The importance of ray tracing for me lies in its ability to deliver realistic visuals and lighting effects.
The importance of ray tracing for me lies in its ability to deliver realistic visuals and lighting effects.
The A-series users without experience with RT cores are definitely not alone.
I believe other systems being used are equally effective or nearly so, so they’re just as valuable in practice. When I’m playing games, I focus on the experience itself—not just the appearance. If looks matter a lot to you, we’ll play for different goals.
RT cores would play an even greater role in workstation cards due to their frequent use in CAD, simulation, or rendering tasks.
I don’t really mind RT when I can enable it and have a smooth FPS game. If it’s off, I’ll turn it back on but there are some titles that need it right now just to play. I’m not spending 3k for a GPU to run 4K with RT and get over 250 FPS.
I own a 3090 that I rarely utilize beyond old titles like Quake and Portal. My preferred scenario is smooth 180 FPS in Cyberpunk without heavy rendering, rather than the lower frame rates seen with RT. I consistently rely on DLSS, even at 1080p, which boosts performance significantly—especially with the latest transformer models—without a perceptible drop in quality.
It's about the current and upcoming projects, and when I play modern games I want them to appear as impressive as they can be with all the features and enhancements. Developers invest effort to bring them to life, so I aim to experience them exactly as intended. I won't accept a reduced or simplified version.
I tried it when it was the latest trend... but soon forgot about prerendered shadows and other details. It never really captured the right feel, especially on sunny days where everything looked overly wet. It just didn’t feel immersive at all. The only time I truly enjoyed it was in ROTTR—using conventional ray tracing instead of the newer RTX tech. It added subtle realism, making scenes look more natural rather than muddy. Now I dislike it completely, seeing it as a sign of Unreal Engine’s flaws. Every game relying on anti-aliasing with this would feel choppy and ugly... I’m starting to link ray tracing directly to Unreal Engine, which is pretty concerning. (And yes, that’s not just the developers’ issue—it’s more about the engine itself.)