Was Ray Tracing a Scam?

[Neatfeatguy]

Metro Exodus and Control are completely different games with RT enabled. I loved playing them with my RTX3070Ti

I must have had different versions of the games because when I turned RT on and off, they played exactly the same. The way light bounces off objects didn't make a difference for me.....

I must have done something wrong.

 

[TechSavy101]

Totally scam. They promised revolution, we got regime change(Ai).
Performance hit is hardly worth it even on a 5090. I prefer 240fps with games on 5090 rather than 80 with ray tracing on.

 

[Liljonny11]

Like most things now a days, the pitch was real, but it was only available to those that could spend tons of money.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Like most things now a days, the pitch was real, but it was only available to those that could spend tons of money.

Was barely available to them… I had a 2080Ti - there was nothing to play on it with Ray Tracing…

 

[Liljonny11]

Was barely available to them… I had a 2080Ti - there was nothing to play on it with Ray Tracing…

actually true, but I was implying they kept upgrading on top of the GPU to try and achieve. I knew people who bought multi gpu setups (without realizing RT doesn't work in SLI lol) and others that immediately went to upgrade next gen to try for the ray tracing again. The entire 20 series is definitely a scam though. I actually skipped the whole line.

 

[Squid Surprise]

actually true, but I was implying they kept upgrading on top of the GPU to try and achieve. I knew people who bought multi gpu setups (without realizing RT doesn't work in SLI lol) and others that immediately went to upgrade next gen to try for the ray tracing again. The entire 20 series is definitely a scam though. I actually skipped the whole line.

Yeah… I used to have triple Titan X cards (bought right before the 980ti came out) and sold them to “upgrade” to the 2080Ti… performed about the same and was far less finicky than triple SLI…

 

[poohbear]

IMHO Space Marines 2 has the best graphics of any game I've played lately on PC, and it had no Raytracing right until Patch 8.0. Even then it only introduced Raytracing Ambient occlusion...hardly noticeable to be frank. So ya, games can look stunning without it.

 

[revenant]

As you said it yourself, multiplayer is played in performance mode. What means RX wasn't made for such kind of games. Why are you calling something 'scam' just because it is irrelevant to what YOU are playing? I don't play multiplayer at all so I couldn't care less how it looks. But I do care how MY games look and with RT they look MUCH better. RT is not for those who compete in faster clicking barely paying attention on details being fully satisfied with DOS graphics. It is for those who play normal games and want to leisurely walk around and enjoy visuals.
Then, why are you talking about RTX 20 in 2026? I mean, sure, give us some comparisons. But, if you're trying to claim RT is STILL a scam, do include in your lineup a few modern cards. And that means RTX 5090 too.

 

[alexnode]

Raytracing is the future, 100%. What Nvidia forgot to mention is that you need 4-5 5090s for high FPS and good deep results with light bounces etc ... Having photons and vectors(rays) illuminating everything is pretty amazing for players and gamedevs. You have to remember that it costs more to have a photorealistic game made by faking it, than a photorealistic game based on how the light works in the real world.

 

[Etoyo]

Raytracing is the future, 100%. What Nvidia forgot to mention is that you need 4-5 5090s for high FPS and good deep results with light bounces etc ... Having photons and vectors(rays) illuminating everything is pretty amazing for players and gamedevs. You have to remember that it costs more to have a photorealistic game made by faking it, than a photorealistic game based on how the light works in the real world.

It reminds me of chess AI vs Go AI. Beating Kasparov was mostly brute-force compute, but Go showed the limits of that approach because the recursion and possibilities became too massive. AI had to evolve toward smarter methods instead of just more power.

I think RT has the same problem. Simulating real light with billions of rays and bounces is amazing in theory, but brute-forcing reality is incredibly expensive. Games don’t need to simulate light perfectly, they need to emulate how humans perceive it.

 

[bitwarden]

I Apple went out there with a feature that halved your iPhone's battery life they would not get away with that. (they leave that to Meta's data-hungry apps)
But what's allowed to NVIDIA, not allowed to Apple...

 

[bloomsun]

I think RT has the same problem. Simulating real light with billions of rays and bounces is amazing in theory, but brute-forcing reality is incredibly expensive. Games don’t need to simulate light perfectly, they need to emulate how humans perceive it.

That's already happening. It wouldn't even be possible without shortcuts and tricks and denoising otherwise. Ray Reconstruction was created specifically for that with path tracing. And path tracing itself is already an algorithm that smartly averages light rays, etc. Monte Carlo, etc.

