultrawide 1080p

Ultrawide 2560 x 1080 Performance

AVG FPS

1 Percent Lows

0.1 Percent Low

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

RTX 2080ti FE 236

157

143

RTX 2080 SUPER 204

146

131

RTX 2070 SUPER 184

131

121

Radeon VII 181

139

120

RTX 2060 SUPER 156

110

106

RTX 2060 FE 140

108

96

RX 5700 137

106

101

RX Vega 64 135

103

99

RX Vega 56 126

102

90

GTX 1080 FE 116

94

88

GTX 1660 106

82

78

GTX 1070 FE 105

81

77

RX 580 8GB 90

71

68

GTX 1060 6GB FE 77

61

59

RX 570 4GB 66

46

44

1440p

Standard 1440p Performance

AVG FPS

1 Percent Lows

0.1 Percent Low

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

RTX 2080ti FE 212

159

145

RTX 2080 SUPER 182

141

129

RTX 2070 SUPER 159

117

105

Radeon VII 151

116

109

RTX 2060 SUPER 132

103

99

RTX 2060 FE 119

91

82

RX 5700 114

88

85

RX Vega 64 113

88

84

RX Vega 56 103

81

78

GTX 1080 FE 93

73

72

GTX 1660 91

72

70

GTX 1070 FE 87

67

66

RX 580 8GB 74

59

54

GTX 1060 6GB FE 63

49

48

RX 570 4GB 19

16

12

Ultrawide 1440p

Ultrawide 3440x1440p Performance

AVG FPS

1 Percent Lows

0.1 Percent Low

0

40

80

120

160

200

240

0

40

80

120

160

200

240

RTX 2080ti FE 177

122

112

RTX 2080 SUPER 150

107

98

RTX 2070 SUPER 134

105

94

Radeon VII 128

101

98

RTX 2060 SUPER 112

86

80

RTX 2060 FE 99

78

72

RX Vega 64 93

73

71

RX 5700 93

76

73

RX Vega 56 84

66

61

GTX 1080 FE 80

65

60

GTX 1660 75

59

57

GTX 1070 FE 74

58

57

RX 580 8GB 61

51

48

GTX 1060 6GB FE 54

43

42

RX 570 4GB 17

14

11

UHD 4K

UHD 4K Performance

AVG FPS

1 Percent Lows

0.1 Percent Low

0

40

80

120

160

200

240

0

40

80

120

160

200

240

RTX 2080ti FE 126

103

97

RTX 2080 SUPER 106

79

69

RTX 2070 SUPER 91

73

64

Radeon VII 86

70

64

RTX 2060 SUPER 76

61

59

RTX 2060 FE 67

55

55

RX Vega 64 63

50

48

RX 5700 62

52

50

RX Vega 56 58

48

46

GTX 1080 FE 57

43

41

GTX 1660 50

41

40

GTX 1070 FE 49

40

39

RX 580 8GB 39

33

29

GTX 1060 6GB FE 35

28

25

RX 570 4GB 7

6

4

Conclusion

In the end we see a fairly consistent story with id Tech 6 and how well it performs all the way up through UHD 4K resolutions. There are a few caveats here this time around with the baseline requirement being pushed up in terms of VRAM, as you'll notice the RX 570 4GB suffers and the game even had a warning regarding running out of VRAM even at 1080p with the settings we used. The average frame rate of the RX 570 shows that if you tweak the settings down a bit you'll be just fine playing the game at a variety of resolutions with that card. Navi's stability is unfortunate, but appears to be isolated to the latest driver intended for that game. This is odd, but with others having stability issues in this game with their RX 5700 Series GPU, perhaps a new driver will release soon otherwise you're best off rolling back to Radeon 19.7.2 and potentially giving up a little performance for stability.

GeForce paints an interesting picture here as the Turing cards are simply walking away from the Pascal generation. In our initial review of the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti, we mentioined that the advances in the design, specifically with the handling of Async Compute, would allow the Turing architecture to begin distancing itself as we move forward and if this game is anything to go by then DOOM Eternal should be a real treat for Turing owners. It's just too bad that the ray tracing features weren't available at the time to test as there is a lot of wiggle room in the RTX cards to be able to take a framerate hit to deliver on some fresh effects.