What is ray tracing in games? Everything you need to know

For the past few years, one phrase that’s been repeated by tech enthusiasts and gamers is “ray tracing,” though many don’t even fully understand what it is. But what is ray tracing? Today, we’ll unpack the technology, from how it works, whether it’s worth it, and what games and graphics cards fully support it.

What is ray tracing and how does it work?

Ray tracing is the realistic rendering of light and shadows. This technology is often used in film and television to realistically blend CGI into live-action scenes. In video games, turning on ray tracing can help improve the visuals. However, it can also be incredibly taxing on one’s gaming system.

Ray tracing simulates and tracks every ray of light created by a game’s lighting source, so as a result, only gaming systems with powerful graphics cards can truly support ray tracing. The benefit of ray tracing is less about the light itself and more about how it interacts with the world. Ray tracing allows for more lifelike shadows, improved translucence, and reflections.

Is ray tracing worth it?

The biggest benefit of ray tracing is that it improves a game’s visuals, specifically the lighting and shadow effects. While there is some benefit to turning on ray tracing, the caveat is that it is extremely demanding on a graphics card – and only the most powerful ones fully support it.

Whether ray tracing is worth it depends entirely on how much you value visual enhancements for your video games, and if you happen to play the latest AAA games that take full advantage of the technology. If you rarely play newer AAA games, stick to older titles, or prefer smaller titles from indie studios, purchasing a graphics card that supports ray tracing probably won’t be worth it.

It’s also important to consider that enabling ray tracing will also significantly impact performance. So, not only do you need a powerful graphics card, but you will also need to have a powerful processor as well.

It might be worth it if you want to have the best experience possible and plan on mostly playing new AAA games that use ray tracing technology. Remember that most graphics cards that fully utilize the technology are fairly expensive. With that said, some cheaper options on the market (below the $500 mark) support the technology, such as the AMD Radeon RX 7600.

What graphics cards support ray tracing?

Only some of the most recent and powerful graphics cards from NVIDIA and AMD support ray tracing. They are the following:

NVIDIA GPUs with ray tracing support:

AMD GPUs with ray tracing support:

What games support ray tracing?

These are some of the games that currently support ray tracing technology:

Keep in mind that more and more games are adding support for ray tracing. This list does give you a good example of which titles could offer the experience. Ray tracing is still a fairly new technology; a limited number of games utilize it. More titles will eventually support it later down the line, however.

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