even though i have the hardware to do so, i keep it off. Its just not worth it. I play games for the sake of playing a game rather than searching for visual "improvements"
Always on. I also don't buy new AAA games which don'T at least have raytraced shadows and reflections any more. It is a new standard and should be mandatory for every new game, with pathtracing also being an option in every game. In my opinion every new game should have path traced global illumination and ambient occlusion + reflection and shadows + ray reconstruction. If I start a game without raytracing I immediatly notive the incorrect shadowing, bad AO and light not correctly transfering object colors to other objects. The exception to this is lumen in Hellblade 2, that game looks good without raytracing because it has technically "software raytracing" by lumen. But the reflections again in Hellblade 2 are really bad which puts me off always I look at them and kinda diminishes the fun of playing.
@@williehrmann Could you explain why this is important to you? Because video games are by definition not real. Nothing in video games is real or would be this way in real life. Why then should lighting be most accurate? Shouldnt games be played for the sake of gameplay? isnt that what is most fun. I found games with the most artistic art style and the most unaccurate lighting to be the most appealing because they are more gamy and the game stays longer in my head. Realistic graphics is just boring, at least for me.
@@BastianRosenmüller I mean I also like playing games with artistic graphic styles, but in different genres. As soon as I'm gonna play a story heavy title it has to be ultra realistic graphics for me to get the immersion. That is also why I never could watch animes or cartoons really. I just prefer plain camera recorded series and films. I catch myself often skipping any cutscene or dialogues when the graphics aren't right in a story heavy game. If the gameplay itself is nice I might still play but just skip every story part. If I wanna enjoy the story and understand the characters I need immersive graphics.
@@williehrmann Something tells me you didn't play Dragon Age Origins, Mass effect 1,2,3, Oblivion and Fallout 3. Those games were better than most of the games we have now but look no where near as good.
@@abanggembelllDLSS rendered image is not as good as the original resolution. DLSS is just a backup plan of compromise when you suffer from low fps. It's not the solution. At least not yet.
Ray tracing doesn’t make a game look inherently better it just makes it look a little different and that’s only in games that fully utilize RT like Cyberpunk and Alan Wake 2
@@jaytay420 Path Tracing, though demanding, to be honest looks unbelievably nice compared to Ray Tracing in other games, this is somewhat the only game that Ray/Path Tracing is worth it. You can turn on path tracing on a 3060 with DLSS Quality 1080p, bit expect 30-35 FPS with Drops to 25-30, basically PS4 performance but a bit better, if you are okay with that, turn it on, if you have stronger cards like 3080, you can jump up hugely on 1080p, even a bit on 1440p, but 4K it's a mess. You have two choices. Ray Tracing or FPS. Pick your Gear.
I'd say ray tracing (not RTX) is a very expensive solution looking for a problem that's not worth the computational cost......for now. Fidelity, resolution, frame rate and frame consistency all matter in a gaming experience and at this point I'd rather play at a higher native resolution or grab a few more FPS than turn on ray tracing. Maybe once we get 50% better than 4090 path tracing performance for 300-500 bucks, ray tracing can be baked in as a minimum requirement, but I also think by them lighting engines will also evolve with tech like Lumen and Nanite in UE5. For now, upscaling is the more exciting tech, in my opinion.
I agree, but can tou help me with something? Should I choose Rtx 4080 Super or Rx7900 XTX? And also, 4k monitor or 1440p monitor? I intend to play MOBA like Dota 2 just as much as RPG AAA games
Ther eis something more "alive" for me in the RTX. The small ways in which certain shadows are amplified and light (such fire on Harry's clothing)... just adds more "aliveness" to the world, compared to feeling like you are just a character in the midst of polygons. This video has actually convinced me to TRY RayTracing. (Might not be as noticeable during fast paced gameplay though... still though, there really is some aliveness to it that I really love.)
It will be worth when normal GPUs will be powerful as rtx 4090 is now. Until then its nice to turn on here and there but for me is mostly off, on Nvidia or AMD.. We all have 144hz or faster screens these days and i found using high refresh fps is more fun for me than watching shadows and reflexions. Ofc there are slow games like Alan Wake but its not my cup of tea..
personally, high fps on high refresh rate monitors in the most noticeable visual improvement on video games out of all the technologies that have come out so far. ray tracing is noticeable only if you stand still look at the scene carefully and know what little details to look out for, if even then. if you aren't specifically looking out for it, you won't have a clue if it's on or off while playing normally.
@@metalface_villain True. In heat of battle you don't look at environment that much, like water reflections or shit like that. I don't care what the fuck is going on with the shadows when I am in front of Elder Ring boss. If I get distracted I get killed lol.
CP: It was the contrast between light vs dark spots and the way the blue neon lights lit up the front of the bar that gave me the answer W3: It was the water Finals: I was wrong. I was going off of the reflections in the floor but I guessed wrong Elden Ring: The shine when you walked over the loot. I guessed right because of the yellow reflections on the armor, otherwise I wouldn't know Hogwarts: I guessed wrong Warzone: I guessed wrong but I didn't notice the difference, unlike Hogwarts and Finals I just took a blind guess. ETA yeah I completely looked over the background, didn't pay any attention at all lol When you were showing Witcher on/off, I actually prefer off. If you look at the boards they're more vibrant with RTX off, and Geralt's armor looks better too. Don't know if that's due to the pics not being identical but Geralt's armor looks sharper and more crisp with RTX off
I think that in Hogwarts it is most noticeable in the floor reflections. Yeah I should have mentioned about Geralt's armour, but yes It does look a lot sharper in the RTX off version. I think that this because the RTX off screenshot is a little closer to Geralt than the RTX on one. Not entirely sure though.
i mostly just tell it by a shadow as rasterization and ray tracing have completely different shadow techniques but yeah makes 0 difference while actually playing as you will barely notice while moving
Ray Tracing is good when implemented right, like in Control, Metro Exodus, Alan Wake II and Cyberpunk 2077. Other games try to implement one solution or another and it is usually badly implemented. Some games you've shown are good examples of that. Elden Ring is not really noticeable, The Witcher 3 not noticeable, COD: Warzone is a "WTF" implementation... The problem with companies failing to add ray tracing is that the FPS will drop, no change will be seen and Ray Tracing will get a bad image among players.
Yes for me only good RT was in Cyberpunk, game looked awesome but more importantly, run ok with it (not with PT) - but heavy RT games like alan wake... you get like 20 fps with no DLSS on 1600 USD card. Ridiculous. Yes, you can render it in 720p with frame gen, but than what you are really playing? And paying?
Lots of times I end up hating RT in certain areas like dark areas; it really make you regret cheaper display panels and black light bleed and then you are onto trying to figure out what to upgrade next; the bloom can be an issue if you dont have decent dimming zones as backlight bleed can make blacks really crushed and awkward for so many games that try to make more atmospheric visuals It becomes hard to see and i either get lost more easily since dark is really dark and areas just dont navigate as easily; I’m into a great thriller or horror game but everything looking wet and mirror like isn’t ideal; at that point just change the material composition of everything and get similar results to appearance Overall i believe at the very least it gives a variant of art direction, as developers can design one game and RT and raster can make up 2 totally different art styles which can accommodate not just playability but how one perceives surfaces to look or how environments are either lifelike due to their own subjective interpretation
The most transformative ray tracing I've seen have been reflections, local shadows (sometimes entire shadows are added that didn't exist before) and indirect lighting (seems to clean up a lot of noise). Sometimes though I turn it on and it's just not obvious without squinting. Path tracing I think is going to suffer until it's the primary lighting option. Like yes it looks good but you can tell the art team wasn't exactly planning for it in cyberpunk (or they would have added more physical lights).
Latley Ive been playing Control maxed out 1440p with all Ray Tracing effects on. With my 7900xt Im getting above 60 fps and with afmf2 on its a buttery smooth 120 plus.
