Is Ray Tracing Worth the FPS Hit? 36 Game Performance Investigation

Most PC gamers know that ray tracing is a very performance-intensive feature, and depending on the improvement to visual quality, it may or may not be worth using. In an extensive Hardware Unboxed video (watch below), we examined the visual benefits that ray tracing can bring in 37 different games. However, today's article solely focuses on the performance impact of ray tracing.

Having analyzed visuals first, we can provide far more insights and context to the performance discussion than ever before. We'll examine the overall performance cost of ray tracing in a ton of games, while also narrowing our focus to titles where ray tracing genuinely enhances visual quality.

How many FPS do you typically need to sacrifice before the benefits of ray tracing become evident and transformative?

Here are two compilation tables of all the games we visually tested and assessed whether ray tracing brought real visual quality benefits in gameplay, where it didn't, or worse off, where it hurt graphics quality.