The State of Nvidia RTX Ray Tracing: One Year Later

Time to revisit the state of ray tracing. Information technology'due south been months since we last discussed ray tracing in detail, when we tested information technology on early on titles such as Battlefield Five, and the latest releases of Metro and Tomb Raider, so there's plenty of fresh stuff to go over, more benchmarks, more experience playing those games and quite a few opinions. This is bound to be a long one, and then strap yourselves in.

We'll do a recap of the unabridged beginning twelvemonth of Nvidia's ray tracing efforts. A look at the games that came out with RTX back up, the games that didn't, and only how the ecosystem has evolved in the space of twelve months. Has functioning improved? Have some of the visual bug been sorted out? Has Nvidia delivered on their launch day promises?

Starting from the start, Nvidia released the starting time consumer GPU with hardware accelerated ray tracing on September 20, 2022 in the GeForce RTX 2080. That was speedily followed by the RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2070 and then in Jan 2022, the RTX 2060. Fast forward until July, we've had even more RTX GPUs hit the market with the Super line-up, so there'south no shortage of RTX products available at a range of price points from $350 and above.

As nosotros were working on this feature, a few new games joined the fray but those won't exist covered today like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and an indie championship called Deliver us the Moon. We'll go out those to future RTX roundups, today nosotros'll focus on the games that were roughly available during the start yr of RTX ownership, which was roughly until late September. To our knowledge those games are as follows: Battlefield Five, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Metro Exodus, Control, Convulse II and Stay in the Light. Still, equally Stay in the Calorie-free is an early access championship with a full sum of 25 reviews on Steam, we won't encompass it either.

RTX games released in the start yr are as follows: Battlefield 5, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Metro Exodus, Control, Quake Two and Stay in the Lite.

Overall in one twelvemonth of RTX we've had five major releases. There have been enough of other announcements, including Wolfenstein Youngblood, Minecraft, and several others, but as of late September, none of those other games actually have RTX modes that you tin play right now.

Battlefield 5 with ray tracing

Battleground V was the first of the bunch and ray tracing in this game was a fail at launch. Half of the game's four RTX modes didn't work properly, at that place were visual artifacts, and performance was horrendous. Using an expensive RTX 2080 Ti at 1080p, performance was halved from DXR Off to DXR Depression, and much worse on the Ultra mode. Luckily there was a significant RTX overhaul in a December patch, about a month later the game launched. That fixed near of these problems. That start implementation of ray tracing should never accept seen the light of day, we think it set expectations in the incorrect place and put buyers of RTX cards offside because the performance was so horrible on $1,000+ GPUs. That situation has probably led to what nosotros have today with so many games promising ray tracing but not providing it at launch.

This BFV patch addressed some of the visual concerns and most importantly, improved performance. At that signal with an RTX 2080 at 1440p, ray tracing on low settings became playable with nigh a xxx% drop, and while the Ultra mode delivered a greater than 40% reduction to frame rates, Ultra actually ended upwardly faster than Low in the original version of the game. The drop is nonetheless significant and there were persistent noise issues throughout the game from the depression ray count implementation of DXR reflections.

Just how does the game stack upward today?

Ray traced reflections in this game vary depending on the environment. On some maps there are nearly no reflective surfaces, so there'south no benefit, in others like the Rotterdam city map, huge amounts of reflections to bask.

Our overall impression hasn't changed much. Ray traced reflections wait okay, they're certainly more accurate than screen infinite reflections the game uses otherwise, which are plagued by horrible artifacts. But at the aforementioned time, Battleground Five'south screen space reflections are worse than average, and the fast-paced nature of a multiplayer shooter like Battleground means you lot often aren't even paying attending to the prissy looking reflections which makes the characteristic unimportant.

When you lot're dashing around the maps, honestly it's hard to tell the difference between ray traced and screen spaced reflections, it'southward but when you lot stop and look at the environments that y'all notice the benefits. Given the performance hit, it's non a feature we believe is worth using for this sort of game. Don't get u.s. wrong, ray tracing looks expert in Battlefield V, it'southward simply not a game all-time suited to this event.

As for the visual racket we saw when evaluating Battleground V back in December... that's notwithstanding present. Information technology looks bad in some situations, particularly the water establish throughout some maps, even on the Ultra ray tracing setting. It doesn't look like whatsoever further piece of work has been washed to make clean it up, which is a shame.