Thx, this was very helpful. I am about to build my own pc and the biggest factor between choosing AMD or Nvidia gpu is ray tracing. My favorite games are souls games/monster hunter followed games like cyberpunk and Witcher. The price of the 7900 xtx is comparable to 4070 ti. I am leaning more towards AMD 7900 xtx bc I don’t feel like I am losing that much with ray tracing off from what you showed. I am open advice from anyone with experience on this topic.
@@tomstechtable Also, I am betting a little bit that AMD will improve the software side with FSR where I feel like the ceiling on Nvidia improving performance thru software is lower. Cyberpunk is a weird one from the many vids I have watched. It seems to be heavily optimized for Nvidia while I have seen other titles with ray tracing and the performance gap is much smaller. Honestly, I feel like I will probably be more than satisfied as someone coming from a Xbox series x and have always played games on a console.
The best way I've seen some ray tracing described is "different but not better". The two places I notice pretty quick is SSR vs ray traced reflections and sometimes shadow detail levels (it's kind of like if shadows had a very high or ultra setting). Of course then there's path tracing which tends to be super obvious since entire scenes look completely different (and I'm not even convinced developers put in lights properly to support path tracing vs. the vision that is more obvious with raster or ray trace supported lighting.
I think i was at a 50/50. And this i the point, when you have a dev who cares about cube-maps for example and good implemented lighting, RT is less noticeable. People use RT to justify big spends on Graphic carts when this is nothing more then a graphic feature that comes with a high cost. The overall performance was quite bad in this gen from NVIDIA especially, but this is the price when you push RT performance instead. With the 5090 they showed a significant boost in rastorization performance and people kind of freak out about it, but in fact it is really just needed to be that much because in this gen they underperformed. RT looks good from the bump up, but this card will cost a lot obviously again. Overtime RT will be more present. Better optimized and in static environments you can bake in rt shadows, i think the CS devs did that?. We will see. For me the best use of RT is when it comes to reflections. A lot of work to spare for the devs and definitely easier to notice.
to me the non-RT looked better almost in all the games, meaning i guessed wrong mostly; thought the non-RT was RT. So it is a win win for me, i save money. have high fps and get the best looking picture. RT is at the moment not worth it, half the fps, high cost to get into it (highend RTX card needed) , fake framegen needed and non native Highres, but upscaling. Meh, i pass.
@@jaytay420 How can it be copium xd. It is a test where you don't know which one is which and if that person can't see an improvement in one picture over the other, that positively aligns with RT then it maybe just isn't all that great
@@jaytay420 I guess you bought a mid tier Nvidia card for ray tracing which isn't working fine for you so you come to comments to justify your mistake.
Ray Tracing add real-time reflections and some bouncing. The real Ray Tracing is called Path Tracing, this one really makes difference, as it adds real-time reflections and light bouncing/spreading. Cyberpunk is the only game where you will notice the differences well, but it's not worth playing RT with low frames vs. non RT with good frames.
RTX is noticeable on darker areas. The way light "spreads" makes them brighter than pure raster. When you light a dark room with your phone screen, it "spreads"... It doesn't shine
I was able to pick out raytracing in every example. The effect of raytracing is more obvious when you're the one controlling the game. The uncontrolled camera angles that come from naturally playing the game are not very forgiving to many rasterized techniques, especially when compared. That's when you start noticing the pitfalls of rasterized effects, especially ssr.
50 here.. been gaming since the 2600, for those GenZ's, this was a gaming device from Atari.. yes long ago indeed. Maybe I am just... well.. just getting old right Lol, but hot damn I enable ray tracing and substantially if minimum I can see a difference where I can say - it's like night and day, and not too mention how it takes a hit on performance. Anyone seeing more or less the same?
Still so many users that do not have a powerfull enough GPU to turn on raytracing and actualy get a playable frame rate and enjoyable game... Untill this happens the ratio of haters to lovers will always be much higher.
I can tell just when you move the camera up and down screen space reflections will disappear ray traced reflections won’t. But in all reality when you’re moving through environments fast screen space reflections are very convincing nowadays.
Comparing just a single frame doesnt realy show how good / bad RTX is... You need to be able to move the camera and see the reflections and shadows and the way these effects propigate around the scene as you move. This is what adds to the realisum and makes you belive the image is closer to reality and there for more imersive.
I got them all right. IMHO RTX on makes water look more wet, bright lights are crisper and shadows/reflections do slightly better. I don’t bother with it to be honest. Of course I’m 42 so the ultra real detail doesn’t really appeal to me as someone who grew up playing 8/16 bit games on the regular.
I don't think the changes for general lighting are as important to me. The techniques the use to fake it are good enough. What I'm more interested in is replacing the techniques that suck and distract me. I hate SSR but all I could ever do is turn it off. In cyberpunk, it's worth the loss of 30ish fps to get accurate reflections that don't vanish at the wrong viewing angle.
Depends on the game. Cyberpunk and witcher 3 with rt update do look noticeably better with rt. But i noticed little difference with pathtracing on in cyberpunk, just lower fps. So i leave that off
Why did I prefer how the games looks with RTX off? Each of the games comparissons I prefered the RTX off version before know it... No matter, I guess I found my answer. Thanks for the video.
i usually play with RT with games like alan wake because it really changes how the game look with just a low RT even with DLSS enabled the games still look beautiful
4 years ago I would say: it's impossible to notice the difference. After 4 years, playing multiple RT games, I can definitely notice the difference and all my guesses in this video of whether it was rt on or off were right. I definitely prefer RT, mainly playing in an OLED screen, it seems they were made for each other. The shadows and ambient occlusion works much better with RT. And as to the reflections, RT is way superior in terms of being faithful to the image. Everytime i llay a full rasterized game nowadays I see how much better it could be if it was RT.
I play many games Cyberpunk, Witcher, Red Death 2 using Samsung Odyssey G9, rtx3080 at 1440p. Ray tracing is suck, it make the shadow darker but I prefer lighter shadow. Imagine taking picture of someone under strong light, probably you have to adjust the shadow lighter to see thing under shadow. Also looking into the small water drop and see the whole building behind, that's not realistic. Ray tracing is a scam, it's a lie, it makes things look worse and take away your GPU raw power, I played with Ray tracing on for couple days, and have to turn off for all of them, RT off is better
@@TbearMuhahah Ray tracing is not about making it "beautiful". It's all about realism, it's the way to go if we want to have more realistic games in the future. A dark place is a dark place, a place without light is dark as hell, and such things are only reproducible with ray tracing. A reflection exists even if you are not looking at the object in real life as well, again, only possible with RT. I agree with you, visually RT is not beautiful in many games, but it's the closest to "real" simulation of light that we could reach so far, mainly with path tracing. And as for reflections, they tend to exaggerate the water reflections. However we are surrounded by many reflection surfaces everywhere, but at this point you probably never paid attention to such details around you. In my home even the kitchen cabinets have reflections.
@@TbearMuhahah you could bake the shadows and colors in a game to look realistic (not the reflections) as it's done in many games so far. But it takes a lot of development time, and the result is still artificial. So RT also speeds up development time as it's already included on DirectX API. In a full RT game, you actually don't need to bake anything, just need to work with the light sources and materials. Now with AI + RT, game development becomes way easier than 10 years ago...
@@Vecchete When they showcase their tech they say it makes things more beautiful, I don't feel that and see that in my game. You say it's more realistic, and your kitchen has lots of reflection. What is it? Your shiny spoon and cup reflect the whole kitchen? You tell me you can see your kitchen reflection and I don't notice it? Create light source and then make rasterized shadow objects based on it is a method used by developers for a long time. Now with Ray Tracing your GPU create a light source and carry it with you all the time and generate object shadow based on it. Developers thank you for that, they do less work, more work for your GPU. A lot of good optimized games you totally don't need Ray Tracing, turn it on mean create your own light source, it's costly heavy and the visual is the same.
