What do gamers actually think about Ray-Tracing?

[SpellowHouse]

As someone who has never used RT, is it realistically practically worth it on anything other than a 4090?

I'm asking from a totally ignorant position, just to be clear.

I think it's one of those questions similar to "do you like chocolate or strawberry?". Personally, I think RT is a waste of time, but I know that some people swear by it.

 

[ICDP]

It requires upscaling to work at playable FPS on a 4090 let alone anything slower. I have a 4080 and play at 4K and RT without upscaling is not playable. At least not levels of RT that are meaningful. If you game at 1440p or less the slower GPUs are viable, and that includes AMD.

When people tell you Nvidia is 30% faster than AMD in RT… most neglect to tell you it’s the difference between 15 FPS and 20 FPS. Sticking on upscaling you then go to maybe 45 FPS vs 50 FPS and then lower settings from there until the blurring and artefacting becomes unbearable. DLSS gives less artefacting and this makes it allegedly “better” than AMD.

 

[PhigBill]

I still think it's in the gimmicky zone, although will slowly become more accessible to everyone without the need to butcher your in-game settings and still needed propping up by up-scaling, personally, to-date, I've maybe switched it on in a few single player games here and there to see what difference it makes to the overall immersion and after 5 minutes I've just turned it off as it's added very little overall.

 

[GhostDog1981]

I still think it's in the gimmicky zone, although will slowly become more accessible to everyone without the need to butcher your in-game settings and still needed propping up by up-scaling, personally, to-date, I've maybe switched it on in a few single player games here and there to see what difference it makes to the overall immersion and after 5 minutes I've just turned it off as it's added very little overall.

RT won’t be a mandatory “must have” or break current gen mid range GPUs (unlike the 1080ti and 5700xt in Alan Wake 2- mesh shaders etc) for another 5 years at least.

I really fail to see much visual benefit from tanking fps and having to use upscaling to bring it back to 60fps.

All the fanboys will keep saying it’s so obvious the differences and use still shots to support their argument but I’ve just played most of cyberpunk at RT Ultra preset (which uses FSR) at 1440p (getting 64 gps avg on a 7800xt) and really didn’t see what the fuss is actually about. I actually found the RT very distracting and hurts my eyes

 

[ICDP]

I tried a 4080 and a 7900XT in CP and found both were able to play at near 60 FPS average at 4K with Ultra RT. The 7900XT was set at balanced FSR vs quality DLSS. To say the 4080 was vastly superior IQ would be a stretch. There was a bit more shimmering on the AMD card but not enough to detract from gameplay.

The game itself with RT looks pretty, but certainly nothing special.

 

[Purgatory]

RT won’t be a mandatory “must have” or break current gen mid range GPUs (unlike the 1080ti and 5700xt in Alan Wake 2- mesh shaders etc) for another 5 years at least.

They fixed the mesh shader issues with new recent patches.

 

[ImMrChris]

I've alway been a graphics snob so always turn it on unless it tanks the FPS below pleasantly playable

 

[Calin Banc]

I tried a 4080 and a 7900XT in CP and found both were able to play at near 60 FPS average at 4K with Ultra RT. The 7900XT was set at balanced FSR vs quality DLSS. To say the 4080 was vastly superior IQ would be a stretch. There was a bit more shimmering on the AMD card but not enough to detract from gameplay.

The game itself with RT looks pretty, but certainly nothing special.

there are more resolutions than 4k.
how that 7900xt is doing in path tracing?

Le: there's a huge gap between 4080 and 7900 XT in anything that's more heavy towards rt/pt

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[F4FF3R]

They fixed the mesh shader issues with new recent patches.

Wait! I can play AW2 with my 5700xt now?

 

[ooStevo]

It's too dark looking!!!!!

I think in terms of older games, the best ones are still alien isolation and batman Arkham knight (well it's lighting, shadows etc. are actually quite poor but it's better than most of the other games that came out at the time)

It's supposed to be dark. That's why you have night vision,and other vision types if memory serves correct. I played it on a wide-screen CRT on Xbox and it looked great.

 

[D3K]

Or it was? A pure choice between the two with one major caveat:
To do RT well, you have to design everything for only RT. Where RT is an afterthought (because raster is first to, you know, address the rest of the market - and RT users can use raster too), it tends to show up problems where things often look too dark. Yes, more realistic considering the actual light sources but often not really fun to play (HDR1200 OLED users in a dark cellar excepted).

