Was Ray Tracing a Scam?
- Thread starter Steve
- Start date
Ray tracing will eventually supplant rasterisation, but it e going to take a while. When GPUs came out, it was straightforward : they did what your CPU was doing, just faster and at higher resolution, so there was a clear and scaling benefit. We've gone down that rabbit-hole for two decades and more, with games and GPUs more and more tightly designed around each other.
Ray tracing isn't another step down the same path. It's not a quality layer to switch on over the top (though that's how it's done for now, mostly). It's kind of a reset.
A game world primarily designed around the strengths and weaknesses of a baked-light raster engine is never going to benefit much from adding ray tracing, because of all the decisions you already made to hide the fact it wasn't there. And right now that's virtually all game worlds.
It's exciting to see ID pioneering a new tech direction with Doom:TDA. And Indiana Jones, I believe, also mandated it?
I think as that trend continues, we will see the benefits. Not necessarily in terms of absolute visual fidelity in a static screenshot, but in terms of the extra freedom developers have when creating their game worlds.
Ray tracing isn't another step down the same path. It's not a quality layer to switch on over the top (though that's how it's done for now, mostly). It's kind of a reset.
A game world primarily designed around the strengths and weaknesses of a baked-light raster engine is never going to benefit much from adding ray tracing, because of all the decisions you already made to hide the fact it wasn't there. And right now that's virtually all game worlds.
It's exciting to see ID pioneering a new tech direction with Doom:TDA. And Indiana Jones, I believe, also mandated it?
I think as that trend continues, we will see the benefits. Not necessarily in terms of absolute visual fidelity in a static screenshot, but in terms of the extra freedom developers have when creating their game worlds.
Jensen probably marketed RT too hard too soon, but there's no sign that developers are turning away from it like they did PhysX. More developers, not fewer, are using it compared to the early 2020s, and it's currently looking like it'll become standard the way 3D hardware acceleration and physically-based lighting did.
Most devs in recent years probably just focused on consoles, which can't do RT that well, since AMD didn't adopt it early on the way Nvidia did. PlayStation 6 and Xbox Helix are supposedly going all-in on RT, and if they can avoid being priced out of the mainstream through the 2030s, developers might shift to making RT a basic requirement if they find out it actually saves them time. The dev time savings haven't happened yet because developers still have to accommodate non-RT-capable hardware.
Indiana Jones and Doom: The Dark Ages are early examples of where things might go. They require RT and still target 60fps on consoles. And I think id said they wouldn't have been able to make Doom's levels the same way without completely relying on RT.
Most devs in recent years probably just focused on consoles, which can't do RT that well, since AMD didn't adopt it early on the way Nvidia did. PlayStation 6 and Xbox Helix are supposedly going all-in on RT, and if they can avoid being priced out of the mainstream through the 2030s, developers might shift to making RT a basic requirement if they find out it actually saves them time. The dev time savings haven't happened yet because developers still have to accommodate non-RT-capable hardware.
Indiana Jones and Doom: The Dark Ages are early examples of where things might go. They require RT and still target 60fps on consoles. And I think id said they wouldn't have been able to make Doom's levels the same way without completely relying on RT.
uzerlinux8
Posts: 7 +3
This feels like another clickbait argument where someone presents their personal preference as a broader “debunking” of the technology.
His main point seems to be that the RTX 20-series cards didn’t have enough performance for ray-traced games when they launched. Fine — but those cards are now years old, and early-generation hardware often struggles with new rendering features. That doesn’t mean the technology itself is a scam or useless.
I played Control with ray tracing on a 3080 at 4K and it ran extremely well. Cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing looked incredible, and so did Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. These are real examples where the technology meaningfully improves the experience, especially for single-player adventure and RPG-style games.
The argument also ignores the obvious: if you don’t like ray tracing, you can turn it off. Not every feature has to be for every player. Some people prioritize 300 FPS in multiplayer games. Others would rather play a cinematic single-player game at 60–120 FPS with better lighting, reflections, and image quality. Both preferences are valid.
With high-end 40-series and 50-series cards, DLSS and frame generation can make ray tracing or path tracing much more practical. Acting like the only meaningful GPU improvement is raw raster performance feels narrow. Of course Nvidia markets new rendering features — they’re a business. Car companies advertise new features too; nobody expects every yearly upgrade to be only about horsepower.