Performance looks to be unchanged every bit well. Here are fresh numbers taken with Nvidia'due south new Super cards at 1440p with a variety of ray tracing modes. Latest drivers, latest game updates, latest Bone updates, simply no real operation changes over the December version. Moving from no RTX to Low RTX at 1440p results in most a 30% reduction in performance, or about 48% moving to Ultra. Very consequent functioning loss across all three cards, and while Low RTX is playable at this resolution, Ultra is below 60 FPS which is ideal for a shooter.

Even the RTX 2060 is unremarkably an 86 FPS menu without ray tracing, reduced to just barely lx FPS with minimal ray tracing, the performance hitting here is still too high.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider RTX

This is in our opinion the least impressive implementation of ray tracing we've seen then far. Not considering of operation or graphical glitches, merely because the visual upgrade is minimal.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses ray tracing for shadows, dissimilar other games which so far have mostly stuck to reflections or global illumination. Ray tracing shadows allows for a more than accurate representation of lighting in the game, with better distance-based shadow softening as you'd run across in real life, every bit well every bit meliorate point light shadows.

This is all dainty, but consider that standard rasterization techniques have reached a bespeak where shadows are 1 of the all-time lighting effects in mod games. Shadow of the Tomb Raider looks great with Ultra, not ray traced shadows, it looks a little amend with ray traced shadows, a flake more accurate, simply information technology's not a "woah, that looks miles better" blazon upgrade.

In that location are also several issues that remain in the game equally of today. The High mode features an obvious cutting draw distance cutting off bespeak for ray tracing as we mentioned in our initial investigation, information technology's not quite as bad as it was when nosotros first tested the game, but it'due south nonetheless obvious enough that we probably wouldn't desire to utilise the High manner. Meanwhile, Ultra yet suffers from shadow popular in and some weird or incorrect shadowing, especially for roofing. If you want to learn more near how this game looks, bank check our previous coverage.

Performance has improved slightly since the initial release, although that'southward generally optimizing the High mode to exist less performance intensive. Previously we found High resulted in a ~40% drop to frame rates, now that's downward at near thirty% in the game's nigh intense areas. Ultra is a piffling faster every bit well, but nosotros're talking a 38% hit versus 42%, not exactly globe shattering.

Aside from performance and visuals, Shadow of the Tomb Raider'due south RTX launched six months subsequently the game came out, so most people had already played through the unabridged game.

Metro Exodus with ray tracing

Metro Exodus is the starting time game we played where nosotros felt like ray tracing was providing something decent from a visual standpoint. There were no major artifact problems -- no grain similar in Battlefield or pop in similar in Shadow of the Tomb Raider -- and in general it delivered what it set out to: ray traced global illumination.

As nosotros mentioned in our first investigation, the game with ray tracing enabled is unlike artistically. In indoor environments, global illumination removes the random and inaccurate fill calorie-free y'all arrive most scenes, so the game can be darker, while you go almost the reverse effect outdoors. Some people like this effect, others don't, and we tin totally see both sides to the argument.

... having played more of Metro Exodus than in our initial review – nosotros've at present finished the entire game – what struck me virtually RTX wasn't necessarily how it looked when it was on, but how the game looks when you turn information technology off.

Personally, having played more than of Metro Exodus than in our initial review – we've now finished the unabridged game – what struck me about RTX wasn't necessarily how it looked when it was on, just how the game looks when y'all turn it off. Peculiarly in the various railroad train scenes, the game looks natural and well lit with RTX on, just when you turn it off after having it on for a period of time, it looks a bit strange and flat due to that unnatural fill light.

Metro has also received a DLC chosen The Two Colonels which adds an additional RTX characteristic: global illumination for emissive lights. This ways that any low-cal in the scene, such as fire or light bulbs, will also factor in to global illumination, casting hues or shadows as appropriate. It adds further to the global illumination experience and we're glad to see 4A Games standing to meliorate RTX in this championship.

Performance of the game seems largely unchanged since launch, although we tested Nvidia'due south Super cards in a unlike, more intensive area than the starting time time. At 1440p, nosotros see near a 25% performance reduction turning RTX on Loftier, and 40% turning on Ultra. This is like to about other games only the effect and result is improve looking overall.

With the extra global illumination from emissive lights in The Ii Colonels DLC, performance is a little worse. We saw up to a 48% performance subtract with RTX on Ultra, which is no great surprise equally adding more rays will inevitably hit functioning harder.

Control RTX

Control is one of the games we picked every bit one of the best releases of 2022, and have played the unabridged way through with ray tracing enabled. It's pretty skillful, we exercise recommend information technology from a gameplay standpoint – and the ray tracing is certainly quite interesting.

