Ray Tracing on OMEN RTX GPUs: 2025 Benchmark Guide
The ray tracing revolution isn't something to dream about anymore. It's here, and it's as beautiful as everyone anticipated. Over the past year, the conversation has shifted from "does it have ray tracing" to "how well does it run with ray tracing". This technology that replicates the natural behavior of light has paved the way for hyper-realistic scenery, becoming the new benchmark for visual fidelity in gaming. But what does that mean for gamers?
For gamers, it means reflections, shadows, and lighting that are indistinguishable from real life, creating a level of immersion once thought impossible. However, this stunning realism comes at the cost of serious hardware demands. That's why our OMEN Gaming Desktops feature NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 40-series GPUs, to make these wonderful visuals accessible to gamers across different budgets. But is the hardware and performance cost worth the visual upgrade? And how does OMEN find the right balance between performance and aesthetics? This guide will answer all those questions. So without further ado, let's dive in.
What is Ray Tracing? Understanding the Technology
Before we examine the statistics and tricks for optimizing your system for ray tracing, let's first understand the technology itself. For decades, video games have used a rendering technique called rasterization. Think of it like creating a 2D painting of a 3D scene. It's fast and effective, but it uses clever shortcuts and approximations to simulate lighting, shadows, and reflections.
Ray tracing, however, is more like a complete physics simulation. It traces the pathway of every individual ray of light from your viewpoint back to the light sources within your game, interacting with objects along the way, bouncing off a puddle or being blocked by a character. This allows the system to calculate the exact color, brightness, and shadow information for every single pixel on your screen.
OMEN RTX GPU Top Picks for Ray Tracing Performance
Our OMEN gaming laptops and desktops are designed to extract maximum performance from these powerful GPUs. With advanced thermal solutions like the OMEN Tempest Cooling system, we ensure your hardware runs at peak performance during the most intense ray-traced gaming sessions. Here are the most popular options:
- RTX 4060 Ti in OMEN systems: Your gateway to ray-traced gaming experiences. These GPUs are excellent for gamers hoping to enjoy 1080p ray tracing without sacrificing smooth frame rates.
- RTX 4070 and 4070 Ti configurations: The sweet spot for high-refresh-rate 1440p gaming. OMEN desktops with an RTX 4070 Ti provide a fantastic balance of price and performance, capable of handling demanding ray tracing in most modern AAA titles.
- RTX 4080 and 4090 flagship options: For extreme enthusiasts who demand an uncompromised 4K experience, these GPUs are the best option. These flagship cards deliver unmatched ray tracing performance at the highest resolutions.
Benchmark Methodology and Test Setup
But don't just take our word for it. We ran benchmarks in some of the most demanding titles and have the results for you. To provide clear and objective results, we used a consistent test environment for all benchmarks.
- Test System: OMEN 45L Gaming Desktop
- Processor: Intel® Core™ i9-13900K
- Memory: 32GB DDR5 RAM
- Storage: 2TB NVMe SSD
- Games Tested: Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2, Portal with RTX, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered
- Settings Used: Tests were conducted at 1920 x 1080 (1080p), 2560 x 1440 (1440p), and 3840 x 2160 (4K) resolutions with the highest in-game graphical presets.
- Performance Metrics: We tracked average frames per second (FPS) as our primary metric.
Ray Tracing Performance Benchmarks
Here's how our OMEN systems performed across a suite of the most demanding ray-traced games available today. "Native RT" refers to Ray Tracing enabled without DLSS, while "DLSS 3 Performance" refers to Ray Tracing enabled with DLSS 3 set to its Performance mode, including Frame Generation.
