Most PC players know that ray tracing is a really performance-intensive function, and relying on the development to visible high quality, it might or is probably not value utilizing. In an in depth {Hardware} Unboxed video (watch under), we examined the visible advantages that ray tracing can herald 37 totally different video games. Nonetheless, in the present day’s article solely focuses on the efficiency affect of ray tracing.
Having analyzed visuals first, we will present much more insights and context to the efficiency dialogue than ever earlier than. We’ll look at the general efficiency price of ray tracing in a ton of video games, whereas additionally narrowing our focus to titles the place ray tracing genuinely enhances visible high quality.
What number of FPS do you sometimes must sacrifice earlier than the advantages of ray tracing turn into evident and transformative?
Listed here are two compilation tables of all of the video games we visually examined and assessed whether or not ray tracing introduced actual visible high quality advantages in gameplay, the place it did not, or worse off, the place it harm graphics high quality.
Desk 1: Video games The place Ray Tracing is Not Price It
| Hurts Visuals | No Enchancment At All | If You Look Intently, You will See It | Completely different Picture, Unclear if Higher |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resident Evil Village | Lifeless House | Elden Ring (Low) | Deathloop |
| Gotham Knights | Dust 5 | Elden Ring (Max) | Forspoken |
| Atomic Coronary heart (Efficiency) | Resident Evil 4 | A Plague Story: Requiem | Dragon’s Dogma II |
| The Callisto Protocol (Medium) | Diablo IV (Low) | Far Cry 6 | Diablo IV (Max) |
| Â | Â | Battlefield 2042 | Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Extremely) |
| Â | Â | F1 24 (Medium) | Hogwarts Legacy (Low) |
| Â | Â | F1 24 (Excessive) | Star Wars Jedi: Survivor |
| Â | Â | Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Medium) | Metro Exodus (Excessive) |
| Â | Â | Forza Motorsport (Automobile Reflections) | Metro Exodus (Extremely) |
| Â | Â | Forza Motorsport (Max) | Â |
| Â | Â | Fortnite | Â |
| Â | Â | The Callisto Protocol (Excessive) | Â |
| Â | Â | Dying Mild 2 Keep Human (Low) | Â |
| Â | Â | Spider-Man: Miles Morales (Shadows Solely) | Â |
Desk 2: Video games The place Ray Tracing Results Are Good or Even Nice
| It is Higher, Additionally Extra Artifacts | It is Higher, Some Surfaces Solely | It is Usually Higher General | Transforms Visuals Considerably |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atomic Coronary heart (High quality) | Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League | Ghostwire: Tokyo (Excessive) | Metro Exodus Enhanced (Regular & Hybrid) |
| Hogwarts Legacy (Extremely) | Doom Everlasting | Watch Canines: Legion (Medium) | Metro Exodus Enhanced (Extremely) |
| Ghostwire: Tokyo (Low) | The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Partial Efficiency) | Watch Canines: Legion (Excessive) | Alan Wake II |
| Hitman 3 | Guardians of the Galaxy (Excessive) | The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Max) | Cyberpunk 2077 (Overdrive) |
| Ratchet & Clank: Rift Aside (Medium) | Guardians of the Galaxy (Extremely) | Management (Medium) | Â |
| Â | Ratchet & Clank: Rift Aside (Max) | Management (Excessive) | Â |
| Â | Black Delusion: Wukong (Low) | Dying Mild 2 Keep Human (Excessive High quality) | Â |
| Â | Â | Spider-Man: Miles Morales (Max) | Â |
| Â | Â | Spider-Man | Â |
| Â | Â | Spider-Man (Excessive) | Â |
| Â | Â | Spider-Man (Very Excessive) | Â |
| Â | Â | Black Delusion: Wukong (Very Excessive) | Â |
| Â | Â | Alan Wake II (Low) | Â |
| Â | Â | Cyberpunk 2077 (Extremely) | Â |
This additionally provides us the perfect alternative to match the ray tracing capabilities of Nvidia and AMD’s GPU architectures with out the outcomes being skewed by ineffective ray tracing implementations. In the end, we solely care about ray tracing efficiency for video games the place you’d truly think about enabling it, and that is going to be our philosophy for reviewing the upcoming technology of recent GPUs.
No dud video games – simply the titles that look nice in the present day and supply a glimpse into the way forward for top-tier, ray-traced gaming.
