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Ray Tracing- Introduction to Ray Tracing in Gaming.
One of the hottest new features of PC gaming has been ray tracing and this often leads to the question “How to Optimize Gaming PC for Ray Tracing”. In its simplest form, ray tracing is a method of rendering which models the behaviour of light in the real world, creating exquisitely believable effects of reflection, shadow and global illumination. Ray tracing is more realistic compared to the traditional rasterization method of lighting, which uses shortcuts to approximate lighting effects on objects. That is why you feel it almost cinematic when you watch the puddles reflecting neon lights on Cyberpunk 2077 or the dynamic shadows on Control.
But, to be honest, ray tracing is not easy. Leaving it on without streamlining your system can shotgun your FPS with gameplay that is choppy rather than immersive. That is why optimization is important. You do not need to spend a thousand dollars on a computer to play ray-traced games, but you do need to compromise your hardware, in-game preferences, and system performance to achieve maximum performance.
Imagine that you are tuning a car to race. The car (your PC) may be fast, but unless you tune gears, tires and aerodynamics (your settings and hardware balance), you will not get peak performance. Here, we will dissect all the facts you should know to optimize your gaming PC in ray tracing-so that you can experience stunning visuals without compromising on smooth gameplay.
Hardware Requirements to Ray Tracing.
It is important to know what areas of your system will actually have an impact on ray tracing before you start setting and making adjustments. Not every hardware is critical in this scenario–there are those which do the heavy lifting, and those which are in the supporting role.
Graphics Card (GPU) Capabilities.
The ray tracing is the showcase of the GPU. The RTX range of cards launched at NVIDIA in 2019 featured dedicated RT cores, specifically designed to compute ray tracing calculations, and the latest Radeon 6000 and 7000 series provide hardware-accelerated ray tracing with their Ray Accelerators. Ray tracing can still be done in some situations with your GPU even though it does not have these specific features, but at an extremely high performance cost.
Because of the game being played at a smooth ray-traced level, you will be wanting an entry-level NVIDIA RTX 2060 or AMD RX 6600 XT. A RTX 3080, 4080 or RX 7900 XT is needed when game quality and resolutions are higher and the game is more demanding. How well ray tracing works is not the only thing the GPU dictates, but also how far you can push the settings, such as reflections, shadows, and the quality of lighting.
CPU and RAM Considerations
Although the majority of the heavy lifting is performed by the GPU, the CPU also has a supporting role by taking care of physics, AI, and overall game logic. The mighty CPU can choke the mighty GPU. In the case of ray tracing, a current-era quad-core or more processor (e.g. Intel i5 12th/13th gen or AMD Ryzen 5 5600X and others) is suggested.
RAM is equally important. Ray tracing games typically consume more memory due to the complicated light computations, and by the time of writing, 16GB is the absolute minimum, with 32GB smoother, unless you are streaming to the TV or running something in the background.
Storage Speed (SSD vs HDD)
Ray tracing does not necessarily rely on storage, but the speed of loading and asset streaming is a massive difference. A SSD and in particular NVMe can significantly decrease the stutters that occur with data streaming in large open world games such as Cyberpunk 2077. HDDs just can not meet the current demands.
Consider storage as a car fuel: it does not actually increase engine power (GPU) but ensures that fuel (game assets) is delivered as fast as possible. In its absence, performance is slow.
Selecting the correct GPU to do Ray Tracing.
When it comes to ray tracing, choosing the correct GPU is among the most critical choices you will ever make. All GPUs are not equal and a cost efficient purchase in this case can be the difference between a nice gaming experience and a nightmare.
NVIDIA RTX vs AMD Radeon RX Series.
With dedicated RT cores and high-quality DLSS, NVIDIA RTX GPUs continue to be the leaders in the ray tracing field. RTX 3070, 3080, 4070 Ti, and 4090 are some of the cards with great performance in terms of ray tracing. NVIDIA is also better equiped with a stronger ecosystem with regular driver support and extensive game optimizations.
