https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/178glp1/thought_path_tracing_and_ray_tracing_are_same_til/
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/what-is-path-tracing/

It's basically the next step up from ray tracing, more accurately simulating the behavior of light for a more realistic and nuanced image. It's what offline renderers for film and tv use (at much higher sample rates, granted).

5070/ti (Galvatron) vs 4090 (Unicron) in  a nutshell:

This whole gen is just one big Chihuahua vs bulldog moment lmao. 

Just reminds me of this honestly lmao

AMD simply showing up to this gen like:

This gen so far is nothing but one giant AI meme lmao.

The raster gains are the icing on the cake though, but damn have Nvidia really fucked themselves so far. 

To simplify, RT is focused on direct lighting, PT on simulating actual light scattering in environment, so it uses more rays.

From the horses mouth, in current context, so to speak (nVidia article on it):

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/what-is-path-tracing/

"So what does path traced mean in this context? It could mean a mix of techniques. Game developers could rasterize the primary ray, and then path trace the lighting for the scene.

Rasterization is equivalent to casting one set of rays from a single point that stops at the first thing they hit. Ray tracing takes this further, casting rays from many points in any direction. Path tracing simulates the true physics of light, which uses ray tracing as one component of a larger light simulation system.

This would mean all lights in a scene are sampled stochastically — using Monte Carlo or other techniques — both for direct illumination, to light objects or characters, and for global illumination, to light rooms or environments with indirect lighting.

To do that, rather than tracing a ray back through one bounce, rays would be traced over multiple bounces, presumably back to their light source, just as Kajiya outlined."