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Ray Tracing vs Rasterization: Which Should You Care About?

1/30/2026 · Graphics · 7 min

Ray Tracing vs Rasterization: Which Should You Care About?

TL;DR

  • Ray tracing simulates light paths for realistic reflections, shadows, and global illumination. It looks striking but is computationally heavy.
  • Rasterization is the tried and true method that maps triangles to pixels very efficiently. It offers much higher raw frame rates for the same hardware.
  • Hybrid techniques are common: use rasterization for primary geometry and ray tracing for selective effects like reflections and ambient occlusion.

What each method does

  • Rasterization: transforms 3D geometry into 2D pixels using shaders, z buffering, and raster pipelines. It is extremely fast on current GPUs and well optimized in games and engines.
  • Ray tracing: traces rays from the camera into a 3D scene to compute lighting interactions physically. This yields more accurate reflections, refractions, soft shadows, and global illumination effects.

Visual differences

  • Reflections and transparency: ray tracing gives accurate, multi-bounce reflections; rasterization uses screen space approximations or cubemaps and can miss off-screen details.
  • Shadows and lighting: ray traced shadows have correct penumbra and soft contact shadows; rasterized shadows often require cascaded shadow maps and tricks to look natural.
  • Subtle global lighting: ray tracing can simulate light bouncing for realistic ambient lighting; rasterization relies on baked lighting, probes, or approximations.

Performance trade offs

  • Ray tracing is expensive. Turning on full path tracing will dramatically reduce FPS on current consumer hardware.
  • Many games use low cost ray traced effects at limited ray counts to balance quality and speed.
  • Upscalers like DLSS, FSR, and XeSS can recover performance while preserving ray traced detail.

Hardware and APIs

  • NVIDIA RTX and AMD RDNA2+ GPUs include dedicated ray tracing hardware to accelerate BVH traversal and ray/triangle intersection.
  • Intel ARC and some integrated solutions also offer basic ray tracing support.
  • APIs: DXR (DirectX Raytracing), Vulkan ray tracing extensions, and OptiX for offline or hybrid rendering.

When to prefer rasterization

  • You need high frame rates for competitive gaming.
  • Your hardware is midrange or older and cannot maintain playable FPS with ray traced effects.
  • You rely on legacy engines or tools that have mature rasterization pipelines.

When ray tracing is worth it

  • You prioritize visual fidelity and immersive lighting in single player games or cinematic work.
  • Your GPU plus upscaler can keep frame rates acceptable.
  • You work in rendering, VFX, or content creation where accuracy matters more than raw FPS.

Practical tips for gamers

  • Enable selective ray traced effects first: reflections or ambient occlusion before full ray traced global illumination.
  • Use DLSS, FSR, or XeSS when available to regain performance.
  • Keep drivers and game patches updated; ray tracing implementations improve over time.

For creators and developers

  • Use hybrid pipelines: rasterize primary visibility and use ray tracing for selective lighting and shadows.
  • Bake where possible for static scenes, use ray tracing for dynamic lighting.
  • Profile scene BVH and reduce unnecessary geometry to speed up ray tracing.

Bottom line

Rasterization remains the best choice when you need maximum performance. Ray tracing brings a leap in realism and is increasingly practical thanks to hardware acceleration and upscalers. For most users, a hybrid approach gives the best balance of speed and visual quality.

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