On this ray tracing efficiency evaluate, we’ll undergo 36 video games, evaluating efficiency with ray tracing enabled and disabled, utilizing the identical configurations seen within the visible evaluation.
We benchmarked all of those titles on the present high GPUs – the GeForce RTX 4090 and the Radeon RX 7900 XTX – to supply a transparent image of the place issues stand. All testing was carried out on an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D with 32GB of DDR5-6000 reminiscence.
As a result of these are high-end GPUs, in the present day’s testing focuses on 4K gaming, although we could discover different GPU tiers and resolutions in future content material. As mentioned in earlier articles, there is no excellent technique to benchmark GPUs lately, however we have opted for “lifelike” gaming configurations that somebody enabling ray tracing would probably select.
In video games the place each DLSS 2 and FSR 2 or newer can be found, we have enabled upscaling in High quality mode with a 4K output decision. In video games the place one or each of those applied sciences aren’t obtainable, we have caught to native rendering. No body technology has been used.
Efficiency Benchmarks
Resident Evil Village
We’ll work our method by means of the worst ray tracing implementations to the perfect, beginning with Resident Evil Village. This can be a sport that really appears worse with ray tracing enabled; but, on the RTX 4090, enabling ray tracing on the highest settings results in a 19% efficiency drop.
On the RX 7900 XTX, the affect is even better, with a 33% efficiency drop, though each playing cards nonetheless ship over 120 FPS in our check space at native 4K.
Gotham Knights
In Gotham Knights, the difficulty lies with very low-resolution ray-traced reflections, making the function primarily pointless by way of efficiency affect.
A 35% efficiency hit on the RTX 4090 and a 24% hit on the RX 7900 XTX are substantial, given the poor high quality of the reflections. It is laborious to justify sacrificing this a lot body price when the reflections are so blurry and lackluster.
Lifeless House
Lifeless House makes use of ray-traced ambient occlusion, which has a minimal visible affect, mirrored within the minor efficiency hit. On the RTX 4090, this impact has a negligible affect, solely 3%, whereas on the RX 7900 XTX, it reduces the common body price by 12%.
This is without doubt one of the smaller impacts of enabling ray tracing, in line with the slight visible distinction.
Dust 5
In Dust 5, distinguishing whether or not ray tracing is enabled or not is difficult, as the sport makes use of ray-traced car shadows. This impact lowers the body price by 15% on the RTX 4090 and by 19% on the RX 7900 XTX, with related efficiency affect on each playing cards.
Though body charges stay excessive with or with out ray tracing, decreasing efficiency appears pointless when the advantages are virtually invisible.
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 4 incorporates fewer ray-traced results than Resident Evil Village, making the affect much less noticeable and the efficiency hit smaller. On the RTX 4090, enabling ray tracing on the highest settings ends in only a 2% drop in common body charges, primarily sustaining the identical efficiency.
This sport can also be favorable for the RX 7900 XTX, with solely a 6% efficiency drop. These are the forms of video games that may skew ray tracing efficiency averages unreasonably, because the small body price affect appears interesting, however the visible advantages are minimal. It is unlikely anybody would put money into ray tracing for this title alone.
A Plague Story: Requiem
A Plague Story: Requiem makes use of ray-traced shadows that improve visuals barely, although solely upon shut inspection. On this sport, the RTX 4090 sees an 18% hit to the common body price with ray tracing enabled, whereas the RX 7900 XTX experiences a a lot better 39% drop.
Consequently, whereas the RTX 4090 is 31% quicker with ray tracing disabled, its lead extends to a formidable 75% when ray tracing is enabled – although the sport appears glorious even with out it.
Far Cry 6
Far Cry 6 makes minimal use of ray tracing, regardless of together with ray-traced shadows and reflections. On the RTX 4090, this results in a modest 13% efficiency drop, and a 19% drop on the RX 7900 XTX. This doesn’t notably alter the efficiency comparability between GeForce and Radeon, as each playing cards nonetheless ship comparatively shut efficiency ranges.
Battlefield 2042
Battlefield 2042 is a multiplayer title that contains a ray-traced ambient occlusion implementation with little sensible profit.
Enabling this setting reduces body charges by 17% on the RTX 4090 and by 27% on the RX 7900 XTX, severely affecting one-percent lows. There’s little motive to allow this setting, particularly because it pushes the 7900 XTX under 120 FPS at 4K.
