What ray tracing is (and what it isn't)
Ray tracing simulates how light behaves in a scene. Instead of faking reflections and shadows, the game traces rays through the scene's geometry to work out how light bounces and what it hits. Engadget contrasts this with the screen-space reflections used in older games. Those reflections can only show what is already visible on screen, so they look inaccurate. Ray-traced reflections can show off-screen objects.
One correction to Engadget's wording: the article describes rays "bouncing around the screen". The rays are actually traced through the scene's geometry, not merely across screen pixels. That difference is the whole reason off-screen reflections are possible.
On Windows, this runs through DirectX Raytracing (DXR), part of DirectX 12. DXR is a DirectX 12 feature that implements ray tracing for rendering, and it arrived with the Windows 10 October 2018 update (version 1809). Microsoft's DXR specification treats ray tracing as a peer to rasterization and compute. It is not a replacement for the older pipeline. That is why most games are hybrid: rasterization draws most of the frame, and ray tracing handles selected effects such as reflections or shadows.
The performance bill
Engadget cites a TechSpot analysis of 36 games. It found average frame rates fell 20 to 40 percent with ray tracing on. The worst cases it names are:
- Hogwarts Legacy: about 45 percent lower.
- Alan Wake 2: about 52 percent lower.
- Hitman 3: about 65 percent lower.
These are attributed figures from one outlet's testing. I haven't independently checked TechSpot's method. Real costs vary with the game, GPU, resolution, ray-tracing mode and other settings. Treat them as a sign of how large the swing can be, not as a guarantee.
Microsoft's DXR specification gives a hint about why. It notes as a rule of thumb that performance is likely to suffer more the further acceleration-structure updates diverge from the original. In short, how a developer builds and updates the scene data matters, and no single rule predicts the result.
Ray tracing versus path tracing
Engadget uses a Star Wars analogy: ray tracing is the Padawan and path tracing is the Jedi Master. Path tracing is still ray tracing, but a more comprehensive form. It often governs the whole look of a game rather than a few effects, and it is sometimes labelled "full ray tracing".
The author compared Resident Evil Requiem's High ray-tracing preset with its path-tracing option. In the path-traced version, a car's headlight picks up a faint red tint from a neon sign off-screen. The author also found less aliasing in the windshield reflections. The caveat is that the differences are subtle on a phone and clearer in uncompressed 4K.
The cost is steeper too. In Cyberpunk 2077, Engadget says path tracing can demand around 50 percent more than standard ray tracing, depending on the scene. The author suggests that, unless you own an RTX 5090 or RTX 5080, you should steer clear.
What the Steam survey does and doesn't show
Engadget points to the Steam Hardware Survey as evidence that PC gamers are buying capable cards. Valve's September 2026 survey does list the GeForce RTX 5070 first among named video cards, at 6.15 percent. That is up from 3.77 percent in August.
Some limits apply:
- 6.15 percent is a lead among individual models, not a majority of Steam users.
- The same table lists the RTX 3060 at 3.66 percent, the RTX 3050 at 2.90 percent, and the GTX 1650 at 2.19 percent. A lot of gamers are still on modest hardware.
- The survey counts hardware. It doesn't measure which settings people use or how well games run.
So "the most popular single card is capable" is true. "The typical player can comfortably ray trace" is not something the data establishes.
Where DLSS fits in
The author uses an RTX 5090 and often enables NVIDIA's DLSS 4.5 Multi Frame Generation, accepting extra input lag. NVIDIA's developer page describes several separate tools:
- Multi Frame Generation can generate up to five frames per rendered frame, and it runs on GeForce RTX 50 Series and RTX PRO Blackwell GPUs. That limits the headline feature to the newest hardware.
- Super Resolution outputs higher-resolution frames from a lower-resolution input.
- Ray Reconstruction uses AI to generate pixels between sampled rays in ray-traced scenes.
These tools reduce the cost of ray tracing. They don't remove it, and frame generation doesn't restore the responsiveness of natively rendered frames. That is the latency trade-off Engadget admits to.
Does your PC support it at all?
Hardware support and good performance are different things. According to UL's 3DMark support documentation, AMD Radeon RX 6000 series and later, and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20, 30, 40 series and later, support DXR Tier 1.1. Older cards can still run games, but without hardware-accelerated ray tracing. To check your own system, run dxdiag and look at the DirectX version and display driver details, and keep your GPU drivers current.
A practical way to decide
Engadget's blunt advice for RTX 3060 and Radeon RX 6600 XT owners is to skip ray tracing and lock in a stable frame rate at your monitor's native resolution. That is the author's judgment, not an official cutoff, and the article doesn't offer controlled benchmarks for those cards. You can test it yourself:
- Pick a repeatable scene in the game you actually play, ideally one with reflective surfaces or complex lighting.
- Record average FPS and watch for stutter with ray tracing off, then on, at the same resolution and settings.
- If the game has granular options, try partial ray-tracing effects or a lower quality preset.
- Try upscaling, and frame generation where your GPU supports it. Judge how the game feels to control, not only the FPS counter.
- Keep ray tracing only if the visual gain is worth the loss in smoothness and responsiveness.
Bottom line
Ray tracing can look striking, and path tracing more so, but both are optional and can be costly. Engadget's central advice holds for mainstream hardware: protect a smooth frame rate first. The article's broader claims need softening, though. Older cards are not universally unable to run RT, and one card topping the Steam chart doesn't make ray tracing mainstream. If you have an RTX 50-series card, the DLSS tools can help. If you don't, test before you commit.