First two games were easy to tell even if the difference wasn't much, the later games were much more difficult to tell the difference. The difference is there but overall when you're playing a game rather than looking for the small differences it would be very hard to tell the difference. Would have been nice to know the performance hit to judge whether its worth it. Personally I don't use ray tracing and prefer playing at 1440p with High settings rather than going for Ultra settings with ray tracing. If I had a much powerful GPU then maybe I would reconsider.
you mixed up the rtx off and on images for elden ring the second time. on shows a lack of ambient occlusion whereas the right image has softer dark shadows from the ray tracing...
The only and I do mean the only game where I have seen Raytracing completely transform a game is Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition and that came like at the start of this trend. For most games you need like side by side or very close attention to notice anything at all.
I got it wrong a few times. I have an RX 6800 (and a few years old now), I can enable RT in a few games and I don't see the benefit. In some games it really only drops FPS to unplayable levels. AMD and Intel do seem to be chipping away at it, but I think they're aware for most games it's not worth it. Especially if you consider the price differences. But yeah, we've all seen the demos of ray and path tracing that make older games look amazing... But I still think we're in that demo period - but do need to to make it a viable tech down the line for anyone outside of the very top Nvidia cards. I should say more casual games like Forza and CoD the AMD implementation works fine, but I just don't notice a real difference and FPS is fine too.
I just wanna say this. Is very easy to decide if you wanna care about ray tracing with the consequences of wallet. And that is by thinking which games you usually play, starting by that at least, because games that really benefit from this are things like cyberpunk. And even so, the benefit is very small for most persons, and that is where I'm going. If you emulate, if you play old games, if you care about other aspects like frame rate, etc... then is not important. But you could even be in the range of people that only plays blockbusters and graphical marvels and EVEN SO leave aside rt. Because even some in that perspective prefer a other aspects that makes the image beautiful and the fps to make it smooth than the drop for a tiny bit more of beauty. Is too demanding and for very specific people.
Rtx is a welcome addition, when it is well implemented into a game. A lot of games do support rtx, but poorly. A game with a good implemented rtx will do the difference. Like cyberpunk, the witcher 3 next gen, and dying light 2 for example. Immediatly noticable
After playing through some games Cyberpunk is def one of the best RT games to play. But its not really worth the frame drop. Id much rather get 100+ frames then better visuals.
Thanks for this video, now I understand for sure that tracing is not worth a single cent spent on it. The difference is so insignificant that you have to zoom in at 200% to see any difference, and it’s funny, for 6 years this is all they could do, but I don’t understand whether it looks better or worse? if there is any difference at all. At the same time, productivity costs are simply colossal, 50-70%.
It's just different.....not game changing. Some people find RT "game changing".....some don't. NV has been trying to convince people to shell out premium prices for their tech...and most aren't buying their bs. Maybe once the tech has really matured and gfx card prices are sensible (which isn't happening), people MAY run after these cards.
I can tell and was right in most of the vids, but thats just because I know what to look for, those are minor things like knowing where the limits of ScreenSpaceReflections are. Basically, RTX is mostly worthless, or more precisely, not worth the low FPS u get with that. Bottomline is, you will see a clear difference between a 60 vs 120FPS gaming, and the GAMING will be better at 120fps. And you will have hard time telling, if RTX is on or off. SO clean win for higher FPS, or 1000 USD in your pocket because u can run without RTX and not max out every last nonsense in a game.
As a tech demonstration, rtx is great, but for gaming, give me consistent framerates as i am not looking at how beautiful the reflections are when I'm trying to actually perform the fun parts of the game.
for god sakes stop saying RTX on & RTX off. RTX is NVIDIA BRANDING, its their branding for raytracing supported cards. Just call it raytracing, not RTX.
@@endcaps1917 That's what he's doing he here. Here is naming a specific type of rendering to be called RTX, when it's actually has a name already called "raytracing." he is using the "brand name" instead of the actual terminology for what he is talking about.
Raytracing is only really useful *if the games lighting was designed to make full use of it* Thats it. Otherwise, like in call of duty, you wont miss out on ANYTHING But Metro Exodus? hmmm some scenes make it completely worth it.
Elden Ring has raytraced AO as well which is kind of obvious when it's on (at the highest raytracing setting only!) because it gets rid of Fromsoftwares SSAO that has pretty visible white haloing artefacts. The raytraced shadows are kind of whatever because it still follows the rasterised shadow map flaws in not every object casting dynamic shadows, so the main benefit of capturing small objects dynamic shadows (like grass) isn't applicable here.
you only notice it when u stop and compare, but we talking about playing it for hours and hours on, you focusing on the story and the gameplay most of the time
than you didnt try playing it in the grass or much forest vegetation. the different in grass and trees shadow reflections especially on leafs is night and day difference even if you play on high fps and dont pay attention to it
I am ashamed, a bit of a mix! But to be fair (or an excuse) It was a little bit too fast for me.. i can't look that fast and see the difference between the 2 samples. When i play around with RTX at home, i do think it does look better, it just pops a bit more. Shadow and lighting are making more sense (reflections as well) But in the end, it's just like a black and white movie, at some point you don't notice it anymore... Just like OLED everybody is so hyped about OLED (me 2, i think it's cool) But if i am honest, Its just like RTX, it's a little bit prettier, but it doesnt make a big difference. Except RTX, because i notice my FPS going down and it often feels less smooth then without RTX, and... DLSS that i need to switch to performance in order to make the game playable. Allthough i think it's cool and i love graphics, but it's just a gimmick in the end.
I just thinked about to buy a gtx 1080ti... but i just thinked about... what about ray tracing... i miss out rt if i buy the 1080ti what looks like the best option for me... because i can afford it.. xD but i see fcking no difference... WTF thanks the video... its help me to to give another + why i choose the 1080ti and not a rtx3060
the only game that its is not acceptable to play without RTX lol. path tracing is too perfect to a point that convinced me to play it at 30 fps better than playing at 120 fps with no rtx at all
I definitely can tell the difference instantly from the fps drop. Graphically not really. My eyes more trained for watching framerate since I start pc gaming in the 90's using Riva TNT 8MB lol.
disagree with witcher 3, the out of city areas look MUCH better with RTX on. The RTX shadows probably make the biggest difference on grass/foliage especially at a distance.
W3 looks absolute breath taking with RT, problem is it still massively immersion breaking bugs and even worse they seem to have stopped supporting the game as the last patch was about 6 months ago😢
The example he used in this video was not a legit comparison. Like literally that was rtx on vs on. Water reflections with rtx on and off is literally night and die. Bullshit vid to craft the narrative that ray tracing doesn’t look considerably better which is an absolute lie. Being worth the fps cost is another issue entirely
there is SO MUCH WRONG with how video games FAKE reflections, that you only start noticing with rtx, to a point, where "once you do black you never go back", as all the fakery gets more noticeable and immersion-breaking, unless the style is consistently simplified/cartoony (where rtx is least useful and good visual design is key), like for example in "outer wilds". screen-space reflections (of water) have the huge issue, that they falsely-reflect skyscrapers, that are too far away from the reflective surface to really reflect it there, just because you can directly see them, the screenspace-reflection can just not reflect large-scale-distances correctly. RTY shadows make foliage look significantly better. rtx-patched-in-witcher3 shines here. even without foliage, RTX Shadows getting blurrier with distance-to-occluder becomes VERY noticeable with scale. This hugely changes space-themed games. Global-Illumination also adds a LOT to all genres with larger scope (you can see a horizon and fly/walk to it), you start to hate rasterized shadows rather quickly. Codsworth the flying robot in fallout4 has well done environment-map-reflections THAT ARE VERY WRONG while Codsworth is in the corner of a room, because fallout4 did not do enough sphere-maps in room-corners (that eat up memory), in favor of console-compatibility.