F1 24
F1 24 incorporates extra ray tracing results than any earlier F1 sport, examined right here with all ray tracing settings enabled at both medium or prime quality. Medium high quality ends in a comparatively modest efficiency hit of 24% on the RTX 4090 and 29% on the RX 7900 XTX.
Prime quality will increase this affect considerably, with a 41% drop on the 4090 and a 51% drop on the 7900 XTX, that means the body price on the Radeon GPU is successfully halved at most in-game ray tracing settings. One-percent lows are much more impacted, making ray tracing tough to advocate for this sport.
Curiously, regardless of the intensive results used, the sport in all fairness well-optimized for each GPU manufacturers. With ray tracing disabled, the 4090 is 31% quicker than the 7900 XTX, a lead that extends to 39% with medium ray tracing and to 57% at excessive settings, indicating a barely bigger hole on the highest settings.
Forza Motorsport
Whereas ray tracing in Forza Motorsport could supply minor visible enhancements, enabling automotive reflections is one thing value contemplating. On each the RTX 4090 and RX 7900 XTX, this setting has a minimal efficiency affect, much like many rasterization settings.
Nonetheless, enabling all ray tracing results noticeably reduces body price, with a 24% hit on the RTX 4090 and a 34% hit on the 7900 XTX. Comparatively, the 4090 is 37% quicker with solely automotive reflections enabled however turns into 55% quicker when extra intensive ray tracing is utilized.
Fortnite
Utilizing {hardware} ray tracing in Fortnite would not notably affect efficiency or visuals. The RTX 4090 sees only a 6% body price discount with {hardware} RT, whereas the 7900 XTX experiences an 8% drop.
General, the sport tends to favor GeForce {hardware} when all results are maximized and Lumen is enabled, whether or not by means of software program or {hardware} paths.
The Callisto Protocol
In The Callisto Protocol, medium ray tracing settings detract from visible high quality, displaying minimal good points even on the highest settings. Medium ray tracing settings result in round a 35% efficiency drop on each the RTX 4090 and RX 7900 XTX.
When all settings are maxed out, each GPUs expertise a forty five% efficiency loss. This can be a uncommon case the place ray tracing has the same affect on each Ada Lovelace and RDNA3 architectures, though the visible enchancment stays minor, even at most settings.
Deathloop
Deathloop makes use of ray tracing primarily for shadows, altering the visible presentation however not essentially bettering it. The efficiency affect on the RTX 4090 is minimal at simply 4%, however the 7900 XTX suffers extra considerably, with a 25% common body price drop.
This distinction means the RTX 4090 is 45% quicker with ray tracing disabled, rising to 85% quicker with ray tracing enabled – a considerable disparity given the minimal visible profit.
Forspoken
In Forspoken, ray tracing efficiency impacts are related on each GeForce and Radeon, averaging round 15%. This sport barely favors Radeon {hardware} general, but it surely would not stand out for example of ray tracing considerably enhancing visible high quality.
Dragon’s Dogma II
Like Deathloop, Dragon’s Dogma II alters its visible presentation with ray tracing, although the development is not all the time noticeable. Enabling ray tracing reduces body price by 18% on the RTX 4090 and 16% on the RX 7900 XTX, making this one other comparatively favorable end result for Radeon. This was with DLSS and FSR enabled on the respective playing cards.
Diablo IV
In Diablo IV, ray tracing has a restricted visible affect, however the efficiency hit is surprisingly excessive. With all settings enabled however set to low, there is a 28% FPS discount on the RTX 4090 and a 36% drop on the RX 7900 XTX.
With settings maxed, the affect will increase to 37% on the 4090 and 44% on the 7900 XTX. Whereas efficiency with ray tracing enabled stays playable, it shifts the 4090’s benefit from 26% quicker than the 7900 XTX with out ray tracing to 41% quicker with ray tracing at most settings.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is without doubt one of the earlier ray tracing implementations, utilizing ray-traced shadows which are nonetheless extremely taxing. On the RTX 4090, enabling Extremely ray tracing ends in a 32% efficiency drop, whereas the 7900 XTX experiences a bigger 44% discount. Given the modest visible enchancment, most players are unlikely to search out this efficiency trade-off worthwhile.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Star Wars Jedi Survivor additionally fell into the class of ray tracing altering the best way the sport appears with out clearly bettering visuals. Each the RTX 4090 and RX 7900 XTX have been impacted to the same diploma, with a 23% drop on the 4090 and 21% drop on the 7900 XTX.
