Your thoughts between running a game with RT or a 'Fidelity mode' as apposed to a 'performance mode'?

As the the title says, what's your preference?

Let's not kid ourselves, consoles struggle with RT. Almost every time a current gen console game on either the Series X or the PS5 gets an RT mode, the performance is 30fps. And in some games like the the latest Witcher 3 update, not even a stable 30 fps, ugh!

Been playing around with RT on the PC version of Cyberpunk on my now slightly underpowered i7 8700 and RTX 3070. To get a stable frame rate, I've had to lock the fps to 45 with RT on. This was with RT reflections, RT local shadows and RT lighting at medium. It's not quite as good as a full 60, but feels good enough for now until I get a new PC build. Still beats the crap out of the consoles - which can't even do RT reflections in this game.

I'll always prefer performance modes and forsake the RT modes. If DLSS can make the difference and not destroy IQ quality, then i'll definitely use that and RT. CP2077 has always been tricky, even on my 3080/5900X... I've not dipped recently enough to see if there's been a change.

Haha, I've never used either. I don't care for most modern games, so my PS4 is mainly just for movies. My PC is from 2012, and barely works. And my TV from 2009 doesn't go above 1080p. I have played nothing in the past decade that was more fun than something I had already played.

At the end of the day I just care about whether the game is fun.

What do you mean consoles struggle with RT? Are you implying that pc without a 4090 doesn't? Or even worse, a pc with an AMD gpu lol. Everything struggles with RT unless you have a NASA computer to play indie games.

If i can't get 60fps, the game is unplayable. If i can't get at least 1440p, its really ugly and blurry. Returnal was blurry af.

Yeah, was gonna say, every platform struggles with ray tracing. 40 series and 3080 were beyond the price I wanted to pay for modern gaming, so I went with an AMD 6800 and use no ray tracing.

Plus the cost of a bigger case to accommodate the ridiculous 4090 and new power supply. I hope there will always be good graphics cards with smaller form factors.

Currently I’m gaming on a 1080p TV so I’d rather just go with whatever gets me 60fps.

Performance first.

Performance every single time. I won't die if I play a game at 30 FPS but if I have the option I'll pick 60.

@hardwenzen: The 4090 doesn’t struggle with RT.

That's what i am saying. Unless you have it, you have trouble.

Definitely performance mode.

The only games I've had ray tracing on for an extended period of time were Miles Morales and Ratchet since they both have performance RT modes.

I always try running my games in RT and ever since the tech's been introduce, I'll always use RT whenever possible and as long as I'm staying 60fps, I'm good to go. I haven't had issues running my games while using RT and I have an RTX 3070 Ti/R9 5900X.

Now on PS5, I'll just use Performance mode but lucky for me, I only use my PS5 for exclusive games.

Waste of framerates.

I can't think of a PS5 game I've owned that gave me the choice of RT. Performance mode, sure. I typically go for whatever gives me better framerate. Did the Demon Souls Remake have RT?

a lock 60 fps .is what i care about.

I like the RT/ Quality modes at 40fps if available.

Played Calisto protocol in PS5 Quality mode and its honestly one good experience. People told me Ratchet & Clank Quality mode is a great experience too and visually much better than the 40fps mode which I played.

Generally performance mode but once in a while there's RT modes that run games decently and I may opt for that.

30 and 60 fps is the most overrated thing in gaming so I go with fidelity mode ever time I cant even tell if a game is 30 or 60. Now if a game can support VRR and get even higher frame rate like miles Morales can or ratchet and clank rift apart can then I think I got to go with that. I just replayed both miles and ratchet the last like month for first time with Performance RT and could actually tell the difference with frame rate being at 70-100 compared to 30 and 60 where I cant and even more so with miles where the combat with VRR and performance rt was so darn fast.

If there's an option for 120fps, I use that. Otherwise it's always gonna be 60+ for any other game.

RT on consoles is a joke, I mean shiny reflections on Clank? Comon, that's not worth a 30fps hit.

Even RT on PC is a joke and I never use it. Can't recall using it once to give away something like 50+ fps.

Full path tracing is impressive though. Examples would be portal RTX, quake 2 RTX, Half Life Ray Tracing mod, RTCW path tracing.

Not necessarily. For example, you don't need a 4090 if you're only playing on a 1440P monitor. Something in the region of a 3070, 3070ti or a 3080 would be more than enough. Unless 120+ FPS is the aim, even a 3080 would be overkill here.

Also, a lot of people on this board seem to be under the impression that Ray Tracing is a strictly GPU task, it isn't. RT needs a good CPU. In games like Cyberpunk, turning on RT adds a good 20-30% extra CPU utilisation.

what about DLSS, or FSR, what's your thoughts on this?

I remember posting on here about the wonders of DLSS only for some moron to criticise is it. Like how great 4K DLSS performance mode is. Yes, the game renders in 1080P and is then upscaled to 4K. This resulted in some rather hilarious comments on this board trying to argue that this technical wizardry isn't real 4K, only 1080P, and their console games were actually 4K.

Problem is, they aren't. Console games use a combination of dynamic scaling an temporal up-sampling to achieve a 4K image. Very few console games play in actual 4K.

I prefer framerate over shininess, so if there are options that I can turn off to reach at least 60 FPS, I turn it off. But ray tracing is just so good on some games, that it's hard to turn off.

DLSS is amazing, but there's one hater here who thinks it's overrated. Don't mind him.

I prefer performance mode ever since I got my Series X. 60fps is just so smooth and RT is barely noticeable IMO.

Take what I can get, but generally it's "whatever" when it comes to bells and whistles.

I love RT, but it is not worth enabling unless you have the performance headroom. Performance always comes first.

Idk I basically just can flip all settings to max if I want.

am I the only one that plays 30 fps just for better resolution and ray tracing?

im a graphics whore.

@SolidGame_basic: "At the end of the day I just care about whether the game is fun."

What ever happened to this concept?

@zeldabotw2: " I cant even tell if a game is 30 or 60"

The majority couldn't either.

Performance mode all the way. Can't tell much difference between resolutions in these games. 30 fps is a slideshow compared to 60.

Let's be frank, people who pick 30 should have the FBI taking their console away.

Well I went ahead a bought a new PC today (don't really have enough room or time to build my own again at the moment).

It's an i5 13600K, 32GB RAM and an RTX 3080. Looks like I'll be playing more games with the RT on for a good while to come! 😂

Even PCs struggle with RT. I have an RTX3080 and for the entire time I had this card, almost no game with option to run RT yielded 60fps with max settings. I just ended up turning RT off because it just wasn't worth the severe performance spike drops. I'll take a silky smooth 60fps with max settings over being able to see reflections on water puddles any day.

The only consolation for PCs is that the RT performance does get better over time. Once a game releases its 5th or 6th patch after 6 months to a year, then I could somewhat play the game with RT and still get 50fps. Unfortunately, I would have already finished the game and wouldn't bother to replay it.

@jhcho2: What's the rest of your spec though? And does it need to be max settings. On newer games max settings seems dumb. Optimised settings is what I go for. Pretty sure with a few tweaks/nip tucks I'll get to 60fps on Cyberpunk with most of the settings at high and nice RT. I may have to drop down to 1440P, but it's no biggie as my LG C2 has a great upscaler.

90% of gamers have no idea what RT is or the difference between 30 fps and 60 fps, and couldn't care less about either.

I really miss the days when you could just put in a game and play it without worrying about all this stupid crap. It's amazing how we all managed to play before any of this nonsense was even a thing.

Given the option, always performance mode.