There are two ray tracing presets in the game merely 5 overall settings. Medium enables both reflection options for ray traced reflections and ray traced transparent reflections, while High adds into the mix indirect diffuse lighting and contact shadows, plus applies ray tracing to debris. Substantially the High mode has both ray traced reflections and global illumination, while Medium is just reflections.

And reflections are the cardinal effect in this game. In that location are lots of reflective surfaces throughout the brutalist compages in the game, whether it's on the expansive polished physical surfaces, or throughout the windows in the various office areas. Some people take said the reflections are a bit overboard in this game but we disagree, heaps of reflections are nowadays whether you have ray tracing on or off, so we think it'due south an creative choice from the developers that we quite like.

With ray traced reflections enabled, the differences are quite obvious. On ground surfaces, ray traced reflections are more striking than their screen infinite counterparts, too every bit more accurate. They besides bear witness details that aren't always visible in the frame, which naturally is incommunicable with screen infinite reflections. The bigger improvements are on window reflections, which are completely absent with ray tracing off, but quite hit with ray tracing enabled. Not only can you often run across what'due south behind y'all, just you can meet yourself in the reflections.

The developers could take achieved a more limited version of this upshot with cube maps but it's time consuming to align those properly, we're sure ray tracing these is easier on development one time the ray tracing system is implemented.

That'due south not to say the reflections are perfect. They are far less grainy than what nosotros become with Battlefield V, only there are some weird temporal problems with how they are rendered. For example when you move around, the reflections on non-transparent surfaces seem to lag a chip behind where they should be, virtually like a rolling shutter effect on a camera with a fleck of a settling time afterward you cease moving. Perhaps rendering over time like this is a merchandise off for less grain, just information technology'southward definitely not nowadays with screen space reflections.

The ray tracing indirect and contact shadows are less impressive and give a more than subtle feel to the game overall. They're likewise even more than prone to temporal problems than the reflections; nosotros saw shadows pop in over time only by moving around the mouse, which can be a bit distracting. We likewise feel like these techniques could maybe exist done simply every bit well with regular shadowing and ambience occlusion, peradventure not as accurately, but without the functioning hitting.

We retrieve the medium setting is the virtually appropriate in this game and despite a few issues, generally looks really good, it'south the most striking improvement we've seen nevertheless and adds quite a scrap to the visuals in this game.

As for functioning? While Control has some of the most impressive furnishings, the operation impact isn't overly unlike to other titles. Using medium ray tracing sees a 25 to 30 percent drop or thereabouts, while enabling High sees virtually a 40 to 45 percent drib. The outcome here is Control doesn't evangelize high frame rates on maximum settings as is, so often this thirty percentage drib using medium ray tracing takes y'all from 60 to 40 FPS at 1440p on an RTX 2080 Super, which let'due south be honest, isn't really the performance you lot'd desire from a $700 GPU.

That said, Nvidia's Super cards are marginally faster at ray tracing than the non Super models, roughly in line with the performance increase we see in non ray tracing scenarios. The difference between RTX on and off with not Super cards is as well similar, which makes sense since Nvidia didn't enable a proportionally higher corporeality of RT cores with the Super cards.

Quake Two RTX

An interesting RTX implementation that we feel is more of a tech demo than something designed to be played (but hey, it's a classic title and then don't allow us stop y'all). The lighting system with RTX is significantly overhauled, significantly better, much more accurate, you're getting decent reflections, shadows, global illumination and then on. It'south a huge overhaul.

The reason we say this feels more like a demonstration is that Nvidia has crammed in every RTX feature they tin to a really high level, which has affected performance. There's virtually no grain, no temporal artifacts, all the ray traced elements are rendered to a very high quality level unlike other RTX titles which often cede quality in order not to tank the frame rate.

This is a game that runs at over 500 FPS -- normally one thousand FPS -- on an RTX GPU in its original state. But at 1440p, this drops to as low as 40 FPS with the default settings that include medium global illumination. And when disabling GI, this merely increases to around threescore FPS at 1440p. In a title where every other chemical element in the game tin can exist rendered in almost 1ms.

Now of course, Quake II is an extremely fast paced shooter, playing this game at fifty-fifty 60 FPS feels so sluggish compared to 150+ FPS and when yous tin toggle between the two options it'due south simply so noticeable. The game looks a lot amend, but like many other titles the performance striking is just insane.

Nevertheless we don't want to entirely slag off Convulse II because we recollect the idea here is promising, information technology merely needs the same level of optimization equally other titles like Control and Metro Exodus. Rather than going all out on an extremely high level of ray tracing, cutting a few corners like nosotros see in modern games such as Control could accept delivered amend performance. So we're basically be getting a remastered version of the game that still runs actually well, we're be hoping for at least 120 FPS at 1440p, simply with hugely overhauled lighting. That would be a really bang-up usage of RTX.