That is one other title the place general efficiency is kind of favorable to Radeon, with the 4090 being lower than 20% quicker, whether or not ray tracing is enabled or disabled.
Atomic Coronary heart
We do not assume the builders of Atomic Coronary heart tried very laborious to optimize the efficiency of ray tracing on this sport. Enabling even the Efficiency settings, which look considerably worse as they strip out many reflections, completely tanks efficiency, halving the body price even on the RTX 4090.
The efficiency hit is not that a lot greater utilizing the High quality mode, so clearly you’ll by no means think about using the Efficiency mode. With ray tracing disabled, the RTX 4090 is 45% quicker than the 7900 XTX, and with most ray tracing, it is 51% quicker, so not an enormous discrepancy there regardless of the huge efficiency price.
Hogwarts Legacy
Hogwarts Legacy might have benefitted from greater decision reflections, although at occasions, ray tracing could make the sport look extra spectacular. When taking a look at these efficiency numbers, you may see why the builders have been a bit conservative with ray tracing high quality: the Extremely mode prompted a forty five% efficiency hit relative to not utilizing ray tracing on the RTX 4090 and a 58% hit on the 7900 XTX.
Even on the a lot much less spectacular Low configuration, with all ray traced results enabled, the efficiency hit was nonetheless fairly giant at 30% on the GeForce card and 48% on Radeon. Whether or not you utilize ray tracing or not utterly modifications the margins between these playing cards: a 16% efficiency benefit for the 4090 with RT disabled, however a whopping 52% lead when ray tracing is ready to Extremely.
Hitman 3
We had blended emotions in regards to the visible advantages of ray tracing in Hitman 3, and sadly, the efficiency price makes it tough to justify utilizing.
This is without doubt one of the most performance-intensive implementations we have seen: turning on max ray tracing noticed a 65% hit to efficiency on the RTX 4090, taking the common body price from 234 FPS to simply 83 FPS at 4K utilizing DLSS High quality.
Efficiency is slaughtered on the RX 7900 XTX, a 73% discount from 176 FPS to simply 48 FPS on common. Whereas the RTX 4090 finally ends up 73% quicker with ray tracing enabled, both method, you take a look at it, this can be a enormous affect that is laborious to advocate.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League’s implementation of ray traced reflections is helpful on some surfaces, however this ends in a 38% efficiency loss on the RTX 4090, and efficiency is halved on the RX 7900 XTX. We would not say that is uncommon for RT reflections, but it surely’s actually a big hit.
Doom Everlasting
Doom Everlasting is in the same place. Within the space we benchmarked, enabling ray tracing led to a 35% efficiency loss on the RTX 4090 and a 48% loss on the 7900 XTX.
This is not a devastating affect on the 4090 as a result of the body price dropped from an enormous 293 FPS to 189 FPS, which remains to be very playable, however on the 7900 XTX, the ray tracing configuration delivered 127 FPS, making the 4090 round 49% quicker.
This is not a scenario the place the 7900 XTX is hopeless at ray tracing – once more, nonetheless playable – however the 4090 is kind of a bit higher.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
Ray tracing in Guardians of the Galaxy is value enabling, even on the bottom configuration, which is with ray traced reflections set to Excessive. On this mode, the 4090 misplaced simply 14% of its efficiency, whereas the 7900 XTX noticed a 23% drop – not a small hit, however manageable for higher-quality reflections.
When cranking every little thing up, although, you are left with a 43% hit on the 4090 and a 56% hit on the 7900 XTX. This implies the 4090 goes from being 35% quicker than the 7900 XTX with ray tracing off, to 49% quicker on the bottom configuration, to 76% quicker on the best configuration. The extra ray tracing you ask a sport to do, the extra this hurts the place of Radeon vs GeForce.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Aside
So far as ray tracing configurations go, we predict Ratchet & Clank Rift Aside is kind of properly optimized relative to different implementations. With each the reflection and shadow results enabled however set to their lowest stage, the RTX 4090 sees simply an 18% efficiency hit, and 28% with every little thing cranked as much as most.
