Engadget Explainer: Ray Tracing Is Worth It Mainly on High-End Gaming PCs

Engadget described ray tracing as an advanced rendering technique that simulates realistic lighting effects more accurately than traditional rasterization. Older games that do not support ray tracing use screen-space reflections, which the article said are not very accurate. Modern titles with ray tracing can reflect offscreen objects and shadows by bouncing rays around a scene before calculating how the in-game world should be lit.

The performance cost is substantial. Engadget cited a TechSpot analysis of 36 games that found average frame rates dropped between 20 percent and 40 percent when ray tracing was enabled. Some games suffered larger declines: Hogwarts Legacy fell by 45 percent, Alan Wake 2 dropped by around 52 percent, and Hitman 3 saw its average frame rate fall by 65 percent, according to the report. The Engadget writer said playing Hitman 3 with ray tracing cranked to the maximum produced a brutal performance hit, despite the improved reflections.

Players can use DLSS or frame generation to improve frame rates, Engadget said, but the article noted that the writer often accepts increased input lag when using NVIDIA's DLSS 4.5 Multi Frame Generation technology. For gamers using an RTX 3060 or AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT, Engadget said it could not recommend ray tracing. Instead, the article advised focusing on a stable frame rate at the monitor's native resolution. It added that players who have never seen ray tracing in action will not miss it.

Hardware remains the deciding factor. Engadget said that if a GPU is more than five years old, any ray-traced games it can run will likely perform poorly. The article also noted that the current console generation, including the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, can handle moderate ray-traced experiences, but that top-end PCs operate on an entirely different level. At the time of writing, the Steam Hardware Survey ranked NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5070 as the graphics card with the highest usage share, which Engadget said shows dedicated PC players are embracing cards capable of handling ray tracing. The article's author said they have access to an RTX 5090.

Engadget also explained the difference between ray tracing and path tracing. It compared ray tracing to a talented Padawan and path tracing to a full-blown Jedi Master, saying path tracing is a more advanced form of ray tracing. Path tracing, sometimes called full ray tracing in some titles, can calculate far more lighting sources than traditional ray tracing. In games that do not support path tracing, ray tracing is often combined with rasterization and handles specific effects such as reflections or shadows. Path tracing usually controls the entire look of a game, producing a more consistently lit image, according to the article.

The article said the differences between the High ray tracing preset and full path tracing may be hard to spot on a phone, but they exist. Engadget's writer compared the two options in the opening scene of Resident Evil Requiem.