Is 3000 Series Raytracing Worth it?

[Niko_Papasta]

Hi all,

 

I’m looking to upgrade from my Gtx 1080 to a 20 or 30 series card. I could get a used 2080 or 2080ti for the same or a similar price to a new 3060ti, my question is; Is it worth going with the slightly less powerful 3060ti for the upgraded raytracing performance and stability in games like Cyberpunk, or is the difference between 20 and 30 series raytracing marginal?

 

thanks for all your help!

Nick.

[Mark Kaine]

it sounds like it would be worth it for you because you apparently care a lot about it. for me all I care is performance and image quality and as such I will buy a 30xx, but I will never use RAY TRACING or DLSS (because I *hate* upscaling of any kind) 

[Delicieuxz]

I haven't used it too much, but it seems quite capable in certain games.

 

In Metro Exodus, at 1440p, with all settings including ray-tracing at maximum, I'm getting 70 - 100+ FPS. Interestingly, I get lower FPS in Quake II RTX.

 

In some games the FPS hit with RT might be too large to play the game without using DLSS, if the game supports DLSS. But if the DLSS option is there, then that's a solution.

[Jet_ski]

I don’t think the 3060ti ray tracing is going to be worth it. For one you get 5GB less GPU memory relative to a 2080ti. Second, when you turn on ray tracing there’s a big performance hit. You need more ray tracing cores and memory for any games that support ray tracing. DLSS is cool but it’s not going to fix this as it can’t recreate lost data perfectly.

 

I like ray tracing but it’s not really ready. You need a whole new system that doesn’t bottleneck. If you play any open world games that incorporate lots of ray tracing, things will look blurrier than if you didn’t.

 

The most impressive thing about the 3000 series cards is their pricing.

[NineEyeRon]

Ray tracing is not worth the cost IMO, I’m going to wait until it is a standard thing that even mid range cards cope with.

 

My next GPU purchase will probably be end 2021 to mid 2022 and will likely be a 5700 if they come down enough in price by then (second hand?) or a new equivalent in affordable price.

[Letgomyleghoe]

3 minutes ago, NineEyeRon said:

5700

as in the radeon 5700?
not the 6700?

there will 100% be alternatives to this card at the time that you plan to buy in the same price range

[NineEyeRon]

3 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

as in the radeon 5700?
not the 6700?

there will 100% be alternatives to this card at the time that you plan to buy in the same price range

I expect so but I will wait to see what offers the best value for money. I literally have nothing to spend and only buying to run the games I have now a little more quietly rather than better. I cap frames to keep the GPU workload down and run at a more tolerable noise.

[unsorted]

Jensen's oven mitts don't pay for themselves. You will upgrade immediately.

[jones177]

It is worth it to me but I would not get less that a 3080 to do it since CP 2077 is only ok with 2080 ti/3070 type performance with RT enabled. 

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Graphics Cards

[LOD_ismynightmare]

Ray tracing depends on games. It’s mostly present in games where there are flashes of light everywhere. I didn’t play cyberpunk but I’m sure the game looks amazing in ray tracing. I played Watchdogs and ray tracing is really good there when it’s set at ultra. To be fair, even the 3090 rtx can’t run cyberpunk at 60fps average with ray tracing on and ray tracing is best set at ultra with dlss set on quality to really see beautiful graphics. That said, I only saw ray tracing worth it on the above games I mentioned, other games don’t really show impressive ray tracing. 
 

Some people think ray tracing is gimmiky, and not necessary. I kinda think that too because it is not revolutionary. Think about it as an added filter to improve the graphics, but not drastic. Assassin creed Valhalla doesn’t have ray tracing and that is had the best graphics I’ve seen even better than RDR2.

[Bobbysixjp]

It really depends on the game and the performance hit. Metro Exodus is one example where RT makes the game look very good and the performance hit isn’t too bad.

In other games (Cyberpunk for example) the performance hit is just too great to justify turning it on (in my opinion). 
And DLSS can make things look very blurry as I found out in Control.

