I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had bought myself an RTX 3070 Ti. For those who don't know RTX is Nvidias new range of cards that they first released in 2018 and that also features Ray Tracing.

Not everyone might know what Ray Tracing means either and without delving to deep into technological babble I'll just say that Ray Tracing is relatively new technology that simulates light in real time. Before there was Ray Tracing light had to be pre-calculated. In short; RTX makes lighting effects look better in games.

Let it also be said that's not the only thing RTX cards do. They also outperform the old GTX cards be quite a margin. It has also spawned a great new format of memes.

^KnowYourMeme

I mentioned the other day that I went [shopping in the Steam Christmas Sale](LINK HERE) and that I picked up Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice which got a free update in November of 2021 to now feature Ray Tracing! Yes, not all games have Ray Tracing.

Being quite excited to see what my new GPU could do I jumped straight into Hellblade. This game immersed me from the get go so it felt kinda shameful to stop every now and then to play around with the settings. I nonetheless put that shame aside to take some screenshots with RTX on and off for comparison.

Comparison 1

RTX on

RTX off

This first comparison is done during the games opening cutscene. Since the boat is always moving it's hard to get a perfect side by side comparison but we can still see quite a difference in the water reflections. That's why I chose to include this comparison.

With RTX on we're seeing a near perfect reflection of what we're seeing above the waters surface. With RTX off the reflection is actually quite different from the above. The poles appear lighter in the reflection than they do above water. Definitely looks better with RTX although I probably never would have thought about it if I didn't do the comparison.

Comparison 2

RTX on

RTX off

Now this comparison is something different. I don't know how much I need to say as the difference should be quite obvious. With RTX on we're actually seeing things in the waters reflection that aren't even on the screen. We see the sky through the trees above. We also see great great reflections off the main character herself. Things are a lot more bland in this scene with RTX off for sure. We can even vividly see the ripples in the water with RTX on.

Comparison 3

RTX on

RTX off

Now this scene I have a bit more to say about for a couple of reason. To just do the general comparison we can see that with RTX on the scene is lit up way more than it is with RTX off. The ground and the shadows from the plants look way better with RTX on. There is one big loser here though and that's the tree on the right. It looks way better with RTX off in my opinion.

That's kinda the trade you make with RTX though. With RTX on you get more realistic lighting and with RTX off you get to see the lighting of the scene exactly how the developers made it, because of the pre-calculations. RTX just makes it more realistic. I do favor RTX though, definitely.

Performance

Now performance is something that needs mentioning. Ray Tracing really takes a hit on your performance. When I was testing it out I was able to play Hellblade with 120+ FPS stable while RTX was off. With RTX on high I was getting around 30-50 FPS most of the time but if I put it down to medium I was running it at a stable 60-70 FPS.

This means you gotta decide if you want the best performance or the best looks. I landed somewhere in between. I set the Ray Tracing setting to medium and locked my monitor to 60 FPS. Ray Tracing on medium versus high really doesn't look that different. It's very minor. That means I'm able to run the game with absolutely beautiful visuals while getting quite acceptable performance.

Final words

My new GPU is definitely paying off in terms of enjoyment so far. I was aware that playing with Ray Tracing on would tank my performance a bit so that's not a disappointment. I still think it's a worthy trade to have games like these look this beautiful. Also, while playing games that doesn't have Ray Tracing I'll have absolutely marvelous performance. I've already been seing a lot of that in Escape From Tarkov, Final Fantasy: XIV and Nier: Automata. My performance has pretty much doubled.

I'll end the post with a few more comparisons that I'm not gonna put words to. In every case the first image will have RTX on while the second image will have RTX off. Enjoy!