[MCPE-161517] RTX GPUs have worse performance than GTX GPUs

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When Ray Tracing is supported by the GPU, the game runs with decreased performance even when Ray Tracing is not enabled in the settings.

From testing, an RTX 3080 Ti gets drastically lower framerates than a GTX 1060 does in the same world with the same settings. In situations that are known to cause frame drops (such as having a large number of entities, lots of item frames, or using a high-res resource pack), the performance hit is greatly exaggerated on RTX GPUs.

It can be proven that this is not an issue with the GPU itself by using the workaround listed below or downgrading the Nvidia drivers to an older version (442.74) where Minecraft doesn't detect the GPU as Ray Tracing capable. The performance will be back to expected levels. Some Windows versions may also stop the game detecting RTX, fixing the performance. Versions without Render Dragon (meaning they don't have RTX support) also have correct performance.
It seems that when the game does not detect a Ray Tracing compatible GPU, it runs at the FPS it should.

Minecraft Preview shows that RTX cards use "D3D12 RTX" and GTX ones just use "D3D12". The RTX version has a large FPS hit for players who aren't using Ray Tracing.

Steps to test the difference:

While using a GTX GPU that has no ray tracing capability, get into a situation that will tax the system slightly. (for example place 100 filled item frames or spawn 50 mobs)
Make sure VSync is disabled and note the average framerate.
Swap the GTX GPU for a more powerful RTX one. (or disable DXR Raytracing in NVIDIA Profile Inspector)
Load the same world with the same graphics settings. (with Ray Tracing off in the settings)
Experience a lower framerate than the less powerful GPU.

Expected Result:
The RTX graphics card is significantly more powerful than the GTX one, so it should have a higher FPS.

Observed result:
The RTX graphics card performs much worse than the GTX one.

Screenshots/Videos:
Performance comparison between GTX 1060 and RTX 3080 Ti, with all other hardware/settings/packs left the same.

[media]

Notes:
When Ray Tracing is disabled in the game settings, it is not fully disabled. Something seems to change when RTX is available for the GPU.
This bug looks to be the root cause of MCPE-153297, MCPE-111547, MCPE-157142, and possibly MCPE-142934 for some users.
I think this bug is capping the performance of everyone playing using an RTX GPU, but goes unnoticed as people with frame drops aren’t comparing the performance to a lower-spec GPU without Ray Tracing support.

Workaround:
With the latest version of NVIDIA Profile Inspector, you can now disable DXR Ray Tracing for only Minecraft, fixing performance! Select the Minecraft profile and set "Raytracing - (DXR) Enabled" to "RT Disabled".

The game will report that your device is incompatible with RTX, however you'll now have performance that matches a non-RTX GPU! If you ever want to use Ray Tracing, just change the setting back to "Default" and the in-game option will be unlocked. For some reason the Minecraft profile in Nvidia Profile Inspector doesn't affect Minecraft Preview, so to test D3D12 on that version of the game you'll need to temporarily disable DXR on the global profile and re-enable it when you're done.

Alternate workaround:
Minecraft switches to D3D11 if the GPU recovers from a crash while RTX is enabled.

We can test a "timeout detection and recovery" by running "dxcap -forcetdr" in an administrator command prompt. This may require "Graphics Tools" to be installed in the optional features page of the PC's settings. When I tried this the screen went black for a few seconds and then Minecraft Preview reported that it was using D3D11 instead of D3D12 RTX! There's a black screen in game until Ray Tracing is off again but after that it'll be on D3D11 until the game is restarted. FPS improved by a lot around item frames and 512x packs worked perfectly. Doing this can and did cause issues with other software/hardware. I'm not an expert, so if you use this it's at your own risk!

Linked issues

is duplicated by 4

MCPE-161963 Minecraft Bedrock Doesn't Use My GPU At All Causing Low FPS Resolved

MCPE-165577 Minecraft Bedrock isn't using all my gpu. Resolved

MCPE-166507 Game performance will be reduced when played on a computer with RTX Resolved

MCPE-169392 Shulker box’s are super laggy Resolved

relates to 1

MCPE-111547 Excessive lag (FPS drop) with held and dropped items and RTX card Resolved

Attachments

Comments 26

Mineliver 2022-08-25T13:28:30Z

Pretty much a duplicate of: MCPE-157142

HavingFunTimes 2022-08-25T13:57:41Z

I would say this is not a duplicate of that issue, as this one does not include GTX graphics cards as being affected. However this bug is likely the cause of that one and I agree it should not have been marked as a feature request!

Mineliver 2022-08-25T14:02:17Z

Yeah, but the two issues are talking about pretty much the same thing, doesn't matter though. The more information, the better! Thanks for your support and for creating this issue. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one. I put your bug report in my report at the top of the report so they can gather more information from other people.