The answer.... maybe, depending on the game, but most of the time not worth it since enabling upscaling and fake frame tricks to get the games to a halfway decent framerate often have their own detrimental effects. Let's see if I'm right! Yup, only game I see as really worth it is CP2077 with path tracing (since RT isn't ALWAYS better in CP2077 than default lighting), but I don't want to shell out $1,600+ for a GPU and then also have to use DLSS2 and 3. I also wonder how many of these games actually call it the Nvidia branded term 'RTX' and how many use the actual 'Ray Tracing' in the menus. RTX is basically the new 'Band-Aid', where many people call bandages 'Band-Aids' due to marketing, like in this video.
i think it looks better without ray tracing! lol Ray tracing seems to just make it look brighter in random areas and throws off the shading if anything. No Ray Tracing looks more natural AMD it is lol
The difference is like 4%; why are we investing so much money into a technology that is barely worth it? I would much rather have sharper textures and details with good antialiasing instead.
Biggest difference can be seen in motion. Raytraced shadows don't shimmer and aren't blocky. Then you have no weird artifacts on reflections and halo effect with ambient occlusion. It's a big upgrade when you actually play with it. If gpu can run it at 60fps, i'll leave it on. Frame gen is amazing, you don't even notice you're playing at 30fps, completely usable with cyberpunk and pathtracing on 4070Ti.
imma be honest, i couldn't tell the difference in almost all of these, the only one i could guess right was the one with the scope, because the non rt one didn't have anything reflecting but i'm pretty sure that if i hadn't seen this same video idea from linus tech tips just a couple minutes ago, i wouldn't even have looked out for that detail and wouldn't be able to tell the difference. as of now, this tech ain't all that, nvidia is just using this as marketing to scam goofy nerds into buying their inferior small pp vram gpus at ridiculously high prices.
I think this is like NURBS all over again. Years of people insisting that hardware NURBS were (going to be!) obviously superior, how could they not be, the real world is made of curves? But clever trick after clever trick applied to plain old polygons (normal mapping, specular mapping, bump mapping etc.) proved to be far superior, performance-wise, for comparable quality. (Of course NURBS support didn't make it to mainstream hardware, it was proved inferior in the laboratory.) Now we have people insisting that raytracing (will be!) obviously superior, how could it not be, the real world is lit by rays? But clever trick after clever trick have been developed (and will continue to be developed) which make expensive raytracing almost entirely redundant. The only (supposed) superiorities of raytracing that are clearly visible are when showing detailed reflections and shadows, but these are in fact almost always very unrealistic indeed. The real world is almost devoid of detailed reflections and detailed shadows! Raytracing hugely simplifies the real world, the result of which are the unrealistically sharp reflections and shadows we see in raytrace-enabled games. The approximations and tricks that are used for shadows and reflections in conventional rendering are in fact often superior in terms of realism. The argument goes that eventually, as raytracing hardware support gets better and better, the superiority of raytracing will become very obvious. But this ignores the fact that the trickery used to generate shadows and reflections in conventional rendering (and also the trickery used to improve the realism of lighting) will continue to improve also (just as the tricks which made polygon based rendering better and better outpaced any advances in hardware-supported NURBS). Will real time raytracing prove its worth one day? Probably. At present, raytracing is still itself full of trickery, overlayed over conventional rendering. No games actually render the scene using only rays, and we are decades away from this being realistically possible in real time. *Perhaps* one day when scenes can be fully raytraced in real time, the result will be significantly more realistic that anything possible with conventional rendering. But as happened with NURBS, perhaps the improvements to conventional rendering will outpace the improvements to raytracing, even though the latter is physically closer to real life.
Toms Tech Table : RTX is simply too buggy to be justified and very subjectively better at best....in most of the cases is worse than rasterizing because it makes too much contrast in colors and causes shadows to be incorrectly drawn as well as texture tearing.
After owning an RTX 4070 for over a year and playing plenty of games with ray tracing enabled, I'd say that, ultimately, no it's not worth it. It's really only in a small handful of games in which ray tracing makes a significant, easily-noticable difference. As we all know already, with most games you need side-by-side comparison shots of 'ray tracing on VS ray tracing off'. And even then, you have to stare at the picture and squint to notice the differences. And in some games, the ray tracing implementation is just trash and makes reflections and shadows look WORSE. The shadows and reflections look like sh*t with ray tracing enabled and the non-ray traced reflections and shadows actually look better. AND.... In exchange for all of this, you lose half of your performance. Your in-game FPS plummets. And for what? At best, all you get is 'improvements' that are barely noticeable. And at worst, the 'improvements' actually look WORSE. No. Not worth it.
yep your completly right. It is alsways the same , every now and then nvidia comes out with a technology, which should be a "lifechanging" graphics improvement. First Advanced Physics, Tesselation, HBAO+ , Godrays , Hairworks, TXAA , Softshadows and now RT . Its rediculous
anyone who owns rtx 40 series and played witcher 3 will know that these comparisons are fake. how is that there is no difference in water reflections in the comparison?? if you ever played witcher 3 , you will know that there is night and day difference between rtx on or off especially in water reflections
How did you do ? Also do you usually play with RTX ON or OFF ?
even though i have the hardware to do so, i keep it off. Its just not worth it. I play games for the sake of playing a game rather than searching for visual "improvements"
Always on. I also don't buy new AAA games which don'T at least have raytraced shadows and reflections any more. It is a new standard and should be mandatory for every new game, with pathtracing also being an option in every game. In my opinion every new game should have path traced global illumination and ambient occlusion + reflection and shadows + ray reconstruction. If I start a game without raytracing I immediatly notive the incorrect shadowing, bad AO and light not correctly transfering object colors to other objects. The exception to this is lumen in Hellblade 2, that game looks good without raytracing because it has technically "software raytracing" by lumen. But the reflections again in Hellblade 2 are really bad which puts me off always I look at them and kinda diminishes the fun of playing.
@@williehrmann Could you explain why this is important to you? Because video games are by definition not real. Nothing in video games is real or would be this way in real life. Why then should lighting be most accurate? Shouldnt games be played for the sake of gameplay? isnt that what is most fun. I found games with the most artistic art style and the most unaccurate lighting to be the most appealing because they are more gamy and the game stays longer in my head. Realistic graphics is just boring, at least for me.
@@BastianRosenmüller I mean I also like playing games with artistic graphic styles, but in different genres. As soon as I'm gonna play a story heavy title it has to be ultra realistic graphics for me to get the immersion. That is also why I never could watch animes or cartoons really. I just prefer plain camera recorded series and films. I catch myself often skipping any cutscene or dialogues when the graphics aren't right in a story heavy game. If the gameplay itself is nice I might still play but just skip every story part. If I wanna enjoy the story and understand the characters I need immersive graphics.
@@williehrmann Something tells me you didn't play Dragon Age Origins, Mass effect 1,2,3, Oblivion and Fallout 3. Those games were better than most of the games we have now but look no where near as good.
The best way to spot if Ray Tracing is on is by looking at the frame rate LOL
Lol what a comment.
@@rolgoldingamd gpu user comment
Thats why dlss come😊
I look at water. it normally gives it away
@@abanggembelllDLSS rendered image is not as good as the original resolution. DLSS is just a backup plan of compromise when you suffer from low fps. It's not the solution. At least not yet.
Ray tracing doesn’t make a game look inherently better it just makes it look a little different and that’s only in games that fully utilize RT like Cyberpunk and Alan Wake 2
Simply false, cyberpunk without path tracing is unplayable to me after experiencing path tracing.
@@jaytay420 get new eyes
@@jaytay420 first of all, I feel sorry for you. Second, we're talking about raytracing not path tracing.