Cyberpunk 2077 (RT: Overdrive - Path Tracing)
| GPU | Resolution | Native RT (Avg. FPS) | DLSS 3 Performance (Avg. FPS) |
|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 4060 Ti | 1080p | 21 | 68 |
| RTX 4070 Ti | 1440p | 25 | 80 |
| RTX 4090 | 4K | 28 | 95 |
Alan Wake 2 (Full Ray Tracing)
| GPU | Resolution | Native RT (Avg. FPS) | DLSS 3 Performance (Avg. FPS) |
|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 4060 Ti | 1080p | 35 | 85 |
| RTX 4070 Ti | 1440p | 42 | 98 |
| RTX 4090 | 4K | 50 | 125 |
Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered (RT: Very High)
| GPU | Resolution | Native RT (Avg. FPS) | DLSS 3 Performance (Avg. FPS) |
|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 4060 Ti | 1080p | 70 | 120 |
| RTX 4070 Ti | 1440p | 85 | 150 |
| RTX 4090 | 4K | 105 | 180+ |
DLSS 3 and Frame Generation Impact
As the benchmark results suggest, NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology is crucial for unlocking the full potential of games featuring ray tracing. But how exactly does it work?
DLSS is an AI-powered rendering technology that, in its traditional form (Super Resolution), renders the game at a lower internal resolution and then uses AI and the GPU's Tensor Cores to intelligently upscale the image to your target resolution, reconstructing detail to look as good as native rendering.
With the RTX 40 Series, NVIDIA introduced Frame Generation, a revolutionary feature alongside DLSS 3, which analyzes sequential frames and motion data to create new frames and inserts them between the traditionally rendered ones. This enhances the visual performance of the game while providing stable frame rates.
Is OMEN Ray Tracing Good? Performance Analysis
The benchmark results look impressive, but what do they mean in practice? From a performance perspective, OMEN desktops are exceptionally well-suited for running games with ray tracing. The primary challenge these systems face isn't performance but heat, as ray tracing pushes your GPU to its absolute limit. This is why all of our desktops come with the OMEN Tempest Cooling Solution to manage heat effectively. This is a critical advantage of an integrated, professionally designed system.
Optimizing Ray Tracing on OMEN Systems
If you already own an OMEN PC, you can leverage certain capabilities already present within your machine to ensure the perfect balance between visual quality and performance. Here are tips to extract every last bit of power and performance from your computer.
- Start with OMEN Gaming Hub: Use our built-in Gaming Hub software to ensure your system is running in Performance Mode, which optimizes power and fan curves for gaming.
- Let DLSS Do the Work: For most games, the best approach is to turn ray tracing settings to High or Ultra and then enable DLSS 3 in Quality or Balanced mode. This gives you the best visuals with minimal performance impact.
- Know When to Disable: In highly competitive, fast-paced shooters where every millisecond counts, you may still want to prioritize raw frame rates over visual fidelity. Consider turning ray tracing off in these specific scenarios to push your FPS to its absolute maximum.
- Game-Specific Settings: In some games, ray-traced reflections have a huge impact while ray-traced shadows are more subtle. You can often gain back significant performance by lowering or disabling one specific RT feature through the in-game settings without a major loss in overall quality.
Future of Ray Tracing on OMEN
Like every other technological revolution, ray tracing will only improve with time. In 2025, we are at the cusp of even more widespread adoption of complete path tracing; however, the need for more powerful hardware will scale alongside technological advancement. Games launching in 2026 and beyond will be designed from the ground up with ray tracing in mind, making it less of a feature and more of a foundational element of game design. As NVIDIA continues to innovate with its next generation of GPUs and DLSS technology, you can be sure that future OMEN systems from HP will be ready to push the boundaries of what's possible.
Conclusion
After extensive testing across various titles, the verdict is clear: ray tracing is the future. The combination of dedicated ray tracing core hardware in OMEN PCs and the massive performance uplift provided by DLSS 3 means the performance of these machines has never been better. If you are still having trouble deciding which desktop to get, here is a quick breakdown:
- For the 1080p Gamer: An OMEN with an RTX 4060 Ti is your perfect entry point into the world of ray tracing, offering a smooth and beautiful experience in the latest titles.
- For the 1440p Enthusiast: The RTX 4070 and 4070 Ti configurations hit the absolute sweet spot, delivering high-refresh-rate ray tracing that will satisfy both graphics enthusiasts and competitive players.
- For the 4K Purist: If you demand the absolute best with no compromises, an OMEN powerhouse with an RTX 4080 or RTX 4090 is the only choice for breathtaking 4K gaming with all ray tracing features enabled.
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