PleaseFixThis 2022-08-26T11:00:51Z

This issue has been in the game for so long now. It makes doing basic minecraft things unplayable.... The GPUs affected are all Nvidia RTX GPUs(not sure about other non Nvidia RTX Capable GPUs) and I think the GTX 1060(Nvidia has said this GPU has RTX capabilities, but im not sure if its affected), 1070, 1070 ti, 1080 and 1080 ti. These GTX GPUs have a small amount of RTX capabilities like reflections and/or shadows which is probably why this problem is happening.

I went as far as messing around with minecrafts game files and still haven't found a better solution than downgrading Nvidia drivers.. What I find a bit odd is if I remove the ray tracing folder from minecraft, the issue still exists.

My youtube has 2 videos showing the difference in performance with Nvidia Driver 442.74 and the latest version.

https://youtube.com/channel/UCocLruDr37nSTxZs5cK2UqQ

HavingFunTimes 2022-08-26T14:47:27Z

After hours of testing, I have figured out that this bug is caused by Minecraft using "D3D12 RTX", which is the version that only Ray Tracing compatible GPUs are allowed to use. The 1060 just uses "D3D12".

In 1.18.30, a version affected by MCPE-152645, you can force "D3D11" (DirectX 11) and bring performance back to normal! There is less item frame lag than the 1060 and 512x packs work fine! However, DirectX 11 doesn't support RTX, meaning you get a black screen in-game while Ray Tracing is enabled in the settings.

If anybody knows of a way to force D3D11 or D3D12 on the latest version, that would be a good workaround until Mojang can fix DirectX 12 RTX or make it optional.

Edit: Added more specific DirectX version names from Minecraft Preview

16 more comments

PleaseFixThis 2022-08-27T10:41:07Z

I did some testing too and got some pretty interesting results. So as far as I know its still impossible to force DX11 at least on Minecraft. I did however find something close to it because it slightly works. It isn't a feasible fix in the slightest, but maybe this will give some more insight...

I found out that there are Direct X files in System32 and I thought removing the D3D12.dll and D3D12Core.dll might help. When I removed both files, Minecraft refused too launch. I put them back and removed just D3D12.dll and I got stuck on the red Minecraft loading screen.. I put D3D12.dll back and removed D3D12Core.dll and after changing DXCPL to run Minecraft on DX11, it worked, kind of. I wasn't getting better performance at all, but it was on DX11(it was worse performance, but still playable) . The only problem is my CPU was at 80% and GPU was at 15%. Its almost like it removed my GPUs functionality.

HavingFunTimes 2022-08-27T19:49:30Z

Possible workaround:

Minecraft seems to revert to D3D11 if the GPU recovers from a crash while RTX is enabled (which is what likely happens with MCPE-152645 and MCPE-104207).

Doing this can and did cause issues with other software/hardware. I'm not an expert. If you use this it's at your own risk!

PleaseFixThis 2022-08-27T21:00:06Z

WOW. The "Possible workaround" Liam posted works as a fix. Open Minecraft and run that command. You'll be switched to DX11 and the game is playable like it should be. High resolution texture packs are finally useable..

I've been playing around with the fix for about 1 hour now and have not noticed anything wrong with my PC. The only noticeable difference so far is that I get a black screen for 5 seconds after I enter the command and that's it.

As Liam stated, some applications may be affected by this, but they should be fine after the application is restarted. Discord had a few black spots that were fixed when I moved my mouse over it and Chrome was completely fine.

PleaseFixThis 2022-08-28T22:58:44Z

Closing Minecraft and reopening it will revert it back to D3D12 with the same bad performance that it regularly has...
I have used this workaround for about a day and have had zero issues other then having to restart discord once because it was just a black screen.

Mineliver 2022-08-30T11:56:45Z

That fix doesn't work for me, my entire screen goes black and then I can't see anything at all, I tried to wait 60 seconds but nothing. I had to restart my entire computer. I hope they come out with a permanent fix soon

PleaseFixThis 2022-08-31T04:00:46Z

If you're still interested in the fix, make sure your Nvidia drivers are updated, Nvidia is open in your tray(up arrow at bottom right of taskbar), no applications are in full screen so that you're able to see some of your desktop, close anything running in the background that isn't needed open and make sure to open CMD as admin.

Mineliver 2022-09-07T11:28:33Z

Take note: This has been an issue ever since RTX became available to Minecraft Bedrock. The CPU (70-100%) does pretty much all the work while the GPU is being used between 0-30%. That causes VERY low fps no matter what render distance. Gets even worse above 8 chunks of render distance, and makes fps go from 100 to like 10. :/

Mineliver 2022-10-26T19:48:51Z

I have already posted this in another issue but I thought it would be some useful information. Take a look at these interesting screenshots. My hardware is an RTX 3060 GPU and an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H CPU. I'm running on Windows 11. Minecraft bedrock uses way too much of my CPU (around 80%) but it only uses 1-2% of my GPU (hilarious). My ram is also being used more than it should be. The weird part is, is that sometimes it's the opposite, the GPU is used more and the CPU used less. All of this causes terrible latency, fps, render distance availability, etc.