AMD has launched its Radeon RX 6000 and 7000 lines of graphics cards with competitive ray tracing hardware, and is slightly behind Nvidia in ray-traced games. But AMD GPUs are typically cheaper by VRAM, accompanied by FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution), allowing it to compensate performance losses.
NVIDIA is again the safer choice in case your priority is on ray tracing. AMD is worth considering, should you desire great value coupled with good rasterization and acceptable ray tracing.
The role of VRAM in Ray-Traced Games.
VRAM is consumed like soy sauce by ray tracing. Reflections and shadows require enormous memory bandwidth when they are calculated in real-time. VRAM memory exhaustion can lead to stutters or crashes or performance reduction by many folds.
8GB VRAM is typically sufficient in the case of 1080p gaming. For 1440p, aim for 10-12GB. 16GB or larger is highly recommended in case of 4K ray-traced gaming. VRAM is always worth keeping in mind when purchasing a GPU, and games such as Hogwarts Legacy and The Last of Us Part I are incredibly VRAM-intensive.
Mid-range vs High-end GPUs.
Even mid-range GPUs such as the RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6700 XT are able to run ray tracing at 1080p or 1440p with certain settings scaled back. Up-end GPUs such as the RTX 4080 or RX 7900 XTX are capable of driving 4K ray tracing at smoother frames.
Imagine this in terms of cars a mid-range GPU would be a sports sedan- fast, efficient, but not extreme performance. A premium-priced GPU is a luxury car–a car that was created to challenge conventions and provide an experience that is as uncompromising as anything.
When you can afford it, it is worthwhile to spend more on a better-end GPU today and also to future-proof your computer with more advanced games when the time to buy comes.
System Settings: Ray Tracing.
Raw brute force is not enough, even with the powerful hardware. Smart system optimization is the reason you can get all the performance out of your setup.
Tweaking In-Game Graphics.
This should begin with the inside of your games. Individual adjustment of the ray tracing effects is possible in most titles. You can also just leave reflections ray traced and reduce ray traced shadows as an example. Secondary effects such as ray-traced ambient occlusion can be disabled to provide a huge increase in FPS at little or no visual cost.
It is best to begin with everything at its fullest extent with all settings and then reduce each setting one by one whilst tracking FPS. This is used to determine the largest performance hogs without losing too much visual fidelity.
Trades Ray Tracing and DLSS or FSR.
Ray tracing is a terminal illness, but upscaling techniques such as NVIDIA DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AMD FSR can be used to save lives. DLSS is an artificial intelligence-based algorithm that takes low-resolution frames and upscales them to higher resolutions, providing you with a higher number of FPS without visually compromising sharpness.
As an example, the game that was running at 35 FPS can be turned into 60 FPS with the DLSS Performance mode on and the output still almost looks the same. The same is done by FSR, but the output of DLSS is usually sharper. Enabling ray tracing is one of the simplest things to do to make use of these technologies provided your GPU has them available.
Frame Rate Management and Resolution Scaling.
It may be possible to make a small resolution tradeoff that offers an enormous FPS increase with a small image quality loss. Being able to play at 1440p rather than 4K with ray tracing usually just looks better all round than trying to play at 4K with frame drops.
Frame rate caps can also help. When you have a 60Hz monitor, you can set your FPS to 60, and it will give you a better, more steady gameplay than the 50-80 FPS. G-Sync or FreeSync are some of the adaptive sync technologies that eliminate screen tearing and make the gaming experience far smoother.
Overclocking and Performance Fine-Tuning.
You can always overclock and tune your hardware to get even more performance when you have optimized settings and still just want more power to do ray tracing.
GPU Overclocking Tips
Overclocking is a gpu clock speed that allows your gpu to execute more data in a single second. MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision are easy to use tools to push your GPU a little more than it was originally. Overclocking by 5-10 percent can result in more fluid play in ray-traced games.
But overclocking is producing additional heat and power consumption, thus stability testing is paramount. Working constantly on temperatures and testing with FurMark or 3DMark before making a commitment to any gaming time.
