Editorial NVIDIA's 20-series Could be Segregated via Lack of RTX Capabilities in Lower-tier Cards

[Vayra86]

Glad to see you figured it out too @Raevenlord

I knew this when I saw Jensen shout TEN GIGA RAYS like a fool. He tried to pull a Steve Jobs on people. Everything was amazing, fantastic, never seen before, first time you could get proper use out of this new tech... it was like watching an Apple keynote.

Except with Nvidia, what they showed were jerky tech demoes at 30 FPS and a huge blurry mess of a dude dancing at the end. Oh yeah, it had reflections, too.

Its hilarious to see people on TPU echoing that RTRT is the next best thing. As if Nvidia re-invented the wheel. I guess this generation separates the fools from the realists.

 

[Eric3988]

Seems to me that the ray tracing was introduced at least a generation too early. Nvidia could of sat on it but decided to release it anyways which makes me think it's a great way to justify the MSRP increases across the board. They can still have their value segment to compete with AMD without the ray tracing around the MSRP too. I don't like it one bit so far...

 

[RejZoR]

I don't know, this is hardly unprecedented. When tessellation was the new thing on the block you could really only do it on the high-end cards for several years before the performance and architectural improvements moved downmarket. Also given the fact that 2080Tis were only running those Raytracing demos at 1080p I cringe to think of how bad performance would be on the 2060 cards and below.

If real-time Raytracing does become the next big leap in videogame engine design, I fully expect AMD and nVidia mid-range cards to be able to adequately handle the task in the next 2-3 generations. Until then though, it'll be the same issue whenever a brand new bleeding edge rendering/engine feature is introduced and that is either hardware or at the very least performance exclusive to the high-end.

Tessellation was a creature of its own. Instead of using Tessellation as a smooth replacement for LOD, they went out of their way and use it the other way around, cramming billions of pointless triangles into objects that don't matter, degrading performance dramatically while keeping most of visible objects all blocky and low poly. And they keep on doing this idiocy. Problem with LOD were visible steps between lower quality models where tessellation is smooth as it dynamically changes polygon count. So, instead of making all games faster and better looking, they used this feature to make everything run like garbage with no real visual benefits. Not the first time they've screwed up like that and you can be assured not the last time either.

 

[Vayra86]

Tessellation was a creature of its own. Instead of using Tessellation as a smooth replacement for LOD, they went out of their way and use it the other way around, cramming billions of pointless triangles into objects that don't matter, degrading performance dramatically while keeping most of visible objects all blocky and low poly. And they keep on doing this idiocy. Problem with LOD were visible steps between lower quality models where tessellation is smooth as it dynamically changes polygon count. So, instead of making all games faster and better looking, they used this feature to make everything run like garbage with no real visual benefits. Not the first time they've screwed up like that and you can be assured not the last time either.

In fact there are only two instances of that happening and both were exposed and blatantly obvious - Crysis 2 and TW3 with Hairworks.

Both were also patched and are a non-issue for years already. Let it go. Because tesselation in every other way is a serious improvement to visual quality.

Seems to me that the ray tracing was introduced at least a generation too early. Nvidia could of sat on it but decided to release it anyways which makes me think it's a great way to justify the MSRP increases across the board. They can still have their value segment to compete with AMD without the ray tracing around the MSRP too. I don't like it one bit so far...

That's just it, ray tracing isn't new, and computing everything 'on the fly' ingame is the worst kind of optimization you can use. Nvidia just adds hardware to speed it up, but it doesn't make it any less inefficient. They brute force it at the cost of die space that could be used for raw performance on everything else.

The real question people need to ask themselves is: is it worth paying that high a cost for some real time reflections and lighting, when just a bit of developer labor can get nearly the same results at much lower performance hits?

 

[The Quim Reaper]

What does it matter when Nvidia seemingly has enough slobbering tech nerd idiots blindly throwing money at them, no matter what the cost.

 

[RejZoR]

And DIRT and AvP and countless other games. No, they used tessellation in totally wrong way in majority of games. The problem was especially more painful because tessellation wasn't global, but it was limited to specified objects. So they crammed tons of polys for those and ignored others. Can't forget AvP where some stuff was super smooth and they used tons of polys on items they showcased in techdemos and then there were railings that looked like they escaped from 1998... Looks revolting and runs like crap most of the time.

 

[r9]

I'm hoping that in 5 years we will have 2x4k VR headsets, graphics cards with ray tracing that can drive it and games that will exploit all of that.

 

[coonbro]

The 2080ti shouldn't cost anymore than it's predecessors, either $699 or $749.

if you think back the 8800gtx was a 500 buck card . I got that 980it for 479 . so you think gpu prices for the series line been close to the same for some years . just could be about time for a RAISE . or get out of china to another 3ed world country to exploit there cheap labor workforce . chinas new generation aint there granddaddy work 18 hrs a day for a bowl of rice anymore. they now got all the money and may start seeing stuff move out like we did / do here in the US of A .
I think we may see a shift in manufacturing and cheap labor revolution there soon.