The issue is that he seems to be cherry-picking examples that support his preference while ignoring cases where ray tracing, path tracing, DLSS, and frame generation genuinely improve the experience. You could make the same style of argument against frame generation by focusing only on edge cases and ignoring where it works well ("MFG is a scam and hyped feature you shouldn't use because it increases latency and artifacting). The whole point of PC gaming is basically trying to push the envelope of cutting-edge and play with all the bells and whistles -- otherwise if you just want a set-it-and-forget experience you can play on console at 30fps in your medium settings at 1080p/1260p res.
It’s completely fair to say, “I personally don’t care about these features.” But it’s much weaker to imply they’re pointless or a scam just because they don’t align with your preferred way to play.
His main point seems to be that the RTX 20-series cards didn’t have enough performance for ray-traced games when they launched. Fine — but those cards are now years old, and early-generation hardware often struggles with new rendering features. That doesn’t mean the technology itself is a scam or useless.
I played Control with ray tracing on a 3080 at 4K and it ran extremely well. Cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing looked incredible, and so did Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. These are real examples where the technology meaningfully improves the experience, especially for single-player adventure and RPG-style games.
The argument also ignores the obvious: if you don’t like ray tracing, you can turn it off. Not every feature has to be for every player. Some people prioritize 300 FPS in multiplayer games. Others would rather play a cinematic single-player game at 60–120 FPS with better lighting, reflections, and image quality. Both preferences are valid.
With high-end 40-series and 50-series cards, DLSS and frame generation can make ray tracing or path tracing much more practical. Acting like the only meaningful GPU improvement is raw raster performance feels narrow. Of course Nvidia markets new rendering features — they’re a business. Car companies advertise new features too; nobody expects every yearly upgrade to be only about horsepower.
The issue is that he seems to be cherry-picking examples that support his preference while ignoring cases where ray tracing, path tracing, DLSS, and frame generation genuinely improve the experience. You could make the same style of argument against frame generation by focusing only on edge cases and ignoring where it works well ("MFG is a scam and hyped feature you shouldn't use because it increases latency and artifacting). The whole point of PC gaming is basically trying to push the envelope of cutting-edge and play with all the bells and whistles -- otherwise if you just want a set-it-and-forget experience you can play on console at 30fps in your medium settings at 1080p/1260p res.
It’s completely fair to say, “I personally don’t care about these features.” But it’s much weaker to imply they’re pointless or a scam just because they don’t align with your preferred way to play.
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Starfals
Posts: 334 +302
For the 20 series? Yeah. Its a scam. 30 series made it somewhat possible but still not ideal. It's not that amazing even today, with the 50 series. It's WAY better than before and I dare say perfectly playable. 30 series had to make a lot of sacrifices to be able to run games at decent frame rates.
40 series is also good, but it just lacked that 50 series + 15% extra fps. Now we are in a good enough state. Until now, I always turned off RT. Even fake frames 2X used to be bugged. Now it just works. Even 4X seems to be great. I often even use 4X on a 35-45 fps and it feels good enough compared to regular 35 fps. Going to 150-200 fps with some ghosting+ artifacts is just better than native 35 fps. To me at least. So yeah, it's all a big scam. All these many years of promoting RT and RTX cards... such a waste of time and energy.
40 series should have been the first RTX cards imho.
40 series is also good, but it just lacked that 50 series + 15% extra fps. Now we are in a good enough state. Until now, I always turned off RT. Even fake frames 2X used to be bugged. Now it just works. Even 4X seems to be great. I often even use 4X on a 35-45 fps and it feels good enough compared to regular 35 fps. Going to 150-200 fps with some ghosting+ artifacts is just better than native 35 fps. To me at least. So yeah, it's all a big scam. All these many years of promoting RT and RTX cards... such a waste of time and energy.
40 series should have been the first RTX cards imho.
uzerlinux8
Posts: 7 +3
It seems the gaming techtubers are like hungry wolves ready to pounce on at outrage pony at any story they think will appeal to their audience .. like GN basically roasting AI/Nvidia in every video. These guys aren't engineers developing the technology -- just critics "analyzing" products from their self-appointed high throne jumping on trends.
He doesn't talk about the evolution of 3d graphics to simulate better lighting such as AO, GI, soft shadows to small sample ray-tracing effects to path-tracing. The progress is impressive but if it were up to him its a waste of time and we should get 40% more raster performance so this guy can play COD at 300hz+.
Good lord. I wonder if Steve will keep this bait going after the PS6 drops with RT and upscaling as first class citizens.
