PC Gamers, what are your thoughts on Ray Tracing? Do you usually leave it on or off?

To be honest I'm usually fine with without turning on the RTX bells and whistles. They're nice to look at but they generally don't matter all that much to me. If I did I'd go through with upgrading to a 50 series GPU, but I'm good with turning that stuff off to get good enough frame rates with my 4070 Ti Super.
 
5070 Ti

I always enable all ray / path tracing effects, always. Sometimes its not always in your face but even getting rid of SSR reflections is 100% worth the penalty, fuck SSR.
 
I bought an RTX card so I could specifically take advantage of said RT cores. Whenever I can, I turn ray tracing on. If a game doesn't have it, it doesn't bother me though.
 
Always enabled (unless it causes stutters, I think Returnal has no workarounds but been a while since I tried it). Don't care if a game doesn't use it but usually games look much nicer with it, especially path tracing.
 
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Yes, I was unsure how much it would punish perf at first, but it's not a problem.
Guardians of the Galaxy, Control, Ratchet & Clank, Returnal, Cyberpunk 2077, all work great with RT.

Only game which is giving the GPU a real run for the money is Portal with RTX. Makes it run toasty, but it runs great.

(9800x3d & 5080).

drotahorror said:
Always enabled (unless it causes stutters, I think Returnal has no workarounds but been a while since I tried it). Don't care if a game doesn't use it but usually games look much nicer with it, especially path tracing.
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I'm playing it now, Returnal is weird. I found the best solution is to lock it to 120fps and toggle Lossless Scaling for 240fps.
 
On, as much as I can, I'll go below 60 for some games if it looks good enough, 3090ti, better ray tracing is pretty much the only reason I want to update my GPU, already get plenty of raster performance
 
If I can get a solid 60fps with it on, I'll keep it on. If it drops below that, not worth it.

If path tracing is possible at 60fps, that's an even easier yes because it looks night/day better than any baked solution that exists.
 
Fake said:
100% of the time turned off.

No fucking way I'll go back to 30 fps just for shit RT.
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RT off & on. I lost 36 fps average at the Ultra RT (max punishing setting, high is enough), it's not that computationally expensive.
I lock the game to 120 and apply Smooth Motion, it looks and plays fabulously with *massive* overhead for perfect framepacing.

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For nearly every game I've played, the difference between RT on and off is so minimal, it's never been worth any hit to the frame rate. There are a few games out there where cranking it all the way up looks a little better than having it off, but again, it's not really worth the performance hit. When it makes a dramatic difference, it literally cuts the frame rate by 70%+ (Cyberpunk "Psycho" for example).

I think game engines are going to have to keep advancing for at least 5-6 more years, and 5090 level GPU tech is going to have to trickle down to the masses before I would consider running it. For now, I just make sure it's turned off in every game.
 
I turn it on when it doesn't negatively affect performance. I don't need it, but there's no denying it's more immersive when done well.
 
I always turn on RTGI when available. Pathtracing seems unnecessary to me for the games that already have RTGI like Doom, Indiana Jones and several UE5 games..
 
Depends how transformative it is and in which game. Indiana Jones path tracing? A must! An online shooter with slightly improved ambient occlusion which costs you 20fps? Nah.
 
Depends on if it look good enough and what the trade off .

Dying light 2 : Look really good ,perf pretty nice too . But many place was too dark cant see shit even in broad day light . Unplayable so I turn it off after a hour .
Wukong : Not good enough .
CP2007 : I use RT , PT look like a low res mess without ray reconstruction and a oily weird looking shit with it . I guess its look fine on 4k dlss4 balance ? But on 1440p dlss4 quality I hate it .
 
This question never came up. But yes, I upgraded from my RTX 4090 to the new RTX 5090 (and grabbed a 9800X3D while I was at it) because of the better ray tracing performance. I want to run everything maxed out at 4K/120fps on my TV, well, except for those demanding UE5 games where that might not always be realistic.
 
Really depends like others mentioned. If the performance hit isn't too rough, if it actually makes a big difference vs standard lighting, the type of game and game mode, if there are different levels to each setting (low to high).

I generally don't care that a single random puddle or window reflects the world in high detail, as in real gameplay I would hardly notice it. Same as shadows under benches or cars, lights adding a slight tonal difference with bouncing light sources.

I do enjoy seeing the contrast between light and dark areas when it comes to lighting and how each is affected by the other more realistically. I also like when the lighting makes materials look more realistic too.
 
Almost always, if you have the performance to spare why not use it? RT effects in games that bother implementing it decently always look better, and in some cases far better.
 
I turn it on in pretty much every game except diablo 4. Early on my game was crashing with it on and I disabled it to fix that. I never turned it back on because you end up sprinting through the game so fast anyways I don't even notice it's on or off.
 
I haven't had too much experience with it yet, but so far I've seen little reason to sacrifice so many fps for so little gain.

Maybe I would change my mind in something like Cyberpunk, but until then it lives with motion blur and chromatic aberration in the "Disable forever" category.
 
I always turn it off.
The performance impact is huge and its not worth it.
To make things worse there is only a handful of games where RT makes a meaningful difference to graphics.
The hardware just isn't ready yet.
 
The opinion in short: I don't use it much, but I love that is being improved on and implemented in games, as I will eventually benefit from it in the future when I go back to certain titles.
 
It's that setting I really wish I could leave turned on, but know I probably shouldn't. Really, though, I hope it gets sorted in terms of performance, because real-time lighting is just really important, and really, really cool. I love RT when it doesn't force me to run at 30 fps.
 
Hero of Spielberg said:
I would love to, but it would reduce my humble rig to a smouldering pile of melted plastic and silicon, so I leave it off.
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What are the specs of your rig? I'm still hesitating and allergic to melting plastic and silicon bs, heck, I wouldn't even mind building a reliable $10K rig.
 
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