@cowanon not even playing with max settings, not even 720p, using very close to the best parts available at the time crysis came out... it's always been like this.

there have been other things like this throughout the years too, like hairworks in witcher 3 and tressfx/purehair in tomb raider. hell, in this witcher 3 example you see that the 970 isn't even hitting 60fps at ultra 1080p without hairworks.

systems being able to run games above 30fps at native 4k with ray tracing and maxed settings is actually pretty incredible. there is definitely room for optimization there still, especially when you consider things like stuttering, but you've never really been intended to use ultra graphics at high resolutions right when a game comes out like this. it takes a while for it to be viable and until then, you're either trading some other features to get these ones or using it for experimental reasons like benchmarking.