How can you proclaim you’re a seasoned hardware reviewer but act so betrayed when the first iteration of a new technology isn’t perfect. It’s like he hasn’t actually been on the tech scene at all.
Anyone who thinks RT transistors spent on more raster instead will deliver better graphics should do a bit more research on the basic limitations of rasterization.
How can you proclaim you’re a seasoned hardware reviewer but act so betrayed when the first iteration of a new technology isn’t perfect. It’s like he hasn’t actually been on the tech scene at all.
Anyone who thinks RT transistors spent on more raster instead will deliver better graphics should do a bit more research on the basic limitations of rasterization.
Ray tracing was a gimmick from the get-go.
I see UE5 creating options for disabling techniques used on raster-only renders, so as to reduce their overhead, when enabling hardware Lumen RT. When the right things are toggled on or off logically, the overhead of hardware RT on the game, when powered by a 9060XT, is debatably unnoticeable relative to software lighting techniques in pure rastering.
Looking forward to more devs mastering UE5 (and 6) and figuring out more best bang for buck settings.
2000 series RT was a scam.
3080+ it was fine.
Been trickling down slowly but mostly because that 3080 level performance is hitting lower cards each generation.
Problem with modern games is many have the Unreal performance hit on top of RT.
3080+ it was fine.
Been trickling down slowly but mostly because that 3080 level performance is hitting lower cards each generation.
Problem with modern games is many have the Unreal performance hit on top of RT.
Lew Zealand
Posts: 2,948 +4,026
Your 3070-5070 numbers seem way off, where'd you get them? From TPU's most recent review last month @1080p:
3070-4070 = 26% gain
4070-5070 = 19% gain
And comparing the 90 series at 1080p raster is not terribly informative due to CPU bottlenecks and low core residency. Few people buy a 90 series to play at 1080p, the difference is 33% at 4K, the intended use for a 90-class GPU.
Raw raster is still very important. The good stuff about RT is we got upscalers and frame gen that easily boost performance, even with RT off.
I don't enable RT in any games, even with a RTX 4090. I enjoy RTX features like crazy tho.
I don't play any games without using DLSS, DLAA or DLDSR these days. Regular native is dead to me. Never plays game in native with some crappy 3rd party AA on top.
Tons of AMD GPU owners praising native, puts TAA on top. Pure garbage AA.
Peasants that can't afford shiny new hardware, will be in denial. What else is new.
AMD GPU users hates upscaling and frame gen, because it don't work well. Radeon 9000 and FSR 4 fixed that tho, now RDNA 4 owners praise upscaling too. Haha. Funny how things change, when you have access to the good stuff.
I bet you, 99% of people that hate upscaling and frame gen, uses RDNA 3 or older, or Intel Arc / Nvidia GTX. Left behind with no money to upgrade.
I don't enable RT in any games, even with a RTX 4090. I enjoy RTX features like crazy tho.
I don't play any games without using DLSS, DLAA or DLDSR these days. Regular native is dead to me. Never plays game in native with some crappy 3rd party AA on top.
Tons of AMD GPU owners praising native, puts TAA on top. Pure garbage AA.
Peasants that can't afford shiny new hardware, will be in denial. What else is new.
AMD GPU users hates upscaling and frame gen, because it don't work well. Radeon 9000 and FSR 4 fixed that tho, now RDNA 4 owners praise upscaling too. Haha. Funny how things change, when you have access to the good stuff.
I bet you, 99% of people that hate upscaling and frame gen, uses RDNA 3 or older, or Intel Arc / Nvidia GTX. Left behind with no money to upgrade.
3080 sucked and still suck for RT workloads. Yes you can make it work with DLSS etc, but then 3060 and 3070 are RT capable too, meaning your claim of 3080+ makes no sense.
RT needs upscaling and FG/MFG pretty much. 2000 and 3000 both are mediocre for RT and especially Path Tracing. No native FP8. Slow Tensor/RT Cores.
RT is possible for people with 4000/5000 series due to FG/MFG support and lower perf hit with DLSS 4 due to native FP8.
RTX 2000 was first gen RTX. Never meant to do RT well but marketed as being RT cards. DLSS still did not exist (DLSS 1 sucked just like FSR 1 sucked absolute donkey balls)
DLSS 2+ support was the only good thing about this, with full DLSS 4 support many years later.
