It's not like every little particle light source is allowed to cast (long range) shadows.
Sure but I wouldn’t expect single bounce RTXDI to be that much more expensive than “classic” single bounce RT shadows even for a small number of lights. RTXDI has the benefit of spatial and temporal sample reuse so you would expect the number of actual rays cast per pixel to be similar or lower. The extra overhead is all of the fancy light selection, sample caching and sample integration math.
It’s more curious since I’ve seen quite a few folks mention that the RTXDI IQ difference is negligible in some scenes which sorta makes sense for a small number of lights.
I think this is the first game to sport both RT shadows and RTXDI (better RT shadows) so I really hope DF digs into what’s happening there. The performance difference doesn’t make sense.