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I Tried Raytracing in 2026.. it's killing gaming.

Vex

20,375 views

So many games this year are now even shipping with path tracing. Raytracing should be the peak version of graphics right? Well, with a hardware crisis, marginal increases to GPU power and increased RT demands... raytracing is lookin kinda goofy. So I tested it across a bunch of different GPUs in the latest games like Control Resonant, Witcher 3 Remaster, and 007 First Light.

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0:00- 8 years
3:04- can you tell?
8:14- RTX 5060 ($450) vs Ray Tracing
16:00- RTX 3060 vs Ray Tracing
20:06- RTX 5070 ($850) vs Ray Tracing
23:09- the frame gen lie
25:14- RTX 5080 ($1600) vs Ray Tracing
27:23- was it worth it?
31:05- has it gotten better?

20 Comments

@hellominecraftandgd 1 hour ago

"ray tracing is killing gaming", bread is in a bakery😭

@LilCulukubuy 1 hour ago

It's frustrating that after 8 years of development, ray tracing still feels like a luxury that even high-end cards struggle to handle at native resolutions.

@yqw_aa 3 hours ago

Rtx3070
Doom eternal ultra nightmare 150-200+ fps
Doom the dark ages low dlss quality 60-90 fps

@PegoSama 2 hours ago

Eight years after its initial launch, ray tracing can still be an issue—let alone path tracing. And they actually want to release DLSS 5 this year? Nvidia, really?

@anthonyanglim7147 2 hours ago

I thought that is what I have been noticing these past couple years. They claimed to be giving us the "most revolutionary technology and increase in quality" while drastically decreasing our frame rates and charging us 3 times more for a graphics card! :face-blue-covering-eyes:

@leighjenkins5601 2 hours ago

Since AI we have been getting less powerful cards while paying through the nose.

@CLutch4444 2 hours ago

I actually noticed every single difference perfectly between the raster vs ray traced games, but if you gave me just the rasterised game, I wouldn't care about the graphics, plus the performance hit isn't worth it

@KorisnikBr1 1 hour ago

Remember when they said frame generation would make GPUs way cheaper? yea, it aged like milk

@vincentvega3093 2 hours ago (edited)

This test should've been done on a 2080 Ti to show how you never invest in the latest tech

@KaZlos 2 hours ago

expensive path tracing vs low quality raster - games usted to look sharp and high fidelity without RT but nowadays regular rendering is not even good anymore creating this artificial inflation of minimal requirements...

@SaifP697 1 hour ago

Nvidia introduced RT/PT to make games more physically realistic, yet 8 years later the performance cost is still so high that we now rely on AI upscaling, frame generation, and neural post-processing just to make it playable.

At this point calling it "neural rendering" feels misleading it still depends on traditionally rendered frames, so it’s more like an AI filter than actual rendering.

I personally don’t see the appeal in paying real money for artificial frames and pixels, and it makes me wonder why Nvidia pushed RT/PT in the first place if the end goal was to rely this heavily on AI post-processing. 😔

@blueeyednick 2 hours ago

0:55 - they're making fun of us.

@JustMarr 2 hours ago

Only thing that i notice during gameplay are RT reflections, the rest isn't really worth the performance hit imo.

@DrFlashGordon83 3 hours ago

I got them all right, but you have to look for it, and the key problem is now also 8 years old, I don't want to lose fps for that mild improvement in IQ, also, I hate noise, hence I could argue to for some the IQ is not simply "better".

@killua88er 2 hours ago

I really dont think ray tracing is that big of a deal, turn that shit off and have 60+ fps is way more important if we prioritise the actual experience of playing games

@blueeyednick 2 hours ago

society has progressed so much. i cant wait till 2077, i wonder how that's gonna look like.

@Whatarewedoinghere73 1 hour ago

8 years with ray tracing and i still turn that off soon as i open the game

@Phynellius 3 hours ago

The differences aren't large enough for me to care in a game where I'm going to be moving at any speed, it's almost like it's just another pointless selling feature not worth the performance hit

@brando3342 54 minutes ago

The shittiest thing about all of this, is they make it so that when you turn ray tracing off, you end up with NO effects. Just flat, garbage image. The problem is, it doesn’t HAVE to be that way. Once upon a time we had REALLY nice reflections, even artificial “real time” ones! As well as other awesome effects. Now, sadly, they just rely on ray tracing, and all the other efforts for non ray tracing effects have been entirely scraped.

This is not the way. We have gone backwards.