How do I check if my GPU supports Raytracing?

Question

while browsing a particular website I came across this notice on a page for Metro Exodus

ATTENTION! ENHANCED EDITION WORKS ONLY ON GPUs WITH RAY TRACING TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT!
IT WILL NOT LAUNCH ON OLDER GPUS! DON’T DOWNLOAD THIS REPACK IF YOU DON’T HAVE A MODERN VIDEO CARD!
If your videocard is old – you still can play Gold Edition.

Searching Steam I found a news article that said something similar though not as explicit that it will not launch but just that Raytracing is a minimum requirement and the chart lists "Normal" as the minimum for Graphic and Raytracing Quality but generally there's a low setting as well (or graphics atleast)

Please note – the Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition requires Ray Tracing capable hardware as the minimum spec – please check the PC Specs chart for more information.

now I own Metro Exodus and the DLC on GOG and when the Enhanced Edition came out I noticed that in my library I have the installers for both versions and before I saw those 2 notices I was going to download the Enhanced Edition and used that. however now I want to check if my GPU can support Raytracing. it is a year or 2 old which could be considered an "older GPU" but I want to be able to confirm and if I was to upgrade be able to check if potential replacements support Raytracing.

Dulkan · Answer

Generally, all Nvidia cards, which have RTX in their name fully support raytracing. For AMD all cards of the new 6000 series support raytracing.
Since your gpu is a year or two old, you can ignore AMD here, as the cards, which support it were released at the end of 2020. However, it's quite possible you have a RTX card from Nvidias 2000 series.
Do note, that technically many other cards can support raytracing, but lack the dedicated raytracing cores. This means, they would work with raytracing, but the performance loss would be so gigantic, that the game should be nearly unplayable.

How do I check if my GPU supports Raytracing?

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