@@jaytay420 Path Tracing, though demanding, to be honest looks unbelievably nice compared to Ray Tracing in other games, this is somewhat the only game that Ray/Path Tracing is worth it. You can turn on path tracing on a 3060 with DLSS Quality 1080p, bit expect 30-35 FPS with Drops to 25-30, basically PS4 performance but a bit better, if you are okay with that, turn it on, if you have stronger cards like 3080, you can jump up hugely on 1080p, even a bit on 1440p, but 4K it's a mess. You have two choices. Ray Tracing or FPS. Pick your Gear.
@@megadeth8592 says u rofl. Anyone who thinks rasterisation can come close to path tracing is restarted
Yup, I literally couldn't tell. Often preferred one without Ray Tracing.
I'd say ray tracing (not RTX) is a very expensive solution looking for a problem that's not worth the computational cost......for now. Fidelity, resolution, frame rate and frame consistency all matter in a gaming experience and at this point I'd rather play at a higher native resolution or grab a few more FPS than turn on ray tracing. Maybe once we get 50% better than 4090 path tracing performance for 300-500 bucks, ray tracing can be baked in as a minimum requirement, but I also think by them lighting engines will also evolve with tech like Lumen and Nanite in UE5. For now, upscaling is the more exciting tech, in my opinion.
also energy consumption is ridicolous. Why wasting that much of energy for a tiny visual bump?
RT is game developer issue not gamer. If we stick to gamer mind set then our graphic will never move beyond half life 2 level of graphic.
@@arenzricodexd4409 exactly. It is what game developers want ant gamers dont care when you think of the tradeoffs.
I agree, but can tou help me with something? Should I choose Rtx 4080 Super or Rx7900 XTX? And also, 4k monitor or 1440p monitor? I intend to play MOBA like Dota 2 just as much as RPG AAA games
@@LucasHermsdorff RTX 4070 super and 2K (1440) is the sweet spot for performance, quality and price in my opinion.
I got most of them wrong, lol! I just looked for which one looked more realistic to me.
Same I consistently liked the non RT ones better haha.
Ther eis something more "alive" for me in the RTX. The small ways in which certain shadows are amplified and light (such fire on Harry's clothing)... just adds more "aliveness" to the world, compared to feeling like you are just a character in the midst of polygons.
This video has actually convinced me to TRY RayTracing. (Might not be as noticeable during fast paced gameplay though... still though, there really is some aliveness to it that I really love.)
Same!
@@millanferende6723 this sounds like an ad from a bot
It will be worth when normal GPUs will be powerful as rtx 4090 is now. Until then its nice to turn on here and there but for me is mostly off, on Nvidia or AMD.. We all have 144hz or faster screens these days and i found using high refresh fps is more fun for me than watching shadows and reflexions. Ofc there are slow games like Alan Wake but its not my cup of tea..
personally, high fps on high refresh rate monitors in the most noticeable visual improvement on video games out of all the technologies that have come out so far. ray tracing is noticeable only if you stand still look at the scene carefully and know what little details to look out for, if even then. if you aren't specifically looking out for it, you won't have a clue if it's on or off while playing normally.
@@metalface_villain True. In heat of battle you don't look at environment that much, like water reflections or shit like that. I don't care what the fuck is going on with the shadows when I am in front of Elder Ring boss. If I get distracted I get killed lol.
CP: It was the contrast between light vs dark spots and the way the blue neon lights lit up the front of the bar that gave me the answer
W3: It was the water
Finals: I was wrong. I was going off of the reflections in the floor but I guessed wrong
Elden Ring: The shine when you walked over the loot. I guessed right because of the yellow reflections on the armor, otherwise I wouldn't know
Hogwarts: I guessed wrong
Warzone: I guessed wrong but I didn't notice the difference, unlike Hogwarts and Finals I just took a blind guess. ETA yeah I completely looked over the background, didn't pay any attention at all lol
When you were showing Witcher on/off, I actually prefer off. If you look at the boards they're more vibrant with RTX off, and Geralt's armor looks better too. Don't know if that's due to the pics not being identical but Geralt's armor looks sharper and more crisp with RTX off
I think that in Hogwarts it is most noticeable in the floor reflections.
Yeah I should have mentioned about Geralt's armour, but yes It does look a lot sharper in the RTX off version. I think that this because the RTX off screenshot is a little closer to Geralt than the RTX on one. Not entirely sure though.
i mostly just tell it by a shadow as rasterization and ray tracing have completely different shadow techniques but yeah makes 0 difference while actually playing as you will barely notice while moving
When doing comparisons like this, you REALLY need to find a spot that you can replicate.
Ray Tracing is good when implemented right, like in Control, Metro Exodus, Alan Wake II and Cyberpunk 2077. Other games try to implement one solution or another and it is usually badly implemented. Some games you've shown are good examples of that. Elden Ring is not really noticeable, The Witcher 3 not noticeable, COD: Warzone is a "WTF" implementation... The problem with companies failing to add ray tracing is that the FPS will drop, no change will be seen and Ray Tracing will get a bad image among players.
Witcher 3 is noticeable, especially outdoors.
Yes for me only good RT was in Cyberpunk, game looked awesome but more importantly, run ok with it (not with PT) - but heavy RT games like alan wake... you get like 20 fps with no DLSS on 1600 USD card. Ridiculous. Yes, you can render it in 720p with frame gen, but than what you are really playing? And paying?
Quality vid👌
true🔥
Lots of times I end up hating RT in certain areas like dark areas; it really make you regret cheaper display panels and black light bleed and then you are onto trying to figure out what to upgrade next; the bloom can be an issue if you dont have decent dimming zones as backlight bleed can make blacks really crushed and awkward for so many games that try to make more atmospheric visuals
It becomes hard to see and i either get lost more easily since dark is really dark and areas just dont navigate as easily; I’m into a great thriller or horror game but everything looking wet and mirror like isn’t ideal; at that point just change the material composition of everything and get similar results to appearance
Overall i believe at the very least it gives a variant of art direction, as developers can design one game and RT and raster can make up 2 totally different art styles which can accommodate not just playability but how one perceives surfaces to look or how environments are either lifelike due to their own subjective interpretation
Thanks for this! I loved all the comparisons (and I could barely tell the difference)
The most transformative ray tracing I've seen have been reflections, local shadows (sometimes entire shadows are added that didn't exist before) and indirect lighting (seems to clean up a lot of noise). Sometimes though I turn it on and it's just not obvious without squinting.
Path tracing I think is going to suffer until it's the primary lighting option. Like yes it looks good but you can tell the art team wasn't exactly planning for it in cyberpunk (or they would have added more physical lights).
Reflections is cool on raytracing. I think reflections more noticeable.
Latley Ive been playing Control maxed out 1440p with all Ray Tracing effects on. With my 7900xt Im getting above 60 fps and with afmf2 on its a buttery smooth 120 plus.
Thx, this was very helpful. I am about to build my own pc and the biggest factor between choosing AMD or Nvidia gpu is ray tracing. My favorite games are souls games/monster hunter followed games like cyberpunk and Witcher. The price of the 7900 xtx is comparable to 4070 ti. I am leaning more towards AMD 7900 xtx bc I don’t feel like I am losing that much with ray tracing off from what you showed.
I am open advice from anyone with experience on this topic.
I'd probably lean towards the 7900XTX considering the games you've listed, although ray tracing in cyberpunk is one of the best.
@@tomstechtable Also, I am betting a little bit that AMD will improve the software side with FSR where I feel like the ceiling on Nvidia improving performance thru software is lower. Cyberpunk is a weird one from the many vids I have watched. It seems to be heavily optimized for Nvidia while I have seen other titles with ray tracing and the performance gap is much smaller. Honestly, I feel like I will probably be more than satisfied as someone coming from a Xbox series x and have always played games on a console.
The best way I've seen some ray tracing described is "different but not better". The two places I notice pretty quick is SSR vs ray traced reflections and sometimes shadow detail levels (it's kind of like if shadows had a very high or ultra setting). Of course then there's path tracing which tends to be super obvious since entire scenes look completely different (and I'm not even convinced developers put in lights properly to support path tracing vs. the vision that is more obvious with raster or ray trace supported lighting.
