On the 5090, the performance cost of enabling RTX Mega Geometry is 23% at 1080p, 24% at 1440p, and 21% at 4K. At a rendering resolution of 1440p or below, performance is above 60 FPS. This gives you the option of using frame generation to further increase motion clarity without significantly impacting perceived latency. Typically, you want to use frame generation with a base framerate of at least 60 FPS – ideally higher – so that the game still feels responsive.
On the RTX 5070, the performance cost is 27% at 1080p, and 26% at 1440p. Unfortunately, 60 FPS with Mega Geometry is not possible in this demo on the 5070 unless you use frame generation or DLSS with an internal rendering resolution below 1080p. This result is not entirely surprising, as standard path tracing is already extremely taxing on this GPU.
We included the 5060 here because the RTX Bonsai Diorama Demo developer guide listed this as the “recommended GPU.” Clearly, that must include the use of DLSS Super Resolution and Frame Generation, because without them, the 5060 averages below 30 FPS in this demo with Mega Geometry enabled. Indeed, with DLSS Super Resolution and Frame Generation at 1080p, the 5060 can exceed 100 FPS, but the resulting experience suffers in both image quality and input latency.
At GDC 2026, NVIDIA announced that Mega Geometry would be implemented in the upcoming 2026 titles Control Resonant and The Witcher 4.
During their Future of Path Tracing presentation at GDC 2026, NVIDIA highlighted the RTX Mega Geometry foliage system coming to The Witcher 4 .
The new level-of-detail (LOD) system for foliage selectively updates only the relevant parts of the scene based on camera movement, and represents level-of-detail in a manner that is efficient to ray trace. This is done without exhibiting traditional LOD pop-in.
The system leverages Opacity Micromaps (OMMs) for distant LODs, which are used as a simplified representation of the geometry that is lightweight in memory. On the RTX 40-series and 50-series, OMMs are hardware-accelerated.
(Image credit: Nvidia) (Image credit: Nvidia) (Image credit: Nvidia) (Image credit: Nvidia) Later in the presentation, NVIDIA showcased the system in a demo featuring a vast 5×5 km forest composed of roughly 60 million plants spanning over 200 species, including around 1 million trees. Notably, the entire scene runs without streaming, with all assets resident in memory. Every element is represented as full geometry – down to individual pine needles – with some of the largest trees reaching approximately 10 million polygons each. The scene is rendered with fully dynamic, path-traced lighting, and the tree assets were provided by CD PROJEKT RED.
What was surprising was the level of performance achieved in this demo. On the RTX 5090 at 4K using DLSS Quality mode (internal rendering resolution of 1440p), the demo ran at 80 FPS. This is nearly 18% faster than the Bonsai Diorama demo ran on the 5090 at 1440p.
On the RTX 4070 at 1440p using DLSS Quality mode (internal rendering resolution of 960p), it ran at about 58 FPS.
RTX Mega Geometry represents a meaningful step toward truly photorealistic real-time graphics. With advancements like the new LOD system for foliage and ongoing performance optimizations, it has the potential to enable scenes of unprecedented geometric complexity that can be rendered with fully dynamic, path-traced lighting at playable framerates on modern hardware.
Dan Mateescu is a PC enthusiast with many years of experience benchmarking PC hardware. In 2021, he started his own YouTube channel called 'Compusemble' where he benchmarks hardware in video games and the latest tech demos. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-23/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Dan Mateescu Social Links Navigation Contributor Dan Mateescu is a PC enthusiast with many years of experience benchmarking PC hardware. In 2021, he started his own YouTube channel called 'Compusemble' where he benchmarks hardware in video games and the latest tech demos.
hotaru251 reminder that majority of RTX features are not used in the intended way by devs because it takes time (and money) to do so and we get to buy brute forcing poorly optimized games. Would love to believe this would help but I won't trust it will based on history. edit: also we really need to stop chasing photorealism in games outside cinematic games…its a waste of $/time & has too much requirements at all points (hardware & dev time) Reply
razor512 hotaru251 said: reminder that majority of RTX features are not used in the intended way by devs because it takes time (and money) to do so and we get to buy brute forcing poorly optimized games. Would love to believe this would help but I won't trust it will based on history. edit: also we really need to stop chasing photorealism in games outside cinematic games…its a waste of $/time & has too much requirements at all points (hardware & dev time) But don't you want a lego game to be rendered slightly more accurately and all at the low, low cost of needing frame gen to hit 30FPS? 🙂 https://www.digitalfoundry.net/features/frame-gen-to-30fps-lego-batmans-bizarre-pc-specs-sheet-is-a-case-study-in-how-not-to-market-a-game Anyway it seems like when we get a combination of game devs not wanting optimization, while seeking even slightly better visuals, requirements skyrocket to an astronomical degree. Reply
-Fran- "What is there not to like?" Well, I don't see any red or blue graphs in there. Does anyone else see any other colour? I don't. Screw praising nVidia for doing their best to corner the market and strangle consumers into a non-choice. Do not forget: you're praising an effective monopoly; one that is screwing you over on many fronts already. Regards. Reply
derekullo -Fran- said: "What is there not to like?" Well, I don't see any red or blue graphs in there. Does anyone else see any other colour? I don't. Screw praising nVidia for doing their best to corner the market and strangle consumers into a non-choice. Do not forget: you're praising an effective monopoly; one that is screwing you over on many fronts already. Regards. How are they screwing us over on many fronts? They single handily were responsible for all of the graphics cards I used growing up, powering games from the original Deus Ex in 2000 to Morrowind to Guild Wars to WoW to Cyberpunk. When I turned 18 back in 2004, my parents seeing how I liked gaming, bought me 10 shares of Nvidia stock for my birthday … was like $15 each back then. Those 10 shares, by themself, have since split into 1200 shares worth over $240,000 today. How are they a monopoly? AMD and now Intel are both highly capable companies that are trying to create a better GPU. If you don't want an Nvidia GPU then you don't have to buy one. Working for a library, my boss had asked me to test out an Arc B580 to see if it was a suitable for use in the upcoming refresh of our teen gaming computers which currently use aging Geforce 2080s. Arc B580 is perfectly capable of maintaining 60 fps in games like Cyberpunk at 1080p on high to ultra settings. Obviously Cyberpunk isn't one of the Steam games for the teens, due to its M rating, but was chosen for its GPU stress testing abilities. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/testing-nvidias-rtx-mega-geometry-tech-vram-reducing-tech-a-leap-forward-for-path-traced-rendering#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/subscription
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