RTX 3000 was a mediocre generation, made on the most sucky and cheap node (Samsung 10nm). Nvidia came rushing back to TSMC 5nm with 4000/5000 series for good reason. Vastly better efficiency and much higher clockspeeds.
So yeah, RT was a gimmick and pure marketing for RTX 2000/3000 series. However, they got support for DLSS which was a lifesaver for them.
RT is possible mostly with RTX 4000/5000 but even with a 4090 I could not care less about using it. I don't give a shite really. DLSS/DLAA/DLDSR/Reflex/RTX HDR and I could go on, is the true magic of RTX, not RT or Path Tracing. Pointless in most cases.
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ZedRM
Posts: 3,352 +2,300
What a interesting opinion piece. It's a piece, that's for sure. What's most thought provoking isn't the idea that RTX is a scam, which anyone with eyes who has seen an RTX card in action(yes even the humble RTX2060) and isn't legally blind can see isn't true, it's the way that the opinions are presented as factual information or nearly factual information.
This opinion piece is made up of carefully curated and cherry picked information intended to act as way to cleverly influence the low hanging fruit of the public and sway public opinions. I'm left wondering how well it's come off.. Based on some of the comments made by other users, it seems to have worked with some people, but not with others.
As someone who bought a 2060 and still owns it, I can say with complete confidence that it rendered ray tracing well. Every RTX card since that time has been a significant advancement, except for the 5000 series cards. Benchmark test from everywhere in the world proves that fact.
Facts are facts, they are objective and have value. Opinions and "truths" are not facts, they are subjective and have little value.
We all know that age old saying, "Opinions are like backsides, we all have one and they all stink".
This opinion piece is made up of carefully curated and cherry picked information intended to act as way to cleverly influence the low hanging fruit of the public and sway public opinions. I'm left wondering how well it's come off.. Based on some of the comments made by other users, it seems to have worked with some people, but not with others.
As someone who bought a 2060 and still owns it, I can say with complete confidence that it rendered ray tracing well. Every RTX card since that time has been a significant advancement, except for the 5000 series cards. Benchmark test from everywhere in the world proves that fact.
Facts are facts, they are objective and have value. Opinions and "truths" are not facts, they are subjective and have little value.
We all know that age old saying, "Opinions are like backsides, we all have one and they all stink".
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Quixotic
Posts: 21 +12
What is the point in this drive for higher quality and realism when a game does not allow or require you to just dwell and explore your surroundings but to simply rush from one area to the next. All the visuals become secondary and will be just lost on you.
A however-many-words-long piece that was succinctly summed up in two sentences that are the reality of the marketplace:
"Developers ... try[ing] to get their games running on as many potato-tier GPUs as possible to maximize sales and player counts, rather than focusing heavily on cutting-edge visual features."
Hmm. Game developers want to make money through the most sales. They don't really care what the hardware vendors want.
"...companies like Nvidia push technologies that often benefit their own strategic interests more than the gamers buying the hardware..."
Hardware developers want to make money on their own sales. They don't really care what the customers want either.
I think this is a really accurate summation of the marketplace. The only thing that was left off in the summation was the point-of-view of the average customer, which was reflected in the results of the polls. Most customers just want to play the games, and they want them to look good enough, on hardware they can afford.
It appears that the software devs have identified that reality, as they keep cranking out titles that don't require ultra high-end hardware to play their game.
Hardware vendors also seem to recognize that truth by selling less capable (read, more affordable) hardware for the masses. They also have no problem selling ultra high-end gear for those whose lives revolve around benchmarks (they know who they are). But they make most of their (gamer-based) money on the bottom 80% of the market. Just like with cars. Sure, those who wanted and could afford a Bugatti Veyron or Chiron could always go get one. But VW group sold a whole lot more Polos, Golfs and Jettas, and made a ton more money than they ever did on Bugattis.
"Developers ... try[ing] to get their games running on as many potato-tier GPUs as possible to maximize sales and player counts, rather than focusing heavily on cutting-edge visual features."
Hmm. Game developers want to make money through the most sales. They don't really care what the hardware vendors want.
"...companies like Nvidia push technologies that often benefit their own strategic interests more than the gamers buying the hardware..."
Hardware developers want to make money on their own sales. They don't really care what the customers want either.
I think this is a really accurate summation of the marketplace. The only thing that was left off in the summation was the point-of-view of the average customer, which was reflected in the results of the polls. Most customers just want to play the games, and they want them to look good enough, on hardware they can afford.