RTX or not to RTX?

Ray tracing is delivering better visuals, at least in some instances. Information technology might not be delivering the style of visuals that all gamers like or are used to, only there is no doubting that both Metro Exodus and Control await better with ray tracing enabled. In fact, Control looks significantly amend and some of the reflection effects add to the unique visual style the developers were going for.

It'southward also articulate at this point that using ray tracing for global illumination or reflections are the best uses for this technology. Control's reflections are more than accurate than screen space reflections and can do things for actual gameplay that other techniques tin't.

Control's reflections are more accurate than screen space reflections and tin do things for actual gameplay that other techniques tin't.

Global illumination is a more subtle effect simply adds realism to the game world. Equally nosotros mentioned earlier, in Metro Exodus the game looks kind of foreign with ray tracing disabled, while RTX on has a natural, realistic presentation that we quite similar, even if some scenes are darker. Metro's ray tracing isn't every bit much of a massive overhaul as with Control, only it's a decent visual upgrade and especially with the Two Colonels DLC yous can see where it is headed and how even more realistic lighting effects are possible.

At this point we're not convinced about shadowing. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider the upgrade isn't overly pregnant and nosotros think this is because we've already got crawly shadowing techniques available to us that don't need ray tracing with a marginal penalty. Tomb Raider's implementation is definitely the weakest so far in our stance.

Making Progress

Every bit we've gone from Battlefield V to Command, we go the impression that with each RTX implementation things have improved for gamers. Battlefield V's initial offer was bad, merely Command'south is by far the best. Clearly Nvidia and developers are learning the best ways to use ray tracing in games, and we fully wait that next year'due south worth of ray traced games will pace that up even farther.

Nosotros're too large fans of remastering older titles with RTX. This could be a actually good use example for ray tracing because there's a bigger performance buffer available. Quake Two was a good pick due to its history and relevance but peradventure wasn't the best example of what could be washed for actual gameplay. We'd love to see what ray tracing could achieve in games similar Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Half-Life, yous know, those classics that run at hundreds of FPS these days.

Watch some live gameplay from the aforementioned games on the HUB video beneath

The Ugly

When RTX debuted in Battlefield V, we idea the bad would be performance and visuals. A 2x functioning hit for grainy reflections and plenty of other technical issues wasn't the best experience yous could inquire for. Simply after a year, we don't think that's the biggest trouble, but the lack of releases.

Early adopters volition tell you that comes with the territory, just information technology's far from ideal.

In the outset year of RTX cards, we've had half dozen titles to play. One is an indie early on access game. Another is a remastered classic that's more of an RTX demo. Another game didn't integrate RTX until six months after launch, and the debut game had to get fixes weeks after release to get it working properly. What we're left with is ii games that launched with RTX in neat usable country, in one year.

Our main criticism here fits into 2 categories: the showtime, nosotros've had several RTX game announcements, without RTX actually launching with the game. A practiced portion of gamers -- peculiarly those paying a premium for loftier-terminate GPUs -- will want to play the games around the launch window or within the starting time month. So pushing out Shadow of the Tomb Raider with ray tracing 6 months afterward release is somewhat pointless. As of writing, Wolfenstein Youngblood'due south RTX patch hasn't arrived. The game launched in July and there'due south no discussion on when the patch will exist available. Most people who wanted to play it, already have. Aside from going dorsum to exercise a bit of a tech demo, we doubt many people get and replay these games for the visuals.

This will exist less of an result with Minecraft RTX, though Nvidia has said this won't be available until 2022.

The 2nd criticism is the list that Nvidia proudly touted at the launch of the GeForce 20 series. It looked similar there were plenty of games coming, with more than getting RTX down the line. Of the launch titles, we have eventually seen four of those, but what about the others? Assetto Corsa Competizione cancelled ray tracing back up. Atomic Heart has no firm release date. MechWarrior v and Enlisted are supposed to come out this year. Justice and JX3 are Asia-specific, and the status of ProjectDH is unclear.

We suspect the second year of ray tracing will be improve, games like Telephone call of Duty Mod Warfare are launching with RTX, and there are some large names to come, like Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal, and Dying Light 2. We're skeptical of how many will launch with decent RTX functionality out of the box, but the list is a promising i.

Operation, while less of a concern than it once was, remains a large factor.

