What do gamers actually think about Ray-Tracing?

[Calin Banc]

Interactive responsive environments, something like Cities Skylines did very well.
I could spend hours there manipulating terrain and water sources, the same could be applied to many other genres.

Like this?

 

[Zarax]

Yes but outside of a tech demo.

 

[Kaapstad]

What do I think about Ray Tracing?

Nothing

I have never used it in a game as it adds nothing to Gameplay.

After 5mins watching it run the novelty has worn off and you are back to square one.

I would even say that in the RTX on/RTX off demos you see everywhere I would even say I find the off option looks better a lot of the time.

Having said that for anyone who enjoys using Ray Tracing, this is a good thing as everyone is different in their gaming experience.



It is also a pity that you can not buy separate cards to do Ray Tracing like the old PhysX cards, if this was possible Nvidia would never tolerate it as it would kill the market for gamers needing to buy the latest next gen GPU to get a performance upgrade.

 

[Rroff]

It is also a pity that you can not buy separate cards to do Ray Tracing like the old PhysX cards, if this was possible Nvidia would never tolerate it as it would kill the market for gamers needing to buy the latest next gen GPU to get a performance upgrade.

A lot of the heavy weight ray tracing calculations are pretty much like the kind of processing the PhysX cards were doing it is possible to hardware accelerate a lot of it with specialised hardware - this is partly where nVidia gets their advantage over AMD from as they have added fixed function capabilities for RT while AMD are still leaning into trying to use unified computation to process it.

 

[throwaway4372]

Having finally got a new PC, with a 5070 (from a 1080), I bought Cyberpunk on sale as a modern game to get a sense of what the 5070 can do (didn't even get close to using 12GB VRAM which is reassuring). (at 1440p)
I tried RTX, it looked good, but the performance impact was too high.
I tried DLSS, weird ghosting effect (saw the same thing in Robocop), looks terrible, had better graphics in the 90s.
Turned RTX off, settled on High settings at 1440p native. Runs great, looks great.
So I'm still of the opinion that RTX is a waste of money for now, and now also of the opinion that DLSS is pointless also. Both features will be always off for me.

 

[TNA]

Wow. @Kaapstad is back!

 

[cyclonus10]

I have never used it in a game as it adds nothing to Gameplay.

That's the thing, outside games like say, Splinter Cell, Hitman etc, it never will add anything to the gameplay.

Would love to play some ray traced remasters of the Splinter Cell games as long the ai got the remaster treatment as well. Same goes for Deus Ex games as well.

Make remasters more worthwhile if it means you have to change the way you play the game.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

I have never used it in a game as it adds nothing to Gameplay.

Honestly, that's probably true of most graphics settings, doesn't mean I turn them all down/off. I realise some people do though.
I've not knowingly used RT though, mostly as I'm still working my way through games that are too old or too low budget to use it.

 

[mrk]

I would even say that in the RTX on/RTX off demos you see everywhere I would even say I find the off option looks better a lot of the time.

 

[Calin Banc]

That's the thing, outside games like say, Splinter Cell, Hitman etc, it never will add anything to the gameplay.

Would love to play some ray traced remasters of the Splinter Cell games as long the ai got the remaster treatment as well. Same goes for Deus Ex games as well.

Make remasters more worthwhile if it means you have to change the way you play the game.

When it comes to affecting the gameplay is more about good reflections (that can give you an edge) or perhaps a proper GI solution for dramatically changing scenery (BF or Red Faction style). RT/PT, like raster in general, is more about setting up the atmosphere, the mood.

 

[humbug]

So i finally bought it.

Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition.

1440P Native, No upscaling, no frame gen.

All graphics settings manually maxed out, except motion blur, film grain... stuff i don't like and makes no difference to performance.

Stock RX 7800 XT

According to TPU i should be getting 26.4 FPS, nearest competitors. RTX 4060 Ti 16GB: 27.6, RX 6900 XT 25.7.

RT Reflections: on
RT Sun Shadows: on
RT Local Shadows: on

RT Lighting: Medium: 31.56

RT Lighting: Ultra. 29.22

RT Lighting: Psycho. 25.72

PT: 12.23

PT Photo Mode: 12.24

I have no idea what settings they are using but i'm going to assume RT Lighting: Ultra, they are using the reference RX 7800 XT which would be a little more hamstrung in its cooler vs mine, i'm getting 29.22 vs the reference 26.4, actually 11% faster.

Its not actually playable with RT on, even on medium, will will try to play the game with Ultra RT lighting and frame gen but i have a felling i will feel that 30 FPS real frame rate even if it looks 60.

Its as good in this here worst case scenario as the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB which when i might this card was the same price and my card is better in every other way, its as i said, this game is unplayable with RT for cards at this level, for both AMD and Nvidia equally, i get it for the top of the range Nvidia cards, 4080 and up, that is a pretty exclusive club and for everyone else its all useless nonsense.