The affect is bigger on the RX 7900 XTX at 25% on the bottom stage, and 45% on the best stage. However in comparison with a sport like Hogwarts Legacy or Hitman 3, we predict the ray tracing in Rift Aside appears higher at a decrease efficiency price, and particularly on the 4090, the sport may be very playable with every little thing set to the best stage.
Nonetheless, evaluating GeForce to Radeon, this can be a title that strongly favors the RTX 4090. Even with ray tracing disabled, the RTX 4090 was 47% quicker, and this grew to a 61% lead with minimal stage ray tracing, and efficiency was almost double on the best settings.
Ghostwire: Tokyo
Ghostwire Tokyo is without doubt one of the earlier implementations of ray traced reflections, and on this sport, cranking every little thing as much as a stage we really feel is value utilizing (so every little thing on Excessive) prompted a 44% efficiency hit on the RTX 4090 and a 58% hit on the 7900 XTX. Like in Ratchet & Clank, this considerably extends an already giant efficiency lead in favor of crew inexperienced.
Watch Canines: Legion
Watch Canines Legion is a fairly easy scenario of ray traced reflections. On the medium mode, which is the bottom ray traced settings, the 4090 sees a 43% efficiency hit and 47% utilizing the best Extremely settings, so you might as properly use Extremely if you will allow ray tracing.
The 7900 XTX sees efficiency no less than halved, or barely greater than halved on Extremely. Once more, this takes a 25% lead for the 4090 with out ray tracing and boosts it to a 60% lead on Extremely stage ray tracing.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Retrofit with ray tracing seven years after launch, The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt is kind of performance-intensive on the Extremely+ preset. Turning on ray traced international illumination to the efficiency mode noticed a 29% efficiency hit on the RTX 4090 and the same 27% hit on the 7900 XTX.
With every little thing cranked as much as the utmost settings, efficiency halved or thereabouts on each GPUs. Regardless of being an Nvidia-sponsored title, this is not the worst instance of ray tracing efficiency variations between GeForce and Radeon, although basically, this title performs higher than common on the 4090.
Management
One other early instance of ray tracing is Management. The RTX 4090 is definitely able to 60 FPS at native 4K utilizing the excessive ray tracing preset, although this can be a 39% efficiency loss relative to disabling ray tracing. The affect is even bigger on the 7900 XTX, the place the body price is halved. This results in the RTX 4090 being round 50% quicker when some type of ray tracing is enabled.
Dying Mild 2
It is typically value utilizing ray tracing in Dying Mild 2 from a visible standpoint, however solely on the Excessive High quality preset, as the usual “Raytracing” mode would not affect the presentation that a lot.
And you may see that within the efficiency price on the RTX 4090, the place every little thing maxed out sees a 36% efficiency hit, however simply an 11% hit when utilizing the decrease high quality mode. Once more, the affect is bigger on the 7900 XTX, the place the perfect visuals will see your efficiency halved, leading to a 34% efficiency result in the RTX 4090.
Spider-Man
Spider-Man is comparatively properly optimized for each GPU manufacturers, though enabling ray traced reflections does include a hefty efficiency price on the best settings. Nonetheless, on this title, the RTX 4090 is barely round 12% quicker than the 7900 XTX even with ray tracing absolutely enabled, in order that’s fairly a positive outcome for Radeon relative to most different outcomes.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Spider-Man Miles Morales provides in ray traced shadows, although once more there is not an enormous discrepancy in ray tracing efficiency hits between GeForce and Radeon. With every little thing set to the best stage, we’re nonetheless taking a look at efficiency being halved relative to in any other case most settings; on this occasion, the RTX 4090 is 24% quicker with most ray tracing.
Metro Exodus
Metro Exodus is a extremely fascinating instance as a result of we’ve each the bottom sport and the “Enhanced Version.” When trying purely on the base sport, it is a easy story: most ray tracing causes a 30% efficiency hit on the RTX 4090 and a 42% hit on the RX 7900 XTX.
However there’s little motive to make use of that configuration if you wish to play the sport, as a result of the Enhanced Version truly runs higher whereas that includes improved visuals, too. Only a 10% hit relative to the bottom sport with out ray tracing to make use of the bottom stage of Enhanced Version RT settings on the 4090, and a 16% hit on the 7900 XTX. That is fairly manageable.
