Tip for ray tracing!

[M.Terion]

Edit:
Don't use Ray tracing on low settings, best don't use it at all! My original testing involved mostly faster moving gameplay. However, on closer inspection of slower gameplay and still images I noticed that lower than Maximum RT settings result in a lot of visual artifacts.
So I recommend to just disable RT for now, since Max hit's your performance really hard, and low to high is not worth tit visually.


Original Post:

"Use low or medium settings.

Ray tracing seemingly adds only rt ambient-occlusiion and rt shadows.
The quality setting mostly extends the draw distance of the shadows with a large impact on performance, and maybe a slight change in resolution of the effect.
(high to maximum is basically not visible)

Even if set to low you will have better AO and much improved character shading, while only missing out on some distant shadows.

Overall RT in Elden Ring does not do a lot, however, if you have a few frames to spare, then using low or medium settings seems worthwhile."

[breadman]

or i could keep playing it without rt cause it's marginal

[Reyeme]

RT is a complete and utter joke in this game, it barely looks better but tanks performance, especially outdoors. If From would stop being so lacking with their PC support they would have also included FSR or DLSS (pref both) to offset the massive performance drop on a game that already suffers from stuttering and other performance issues without RT!

Worst part is they made us wait a year for this pointless and poorly executed feature. This doesn't bode well for Armoured Core or the upcoming ER DLC if they're slacking so hard on their PC ports.

[Arcus Wengart]

They didn't even adress the main issue ER has - awful indoors/ caves lighting. Okay, the foliage looks better now but at the cost of drops to 30 fps with rtx 4080

[Alby]

Originally posted by breadman:

or i could keep playing it without rt cause it's marginal

[M.Terion]

Originally posted by breadman:

or i could keep playing it without rt cause it's marginal

It's definitely not worth using over a higher resolution or smooth 60 fps.
But, similar to every other graphical setting, if it does not impact either of those on your setup, then there's not much of a reason not to use it.

Aside from someone disliking the visual change, liike the very diffused shadows it provides.

[M.Terion]

Originally posted by Let Go Your Earthly Tether:

They didn't even adress the main issue ER has - awful indoors/ caves lighting. Okay, the foliage looks better now but at the cost of drops to 30 fps with rtx 4080

I recommend using the Elden Ring Reforged mod, it fixes some of the lighting issues. By adding dynamic shadows to bonfires and torches for example.

Weird that fromsoft could not figure that out themselves.

ER-Reforged is also a better game overall. (in my opinion)

[Cootswig]

I go to 30fps even on low. Granted my setting are max and 4k. I rather have that then a little better lighting

[CourtesyFlush09]

Originally posted by Redyrant 🎸:

I don't see an impact on frame rate(RTX 3070), still capped at 60, won't go higher or lower than that, however it doesn't change anything on reflections where ray tracing should be more noticeable, reflections still using screen space, it doesn't do much.

I think they implemented a very light version of ray tracing so that it wouldn't completely destroy performance.

It was a compromise they really shouldn't have had to make if they just kept their mouths shut and never said RT was coming in the first place. They could have fixed or improved other aspects of the game (like general performance) if they decided to focus on them instead.

[M.Terion]

I wish they wood have separated AO from shadows in the ray tracing options. That way indoor scenes and smaller foliage would benefit from better ambient occlusion, but you would not lose so many frames to shadows in the open world.

[Zephyr]

Originally posted by Redyrant 🎸:

I don't see an impact on frame rate(RTX 3070), still capped at 60, won't go higher or lower than that, however it doesn't change anything on reflections where ray tracing should be more noticeable, reflections still using screen space, it doesn't do much.

That is a little weird. I go from capped 60 to 45-50 FPS on a 3070 RTX (1440P) and as far as I can see quite a few people with higher end RTX GPUs having issues at 1440P or 4K. Definitely it is not worth it for me like this for what it adds.

[rhysbox360]

Originally posted by Cootswig:

I go to 30fps even on low. Granted my setting are max and 4k. I rather have that then a little better lighting

I
I have a 3070 and get the same, can I just check your also using a 3070 or something similar? I was worried my GPU was on the blink coz the performance tanked so hard and I had only just updated the bios. Worried I ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the card somehow but if you get about 30 FPS on max 4k with a 3070 then I'm less worried. For comparison I get about 50 FPS on 1440p with ray tracing on. Is that consistent with you?

[KazumaSteal]

Better no use it cause your fps fall and you really can't see the quality difference with and without it.

[keikei]

If you can spare the performance hit, the RT is gud (there are several youtube vids comparing), but i would use at least medium settings. Even a 4090 is put on its knees @ max in certain areas with heavy effects. I would like to see RT lighting possibly in future updates.

[Amanita]

I don't understand people who claim the raytracing is good. In other games raytracing is fantastic,in elden ring it sucks. I see 0 differences between on and off and i play on a65 inch oled tv(lg c1).

[Otaku]

Originally posted by Reyeme:

RT is a complete and utter joke in this game, it barely looks better but tanks performance, especially outdoors. If From would stop being so lacking with their PC support they would have also included FSR or DLSS (pref both) to offset the massive performance drop on a game that already suffers from stuttering and other performance issues without RT!

Worst part is they made us wait a year for this pointless and poorly executed feature. This doesn't bode well for Armoured Core or the upcoming ER DLC if they're slacking so hard on their PC ports.

I read somewhere that the ray tracing was all done by 1 man in the fromsoft studio, because he insisted to make it happen.