Path tracing: full ray-traced lighting in Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2 and Portal RTX
Path tracing is the most complete form of ray tracing: every light effect — direct light, shadows, reflections, multi-bounce indirect light — is computed by tracing random light paths from the camera through the scene. Games call it "Full ray tracing" or "RT Overdrive", and it is the heaviest graphics setting that exists today.
full ray tracing · RT Overdrive · PT
Key figures
From the FPSHQ database, as of Oct 15, 2026
Path tracing versus hybrid ray tracing
Hybrid RT keeps the rasterizer for the base image and adds one or two ray-traced effects. Path tracing throws the rasterizer away for lighting: a handful of paths per pixel are traced with several bounces, the noisy result is reconstructed by a denoiser and a temporal upscaler such as DLSS Ray Reconstruction. The quality is film-like — light bleeds naturally around corners, emissive signs light the street, and shadows have correct softness.
Because paths are random, static scenes look stable but fast motion can show boiling noise or ghosting from the denoiser. NVIDIA addresses this with Ray Reconstruction and "ReSTIR" sampling, which reuses good light paths between pixels and frames.
Performance: what to expect
Path tracing roughly halves the frame rate of hybrid RT and divides raster FPS by three or more at native resolution. A GeForce RTX 4090 renders Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive at about 20 FPS in native 4K; with DLSS Performance and Frame Generation it is above 100. On mid-range RTX 40/50 cards 1080p with DLSS Quality is the realistic target; Radeon GPUs run it but at much lower rates because of weaker RT throughput.
The FPSHQ FPS model treats path tracing as the RT preset of the game; measured runs with the Overdrive preset are stored separately when available.
Games with path tracing
New titles appear as RTX Remix mods and as Unreal Engine 5 projects with hardware Lumen pushed to its maximum.
- Cyberpunk 2077 — RT Overdrive (2023)
- Alan Wake 2 — Full ray tracing (2023)
- Portal with RTX, Quake II RTX, Half-Life 2 RTX (RTX Remix)
- Black Myth: Wukong — Full ray tracing (2024)
- Indiana Jones and the Great Circle — Full RT path (2024)
- Star Wars Outlaws, Doom: The Dark Ages RT modes
On your PC
Enter your GPU (and CPU) — we calculate the effect of "Path tracing" with the unified FPSHQ model using Cyberpunk 2077 as the example.
Save your PC in the account · Detect hardware with the app · Unified FPSHQ model estimate, not a measurement.
Where to use this on FPSHQ
Forum discussions
What is Path tracing?
Path tracing is the most complete form of ray tracing: every light effect — direct light, shadows, reflections, multi-bounce indirect light — is computed by tracing random light paths from the camera through the scene. Games call it "Full ray tracing" or "RT Overdrive", and it is the heaviest graphics setting that exists today.
- games with ray tracing
- 22
- games with path tracing
- 4
- FPS with RT vs ultra (model)
- 58%
- FPS with RT vs ultra (measured)
- 58%
FAQ
Is path tracing the same as ray tracing?
Which GPU is needed for path tracing?
Why does path tracing look noisy?
Does path tracing use more VRAM?
Sources
FPSHQ Team · methodology · methodology · Updated
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