This is why I sold my 3070 and bought a  6800 instead. Give it 5 years maybe and RT will be worth it. 

[b1k3rdude]

21 hours ago, Niko_Papasta said:

• I’m looking to upgrade from my Gtx 1080 to a 2080ti for the same or a similar price to a new 3060ti,
• my question is; Is it worth going with the slightly less powerful 3060ti for the upgraded raytracing performance and stability in games like Cyberpunk

• Don't waste your time getting anything less than a 2080Ti or 3070 (if you can find the latter). 2080ti will have dropped massively in price, so make sure your paying less than a brand new 3070 would cost and also factor a lowering of price as I the cheapest 2080Ti's will be used ones - so as always be diligent when buying and testing it!
• And regarding the RT performance of the 3060Ti versus the 2080ti's, its gonna be about the same, but the Raster performance of the 2080ti will murder the 3060ti.

What are your current system specs?

[NoahFE]

 

On 12/12/2020 at 9:03 PM, Niko_Papasta said:

Hi all,

 

I’m looking to upgrade from my Gtx 1080 to a 20 or 30 series card. I could get a used 2080 or 2080ti for the same or a similar price to a new 3060ti, my question is; Is it worth going with the slightly less powerful 3060ti for the upgraded raytracing performance and stability in games like Cyberpunk, or is the difference between 20 and 30 series raytracing marginal?

 

thanks for all your help!

Nick.

the 3060ti is actually very capable of rtx imo  from my personal use i can get 120 fps on BF5 with setting on ultra and raytracing on ultra at 1080p and with a game like bocw i can get 80-90fps with rtx maxed and everything else on ultra, basically if you are playing at 1080p you can max out any game, i would personally recommend the 3000 series gpu's since they have better nvenc encoding and will have the newest nvidia software if they choose to release some new feature   

[Mark Kaine]

6 hours ago, LOD_ismynightmare said:

Some people think ray tracing is gimmiky,

It's not that raytracing is gimmicky, fully ray traced graphics are amazing, it's that the current implementation is gimmicky and doesn't really benefit games as a whole as it isn't exactly "amazing" either and really isn't worth the drawback of lower performance or higher hardware prices *currently*. 

[Gamer Schnitzel]

OP to finally answer your question.

 

No.

 

RT is a gimmick that was pushed out by Nvidia way too early just to milk stupid people for cash. The 2000 series was completely useless at it and the 3000 series just about can run it somewhat. Nvidia should have released it at least one generation later because there is simply not enough tech to run it which is proven by CP2077. CP2077 uses all 3 kinds of RT which is impossible for any card today to run. Most of the time when devs include RT it's always only 1 of the 3 kinds of RT and even then it takes a big toll.

If you are going to build your machine now then build whatever is the most cost effective. If it has RT then cool but if not, whatever. Very few games have RT and even those you don't really notice it while playing the game unless "playing" for you means standing still to look at a picture. It's far from worth it. Maybe this is different next generation but right now it is definitely not.

[SteveGrabowski0]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

It's not that raytracing is gimmicky, fully ray traced graphics are amazing, it's that the current implementation is gimmicky and doesn't really benefit games as a whole as it isn't exactly "amazing" either and really isn't worth the drawback of lower performance or higher hardware prices *currently*. 

Seems like most of the time RT is used to make puddles look like mirrors and make every floor look like polished stainless steel. RT reflections look pretty cool at first but I think I'd get tired of the effect pretty quickly since it doesn't look realistic at all. 

[Mark Kaine]

1 minute ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

every floor look like polished stainless steel

 

1 minute ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

it doesn't look realistic at all. 

that's exactly the problem with it yeah.................... 

 

 

CP looks absolutely awful, unrealistic, and and also completely *not* cyberpunk because of it (for example) probably even if you turn off rt because everything in the game seems to designed around this weird, unrealistic, horribly shiny effect...