I think i was at a 50/50. And this i the point, when you have a dev who cares about cube-maps for example and good implemented lighting, RT is less noticeable. People use RT to justify big spends on Graphic carts when this is nothing more then a graphic feature that comes with a high cost. The overall performance was quite bad in this gen from NVIDIA especially, but this is the price when you push RT performance instead. With the 5090 they showed a significant boost in rastorization performance and people kind of freak out about it, but in fact it is really just needed to be that much because in this gen they underperformed. RT looks good from the bump up, but this card will cost a lot obviously again.
Overtime RT will be more present. Better optimized and in static environments you can bake in rt shadows, i think the CS devs did that?. We will see.
For me the best use of RT is when it comes to reflections. A lot of work to spare for the devs and definitely easier to notice.
to me the non-RT looked better almost in all the games, meaning i guessed wrong mostly; thought the non-RT was RT. So it is a win win for me, i save money. have high fps and get the best looking picture. RT is at the moment not worth it, half the fps, high cost to get into it (highend RTX card needed) , fake framegen needed and non native Highres, but upscaling. Meh, i pass.
@@deejeemadrox1866 lol keep coping lil bro
@@jaytay420 How can it be copium xd. It is a test where you don't know which one is which and if that person can't see an improvement in one picture over the other, that positively aligns with RT then it maybe just isn't all that great
@@jaytay420 bro bought a 4090 and thinks he owns the world now 😭
Meh I pass it seems say you are a begger who can’t afford it 😂stop coping
@@jaytay420 I guess you bought a mid tier Nvidia card for ray tracing which isn't working fine for you so you come to comments to justify your mistake.
Fantastic video. Thanks you.
After training myself on RTX on and off I was able to subconsciously identify RTX on but I consciously can't tell the difference.
Ray Tracing add real-time reflections and some bouncing. The real Ray Tracing is called Path Tracing, this one really makes difference, as it adds real-time reflections and light bouncing/spreading. Cyberpunk is the only game where you will notice the differences well, but it's not worth playing RT with low frames vs. non RT with good frames.
Metro 2033
RTX is noticeable on darker areas. The way light "spreads" makes them brighter than pure raster. When you light a dark room with your phone screen, it "spreads"... It doesn't shine
Cyberpunk looks stunning without but next world with it on.
I was able to pick out raytracing in every example. The effect of raytracing is more obvious when you're the one controlling the game. The uncontrolled camera angles that come from naturally playing the game are not very forgiving to many rasterized techniques, especially when compared. That's when you start noticing the pitfalls of rasterized effects, especially ssr.
50 here.. been gaming since the 2600, for those GenZ's, this was a gaming device from Atari.. yes long ago indeed. Maybe I am just... well.. just getting old right Lol, but hot damn I enable ray tracing and substantially if minimum I can see a difference where I can say - it's like night and day, and not too mention how it takes a hit on performance. Anyone seeing more or less the same?
Still so many users that do not have a powerfull enough GPU to turn on raytracing and actualy get a playable frame rate and enjoyable game... Untill this happens the ratio of haters to lovers will always be much higher.
I can tell just when you move the camera up and down screen space reflections will disappear ray traced reflections won’t. But in all reality when you’re moving through environments fast screen space reflections are very convincing nowadays.
Comparing just a single frame doesnt realy show how good / bad RTX is... You need to be able to move the camera and see the reflections and shadows and the way these effects propigate around the scene as you move. This is what adds to the realisum and makes you belive the image is closer to reality and there for more imersive.
I got them all right. IMHO RTX on makes water look more wet, bright lights are crisper and shadows/reflections do slightly better. I don’t bother with it to be honest. Of course I’m 42 so the ultra real detail doesn’t really appeal to me as someone who grew up playing 8/16 bit games on the regular.
Shadows and reflections are the two things that pop for me when ray tracing is on.
Those two are least effective as modern games already have great shadows n good ssr reflection but rt global illumination is just too good
I don't think the changes for general lighting are as important to me. The techniques the use to fake it are good enough. What I'm more interested in is replacing the techniques that suck and distract me.
I hate SSR but all I could ever do is turn it off. In cyberpunk, it's worth the loss of 30ish fps to get accurate reflections that don't vanish at the wrong viewing angle.
Depends on the game. Cyberpunk and witcher 3 with rt update do look noticeably better with rt. But i noticed little difference with pathtracing on in cyberpunk, just lower fps. So i leave that off
Why did I prefer how the games looks with RTX off? Each of the games comparissons I prefered the RTX off version before know it... No matter, I guess I found my answer. Thanks for the video.
i usually play with RT with games like alan wake because it really changes how the game look with just a low RT even with DLSS enabled the games still look beautiful
4 years ago I would say: it's impossible to notice the difference. After 4 years, playing multiple RT games, I can definitely notice the difference and all my guesses in this video of whether it was rt on or off were right. I definitely prefer RT, mainly playing in an OLED screen, it seems they were made for each other. The shadows and ambient occlusion works much better with RT. And as to the reflections, RT is way superior in terms of being faithful to the image. Everytime i llay a full rasterized game nowadays I see how much better it could be if it was RT.
I definitely noticed the difference when playing on my OLED TV but struggle to notice much of a difference on my monitor unless they are side by side.
I play many games Cyberpunk, Witcher, Red Death 2 using Samsung Odyssey G9, rtx3080 at 1440p. Ray tracing is suck, it make the shadow darker but I prefer lighter shadow. Imagine taking picture of someone under strong light, probably you have to adjust the shadow lighter to see thing under shadow. Also looking into the small water drop and see the whole building behind, that's not realistic. Ray tracing is a scam, it's a lie, it makes things look worse and take away your GPU raw power, I played with Ray tracing on for couple days, and have to turn off for all of them, RT off is better
@@TbearMuhahah Ray tracing is not about making it "beautiful". It's all about realism, it's the way to go if we want to have more realistic games in the future. A dark place is a dark place, a place without light is dark as hell, and such things are only reproducible with ray tracing. A reflection exists even if you are not looking at the object in real life as well, again, only possible with RT.
I agree with you, visually RT is not beautiful in many games, but it's the closest to "real" simulation of light that we could reach so far, mainly with path tracing.
And as for reflections, they tend to exaggerate the water reflections. However we are surrounded by many reflection surfaces everywhere, but at this point you probably never paid attention to such details around you. In my home even the kitchen cabinets have reflections.
@@TbearMuhahah you could bake the shadows and colors in a game to look realistic (not the reflections) as it's done in many games so far. But it takes a lot of development time, and the result is still artificial. So RT also speeds up development time as it's already included on DirectX API. In a full RT game, you actually don't need to bake anything, just need to work with the light sources and materials. Now with AI + RT, game development becomes way easier than 10 years ago...
@@Vecchete When they showcase their tech they say it makes things more beautiful, I don't feel that and see that in my game. You say it's more realistic, and your kitchen has lots of reflection. What is it? Your shiny spoon and cup reflect the whole kitchen? You tell me you can see your kitchen reflection and I don't notice it? Create light source and then make rasterized shadow objects based on it is a method used by developers for a long time. Now with Ray Tracing your GPU create a light source and carry it with you all the time and generate object shadow based on it. Developers thank you for that, they do less work, more work for your GPU. A lot of good optimized games you totally don't need Ray Tracing, turn it on mean create your own light source, it's costly heavy and the visual is the same.
First two games were easy to tell even if the difference wasn't much, the later games were much more difficult to tell the difference. The difference is there but overall when you're playing a game rather than looking for the small differences it would be very hard to tell the difference. Would have been nice to know the performance hit to judge whether its worth it. Personally I don't use ray tracing and prefer playing at 1440p with High settings rather than going for Ultra settings with ray tracing. If I had a much powerful GPU then maybe I would reconsider.
