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

[CMP01]

Honestly, this article was surprising but not too much given the truth of things the last two gens.
Just reinforces every point I've made re Nvidia vs AMD before now, yet changes nothing.

For want of appreciation for the great strides they actually made vs pre-RDNA2, AMD are now less contest at the high end, top 2-3 tiers, then they've been for two gens... and while it's a crying shame I can't say I blame them given the majority of the audience. Intel's last best sally is now about to be two gens old and was only mid range then with much to work on to match Nvidia nm catch up. And Nvidia... well it would seem more so after this that they've overpriced the last two gens and now no competition for the upcoming and no signs they'll slow down on the excessive pricing... it doesn't look good going forward.

I just hope AMD can make good on their new strategy and, it being a success, can run it back into full stack contention down the line like RDNA2/3 actually did. I'd hate to reach a point where ppl formerly indifferent at best actually miss AMD being a counterbalance to Nvidia but blame AMD for failing, not being failed. This one, not unlike no few other negatives in modern gaming, is on us.

 

[ddogmaa]

Okay lets be fair and honest here, before I comented I am not fanboying any brand or gpu in fact I own 6900xt and 4070 ti super here.

first of all when the first gen ray tracing was released by nvidia on gamer market in their rtx 20 gen I would say it was "meh" because it takes a toll of performance and they only game was to implement that and make huge difference only metro,cyberpunk and control and even if you purchased high end one 2080ti is still have tremendous performance drop so it still no good,
however when rtx 30 series was release more and more game released has ray tracing and from that I believe ray tracing was the future not because it still take a ton performance but the most of games has good implementation but nowdays the devlopper just throwing around ray tracing and has bad implementation even worse it would make visual hurts and has bad performance about it(dont get me wrong but the game where has bad visual ray tracing mostly from amd sponsored games far cry 6, resident evil,dead space,atomic heart ), however path tracing dan ray tracing with good implementation it will make huge difference and objectively better than traditonal rasterization, for example cyberpunk,alan wake 2,control,the witcher 3,metro exodus and wukong was a good example what is mean to what an actual ray tracing do

secondly to compromise losing fps nvidia and amd(optional frame generation) make an upscaling tech to increase fps more but it will have an downgrade image quality, so in my case I would say it can still worth to use upscale and ray tracing if the visual has an significiant upgrade than rasterization and moreoever ray tracing and upscaling for now cannot be seperated to compromise losing fps, in my opinion for nvidia card I dont see anything difference between native or dlss on but it will notice difference when using performance mode and balanced (with resolution under 2160p) and believe me or not it can still improve visual image better then native on some case scenario and games the only problem I have here still has issue about shimmering effect with path tracing on,so lets talk about fsr I am not gonna lie fsr was good tech which can run at any gpu even older gpu, however the image quality is downgrading so bad and make me unbearable not mention still has ghosting but it can be tolerable if you only use quality but still I cannot deny it dlss was the best upscale and with ray rescontruction sometimes it can improve the ray tracing quality

Thirdly, there is an alternative actually to have a quality of ray tracing but without need an specific hardware like software ray tracing like lumen and liekly make anycard will have ray tracing even their card doesnt support it however it still looks bad on my opinion and ray tracing still works and give an actual godrays and better reflection then lumens it self but no just the important thing why lumen bad is because it like ray tracing it takes fps so high and even close like ray tracing and idk if it also using rt cores to boost the calculate but on amd side it has worse performance than nvidia one is it because they maybe also weak on unreal engine 5 with lumen or is not optimized on amd card aswell but I would choose ray tracing over lumen because ray tracing give better visual and it closely to lumen in term taking performance

so with all of that on my opinion yes indeed ray tracing and path tracing was the future and can be really worth it if the game devlopper not lazy just because it will lighten their work rather than using bake light but also improve tracing and neat implemantion of ray tracing, so will it worth it? it depends on your budged if your budged for gpu under 500$ than I would say you dont really need it just focusing on price performance and feature, but your budged more then 500-7000$ I would say you need to consider it because many and more games AAA eventually use ray tracing and cannot dissable it in my opinion however you also need to look at vram I would say the best gpu is always come with a reasonable amount vram in fact ray tracing and frame generation also high demanding vram too 12 and 16gb card is a recomended for that , so in the end is your choice is it worth I personally using dlss and ray tracing has no issues and still has good maintaining over quality image and fps but I would rather choose native over upscale if I can and has more powerful gpu and raw performance too, but for now I am good with upscaling as long is dlss,THANK your very much if u read my opinion and *cmiiw

 

[Watzupken]

It's 99% certain RDNA4 8800XT will smack the 7900XTX in RTing if that's your thing. I can see why AMD are desperately trying to evaporate stockpiles of 7900 cards. 8880XT at least as strong as 7900XT in raster, much faster than 7900XTX in RTing, < $600, much higher AI performance, and a lot lower power. I wonder if Nv!diots will still wax lyrical about $1200+ 5080 or $2000+ 5090.

