I have tried ray tracing and prefer how games look without it. I want shadows crisp and clear. I'm also not a big fan of HDR and leave it turned off. I have seen all of the resolutions and on a 24" screen, which is the biggest I'll use, they pretty much all look the same. Also, I do not have to have 60fps at ultra settings. 40fps at whatever settings it takes is good enough. If I can play the game smoothly, which on most games only requires 30fps, I'm good. I play the Forza Horizon games on older hardware with the framerate locked to 30 and they play excellently. I normally only up grade when the hardware I have can't play a game I want to play at a steady 40fps on low settings.
As to resolution, I don't have a 4k screen anywhere in my house. My 40" TV is just fine at 1080. My bedroom TV, a 29" Vizio is all I need at 720p. 4K is marketing hype for the most part and I only see a difference on screens larger than 55" which is already too big for me. I purposely tailored the upgrades on my gaming rig for 1080p. I even bought a new 1080p monitor because it had FreeSync, a 144 refresh rate , and HDR. I was disappointed in the HDR so that stays turned off. The new laptop I'm considering has a 16:10 1440p screen which to me is overkill on a 14" screen but it's rated as an excellent screen and the GPU is powerful enough to handle it.