I got a couple wrong. Wow, surprisingly hard to tell the difference. No way I'd tell a difference while actually playing a game I don't think.
you mixed up the rtx off and on images for elden ring the second time. on shows a lack of ambient occlusion whereas the right image has softer dark shadows from the ray tracing...
The only and I do mean the only game where I have seen Raytracing completely transform a game is Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition and that came like at the start of this trend. For most games you need like side by side or very close attention to notice anything at all.
Honestly I feel like path tracing vs ray tracing makes a bigger difference than standard ray tracing vs none at all.
for me, RTX on W3 is a complete waste of resources. What makes the game genuinely better graphically is the foliage ultra +
Rt gi is game changing on Witcher 3 🤡 ofc it is a waste if u are poor
RTX gives a life-like lighting to all buildings in W3. I don’t how ppl don’t see it
I got them all right. The biggest giveaway for me is the fog and smoke effects.
I got it wrong a few times. I have an RX 6800 (and a few years old now), I can enable RT in a few games and I don't see the benefit. In some games it really only drops FPS to unplayable levels.
AMD and Intel do seem to be chipping away at it, but I think they're aware for most games it's not worth it. Especially if you consider the price differences. But yeah, we've all seen the demos of ray and path tracing that make older games look amazing... But I still think we're in that demo period - but do need to to make it a viable tech down the line for anyone outside of the very top Nvidia cards. I should say more casual games like Forza and CoD the AMD implementation works fine, but I just don't notice a real difference and FPS is fine too.
You are blind n poor
I just wanna say this. Is very easy to decide if you wanna care about ray tracing with the consequences of wallet. And that is by thinking which games you usually play, starting by that at least, because games that really benefit from this are things like cyberpunk. And even so, the benefit is very small for most persons, and that is where I'm going. If you emulate, if you play old games, if you care about other aspects like frame rate, etc... then is not important. But you could even be in the range of people that only plays blockbusters and graphical marvels and EVEN SO leave aside rt. Because even some in that perspective prefer a other aspects that makes the image beautiful and the fps to make it smooth than the drop for a tiny bit more of beauty. Is too demanding and for very specific people.
My brain is so used to raster, I got all wrong
It's great on old Games like Black Mesa, but newer games with the plethera of lighting effects baked in, I'm not so sure.
which one is RT ON btw?im not kiddin
Rtx is a welcome addition, when it is well implemented into a game. A lot of games do support rtx, but poorly. A game with a good implemented rtx will do the difference. Like cyberpunk, the witcher 3 next gen, and dying light 2 for example. Immediatly noticable
After playing through some games Cyberpunk is def one of the best RT games to play. But its not really worth the frame drop. Id much rather get 100+ frames then better visuals.
U don’t need more than 60fps n u ain’t playing no competitive shooter u need 100fps 🤡🤡🤡🤡
Thanks for this video, now I understand for sure that tracing is not worth a single cent spent on it. The difference is so insignificant that you have to zoom in at 200% to see any difference, and it’s funny, for 6 years this is all they could do, but I don’t understand whether it looks better or worse? if there is any difference at all. At the same time, productivity costs are simply colossal, 50-70%.
It's just different.....not game changing.
Some people find RT "game changing".....some don't.
NV has been trying to convince people to shell out premium prices for their tech...and most aren't buying their bs.
Maybe once the tech has really matured and gfx card prices are sensible (which isn't happening), people MAY run after these cards.
It's very easy to tell when you know what to look for and the implementation in the game. I got each one correct.
is A with ray racing or B?
I can tell and was right in most of the vids, but thats just because I know what to look for, those are minor things like knowing where the limits of ScreenSpaceReflections are. Basically, RTX is mostly worthless, or more precisely, not worth the low FPS u get with that. Bottomline is, you will see a clear difference between a 60 vs 120FPS gaming, and the GAMING will be better at 120fps. And you will have hard time telling, if RTX is on or off. SO clean win for higher FPS, or 1000 USD in your pocket because u can run without RTX and not max out every last nonsense in a game.
why didnt you see sun rise in withcer 3.there was barely any rays
As a tech demonstration, rtx is great, but for gaming, give me consistent framerates as i am not looking at how beautiful the reflections are when I'm trying to actually perform the fun parts of the game.
RT on in cyberpunk = looks like it just rained, everything is overly reflective, its annoying tbh
U clearly never seen the game with path tracing so u are bsing urself. Keep telling urself that
for god sakes stop saying RTX on & RTX off. RTX is NVIDIA BRANDING, its their branding for raytracing supported cards. Just call it raytracing, not RTX.
I mean tbf naming a general product after a brand is supposingly common
@@endcaps1917 That's what he's doing he here. Here is naming a specific type of rendering to be called RTX, when it's actually has a name already called "raytracing." he is using the "brand name" instead of the actual terminology for what he is talking about.
I notice a difference, but it’s usually minor. An example is Elden Ring. I can’t even really say that I prefer the way the game looks.
Ray tracing is the same as fixing the little strands of hair on your head in the mirror thinking it’s making you look so much more different.
All that said should i buy a 4070Super or a rx7800xt ? helppppp
7900xtx
Got everything right, but doesnt really bother not having it
Raytracing is only really useful *if the games lighting was designed to make full use of it*
Thats it.
Otherwise, like in call of duty, you wont miss out on ANYTHING
But Metro Exodus? hmmm some scenes make it completely worth it.
None of these really seemed like it would be worth the frame rate hit. It would be hard to tell the difference when actually running around.
Elden Ring has raytraced AO as well which is kind of obvious when it's on (at the highest raytracing setting only!) because it gets rid of Fromsoftwares SSAO that has pretty visible white haloing artefacts.
The raytraced shadows are kind of whatever because it still follows the rasterised shadow map flaws in not every object casting dynamic shadows, so the main benefit of capturing small objects dynamic shadows (like grass) isn't applicable here.
you only notice it when u stop and compare, but we talking about playing it for hours and hours on, you focusing on the story and the gameplay most of the time
For Witcher 3, the RTX difference is generally indoors.
than you didnt try playing it in the grass or much forest vegetation.
the different in grass and trees shadow reflections especially on leafs is night and day difference even if you play on high fps and dont pay attention to it
I am ashamed, a bit of a mix! But to be fair (or an excuse) It was a little bit too fast for me.. i can't look that fast and see the difference between the 2 samples.
When i play around with RTX at home, i do think it does look better, it just pops a bit more. Shadow and lighting are making more sense (reflections as well)
But in the end, it's just like a black and white movie, at some point you don't notice it anymore...
Just like OLED everybody is so hyped about OLED (me 2, i think it's cool) But if i am honest, Its just like RTX, it's a little bit prettier, but it doesnt make a big difference.
Except RTX, because i notice my FPS going down and it often feels less smooth then without RTX, and... DLSS that i need to switch to performance in order to make the game playable.
Allthough i think it's cool and i love graphics, but it's just a gimmick in the end.
I just thinked about to buy a gtx 1080ti... but i just thinked about... what about ray tracing... i miss out rt if i buy the 1080ti what looks like the best option for me... because i can afford it.. xD but i see fcking no difference... WTF thanks the video... its help me to to give another + why i choose the 1080ti and not a rtx3060
It's a very well marketed feature but in reality the tradeoff with performance is still too high.
I prefer rtx on in cyberpunk, my GPU on the other hand hates me when I do that to it lol
the only game that its is not acceptable to play without RTX lol.
path tracing is too perfect to a point that convinced me to play it at 30 fps better than playing at 120 fps with no rtx at all
I definitely can tell the difference instantly from the fps drop. Graphically not really. My eyes more trained for watching framerate since I start pc gaming in the 90's using Riva TNT 8MB lol.
Are we all just going to ignore how funny the
'Don't have the capacity 😢"
actually was.