It appears that the software devs have identified that reality, as they keep cranking out titles that don't require ultra high-end hardware to play their game.
Hardware vendors also seem to recognize that truth by selling less capable (read, more affordable) hardware for the masses. They also have no problem selling ultra high-end gear for those whose lives revolve around benchmarks (they know who they are). But they make most of their (gamer-based) money on the bottom 80% of the market. Just like with cars. Sure, those who wanted and could afford a Bugatti Veyron or Chiron could always go get one. But VW group sold a whole lot more Polos, Golfs and Jettas, and made a ton more money than they ever did on Bugattis.
GC animation professional here - Ray tracing was inevitable. Path tracing is also inevitable after that unless AI filters can overtake it and skip it. It's not a scam. Nvidia demoing the star wars storm troopers demo with 4x GPUs at 24fps was neat, but also showed how heavy of a calculation ray tracing is. There's other things like audio filtering that can be offloaded to the RTX ASICs. The problem is lack of optimization since there are now so many paths. Unreal Engine alone now has to contend with RTX ray tracing, Lumen/Nanite, Nvidia's Mega Geometry, and none, as well as any other secret sauce a studio might add. AMD has their own versions of things too. Difficult to support all these things well, for all product lines, and old hardware. Combine that with consumers not buying much new PC hardware these days since games do support older hardware, games taking longer to develop, and that has brought us to how ray tracing has been 8-years in the making which feels like ray tracing is a flop, but it was always inevitable, regardless how long the transition is
BadThad
Posts: 1,786 +2,044
As a gamer, for me, FPS is the most important attribute. I'm not in game to look at eye candy, I'm there to kill as many opponents as I can. I'll usually turn up the graphics a bit for single player games but multiplayer, it's not worth the FPS penalty.
Great article again Steven!
Great article again Steven!
Stoly
Posts: 190 +132
Metro Exodus and Control are completely different games with RT enabled. I loved playing them with my RTX3070Ti
Endymio
Posts: 5,131 +4,796
I'll see your Donkey Kong and raise you a M.U.L.E.Release a game as fun and as simple as Donkey Kong please
Was raytracing a scam? Well, no. Did it work out how Nvidia etc. planned? Also no.
TLDR version, too many people (myself included) have non-RT capable hardware still. The performance hit is too high. And the visual difference is too low (based on screenshots meant to hilight what RT brings to the game, so even less of a practical difference when you're, you know, actually playing the game).
Games can't RELY on raytracing because they're excluding too many players. Steam survey shows a full 25% of users (if Google AI is not full of crap... less than a year ago a actual human went through the Steam survey data and found it was 55% then...) have setups that are not raytracing capable at all. I have a GTX1650 myself.
I do prefer nice visuals, I only aim for 30FPS on 'regular' games and 60FPS on shooters... but I would turn up the other visual settings before I turned up raytracing. Indeed, turning on resolution scaling, turning down other visual quality, to turn on RT for a tiny bit better reflections and lighting is truly not worth it.
I have seen screenshots on a few games where the RT *really* made them pop, but on some of these games, rather than the RT being some big generational improvement, it's more a matter of the conventional lighting and reflections being a tad sub-par. I've seen other games that have very nice reflections and lighting without the benefit of RT.. turning on RT on those there's an improvement but it's very very small since the "non-RT" looked so good already.
TLDR version, too many people (myself included) have non-RT capable hardware still. The performance hit is too high. And the visual difference is too low (based on screenshots meant to hilight what RT brings to the game, so even less of a practical difference when you're, you know, actually playing the game).
Games can't RELY on raytracing because they're excluding too many players. Steam survey shows a full 25% of users (if Google AI is not full of crap... less than a year ago a actual human went through the Steam survey data and found it was 55% then...) have setups that are not raytracing capable at all. I have a GTX1650 myself.
I do prefer nice visuals, I only aim for 30FPS on 'regular' games and 60FPS on shooters... but I would turn up the other visual settings before I turned up raytracing. Indeed, turning on resolution scaling, turning down other visual quality, to turn on RT for a tiny bit better reflections and lighting is truly not worth it.
I have seen screenshots on a few games where the RT *really* made them pop, but on some of these games, rather than the RT being some big generational improvement, it's more a matter of the conventional lighting and reflections being a tad sub-par. I've seen other games that have very nice reflections and lighting without the benefit of RT.. turning on RT on those there's an improvement but it's very very small since the "non-RT" looked so good already.
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