 

[Zarax]

I found Cyberpunk utterly unstable with RT using my 7900GRE, TBH I find that the performance impact is not worth it.
13fps at 1440p with path tracing and everything maxed out.

 

[Noxia]

Funny that.

 

[d_brennen]

Cyberpunk has come a long way from the launch debacle but it should hardly a bastion for technology. I enjoyed it in just raster tbh, it can look quite nice

 

[TNA]

Funny that.

My 4070Ti ran it fine enough. My 5070Ti runs it even better. He just went for the wrong card

 

[Calin Banc]

So i finally bought it.

Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition.

1440P Native, No upscaling, no frame gen.

All graphics settings manually maxed out, except motion blur, film grain... stuff i don't like and makes no difference to performance.

Stock RX 7800 XT

According to TPU i should be getting 26.4 FPS, nearest competitors. RTX 4060 Ti 16GB: 27.6, RX 6900 XT 25.7.

RT Reflections: on
RT Sun Shadows: on
RT Local Shadows: on

RT Lighting: Medium: 31.56

RT Lighting: Ultra. 29.22

RT Lighting: Psycho. 25.72

PT: 12.23

PT Photo Mode: 12.24

I have no idea what settings they are using but i'm going to assume RT Lighting: Ultra, they are using the reference RX 7800 XT which would be a little more hamstrung in its cooler vs mine, i'm getting 29.22 vs the reference 26.4, actually 11% faster.

Its not actually playable with RT on, even on medium, will will try to play the game with Ultra RT lighting and frame gen but i have a felling i will feel that 30 FPS real frame rate even if it looks 60.

Its as good in this here worst case scenario as the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB which when i might this card was the same price and my card is better in every other way, its as i said, this game is unplayable with RT for cards at this level, for both AMD and Nvidia equally, i get it for the top of the range Nvidia cards, 4080 and up, that is a pretty exclusive club and for everyone else its all useless nonsense.

4060ti 16GB would jump close to 60fps once you get it to DLSS Performance, which, most likely, is of higher quality than FSR. Add on top FG and should be very playable.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

4060ti 16GB would jump close to 60fps once you get it to DLSS Performance, which, most likely, is of higher quality than FSR. Add on top FG and should be very playable.

I had an RTX3060TI and it was fine with some RT effects on at qHD with DLSS quality. Compared that to my mate with an RX6700XT who had to play it with less effects on(or at a lower quality).

Once they made the big update for Phantom Liberty performance cratered and yet I didn't really see much in the way of improvement. Tried using FSR FG,but it only helped a bit,because the base FPS was too low anyway. You really need as close to 60FPS as possible. This was on a system with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D,PCI-E 5.0,DDR5,etc.

Another example of poor optimisation from a developer breaking performance for older cards,just to cater for newer ones.

Having finally got a new PC, with a 5070 (from a 1080), I bought Cyberpunk on sale as a modern game to get a sense of what the 5070 can do (didn't even get close to using 12GB VRAM which is reassuring). (at 1440p)
I tried RTX, it looked good, but the performance impact was too high.
I tried DLSS, weird ghosting effect (saw the same thing in Robocop), looks terrible, had better graphics in the 90s.
Turned RTX off, settled on High settings at 1440p native. Runs great, looks great.
So I'm still of the opinion that RTX is a waste of money for now, and now also of the opinion that DLSS is pointless also. Both features will be always off for me.

I had a GTX1080 and played a lot of the game using no RT and no DLSS. Updated to an RTX3060TI and RX9070 which I could run RT on and even if it looked better,the performance drop was really high. Looks like an RTX5070 owner has had the same issues.

 

[t2na]

My 4070Ti ran it fine enough. My 5070Ti runs it even better. He just went for the wrong card

Or he could just use FSR or not run path tracing or slightly lower the settings across the board to hit a nicely stable 60fps...

There are so many options available other than just whacking everything to max with PT and saying 'yeah 13fps is unplayable'.

 

[Vonhelmet]

Seems like Cyberpunk is the Crysis of our age.

 

[Rogueywon]

Seems like Cyberpunk is the Crysis of our age.

It kind of is, really. When it released, the PC version's visuals were well beyond what the current consoles (the then-new PS5 and XBSX) could handle. The eventual path tracing update pushed it even further ahead of that. Not many developers choose to put time and effort into a PC version that pushes so far ahead of the consoles, as the commercial return on investment can be quite poor.

And looking at the posts above... yeah, don't expect to be playing anything path traced on those cards, without DLSS/FG and/or dropping settings. The "full" path traced experience is really only available on three cards right now - the 4090, 5080 and 5090 and even there it really needs at least DLSS and often 2x FG. Looks spectacular, though.