Most settings see only a 24% hit on the 4090 and a 39% hit on the 7900 XTX, in each cases performing higher than the bottom sport on extremely ray tracing.
General, the sport is kind of favorable to GeForce {hardware}. Even the bottom sport is 49% quicker on the RTX 4090 vs. RX 7900 XTX, and this will increase to 61% utilizing the Enhanced Version on minimal ray tracing or 85% on max ray tracing.
Black Delusion: Wukong
Lastly, we get to the three path-traced titles, which typically have among the many largest visible enhancements. Black Delusion Wukong runs very well on the RTX 4090, so utilizing Very Excessive Full Ray Tracing solely causes a 41% efficiency loss versus the Cinematic preset.
That is not overly totally different from different ray-traced results in different titles. However on the RX 7900 XTX, this totally cripples efficiency, with a 64% efficiency loss on the Low mode and 83% on Very Excessive, taking the sport into the single-digit FPS vary.
This makes Black Delusion Wukong a lot quicker on the RTX 4090. It is already 53% quicker than the 7900 XTX with out ray tracing, however enabling path tracing results in the 4090 being no less than 3.5x quicker: 59 FPS vs. 17 FPS. The extent of {hardware} acceleration obtainable on the 7900 XTX is simply not adequate for this system, though it was developed by Nvidia and optimized for his or her {hardware}.
Alan Wake 2
In Alan Wake 2, it is a related story. The efficiency price of ray tracing is fairly regular on the RTX 4090: a 38% hit on Low settings and a 52% hit on Excessive settings. On the 7900 XTX, this can be a 50% hit on Low settings and a whopping 82% hit on Excessive settings. Whereas Low is perhaps borderline usable with extra upscaling concerned, Excessive cripples the Radeon card.
Comparatively, we see a 31% efficiency acquire for the 4090 vs. 7900 XTX with ray tracing disabled, a 63% acquire with ray tracing on Low, and an enormous 259% acquire on Excessive ray tracing. Given Alan Wake 2 is without doubt one of the best-looking video games on PC with path tracing enabled, that is one space AMD actually must give attention to with future architectures.
Cyberpunk 2077
Then there’s Cyberpunk 2077, the place the Extremely and Overdrive settings are essentially the most usable. The Extremely setting is surprisingly performant on the RTX 4090, resulting in only a 22% efficiency loss. Path tracing runs fairly properly, too, contemplating the visible good points, halving efficiency, which is definitely a greater outcome than video games like Hitman 3 that do not use path tracing.
The affect is way greater on the RX 7900 XTX, the place even Extremely ray tracing runs significantly worse than path tracing on the RTX 4090: a 61% body price hit. The Overdrive preset results in an 83% efficiency loss and, once more, cripples efficiency fully. Path tracing is simply not one thing you are able to do with no GeForce GPU in the meanwhile.
This takes a sport that is typically fairly favorable to Radeon {hardware} when rasterization is used – the 4090 is simply 18% quicker – and turns it right into a dominant Nvidia win when visually appropriate ranges of ray tracing are enabled.
Once more, the ray tracing implementation on this sport was developed together with Nvidia, so that is no shock, however should you’re designing a GPU structure to deal with ray tracing, you’d need to be sure that it does what Cyberpunk 2077 requires.
Ray Tracing Efficiency Price on GeForce
With all the video games examined, let’s check out the common efficiency loss from enabling ray tracing, beginning with the RTX 4090. Throughout all 59 ray tracing configurations, on common, in comparison with working on extremely or most rasterized settings at 4K, enabling ray tracing will trigger a 29% discount in body price.
So, for a sport working at 100 FPS with out ray tracing, on common, enabling ray tracing will see that sport run at 71 FPS. However after all, this can be a simplification of all the outcomes, because the efficiency affect can vary wherever from simply a few p.c, like in Resident Evil, to over a 50% efficiency affect, like in Atomic Coronary heart and Hitman 3.
It is no shock that ray tracing is tougher to run on greater settings. After we take a look at the bottom examined ray tracing configurations for the 36 video games, the efficiency hit from enabling ray tracing was 22% on common. In 12 video games, you can allow medium or low-type ray tracing with lower than a 15% efficiency hit; in 15 video games, the affect was between 15% and 30%, and in 9 titles, you are dealing with no less than a 30% hit.
