Is Ray Tracing Worth the FPS Hit? 36 Game Performance Investigation

TL;DR, but 'Yes' it is 100% worth the hit, and if it is too much of a hit for you, upgrade your fossil.

Also the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of gamers game @ 1440p or 1080p, so doing a post about RT performance @ 4K is not worth your time and effort imo.
 
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Jarenien said:
TL;DR, but 'Yes' it is 100% worth the hit, and if it is too much of a hit for you, upgrade your fossil.

Also the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of gamers game @ 1440p or 1080p, so doing a post about RT performance @ 4K is not worth your time and effort imo.
Click to expand...
this is so wrong it should be a criminal offense.

if you have top shelf gear you arent playing at 1440p and especially 1080(ffs a ps2 could crank 1080i)

you burn all that cash to play at 4k, so for those folks(llike myself and probably many other forum lurkers)4k is all you really care about because if you arent playing there youve just burned money, im still on the fence with RT, yes it looks great but its rare because it needs devs to implement it correctly for it to shine and many dont do that so you end up with wasted performance and terrible image quality.

they may be because unreal engine is just a dog, when its bolted onto custom built engines RT seems to shine.
 
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Techspot in 2020

https://www.techspot.com/news/87946-ugly-side-nvidia-rollercoaster-ride-shows-when-big.html

In a tersely-worded email, Nvidia told Hardware Unboxed (and by extension TechSpot) that it would no longer be providing them with GeForce Founders Edition review units. The stated reason? Spending too little time focusing on RTX ray tracing, as opposed to raster performance. Hardware Unboxed, apparently, did "not see things the same way that we (Nvidia), gamers, and the rest of the industry do."

Techspot in 2024

"Based on visual analysis, we firmly believe path tracing is the future of high-end PC visuals because it's the most likely to transform how a game looks and give that next-generation feel"
 
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Not to me. Not a graphics wh0re. The couple of games I've played where RT is available and I turned it on, not once was I standing there (in game) with my mouth agape (in real life), drooling because the light looked a little different and reflections looked a little different. I'm too busy playing the game to notice those minor changes because I'm not standing there trying to see my avatar's reflection in a window or puddle on the ground.

When you have a product that gets performance tanked by 30% (sometimes less, but usually a lot more) by turning on a feature and then you need another feature to regain some of the lost performance and this second feature introduces latency (and other issues such as ghosting, but I've heard these things are improving)....only to need a third feature to reduce the latency.... Yeah, no thanks. Keep your crap away from my gaming.
 
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Lastly, if Path Tracing was so good, then why is God of War Ragnarok still the best looking game to date, which doesn't host any Ray Tracing?

Ah yeah, it called optimization and talented developpers.

Not to mention that RT is introducing A LOT of artifacts.
 
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I would be more interested if the impact is the same on a 4070 for example? And what about CPU? RT is known to be CPU heavy as well.

Saying that the impact is not too bad on a maxed out system seems kind of irrelevant, unless it scales perfectly linearly, which I doubt.
 
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No, and it's becoming increasingly clear that it's an irrational waste of resources. If a $2000 GPU struggles to deliver 30fps, how come the rest of the market pays so much attention to it? Most people buy GPUs under $500. How about a realistic approach.

Take RT back to the movies where it makes sense.
 
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I usually disable RT even if I have a 4090. I love DLDSR and DLAA tho, massively improves visuals without a huge performance hit, and DLAA can be forced in all DLSS games, meaning 600+ titles at this point.

DLDSR is insane for old games. Vastly improves sharpness and visuals.

redgarl said:
Lastly, if Path Tracing was so good, then why is God of War Ragnarok still the best looking game to date, which doesn't host any Ray Tracing?

Ah yeah, it called optimization and talented developpers.

Not to mention that RT is introducing A LOT of artifacts.
Click to expand...

God of War Ragnarok is not the best looking game, or even close. The game does not really stand out in terms of graphics. Tons of games look similar. Good yeah but nothing special.
 
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In my 2 year old outlook for Ray tracing in gaming I predicted that RT will not take off until the hardware equivalent to the 4090 will be affordable to the masses. The ps6/pro will probably be that hardware and or PC counterpart. The ps5 pro will probably improve things by allowing developers to program for a fixed static hardware and work on efficiency vs the brute forced approach we have now. The efficiency should scale to PC hardware but we will likely not see this middle ground of improvement until rdna4 and ps5pro optimized rt games this time next year or later. 5 year outlook with ps6/pro dedicated ports will probably be when ray tracing will probably hit the masses on the cheap with plautauing efficiency curve.
Hopefully rdna4 brings some crazy rt performance gains but without dedicated silicon That is on par with 4080 but this is probably wishful thinking on my part.
Also which Blackwell card will have equivalent ray tracing performance to a 4090? If the 5070 has the 4090 rt performance at $600 it might we might have a move in the right direction but I wouldn't hold my breath due to the rumored lack of vram movement from 12 gigs for the upcoming 5070.
 