 

[jbgtly]

Yes, 100% a NVIDIA driven scam. Unfortunately most of the media helped drive this scam. Its done nothing but hold gaming back for the last several years.
And it seems like FG is the next Nvidia driven scam. Media being so dishonest about it, just sad.

 

[wwwendigo]

So, you are negating and pretending to create an argument overanalizing all except pure data (only one game with performance data, an only the weakest of the RTX 2000 with many games), talking but nor reasoning at all, raw click bait.

BUT your data with ONE game showed us that YES, that game it's playable with RT with many of the RTX 2000, and what is more, all without using DLSS at all.

Very funny your "reasoning":

1.- Not using DLSS because in launch it wasn't present. Oh dear, the same with RT without games, or use of many advanced features of DX12 like mesh shading, variable shadering and so on. So, they are all scams to the users, because are promises that went real months after of the launch?

Ridiculous.

2.- DLSS 2.0 arrived "late"... And? That beneficts or NOT to the RTX 2000 users? A simple question, Why are you negating the relevance of it to maintain good performance with and without RT?

3.- Taking the weakest card, not for this "fast test" that you did with one game (there it's the RTX 2060 super), searching and using with many games a clearly inferior card like vanilla 2060.

You are a schemer!

4.- All this blablah to say "RT is a scam FROM NVIDIA", from 2026, when it's probed and ADOPTED RT by ALL the relevant gpu-makers.

What nonsense are you talking, Steven?

You can use it and it's MANDATORY with some very relevant GAMES like.... Doom The Dark Age or Indiana Jones and so on.... and you can argument about that it's useless with RTX 2000, except a 2080 Ti, with Indiana Jones, but... The Dark Age?

Go and buy a life, you are a hater pretending to be objective when it's so evident your low and FAKE arguments.

5.- Talking about Doom, you know, there is one title that is named like.... I don't know, Doom Eternal, maybe? And WORKS FLAWLESSLY with RTX 2000 without any downgrading setting, only the 6GB cards needs some minor adjustements, but can play it fine.

6.- The Fxxking reality:

The software has adopted massively RT. The hardware of the rivals adopted RT, too. How can be a scam or be like PhysX something that is a standard and is adopted from Microsoft, Khronos group, AMD and intel, Qualcomm, ARM and so on? What stupidity.

7.- And the last one. AMD ones.

Are you accusing Nvidia to scam clients with RT and so on, when AMD launched at least TWO GENERATIONS of cards, RX 6000 and RX7000, with clearly underpowered implementation of RT, inferior to the first one of Nvidia. And shut up your mouth about this?

And you are pretending to be a serious and neutral reviewer? Come on.... you are embarrasing yourself.

You can play many RT-ON games with RTX 2000 than you can't with AMD cards that are many years more recent than these.

Resuming:

You can play many RT games with good performance, at least at 1080p, with many models of RTX 2000. You NEED to have RT with some games and some of them are playable with RTX 2000 cards, too (The DArk Ages). You have TWO generations of cards of the rival AMD that "implemented" RT but isn't usable at all, well, not in so many titles like nvidia (in justice, they can play in a good way Doom Eternal with RT and so on). You forget all about these cards, and you are centering all of that hate-rage article to "demonstrate" that nvidia cheated us with RTX 2000, but by omission not AMD with RX6000-7000.

Oh, and not less important, the RT implementation of RTX 2000 cards is somewhat BETTER than RX9000 cards of AMD, when you uses extensively RT advanced characteristics (much more with previous one, RX9000 improved so much AMDs performance with real use of RT in many cases, BUT NOT ALL).


Bonus track: For all these comments about nvidia cheated us with RT like PhysX, saying dumb things like "nvidia is again with closed features" and so on... how can you be so dumb??

Really, boys, saying that is premium grade stupidity, seeing the reality of STANDARIZATION of RT, NOW and BEFORE, even with the RTX 2000 launch, "fak", the implementations were via DirectX, OpenGL and Vulkan, open standards, RT isn't some crazy feature that nvidia "invented" to sell something than nothing have, the MARKET was moving to RT via hardware BEFORE first nvidia implementation. The standards and many other hardware designs were THERE in the same time, it's imposible that nvidia provoked THEN that change in ALL the MARKET and the adoption for software firms and standards.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Impressive rant… but… really? Name a game that performs better with RT as opposed to without? Many gamers barely get their desired FPS with their cards… why would they decide to take a performance hit?

