Here's my comparison to show how scalable RT is, since people usually compare raster performance with full RT / PT settings and as if there were nothing in between.
This is Cyberpunk without RT. Water reflections look like crap regardless of SSR settings.
The only way to improve water rendering in this game is by using RT/PT. With PT the water finally looks good, but of course Path Tracing costs a lot of frames (52%).
However, people can use lower RT settings (psycho RT) that still look much better compared to raster and the RT cost is reduced to 32%.
With only RT shadows and reflections, the performance is only 20% worse compared to raster and the game still looks much better.
And now let's look at shadows quality.
Raster / no RT
Path Tracing 58% performance cost.
Ultra RT 38% performance cost.
RT shadows + reflections 27% performance cost
As my screenshots clearly shows, even with low/medium RT settings the game looks way better than raster and RT performance cost isnt that big at this point. Sometimes SSR alone cost more performance, for example SSR implementation in the witcher 3. On my old GTX1080 I had 70fps with low SSR and 30fps with high SSR, that was 130% relative difference. Not even RT tanks so much performance on my current GPU while offering much better visuals.
From my perspective, as long as you have a modern PC with fast GPU, playing with RT improves gaming experience. Some people in this thread want to tell me they don't care about RT, but that's like saying they don't care about the graphics. If people really didn't care about the graphics, we'd still be playing NES or PSX games, because what's the point of buying newer game platforms if you don't care about the graphics?
I have a 4090, and it seems like nearly every single game I can go max settings + 4k and have very smooth performance, maybe not 120fps but definitely 60. But as soon as I turn Raytracing on there is slight stutter in some titles (Diablo IV, Resident Evil 4 Remake) or incredibly poor performance (Star Wars Outlaws, Avatar).
Even in the slight performance hits, it doesn't seem worth it. Yeah Diablo looks a little moodier with RTX on, but I would rather have full texture detail and special effects and 4k with no frame drops. I haven't played Cyberpunk in a few years and hear that really utilizes RTX the best, so maybe in that case it will be worth it.
If you play at 4K native and refuse to use DLSS, even the RTX4090 will not be able to run the most demanding RT games smoothly. Star Wars Outlaws is probably the most un-optimized RT game out there, because it's using experimental RTXDI feature that wasnt implemented well. In one second, the RTX4090 can have 45 fps, and when you take a step forward, the fps suddenly drops to 20 fps for unknown reason. Without RTXDI, "just" with ultra RT at 4K DLSSQ + FG, the RTX4090 is able to run this game at round 80-100fps, and that's not a bad experience at all. BTW. you cant even turn off RT in this game, you can only lower RT settings, so good luck playing this game without RT.
As for the RE4 remake, the game becomes a CPU bottleneck with RT, and if the CPU limits your framerate, you may see stuttering. With a reasonable fps cap, the game runs without stuttering with RT, at least I had no problems playing the game at 120fps lock on my 7800X3D.