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Dead Space is the only game where I turned it on, turned it off, turned it back on, and never turned it off again. The game just looks better with its implementation of ray tracing. It isn't over the top and it complements the already existing shadows without tanking performance.
 
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redgarl said:
Techspot in 2020

https://www.techspot.com/news/87946-ugly-side-nvidia-rollercoaster-ride-shows-when-big.html

In a tersely-worded email, Nvidia told Hardware Unboxed (and by extension TechSpot) that it would no longer be providing them with GeForce Founders Edition review units. The stated reason? Spending too little time focusing on RTX ray tracing, as opposed to raster performance. Hardware Unboxed, apparently, did "not see things the same way that we (Nvidia), gamers, and the rest of the industry do."

Techspot in 2024

"Based on visual analysis, we firmly believe path tracing is the future of high-end PC visuals because it's the most likely to transform how a game looks and give that next-generation feel"
Click to expand...
TechSpot commenters discover that it's okay to change your mind when things evolve over time and you're presented with new information, and you don't have to grand-stand one single opinion for the rest of eternity.

redgarl said:
Lastly, if Path Tracing was so good, then why is God of War Ragnarok still the best looking game to date, which doesn't host any Ray Tracing?
Click to expand...
Not even close LOL
You may like the art direction of God of War, but on the technical aspect it's nowhere remotely near being the most impressive, it's literally a PS4 game. It's not even the best looking console game, the Demon's Souls remake is a much better technical accomplishment than Ragnarok is.
 
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I believe raster can mimic reality to such a degree that ray tracing is not needed, and you get to run the game at a playable frame rate. Ray tracing is also not "real" but people think it is. Metro Exodus has two versions of the same game, both have ray tracing and the later version looks much better.
 
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redgarl said:
Techspot in 2020

https://www.techspot.com/news/87946-ugly-side-nvidia-rollercoaster-ride-shows-when-big.html

In a tersely-worded email, Nvidia told Hardware Unboxed (and by extension TechSpot) that it would no longer be providing them with GeForce Founders Edition review units. The stated reason? Spending too little time focusing on RTX ray tracing, as opposed to raster performance. Hardware Unboxed, apparently, did "not see things the same way that we (Nvidia), gamers, and the rest of the industry do."

Techspot in 2024

"Based on visual analysis, we firmly believe path tracing is the future of high-end PC visuals because it's the most likely to transform how a game looks and give that next-generation feel"
Click to expand...

So you're saying: now that we have Path Tracing, RT is worth it and we should buy the best RT cards and use them for new path traced games. Gotcha. (y) (Y)
 
Ray tracing o whatever it is, might be a very far far away future since the GPUs nowadays still can't handle it, and till the day a mid tier GPU could handle it then probably all the people here will let their grandchildren enjoy it.
 
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20 years ago, our GPUs struggled to deal with 4x antialiasing and 16x anisotropics. Now they are working hard for ray tracing. The essence of the games remains the same, and only well-oiled mechanics for playability and immersion make me have fun. Not the expensive bling bling of GPUs which only provide window dressing.
 
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I was about to fire up my torch and join the angry mob, but then I remembered something:

"Oh yeah... RT has an OFF button, and I don't HAVE to use it!"

I just finished GoW (2018) using my RTX 3080 12GB with RT ON at 4587x1920 (1.78x DL + DLSS / OLED ultrawide) and it was stunning. Averaged 102 fps with minimal drops. Worked flawlessly.

Not sure what a graphics wh0re is, but if pausing now and then to appreciate all the incredible and intricate details, lovingly crafted by large teams of programmers and artists over several years, then I'm proud to be a wh0re!
 
poshflamingos said:
TechSpot commenters discover that it's okay to change your mind when things evolve over time and you're presented with new information, and you don't have to grand-stand one single opinion for the rest of eternity.


Not even close LOL
You may like the art direction of God of War, but on the technical aspect it's nowhere remotely near being the most impressive, it's literally a PS4 game. It's not even the best looking console game, the Demon's Souls remake is a much better technical accomplishment than Ragnarok is.
Click to expand...

You are legally blind if you think this is true...
 
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Lew Zealand said:
So you're saying: now that we have Path Tracing, RT is worth it and we should buy the best RT cards and use them for new path traced games. Gotcha. (y) (Y)
Click to expand...
No...

What I am saying is that Tim and Steve are now doing what Nvidia asked them to do... what they were so vocal about not going to do in the name of journalistic impartiality...

(Ricochet)

🏹 --> :dizzy:
 
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