 

[p51d007]

My "gaming" pretty much stopped at "Return to Castle Wolfenstein". Don't even bother with them any more. In a way, kind of glad considering the complexity (and EXPENSE) of the components inside the PC's these days.

 

[bloomsun]

So, you are negating and pretending to create an argument overanalizing all except pure data (only one game with performance data, an only the weakest of the RTX 2000 with many games), talking but nor reasoning at all, raw click bait.

BUT your data with ONE game showed us that YES, that game it's playable with RT with many of the RTX 2000, and what is more, all without using DLSS at all.

Very funny your "reasoning":

1.- Not using DLSS because in launch it wasn't present. Oh dear, the same with RT without games, or use of many advanced features of DX12 like mesh shading, variable shadering and so on. So, they are all scams to the users, because are promises that went real months after of the launch?

Ridiculous.

2.- DLSS 2.0 arrived "late"... And? That beneficts or NOT to the RTX 2000 users? A simple question, Why are you negating the relevance of it to maintain good performance with and without RT?

3.- Taking the weakest card, not for this "fast test" that you did with one game (there it's the RTX 2060 super), searching and using with many games a clearly inferior card like vanilla 2060.

You are a schemer!

4.- All this blablah to say "RT is a scam FROM NVIDIA", from 2026, when it's probed and ADOPTED RT by ALL the relevant gpu-makers.

What nonsense are you talking, Steven?

You can use it and it's MANDATORY with some very relevant GAMES like.... Doom The Dark Age or Indiana Jones and so on.... and you can argument about that it's useless with RTX 2000, except a 2080 Ti, with Indiana Jones, but... The Dark Age?

Go and buy a life, you are a hater pretending to be objective when it's so evident your low and FAKE arguments.

5.- Talking about Doom, you know, there is one title that is named like.... I don't know, Doom Eternal, maybe? And WORKS FLAWLESSLY with RTX 2000 without any downgrading setting, only the 6GB cards needs some minor adjustements, but can play it fine.

6.- The Fxxking reality:

The software has adopted massively RT. The hardware of the rivals adopted RT, too. How can be a scam or be like PhysX something that is a standard and is adopted from Microsoft, Khronos group, AMD and intel, Qualcomm, ARM and so on? What stupidity.

7.- And the last one. AMD ones.

Are you accusing Nvidia to scam clients with RT and so on, when AMD launched at least TWO GENERATIONS of cards, RX 6000 and RX7000, with clearly underpowered implementation of RT, inferior to the first one of Nvidia. And shut up your mouth about this?

And you are pretending to be a serious and neutral reviewer? Come on.... you are embarrasing yourself.

You can play many RT-ON games with RTX 2000 than you can't with AMD cards that are many years more recent than these.

Resuming:

You can play many RT games with good performance, at least at 1080p, with many models of RTX 2000. You NEED to have RT with some games and some of them are playable with RTX 2000 cards, too (The DArk Ages). You have TWO generations of cards of the rival AMD that "implemented" RT but isn't usable at all, well, not in so many titles like nvidia (in justice, they can play in a good way Doom Eternal with RT and so on). You forget all about these cards, and you are centering all of that hate-rage article to "demonstrate" that nvidia cheated us with RTX 2000, but by omission not AMD with RX6000-7000.

Oh, and not less important, the RT implementation of RTX 2000 cards is somewhat BETTER than RX9000 cards of AMD, when you uses extensively RT advanced characteristics (much more with previous one, RX9000 improved so much AMDs performance with real use of RT in many cases, BUT NOT ALL).


Bonus track: For all these comments about nvidia cheated us with RT like PhysX, saying dumb things like "nvidia is again with closed features" and so on... how can you be so dumb??

Really, boys, saying that is premium grade stupidity, seeing the reality of STANDARIZATION of RT, NOW and BEFORE, even with the RTX 2000 launch, "fak", the implementations were via DirectX, OpenGL and Vulkan, open standards, RT isn't some crazy feature that nvidia "invented" to sell something than nothing have, the MARKET was moving to RT via hardware BEFORE first nvidia implementation. The standards and many other hardware designs were THERE in the same time, it's imposible that nvidia provoked THEN that change in ALL the MARKET and the adoption for software firms and standards.