Roughly speaking, using entry level ray tracing options will deliver a directly 30% performance striking, a little less at 1080p, a little more at 4K. That'south a substantial driblet to frame rates, and a lot of times we feel the visual improvements don't justify that sort of hit.

Fifty-fifty in a game like Metro Exodus with decent ray tracing… a 25 to 30 percent hit is meaning given the changes to lighting furnishings can exist subtle in some situations. More than realistic? Sure. But is that plenty to justify going from a 60 FPS experience into the mid 40s, sometimes with dips into the 30s? Probably not.

In Control, the game looks spectacular with RTX reflections, but on our RTX 2080 Ti at 3440 x 1440 we were regularly dipping below xl FPS, sometimes beneath xxx FPS, using the medium ray tracing setting. Switching ray tracing off was less visually stunning, but a fifty+ FPS feel.

Where do we go from here?

Nvidia has a number of responses to the ray tracing performance trouble. One of them is that most gamers take a 1080p display, so it'southward perfectly fine that ray tracing targets 1080p 60 FPS. In our opinion, that's rubbish. Aye, if you play these titles at 1080p with an RTX 2060 Super and the entry level ray tracing modes, ofttimes you become playable frame rates around threescore FPS, as you can run across on the chart beneath. Control is not quite at that level, but certain, in full general the RTX 2060 Super and in a higher place are going to deliver 60 FPS at 1080p.

Simply there'south a reason we ran most of our tests at 1440p. These GPUs are 1440p class cards. You are spending $400 on an RTX 2060 Super, that'southward a lot of coin to go a 1080p lx FPS experience. What nigh the RTX 2070 or RTX 2080? Y'all can't perchance say a $500+ GPU is designed for 1080p 60 FPS gaming. If that was the target you could accept but besides bought a GTX 1660 which is a 1080p 60 FPS level GPU. The reason people spend the big bucks on these higher priced cards is to play at higher resolutions and frame rates. If ray tracing is to succeed, information technology has to fit into that pic.

Nvidia'due south other response is to either turn down other graphics settings, or utilise DLSS. We don't buy the idea of turning downward settings to enable ray tracing. This is a premium graphics feature, a ruby on top when yous've already been playing on Ultra settings. We don't want to reduce our preset to medium to enable ray tracing, that makes little sense.

DLSS, or other forms of resolution scaling... certain, these will ameliorate your frame rate when ray tracing is enabled. But they also better your frame rate when ray tracing is disabled, they don't fundamentally close that performance gap. So you will always accept the choice between significantly higher performance, or ray tracing, regardless of whether you are resolution scaling or not. And that'south just scratching the surface of that word.

That's non to say there is no time when enabling ray tracing make sense. If you have an RTX 2070 or RTX 2080 and you exercise play at 1080p, y'all're probably playing virtually games on Ultra settings at 1080p well above 100 FPS. You've bought the card for 1080p loftier refresh gaming, that's fair enough. If y'all plow on ray tracing and get 80 FPS, that's going to be fine well-nigh of the fourth dimension, specially for slower paced and non-competitive titles. Same situation with the RTX 2080 Ti at 1440p.

Fundamentally though, a 30% performance hit for ray tracing is also loftier a cost for a basic effect, and up to 50% for "ultra" ray tracing is really pushing it. We need faster hardware with better ray tracing dispatch to reasonably play games with the characteristic enabled. If the performance hit was in the 15 to twenty percent range -- which is nonetheless very significant -- we recollect it would be easier to justify, but that would crave a large step up in the corporeality of RT hardware on these cards.

Intertwined with this issue is that many games are cut corners with these effects, using low ray counts. That means introducing artifacts that are not nowadays with non ray traced presentations of the game, which depending on the effect tin be a downgrade from ray tracing disabled.

Putting all of these elements together, we believe the first year of RTX ray tracing has been a thwarting. Non many games to play, big performance hits, and effects that while visually impressive in some instances, are however in their infancy.

Perhaps the situation would accept been easier to swallow if Nvidia had marketed RTX differently. They went on to push ray tracing as a headline characteristic, the reason to buy these new GPUs and pay a big premium, especially at launch. Instead Nvidia could have focused on traditional gaming performance, more mature features, and value.

Later on all, while some of these RTX cards are expensive, they're still pretty darn powerful. Ray tracing is a corking bonus that nosotros've been able to demo on these powerful gaming GPUs while the ecosystem matures. Because honestly, when you expect at it equally a demo and the futurity of gaming graphics, there'southward a ton of promise there. Nosotros suspect and promise this coming twelvemonth of ray tracing will exist a lot amend than the beginning.