CPU Optimization for Gaming
Although the ray tracing is probably done by the GPU, a powerful CPU will make sure that nothing slows the game down. Increasing the efficiency of the background can be helped by disabling those applications that are not needed, by turning on XMP/DOCP on RAM, and by adjusting the settings in the BIOS (such as Precision Boost Overdrive on AMD processors).
Others are CPU intensive games, particularly open-world games. It is worth ensuring that throttling of your CPU does not occur.
Cooling and Thermal Management.
Silent opponent of performance is heat. The warmer GPUs and CPUs become, the slower they will run in order to avoid a breakdown. Good cooling, such as additional case fans, a aftermarket air cooler or liquid cooling, can help maintain hardware at peak output longer.
Imagine it as in sports: the more the athlete works, the more he/she sweats. Performance declines in the absence of cooling (hydration). Keeping your PC cool will also help you ensure that you extract every bit of power out of it during the times when ray tracing puts hardware to the test.
Updating Game Patches and Drivers.
Among the most basic, but least recognized measures of optimizing a PC to ray tracing is to keep your software up to date. The game developers, as well as the manufacturers of the two different GPUs, are constantly issuing patches that enhance performance, address bugs, and improve the performance of ray tracing. These updates may ensure a more enjoyable gameplay and a better frame rate.
Significance of recent GPU Drivers.
Your graphics drivers are your hardware communication bridge and your game communication bridge. NVIDIA and AMD provide regular driver releases, which are sometimes coordinated with the release of major games. These updates not only correct bugs, but also support game-specific optimizations that can further boost ray tracing by 5-15 percent.
To use the NVIDIA example, NVIDIA released drivers optimized to handle the Cyberpunk 2077 full path-tracing mode. Running old drivers you may be losing a lot of performance.
To be stable and compatible, it is always better to download GPU drivers either through an official source (NVIDIA GeForce Experience or AMD Adrenalin software). Net websites should be avoided as they may have expired or dangerous versions of the third-party driver.
Game-Specific Optimizations
GPU drivers are not as significant as game patches. Ray tracing implementations are often optimized, sometimes long after launch, by developers. In some cases, a game may not run well with ray tracing on, but with a couple of updates, the same game can improve by 20-30 percent.
Stake Minecraft RTX, as an example, early versions were rough, but updates slowly refined the game to be more compatible with a broader selection of GPUs. Likewise, Dying Light 2 was updated with new ray-traced shadows and reflections, making it much more performance-friendly.
A good practice is to check patch notes on Steam, Epic Games Store or the developer webpage. To get these optimizations, you must update your games.
Software Updates using Software Utilities.
Updates can be a tedious task that is easy to check manually, but it is simplified with tools. NVIDIA GeForce Experience and AMD Adrenalin automatically inform you about the updates to drivers and install them with a few clicks. Titles are also configured to be updated automatically by game launchers such as Steam and Epic unless they are turned off.
When you have several games with ray tracing running, it is a good idea to have auto-updates to keep your system up to date with the latest improvements without the hassle associated with using the manual approach.
Windows Tuning Gaming and Ray Tracing.
Your operating system is important to gaming performance more than you may suspect. It can drag your FPS down even with the best GPU just because your windows setup is poorly optimized.
Turning off Background Processes.
Windows also has a raft of background processes (updates, cloud sync and startup programs) that consume the CPU and RAM resources. In gaming, these processes have the potential to generate stuttering or frame drops.
Close Task Manager and turn off the unwanted applications running in the background, such as OneDrive sync, update checkers, or chat applications when playing games. Applications such as MSconfig also allow you to permanently disable start up programs that are not necessary.
Imagine this as tidying up your desk before starting your work – it makes it a lot easier and efficient.
Power Settings and Game Mode
Windows is set up by default to use a balanced power plan, restricting performance to save power. Changing between High Performance and Ultimate Performance mode makes sure that you can use all of your CPU and GPU resources.
There is also an inbuilt Game Mode in Windows that gives priority to gaming processes and minimizes background activity. Although not a magic bullet, it can be used to provide a more stable environment during demanding tasks like ray tracing.
Storage and Memory management.