So the developer did raster first, raster second and thirdly added some RT features; but what didn't do is over all their light sources, textures, reflectivity etc. to make RT look more their hand-crafted raster sceene.

Raster vs RT has not been a choice of one over the other because of the age and capabilities of RT performance for consumers. RT-only was never been a choice for new games. The choice was not "do we make this game raster or RT" but "do we add RT elements to this raster game?". Interestingly they say AW2 is fully ray traced, but I'm not sure I believe it.

It was not a choice before 2000 series, and for devs it was a choice to add some RT elements to games in 2000 series. I personally didn't touch it til 3000 series and if I hadn't gotten a cheap 3080 FE I probably wouldnt have touched it til 4000 series. As GPU capabilities increase their perf with RT gen on gen, there will inevitably be a fork in the road where devs developing new games will just stop doing raster. It's far too time consuming. It will still be a partial choice going forward, and raster will continue to be supported for a good while (purely because people do not upgrade often enough to newer tech), but as soon as they can they will drop it (unless of course the aesthetic is enhanced somehow by using raster).

As for games not supporting RT... https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/news/rtx-remix-announcement/
Practically every 3d generated environment can be lit with RT. What you may be missing are some definitions for materials that did not exist at the time the game was developed, because those definitions were meaningless for raster. With remix you will start to see an avalanche of older games that can have RT retroactively added

 

[D-Ranged]

I like how Ray tracing looks when I turn it on, when I'm actively looking for differences it looks good... but when I actually get into a game and am not just staring at the lighting you could probably turn it off and I wouldn't even notice

This is exactly how I feel.

It does look great, but the amount of times I'll stand around in a game staring and admiring the RT after turning it on the first time, is going to be minimal.

 

[no_1_dave]

This is exactly how I feel.

It does look great, but the amount of times I'll stand around in a game staring and admiring the RT after turning it on the first time, is going to be minimal.

Same can be said for most graphics settings, but that doesn't stop people upgrading when they can't run games at max anymore

 

[D-Ranged]

Same can be said for most graphics settings, but that doesn't stop people upgrading when they can't run games at max anymore

Ray tracing isnt as obvious a jump, imo anyway, compared to turning graphics from low to high

 

[Calin Banc]

it is

Imgsli

 

[no_1_dave]

Ray tracing isnt as obvious a jump, imo anyway, compared to turning graphics from low to high

It's a bigger jump in some games

That's why it makes no sense when somebody is spending £600+ on a graphics card and says "I don't care about ray-tracing"
Spend £600+ on something which is designed to make games look pretty and say you don't care about one of the features which does just that in a big way... Ok lol

 

[Gerard]

It's a bigger jump in some games

That's why it makes no sense when somebody is spending £600+ on a graphics card and says "I don't care about ray-tracing"
Spend £600+ on something which is designed to make games look pretty and say you don't care about one of the features which does just that in a big way... Ok lol

The gpu is designed to run the game, not 'make it look pretty'. And with running the games, framerate comes first and foremost, and a lot of people prefer a high framerate vs 'making it look pretty', especially when it comes to online shooters.

 

[no_1_dave]

The gpu is designed to run the game, not 'make it look pretty'. And with running the games, framerate comes first and foremost, and a lot of people prefer a high framerate vs 'making it look pretty', especially when it comes to online shooters.

Most posts I see where people want to upgrade it's because their current card no longer runs games at high settings

 

[Gerard]

Most posts I see where people want to upgrade it's because their current card no longer runs games at high settings

Depends entirely on what type of game they want to play, ratcheting down settings for shooters to gain an advantage has been a thing for decades now. That image above with counterstrike path\raster is the perfect showcase of how raster or lower settings gives an advantage as the shadows aren't there in that entrance and the area is easy to see into vs harder with path tracing enabled.

 

[Calin Banc]

Depends entirely on what type of game they want to play, ratcheting down settings for shooters to gain an advantage has been a thing for decades now. That image above with counterstrike path\raster is the perfect showcase of how raster or lower settings gives an advantage as the shadows aren't there in that entrance and the area is easy to see into vs harder with path tracing enabled.

My image is from Cyberpunk .