Can Your Hardware Handle ‘Minecraft’ With Ray Tracing?

After months in beta, Minecraft with ray tracing is now available for Windows 10 players. It’s the biggest visual upgrade Minecraft has received in its nine-year lifespan, adding realistic lighting behaviour to the game’s blocky, malleable worlds. You’ll need to meet high hardware requirements to experience the effect for yourself, but it’s absolutely worth it.

Here’s the full checklist of what you need play Minecraft with ray tracing:

• Minecraft for Windows 10 updated to version 1.16.200 or higher. (Note: if you were using Minecraft’s ray tracing beta, follow this guide to safely revert from that version to the new, stable build.)
• A ray tracing-compatible graphics card such as Nvidia’s RTX 20 or 30 series and higher, or AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 series and higher. Older GPUs do not have the necessary hardware to run Minecraft with ray tracing.
• The latest drivers for your Nvidia or AMD graphics card.
• An Intel Core i5 CPU or better.
• At least 8GB of RAM.

You’ll also need to download one of the ray tracing-enabled maps or texture packs from the Minecraft Marketplace, or use Nvidia’s guide to create and sideload your own texture packs (or convert maps you previously created). Marketplace content that supports ray tracing has a blue and white star icon in the corner, like so:

These maps and resource packs work on public servers and Minecraft Realms. Those playing on console, mobile, or older PC hardware can join, but only players with fancier hardware will see the ray tracing effects.

Run the game and load into one of the maps you downloaded or create a new one with a ray tracing-enabled texture pack. Ray tracing will be turned on by default, but you can toggle the effects on or off at any time by pressing the “;” key or going to Settings > Video > Ray Tracing.

Note that ray tracing requires a significant amount of computing power, so you won’t be able to see as far into the horizon with it turned on. You may also experience more graphical hitching and lower framerates, but turning off ray tracing should fix it. Mojang’s ray tracing FAQ can also help if you run into other issues.