Being able to store new games is not the only way to have free space in your SSD. Windows utilizes some of your drive as virtual memory (page file), which means that a near full SSD can slow things down to glacial. You should have at least 15-20% of your drive free to perform better.
And features such as Resizable BAR in BIOS (where your hardware supports it) can enable the CPU to access VRAM in your GPU more efficiently to increase performance in ray tracing-enabled modern games.
Better performance using Upscaling Technologies.
Upscaling technologies have been one of the largest advancements in game performance. These can give you ray tracing without the frame rates trade-off of rendering at lower resolutions and upscaling to higher ones.
NVIDIA DLSS
NVIDIA has its own AI-based upscaling solution, called DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling). DLSS does not render a game at full resolution, but rather renders it at a lower resolution and uses AI upsampling to enhance the frames. The result? A lot higher FPS with images that are virtually identical to native resolution.
DLSS can be particularly useful in games that are ray-traced, where the performance cost is high. DLSS 3, which is used on RTX 4000 series GPUs, goes so far as to create completely new frames with help of AI, and in certain scenarios, it is twice as fast.
AMD FSR
FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is an open-source upscaling tool from AMD, which can be used on both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. FSR is not as sharp as DLSS in certain situations, but the performance improvements are enormous.
In titles like Resident Evil Village and Forspoken, FSR can allow gamers on mid-range GPUs to play ray tracing at higher settings.
Intel XeSS
Intel has attempted to make inroads into the upscaling arena with XeSS (Xe Super Sampling). Similar to DLSS, it is an AI-based frame-upscaling algorithm that is compatible with Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA systems. XeSS is still somewhat of a newcomer, but it has potential based on more games using it.
One of the most effective ways to balance between high visuals and smooth gameplay when relying on ray tracing is to use it in combination with DLSS, FSR, or XeSS.
Ray tracing your PC in the future.
Today, when you invest in ray tracing, you will want to get ready to play tomorrow also. Ray tracing technology is not perfect and the requirements of the system will never stop growing.
Upgrading Hardware Smartly
All upgrades do not have the same advantage. In ray tracing, the largest improvement is normally in the form of upgrades on the GPU. However, when your CPU is causing your performance to drop, an upgrade to the next-generation processor can help open up more of the hidden memory of your GPU.
Upgrades in RAM are also worth trying. A 16GB to 32GB upgrade will not necessarily always increase its performance, but guarantees less chugging when doing multiple tasks at once or loading a game- particularly as games become more and more cumbersome.
Projecting Requirements of the Game.
Future AAA titles are pushing ray tracing to its furthest limits. Games such as Alan Wake 2 or Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty will require the use of some of the most advanced lighting techniques and can even make high-end GPUs struggle. By checking the recommended specs of upcoming titles, you can get a fairly good feeling of whether your system is ready or not.
A trade-off between Cost and Performance.
Future-proofing does not imply the most expensive parts. In many cases, smart upgrades such as a GPU upgrade to more VRAM or an upgrade to NVMe SSD will have better long-term performance than a splurge on the very top hardware.
It is more like purchasing a car: you do not necessarily need the Ferrari. In some cases, a good and effective sports car can serve you well over the years without emptying your pocket.
Common Ray Tracing Problems Troubleshooting.
Despite the optimalizations in place, there are still problems that might arise when you enable ray tracing. The best thing is that in the majority of cases they can be resolved by making some minor changes.
Fixing Low FPS Problems
Enabling ray tracing may disable your FPS, so before disabling ray tracing, first reduce the specific ray tracing settings. Disabling reflections on and ambient occlusion is good, but with reflections turned off the balance is not as good as with ray-traced shadows.
Then turn on DLSS, FSR or XeSS (when available). This by itself can sometimes increase your FPS by a factor of twice. Trying to run things at a lower resolution (4K to 1440p or 1440p to 1080p) can help, should your GPU still be struggling.
Stuttering and Screen Tearing.
Background tasks tend to cause stuttering or storage bottlenecks. It can help to make sure that your game is located on an SSD and to disable all unnecessary applications.