When enabling most ray tracing in all 36 video games, the common efficiency hit will increase to 32%, and now in 21 of the 36 titles, the efficiency hit is over 30%, with simply six video games delivering lower than a 15% hit.
Crucially, we will look at what the efficiency affect is like in video games that we all know have good ranges of ray tracing. In our preliminary evaluation of ray tracing visible high quality, we discovered 24 sport configurations the place ray tracing was typically helpful, so listed below are the outcomes from these configurations.
On common, the RTX 4090 sees a 35% efficiency hit working considered one of these configurations, with 21 out of 24 configurations seeing no less than a 20% affect. So it is fairly secure to say that in most circumstances, with the perfect ray tracing GPU in the marketplace, to get a very good stage of ray tracing, you are dealing with no less than 20% decrease FPS than you have been getting with ray tracing disabled.
Within the remaining 35 configurations we deemed typically not value it, the common efficiency affect was 24%. It is clear that the higher implementations that includes extra ray tracing are additionally extra performance-taxing.
In various video games that had visually negligible ray tracing, the efficiency affect was very low, akin to in Lifeless House, Deathloop, Resident Evil 4, and Cyberpunk 2077 on the Low preset. So, it appears these video games have dialed again their ray tracing on function to restrict the efficiency hit.
Ray Tracing Efficiency Price on Radeon
The Radeon RX 7900 XTX is impacted to a better diploma when ray tracing is enabled. Throughout the 59 sport configurations, the common efficiency affect from enabling ray tracing was 39%. This contains some monumental efficiency losses in path-traced configurations; with out these outliers, the efficiency affect was extra like 35% – nonetheless sizable and a bigger loss than with the RTX 4090.
The discrepancy between high and low ray-traced configurations can also be seen on the Radeon card. When the 36 video games are performed on a decrease ray-traced setting, efficiency was decreased on common by 29%. However when utilizing the best ray-traced settings, that loss will increase to 42%. That is 10 proportion factors better than the loss suffered by the RTX 4090 in these video games.
Essentially the most regarding side for house owners of playing cards just like the RX 7900 XTX is the discrepancy between subjectively good and dangerous ray tracing implementations. The common efficiency loss within the 24 configurations we thought have been good examples of ray tracing was 50%, that means efficiency halved on common when enabling ray tracing in video games we predict is value utilizing. As compared, the hit to the RTX 4090 was solely 35% on common.
After which for the titles the place ray tracing is usually not value utilizing, the common efficiency affect was 31%, in comparison with 24% on the RTX 4090. The hole in efficiency affect is way smaller when taking a look at these “worse” ray tracing examples, so it is clear the 7900 XTX would not wrestle as a lot with rendering ray-traced results when both there simply aren’t many ray-traced results enabled, or the impact high quality is dialed again.
GeForce RTX 4090 vs Radeon RX 7900 XTX in Ray Tracing
This creates an fascinating scenario whenever you examine the perfect RTX 40 Ada Lovelace GPU to the perfect RX 7000 RNDA3 GPU. With ray tracing disabled, the RTX 4090 is 29% quicker in our 36-game pattern used for this text. That is a fairly commonplace distinction, similar to what we have proven beforehand, and we all know the RTX 4090 is quicker general.
Rasterization Efficiency (No RT)
However when ray tracing is enabled, throughout 59 sport configurations, the RTX 4090 extends its result in find yourself 66% quicker on common. This contains a number of huge outliers the place path tracing is enabled; the RTX 4090 is definitely able to utilizing these modes, whereas the 7900 XTX is just not. Excluding these outcomes and taking a look at regular ray-traced examples, we’re nonetheless left with a 50% efficiency lead for the RTX 4090.
Ray Tracing Efficiency
Limiting this comparability simply to video games the place ray tracing is value enabling, and it is not a fairly comparability for the RX 7900 XTX. The RTX 4090 is 97% quicker on common, although once more this contains some enormous outliers. Eradicating the 4 excessive path-traced examples, the RTX 4090 nonetheless ended up 56% quicker on common, almost double the lead it has over the 7900 XTX in extremely rasterization.
The RTX 4090 can also be quicker basically for the “lesser” ray-traced configurations, 45% quicker on common in these examples, but it surely’s clear the lead extends in video games the place ray tracing has extra visible affect. These video games use extra ray-traced results, the consequences are greater high quality, resulting in a greater presentation – but it surely additionally makes the video games wrestle extra on RDNA3.
