I reinstalled the mildly disappointing Diablo IV to check out the latest step in its ongoing existential crisis: its long-in-development ray tracing update. This is out now for free across PS5, Series X, and PC. Xbox Series S owners don’t get any of the new ray tracing effects, but should still benefit from the patch’s updated ambient occlusion system for contact shadows.
You can read Blizzard’s official blog touting this update right here if you want to, but the bottom line is that the game now has optional ray traced shadows and reflections — at a huge cost to performance across all hardware. Console versions now “target” 30FPS instead of 60 with varying degrees of success, and PC players should look forward to half as many frames as they used to have, even on the beefiest hardware. AMD owners will be hit even harder than Nvidia users…but no one is in for an amazing time here, speed wise. And I don’t think the benefits are really worth it at all.
On my Radeon 6800XT at my standard settings (Everything at ultra with FSR 2 in performance mode upscaled to my 4k monitor), I can regularly clear 175 FPS across a typical play session. With ray tracing enabled, even on lower settings, that plummets into 60FPS territory in a best case scenario, with regular drops below that if I crank up the…