In the case of screen tearing, you can activate G-Sync (NVIDIA) or FreeSync (AMD) in order to align your monitor and graphics card output with the refresh rate of your monitor, thus removing screen tearing and providing much smoother images.
Stable Performance Guarantee.
Ray tracing can also cause an otherwise normal PC to crash randomly or overheat when on, even if your PC is in an open case. There are some monitoring applications HWMonitor or MSI Afterburner that allow you to monitor the temperatures in real time.
It is stable to keep your GPU below 80degC and CAU below 85degC. As the overheating continues, it might be required to clean dust off fans, rerun thermal paste, or upgrade cooling solutions.
Conclusion
Ray tracing is among the most exciting gaming technology innovations, yet it is also one of the most challenging. The art behind ray tracing is that it can make games look almost like real life with realistic shadows, realistic reflections, and lighting effects that make you feel like you are in the game. But, unless hardware and software optimization is done right, the cost of performance can outweigh the advantages.
At this point, you have noticed that there is no single trick to ray tracing optimization on your gaming PC, but rather a combination of several tricks. It begins with the possession of the appropriate hardware, in particular a qualified GPU, with an adequate amount of VRAM, backed by an equitable CPU, RAM, and storage infrastructure. Next there is intelligent software optimization, keeping drivers and game up-to-date, adjusting in-game options, and applying upscaling methods such as DLSS, FSR, or XeSS to unlock additional performance.
You also need to remember your operating system. By turning off background processes in Windows, customizing your power options, and making sure that you aren’t overloading your storage drive, you can optimize Windows to play ray-traced games with reduced lag. And, with the right mindset, safe overclocks and thermal control may coerce additional performance out of your system, allowing you to reach that golden mean between breathtaking graphics and silky smooth frame rates.
The journey will also deal with troubleshooting. Whether it is to resolve stutters, crashes, or poor frame rates, there is always a solution- and in most cases it can be as easy as changing a setting or updating your programs. And, just in case you want to plan ahead, future-proofing your PC with intelligent upgrades means you will be equipped to handle the ray tracing-intensive games of the future.
Finally, ray tracing optimization is a race car optimization. Raw horsepower is not enough, you have to make some adjustments, finetuning and you must maintain everything in perfect order to get everything running good. When it is properly accomplished, the reward is unbelievable: even more film-like and immersive than ever before, and all that at a performance level you can actually enjoy.
Ray tracing is definitely worth it so far as you love playing games and want your favorite titles to look as beautiful as possible. Remember only,–how to optimize your hardware is not merely a matter of having powerful hardware.
FAQs
- Do I require an RTX graphics card on ray tracing?
No, but it is strongly advisable. Both NVIDIA and AMD have hardware-accelerated ray tracing, under the name of the RTX-series and the Radeon-RX 6000/7000 respectively. But older GPUs that lack dedicated RT hardware can technically support ray tracing-but at very low performance, which is impractical to most gamers.
- Ray tracing is compatible with all games?
Not yet. Game developers are required to use the technique of ray tracing. It is supported by many AAA games such as Cyberpunk 2077, Control, and Minecraft RTX, but not all games. The list of titles supported by ray tracing is increasing, however, and it will probably become more widespread in the future.
- Will ray tracing make better performance or visuals?
Ray tracing does not enhance performance–it reduces performance. It is primarily aimed at improving the visuals by making them look more realistic in terms of lighting, shadows, and reflections. To offset the performance penalty, primarily to ensure smoother frame rates, most gamers use ray tracing in combination with upscaling technologies such as DLSS or FSR.
- What is the recommended amount of VRAM that is needed to support ray tracing?
VRAM 1080p ray-traced gaming requires at least 8GB. In the case of 1440p, 10-12GB will be favored, though 4K ray-traced gaming will normally need 16GB or more. VRAM saturation can lead to stuttering, crashing or very low performance.
- Is ray tracing competitive gaming?
Not usually. Competitive players are more concerned with FPS and low latency, whereas ray tracing is more concerned with images. Frame rates can be reduced by turning on ray tracing and this is a negative factor in esports games that are fast-moving. In competitive gaming, it is preferable to turn off ray tracing and use higher FPS.