Ray Tracing Efficiency (“RT Worthy” Video games Solely)
Quite a lot of these examples the place the RX 7900 XTX would not look too dangerous – akin to in Dragon’s Dogma II, Far Cry 6, and Resident Evil 4 – the precise quantity of ray tracing used is negligible or not very impactful. These are the video games that the Radeon GPU is finest at dealing with.
Now, the apparent speaking level out of this, as we talked about within the visible evaluation, is that a lot of the good ray tracing examples are Nvidia-sponsored video games, whereas AMD-sponsored video games have a tendency to make use of decrease quantities of ray tracing and do not profit as a lot visually. This performs out within the efficiency knowledge as properly – Nvidia-sponsored ray-traced video games are likely to have the most important efficiency distinction between the 4090 and 7900 XTX.
Some fanboys will instantly recommend it’s because Nvidia is intentionally going overboard on ray tracing to place their playing cards in an particularly favorable gentle and doing no optimization work and even sabotaging ray tracing efficiency on AMD playing cards. However we do not assume there’s proof to say that is the case.
As issues stand now, with the video games obtainable in the marketplace, the conclusion we’ve to attract after six years is that Nvidia GPU {hardware} is extra superior and higher for ray tracing than AMD GPUs. We have not seen a development of the hole closing as newer video games put in additional optimization work. Many individuals hoped that might occur, but it surely actually appears to be extra of a {hardware} discrepancy than one thing that may be addressed in software program.
In fact, this is not going to be information to lots of people; we already knew GeForce playing cards are higher at ray tracing, however now we will put some details and figures to that dialogue. The information helps that RDNA GPUs is not going to get higher at ray tracing relative to GeForce except the {hardware} itself is improved.
What we’ll say, although, is that video games, basically, are discovering methods so as to add extra ray tracing into the combo over time with out inflicting bigger and bigger efficiency hits relative to rasterized visuals. A part of this would be the commonplace of rasterized visuals additionally bettering, so the baseline for comparability is getting higher and tougher to run, however no less than we’re not seeing a runaway impact the place the “ray tracing tax” is getting bigger and tougher to justify.
Is the Efficiency Hit Price It?
The problem with plenty of these video games is whether or not the visible profit justifies the efficiency price, and we predict that is going to rely upon how a lot worth you place in visible high quality.
In the event you’re the form of gamer that all the time desires to run on extremely settings and needs the perfect graphics the PC platform can supply, a 30% efficiency hit from enabling ray tracing in a few of these video games goes to be acceptable. However should you’re simply positive working on medium settings or should you wish to optimize every setting for the perfect efficiency, a 30% efficiency hit from ray tracing may sound completely outrageous.
Whether or not or not ray tracing is value enabling will even rely upon how a lot efficiency headroom there’s together with your GPU. If a sport is already working at 150 FPS with out ray tracing, a 30% hit from ray tracing nonetheless means over 100 FPS on common, which, in plenty of single-player titles, may be very playable and gives an amazing expertise. But when the baseline is 60 FPS, a 30% hit drops it to a a lot much less gratifying 42 FPS.
There is not any doubt that ray tracing is essentially the most performance-intensive visible setting in most video games and needs to be enabled final. In some titles, the efficiency hit will be laborious to justify, particularly for video games the place the visible advantages aren’t as robust, like Hogwarts Legacy or Guardians of the Galaxy. In different titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Spider-Man, or Metro Exodus Enhanced Version, utilizing ray tracing outweighs the efficiency price. It actually will depend on the sport, your GPU, and the place you fall on that visual-performance scale.
If we needed to give a intestine response to the outcomes, primarily based on our personal biases, we might say the ray tracing efficiency price remains to be too giant basically.
Primarily based on visible evaluation, we firmly consider path tracing is the way forward for high-end PC visuals as a result of it is the most probably to rework how a sport appears and provides that next-generation really feel – however on an RTX 4090, all three path-traced video games run at under 50 FPS at 4K utilizing DLSS High quality upscaling. And that is a high-end, $1,600 graphics card. GPUs must get much more highly effective to deal with the perfect results, particularly within the mid-range and mainstream segments, for a ray-traced gaming future to turn into a actuality.