Thank you!! Someone spells it out.

 

[Rudyduu]

I truly can't wait for the day when every single game has mandatory ray tracing and path tracing so everyone has to play like that. Thankfully, it won't be long.

So everybody finally sees how good the games look, can't play any other way anymore, and this whole discussion is finally over. I feel like I'm talking with boomers that claim vinyl sounds better than digital.

That day will only come when the cheapest and most common hardware configurations can play fully RT/PT games above 60fps at 4k and that just isn't happening any time soon, not even close.

 

[robert40]

A lots of people eat this scam I am pro player I play low SETTING IN MY 3000 DOLLARS PC

 

[manowar51]

I saw who the article was written by and I knew immediately what the conclusion was. If I were Nvidia I would sue Walton. He really is a disgusting journalist.

 

[Bonaducci]

People are looking at RT in a wrong way. You will pretty much never see the potential of RT in a game that was made to be universal. Simple as that. I don't recall any game, which was designed with only RT in mind, they all use RT to some extent as an improvement, sometimes quite visible improvement, but they are still built to be playable without it. What does that mean? That all locations need to be properly visible and shadowed with and without it. With RT you can have a location without a single light source and yet you will see everything as outside light is entering the room from windows. You can't do that without RT, you need some artificial way of providing similar experience, so you design games in a way they will look decent even without RT. Simply said, if something can only be achieved with RT, it will not be used in a game that's meant to be played without it as well. The most visible, most eye-candy, most revolutionary differences in level design will not be present in any title, that's meant to work without RT. Can anyone make high quality game that's only meant for those, who can run fully attracted games? Not yet. Most people don't have sufficient hardware for that, so we are still at the introduction of technology that is far from being fully utilized.

 

[SirRonWhite]

The tech was really exciting when it first came out, for both ray tracing in lighting and even directional - that also never panned out. But it was just never part of gaming for me, and its useful adoption was not even in the single digit of games that came out.

I think the biggest broken promise was that it would make lighting so much easier to implement for developers- giving better quality results, faster, easier. .... yeah.

I am lucky, I work with other professional creatives in a industry with lots of great hardware. I have been building computers since win 98' 2nd edi. And I keep several computers upto date. I get some good trades on video cards all the time. Currently have a few 9070xt, a 5070ti, and a 5080. And the vast majority of games I and most of my family play... just do not have RT or it is not implemented in any kind of meaningful way. And the games we do have, it is just better to turn RT off, as it offers nothing worth the hit in fps, and sometimes 'frametime', depending on what tax it puts on vram.

Fact is, it has been several years or more and developers are just not using it, and even if they do... hard to tell. And 99% of the time, never worth it.

 

[longjohn119]

If it is a flop then why did all three GPU manufacturers include it in all their GPUs and all the current gen consoles also support it?

 

[Lew Zealand]

If it is a flop then why did all three GPU manufacturers include it in all their GPUs and all the current gen consoles also support it?

Because it's a line item feature and selling a product that's seen as missing features that a competitor has is very bad for marketing. Even if the feature is mostly useless.

Take DLSS 4.5 upscaling on Ampere, it kills performance so much that it's unusable except as a tech demo so you can at least see the quality improvements. But the feature is there so Nvidia can claim upscaling feature-completeness, something that AMD won't have until next year with its competitor RDNA2. It will be interesting if it turns out the same for RDNA2 with the feature being too heavy for actual use but hey they can still claim the feature is there and equally competitive.

 

[acrossthestars]

To call raytracing a scam, implies that it's all smoke and mirrors and no actual benefit is observed. It's literally the opposite, though: rasterization is the "smoke and mirrors" and raytracing is the actual "lighting that just works". The problem is that raytracing is computationally expensive; so expensive, that using it incurs a massive penalty―sometimes as low as 20%, sometimes as high as half. It's costly, because it has to bounce ray vectors off of every single character and surface in a given scene, in order to calculate the angle and intensity of a given light source, and there can hundreds of thousands of those.

In a game from 30 years ago, like Quake, where the environment and models are "low-poly" (at least, by today's standards), it is relatively cheap to render. But, low-poly games are decidedly "indy" now, so that is a very rare use-case. Most games are already computationally-expensive, because graphics are prestige and have been for 20 years. Blockbuster, triple-A titles are typically sold on their graphical fidelity and realism, and that visual spectacle has a cost. Add raytracing on top of that cost and it quickly balloons.