I wouldn't be so optimistic until I actually see how the next gen AMD GPUs perform. When they launched RDNA3, they also claimed this, "Overall, thanks to the new features, higher frequency, and increased number of Ray Accelerators, AMD says RDNA 3 should deliver up to a 1.8x performance uplift for ray tracing compared to RDNA 2", from the below source. But in reality, the RT performance is better than RDNA2, but not meaningfully better.

Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-rdna-3-gpu-architecture-deep-dive-the-ryzen-moment-for-gpus

 

[McMurdeR]

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

Don't forget about the resources expended on making the feature available, both hardware and software, and the features that might have been If that effort was spent elsewhere..
If indeed RT looks worse or no better than than raster in a material percentage games - at a major cost to performance - then this is problematic.

I'm not necessarily one of those nay-sayers who doesn't believe that RT isn't in the future of real time graphics rendering, perhaps a few years, but evidently RT isn't for the present.

 

[JeffM32164]

The difference is barely noticable unless you're pausing and really, really scrutinizing the details of a scene. If you have money to burn go for it, us poors with midrange system (and, gasp, AMD GPUs!) will be just fine with a still fine looking game.

 

[ghosty]

2% of steam users have a 4090. Maybe a surprising amount, but still... only 2%. Similar amount have a 4080.
This is a feature that affects a very small amount of players, and not all of them care about it either.

 

[poshflamingos]

2% of steam users have a 4090. Maybe a surprising amount, but still... only 2%. Similar amount have a 4080.
This is a feature that affects a very small amount of players, and not all of them care about it either.

The RTX 4090 is at 0.91% right now in the Steam Survey. Where did you get "2%" from?

 

[Subset6]

You simply can’t have high res/RT/high fps 60+ ideally 85+ at the same time.
I think for most gamers the order of importance is frame rate / resolution - then anything else.

I would always put those first, RT is almost never a consideration why? That’s more performance on the table for higher upscale or no upscale and higher frame rate.

 

[godrilla]

Quickly Radeon users please participate in the Steam survey that just dropped. The 4090 went up again.


NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
0.94%0.92%0.98%0.93%1.19%+0.26%

 

[kinetix]

As long as what I'm playing runs at max quality at 30fps minimum, I'm happy. usually the card I'm looking for should run my most demanding games at at least 45fps, which ensures a few years before performance drops below 30fps with some tweaking. my 2nd PC has an RX470 and I can play CP2077 just fine at 1080p with some tweaking.

 

[ghosty]

The RTX 4090 is at 0.91% right now in the Steam Survey. Where did you get "2%" from?

oops. I just did a quick look via ctrl-f 4090 and had 2 results on the page for vidcards. I see now they have multiple tables, for all graphics, and for directx 12.
Funny thing is, if you look at the previous summary page & click on video card description there, it shows 4090 having 1.12%.

In any case, makes it look even more niche & irrelevant for the masses.

 

[Starfals]

RT? No thanks.

 

[mbk34]

I just don't see much difference between the RT turned off and RT on maximum images.
Perhaps I need to upgrade my eyes?

 

[Megalomaniac]

I had the 2080Ti and played Cyberpunk when it was released. The game had the most amazing visuals I've ever seen on my 34" gaming monitor. During that week, I was able to score a 3090 FTW3. The graphics looked even better and the frame rate improved considerably making my playthrough(s) of the game better. I was also very impressed by the graphics in CoD: Modern Warfare.

If you can afford a $2000 GPU to accompany your $2000 desktop, sure, it's worth it.

4K 60 fps, like it or not, is a benchmark. Either you can meet it or you can't.

1080p and 1440p are passable - especially if you have a curved monitor that isn't 4K, but there's just something special about 4K 60fps or even 120 fps.

But what really gets me is all that RTX can't do. Try walking up to an in-game mirror and seeing real time reflections. The entire framerate drops and the game stutters.

 

[LyntonB]

1440p / 2K is still quite crisp/sharp on 32" so I stick with that with Ultra Ray-Traced settings on games via 4090 and don't need any upscaling, >100fps still. If latency not relevant to a title I sometimes enable frame gen

 

[janmike80]

Ray Tracing (RT) is the main reason I plan to stick with my 3080 for the long haul. The visual enhancements it offers aren't compelling enough to warrant an upgrade just yet. Plus, by disabling RT, I essentially unlock a 'free boost' in FPS, enhancing my gaming experience without the need for new hardware.

 

[Tinderbox]

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