NOTICE: This blog post is outdated. Recommended RTX games may be different as of 2023.
To start, RTX is created to imitate real-time lighting and how it interacts with the gaming environment. Not every game utilizes RTX, and some do it better than others. In 2018, RTX was announced and has only gotten more popular on upcoming games. RTX can take a game that looks just ok to looking like a movie. So what’s the downside? It eats away at frames. Depending on the game, it can drop your FPS up to, or even more than 30FPS. The upside is that RTX can be combined with DLSS. DLSS uses AI to pretty much scale down resolutions/quality, then scale it back up by filling in the gaps by rendering it what it was originally supposed to be. What this does is boost your frames, in same games by over 50FPS. DLSS helps maintain high frames with RTX enabled.
The truth about RTX is that it is up to the game developer/game engine on how well it will make use of RTX. This means, some games may even end up not looking any different, yet it will still take away frames. Then other games would look completely different. We created this list to help our customers determine what games their new RTX card is best for. Please note, this list is only some of our favorites in terms of how different the games look with and without RTX. There are games which are not on this list which handle RTX just as well as anything on this list.
To be clear, RTX and raytracing is not the same. RTX comes with Raytracing and DLSS. A game can be RTX compatible and not make use of Raytracing. In this list, we list games which make use of both RTX Raytracing and RTX DLSS.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Wolfenstein: Youngblood, despite mixed reviews as a game, there is no doubt that the use of NVIDIA RTX is impressive. The added reflections and lighting offers an unbeatable experience and helps immerse you into the game. The game had originally launched without RTX Raytracing, however received an update with this feature in it. It truly looks gorgeous as a game with this setting enabled. See reference image above.
Metro Exodus
Metro Exodus is another game which takes advantage of RTX Raytracing. With this setting enabled, it truly changes the Metro environment. The game developers have gone the extra mile to make sure that having RTX enabled really does make a difference. Generally, all Metro games have been benchmarks for gaming GPUs, and this one was not missed. The already immersive environment is only made more immersive with the use of RTX. This is one of our top picks to play with RTX Enabled.
Battlefield V
Battlefield V may not have been regarded as one of the best in the series, but similarly to Wolfenstein: New Blood, got down RTX Raytracing. Between the lighting, reflections, and shadows, you take an already good looking game and make it look almost life like. That being said, it also eats away your frames to a noticeable amount.
Cyberpunk 2077
If you’re willing to look past the sea of issues with the Cyberpunk 2077 launch and played it with RTX enabled, you would have noticed it looks gorgeous with RTX enabled. Despite the use of DLSS, if you choose to play with RTX Raytracing on, you would need a pretty high-end system. We would recommend a minimum of an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 for this one.
Minecraft
Minecraft has been receiving frequent updates, despite being almost 10 years old. Overall, Minecraft is a super easy game to run. So why is it on this list made by a company that sells high performance PCs? Simple. RTX. If you look at the difference between RTX enabled and RTX disabled it is truly jaw dropping. It looks like a completely different game. How can it do this? It can do this because at its core, Minecraft is already easy to run. So the team that works on Minecraft can pretty much push RTX to its limits. Unlike a game like Battlefield 5 or Cyberpunk 2077, Minecraft could practically run on a potato. This gives the ability to allow RTX to run at its maximum. This means Minecraft truly shows off the capabilities of RTX.
