The difference is quite big because, contrary to what some are saying, proper ray tracing is IMMEDIATELY noticeable in a scene and you don't have to stare for an hour to notice it. It changes the perception of the whole image, adds depth and makes everything seem more realistic. It makes a gigantic difference in atmospheric horror games for example.
Takes just one look at that Monaco track in F1 to notice how flat it looks without DDGI and RTAO and all the other more minor stuff, with cars looking like they're painted onto the road because of the lack of proper shadowing.
Don't get me wrong, games are perfectly playable without RT and I don't even particularly care for every game having RT but to say it makes a negligible difference is blatantly false, it just hasn't yet had a chance to make that difference on consoles because the hardware simply isn't there yet and won't be for quite a while, even with the PS5 Pro, but we just might get a better taste of it now.
There's a resaon why fully path-traced AW2 is one of the best looking games around but path tracing is not realistically achievable on the Pro (the best they could do is RT transparent/opaque reflections and that's at 30fps still) and we're still ways off when it comes to the tech anyways.