Take note that these tests were run with a render distance of 76 to get the most accurate results.

[media][media][media][media]

Pamicuro 2022-11-05T13:55:44Z

I have a computer with a 5600x ryzen processor and a rtx 3070 graphics card. In a world with a large amount of chest I have around 30 fps in game. My friend with a gtx 970 had around 80 fps in the same world.

With this "Possible workaround" it went to 160 fps stable while the gpu being only at 30% usage.

This need to be resolved by mojang quickly, as it makes no sense why it does this in the first place.

Thanks Liam for the workaround!!!

Mineliver 2022-11-17T13:19:08Z

My igpu gives me higher fps than my rtx 3060 in Minecraft bedrock

HavingFunTimes 2022-11-26T12:02:54Z

Unfortunately not fixed in 1.19.50.23 or the latest Preview build. The recent change only improves performance for Intel graphics, not Nvidia.

"D3D12" gives higher FPS than "D3D11", but "D3D12 RTX" does not due to this bug. When testing, make sure to check the text at the top of the screen to see which GPU is being used and if it is using "D3D12" or "D3D12 RTX".

HavingFunTimes 2022-11-28T16:29:44Z

Using the new workaround, I managed to get a 4x FPS improvement in my test world!

I kept all resource packs, graphics settings, and other PC hardware the same. I only changed the DXR setting and the GPU. My CPU is an i7-8700k and I have 16GB of DDR4 RAM. As you can see the framerate is quadrupled on the RTX card when DXR is disabled. I love the Ray Tracing feature, but it has a lot of bloat that is impacting framerate for people that aren't using it.

Here are my results comparing the RTX 3080 Ti with no profile changes, GTX 1060 with no profile changes, RTX 3080 Ti with DXR disabled, and RTX 3080 Ti with the old TDR workaround:

[media]

djmira92 2022-11-28T20:02:47Z

AMD graphics has the same problem. When D3D12 RTX is in use, the fps drops massively.

HavingFunTimes 2022-12-02T16:10:36Z

For some reason the Minecraft profile in Nvidia Profile Inspector doesn't affect Minecraft Preview, so to test D3D12 on that version of the game you'll need to temporarily disable DXR on the global profile and re-enable it when you're done.

PavelDobCZ23 2023-01-18T22:42:59Z

To use the workaround with NVIDIA Profile Inspector on Minecraft Preview without overriding the global profile you need to create a profile with executable microsoft.minecraftwindowsbeta_8wekyb3d8bbwe or add the executable string to the existing Minecraft profile. I did it through exporting the profile and editing the .nip file which is easy to read and modify as this isn't an actual exe file but a UWP app. Here's how it should look like:

[media]

[Mod] OcelotOnesie 2023-03-23T16:56:15Z

Is anyone still experiencing this issue in 1.19.80.22 Preview?

HavingFunTimes 2023-03-23T17:45:07Z

I've only done a small amount of testing but it looks like this bug has finally been fixed!

The patch notes only mention that the debug HUD text was modified, but there have clearly been more changes under the hood.
"D3D12 RTX" has now been renamed to "D3D12+", and RTX features are now only enabled when Ray Tracing is enabled!

This update has given me a 400% FPS boost in my world's most taxing areas, and there is no longer any FPS drop when holding a 512x resolution item. Absolutely overjoyed that this is fixed.

This change also means that MCPE-153297 and MCPE-111547 are both fixed, along with MCPE-142934 for some users.

PleaseFixThis 2023-03-24T04:16:28Z

I spent a few minutes trying out preview 1.19.80.22, and was getting expected FPS values. I was able to look at a 10x10x10 of chests and maintain a constant 240FPS. I Tried holding a high resolution item(512x512) and didnt drop to 20FPS like it normally would with D3D12 RTX.. It seems like the issue with RTX capable GPUs performing poorly, is fixed.. I agree with Liam though that high resolution items render improperly with a ray tracing resource packs enabled.

ElFlxen 2023-04-22T08:03:48Z

Fixed in 1.20.0.21
I have tried the latest preview 1.20.0.21 and the problem was solved. I am attaching screenshots of the same area, one in the official version and the other in the previously mentioned preview.

[media][media]

HavingFunTimes 2023-04-26T18:13:26Z

After testing, I can confirm this is fixed in 1.19.80! (again not mentioned in the changelog)

Compared to Preview 1.19.60.20, this update brings me a 4x FPS increase and I can now play on my world without needing any workarounds. Thank you for fixing this.

[media]

[Mod] Umija5895M 2023-06-06T14:57:21Z

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