Big AMD fan, but that made me laugh 😅
I just play games without noticing the environment. Play Some game on low setting and don't really care that much.
disagree with witcher 3, the out of city areas look MUCH better with RTX on. The RTX shadows probably make the biggest difference on grass/foliage especially at a distance.
W3 looks absolute breath taking with RT, problem is it still massively immersion breaking bugs and even worse they seem to have stopped supporting the game as the last patch was about 6 months ago😢
The example he used in this video was not a legit comparison. Like literally that was rtx on vs on. Water reflections with rtx on and off is literally night and die. Bullshit vid to craft the narrative that ray tracing doesn’t look considerably better which is an absolute lie. Being worth the fps cost is another issue entirely
RTX is an eyecandy for me, it's fun but at a cost, yet still it would be nice to have on a very powerful gpu..
there is SO MUCH WRONG with how video games FAKE reflections, that you only start noticing with rtx, to a point, where "once you do black you never go back", as all the fakery gets more noticeable and immersion-breaking, unless the style is consistently simplified/cartoony (where rtx is least useful and good visual design is key), like for example in "outer wilds".
screen-space reflections (of water) have the huge issue, that they falsely-reflect skyscrapers, that are too far away from the reflective surface to really reflect it there, just because you can directly see them, the screenspace-reflection can just not reflect large-scale-distances correctly.
RTY shadows make foliage look significantly better. rtx-patched-in-witcher3 shines here. even without foliage, RTX Shadows getting blurrier with distance-to-occluder becomes VERY noticeable with scale. This hugely changes space-themed games. Global-Illumination also adds a LOT to all genres with larger scope (you can see a horizon and fly/walk to it), you start to hate rasterized shadows rather quickly.
Codsworth the flying robot in fallout4 has well done environment-map-reflections THAT ARE VERY WRONG while Codsworth is in the corner of a room, because fallout4 did not do enough sphere-maps in room-corners (that eat up memory), in favor of console-compatibility.
The answer.... maybe, depending on the game, but most of the time not worth it since enabling upscaling and fake frame tricks to get the games to a halfway decent framerate often have their own detrimental effects. Let's see if I'm right!
Yup, only game I see as really worth it is CP2077 with path tracing (since RT isn't ALWAYS better in CP2077 than default lighting), but I don't want to shell out $1,600+ for a GPU and then also have to use DLSS2 and 3. I also wonder how many of these games actually call it the Nvidia branded term 'RTX' and how many use the actual 'Ray Tracing' in the menus. RTX is basically the new 'Band-Aid', where many people call bandages 'Band-Aids' due to marketing, like in this video.
i think it looks better without ray tracing! lol Ray tracing seems to just make it look brighter in random areas and throws off the shading if anything. No Ray Tracing looks more natural
AMD it is lol
The difference is like 4%; why are we investing so much money into a technology that is barely worth it? I would much rather have sharper textures and details with good antialiasing instead.
It's much better looking but hits the system hard
Elden Ring only has RT shadows
Couldnt tell them apart. RT in games is a gimmick to raise GPU prices.
You chose a weird scene for Witcher. It looks *considerably* better with RT on and the differences are very noticeable. Good video otherwise.
Biggest difference can be seen in motion. Raytraced shadows don't shimmer and aren't blocky. Then you have no weird artifacts on reflections and halo effect with ambient occlusion.
It's a big upgrade when you actually play with it. If gpu can run it at 60fps, i'll leave it on. Frame gen is amazing, you don't even notice you're playing at 30fps, completely usable with cyberpunk and pathtracing on 4070Ti.
imma be honest, i couldn't tell the difference in almost all of these, the only one i could guess right was the one with the scope, because the non rt one didn't have anything reflecting but i'm pretty sure that if i hadn't seen this same video idea from linus tech tips just a couple minutes ago, i wouldn't even have looked out for that detail and wouldn't be able to tell the difference. as of now, this tech ain't all that, nvidia is just using this as marketing to scam goofy nerds into buying their inferior small pp vram gpus at ridiculously high prices.
i just use a HDR monitor and its close enough xD
I think this is like NURBS all over again. Years of people insisting that hardware NURBS were (going to be!) obviously superior, how could they not be, the real world is made of curves? But clever trick after clever trick applied to plain old polygons (normal mapping, specular mapping, bump mapping etc.) proved to be far superior, performance-wise, for comparable quality. (Of course NURBS support didn't make it to mainstream hardware, it was proved inferior in the laboratory.)
Now we have people insisting that raytracing (will be!) obviously superior, how could it not be, the real world is lit by rays? But clever trick after clever trick have been developed (and will continue to be developed) which make expensive raytracing almost entirely redundant.
The only (supposed) superiorities of raytracing that are clearly visible are when showing detailed reflections and shadows, but these are in fact almost always very unrealistic indeed. The real world is almost devoid of detailed reflections and detailed shadows! Raytracing hugely simplifies the real world, the result of which are the unrealistically sharp reflections and shadows we see in raytrace-enabled games. The approximations and tricks that are used for shadows and reflections in conventional rendering are in fact often superior in terms of realism.
The argument goes that eventually, as raytracing hardware support gets better and better, the superiority of raytracing will become very obvious. But this ignores the fact that the trickery used to generate shadows and reflections in conventional rendering (and also the trickery used to improve the realism of lighting) will continue to improve also (just as the tricks which made polygon based rendering better and better outpaced any advances in hardware-supported NURBS).
Will real time raytracing prove its worth one day? Probably. At present, raytracing is still itself full of trickery, overlayed over conventional rendering. No games actually render the scene using only rays, and we are decades away from this being realistically possible in real time. *Perhaps* one day when scenes can be fully raytraced in real time, the result will be significantly more realistic that anything possible with conventional rendering. But as happened with NURBS, perhaps the improvements to conventional rendering will outpace the improvements to raytracing, even though the latter is physically closer to real life.
Ray Tracing makes a HUGE difference in Hogwarts... My God...
I couln't tell. Very uncertain on every single answer
Only game where RTX made sense was Cyberpunk.
Toms Tech Table : RTX is simply too buggy to be justified and very subjectively better at best....in most of the cases is worse than rasterizing because it makes too much contrast in colors and causes shadows to be incorrectly drawn as well as texture tearing.
After owning an RTX 4070 for over a year and playing plenty of games with ray tracing enabled, I'd say that, ultimately, no it's not worth it. It's really only in a small handful of games in which ray tracing makes a significant, easily-noticable difference. As we all know already, with most games you need side-by-side comparison shots of 'ray tracing on VS ray tracing off'. And even then, you have to stare at the picture and squint to notice the differences. And in some games, the ray tracing implementation is just trash and makes reflections and shadows look WORSE. The shadows and reflections look like sh*t with ray tracing enabled and the non-ray traced reflections and shadows actually look better.
AND.... In exchange for all of this, you lose half of your performance. Your in-game FPS plummets. And for what? At best, all you get is 'improvements' that are barely noticeable. And at worst, the 'improvements' actually look WORSE.
No. Not worth it.
Futility. I don't even play games on ultra settings. Ray Tracing is just marketing and a loss of 30-50% of game performance.
yep your completly right. It is alsways the same , every now and then nvidia comes out with a technology, which should be a "lifechanging" graphics improvement. First Advanced Physics, Tesselation, HBAO+ , Godrays , Hairworks, TXAA , Softshadows and now RT . Its rediculous
@@BastianRosenmüller keep telling yourself that amd user
i watched this without really knowing what Ray Tracing does.
Picked non RTX 80% of the time.
So yeah... i'm not getting Nvidia anytime soon
I may get called a "filthy casual" saying this but
I really can't tell the difference
After I guessed WRONG 3 times in a row I decided rtx isn't for me
anyone who owns rtx 40 series and played witcher 3 will know that these comparisons are fake.
how is that there is no difference in water reflections in the comparison??
if you ever played witcher 3 , you will know that there is night and day difference between rtx on or off especially in water reflections
4K RT OFF looks better and have better FPS than 2K RT ON.