 

[efikkan]

if you think back the 8800gtx was a 500 buck card . I got that 980it for 479 . so you think gpu prices for the series line been close to the same for some years . just could be about time for a RAISE . or get out of china to another 3ed world country to exploit there cheap labor workforce . chinas new generation aint there granddaddy work 18 hrs a day for a bowl of rice anymore. they now got all the money and may start seeing stuff move out like we did / do here in the US of A .
I think we may see a shift in manufacturing and cheap labor revolution there soon.

 

[coonbro]

For a suggested street price of $599, the GeForce 8800 GTX brings tremendous processing power to current-generation games. It's also the first card to market that will support all of the 3D gaming-related features of Windows Vista and DirectX 10.Nov 8, 2006

seem I aslo bought 2 8800gts's for a sli and they were like 250-280 each ??

 

[Basard]

I believe in ray tracing. Hopefully AMD will have it on their 7nm cards, and hopefully Nvidia will have it on their lower end 7nm cards when those are released.

Having said that, I dont see myself jumping on the bandwagon for a couple more years. Unless AMD pulls a Ryzen with their GPUs next gen--which I doubt.

 

[moproblems99]

I actually think that's the reason they created the RTX branding. The 2080Ti, 2080 and 2070 get the RTX branding and all the cards below it get the GTX branding.

Nailed it.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...vailable-at-launch.247209/page-2#post-3895187

 

[coonbro]

''I believe in ray tracing. Hopefully AMD will have it on their 7nm cards, and hopefully Nvidia will have it on their lower end 7nm cards when those are released.

Having said that, I dont see myself jumping on the bandwagon for a couple more years. Unless AMD pulls a Ryzen with their GPUs next gen--which I doubt.''

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1255...cing-for-prorender-and-radeon-gpu-profiler-12

maybe a approach as like gstink vs freestink and amd has it in software for all cards ?

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

In fact there are only two instances of that happening and both were exposed and blatantly obvious - Crysis 2 and TW3 with Hairworks.

Both were also patched and are a non-issue for years already. Let it go. Because tesselation in every other way is a serious improvement to visual quality.



That's just it, ray tracing isn't new, and computing everything 'on the fly' ingame is the worst kind of optimization you can use. Nvidia just adds hardware to speed it up, but it doesn't make it any less inefficient. They brute force it at the cost of die space that could be used for raw performance on everything else.

The real question people need to ask themselves is: is it worth paying that high a cost for some real time reflections and lighting, when just a bit of developer labor can get nearly the same results at much lower performance hits?

Exactly , and now unless Rtx is Made to work v well v quickly Amd will bring out 7nm navi and vega with a full die of shaders and No chip size penalty in most use cases they could have a winner, next generation after that could be very interesting with Nvidia going all in on Rtx and Amd doing it gpgpu but with a massive shader pool across 2-4 modules-obvs pure fantasy.

As I said in another thread without the bloatware maybe a 2060 could ship beyond 2Ghz, a first , could get amusing if the 2060=2070 in all none Rtx modes due to clocks.

 

[Gasaraki]

So now we will have to pay $599 or higher for raytracing, i'm out.

You really expected them to put the expensive tensor cores in the 2030, 2040 and 2050?

 

[GoldenX]

Wow, this release is getting worse and worse.

 

[notb]

Well, some expect it even if it runs at 10fps in the end.

You can always turn it off. And I really hoped to see these new cores on cheaper cards. :-/
Wonder what's going to happen in notebooks... I hoped for an ultrabook with RTX. :-/

Remember the times when 3DMark ran like that on top of the line cards?

No. I've never run 3DMark.

 

[moproblems99]

You can always turn it off. And I really hoped to see these new cores on cheaper cards. :-/
Wonder what's going to happen in notebooks... I hoped for an ultrabook with RTX. :-/

No. I've never run 3DMark.

I would be tempted to pick up a 2060 if it had a few tensor cores to play with.

 

[kastriot]

Well well, it seems nvidia need someone to break his teeths like amd did it to intel this year but then again monopoly is ugly thing

 

[coonbro]

''You can always turn it off''

spend all that money so you can, and end up having to do that . I like it

 

[Solidstate89]

You really expected them to put the expensive tensor cores in the 2030, 2040 and 2050?

Actually the lower end cards (though probably not as low as a 2030) is where the Tensor cores would make the most sense with the performance improvements you'd be able to gain from DLSS.

 

[Ruru]

RTX OFF is fine for me.

 

[notb]

maybe a approach as like gstink vs freestink and amd has it in software for all cards ?

All GPUs can perform ray tracing, but general use cores are too slow for RTRT.
Today you need either purpose-built ASIC (like RTX cores) or a much stronger machine.

 

[coonbro]

I did make a joke on how there showing how neat that feature was under your old card that did not support it [vids and all like that to hype you in to getting it ]

heck NVidia, if your examples looks so good on this I got/run now why di I need to upgrade to these new $$ cards ?

I just run what I got till it dies then I worry about what to do next or just got to buy to get back going the it a so what add to cart and get something here to get back going

 

[notb]

I would be tempted to pick up a 2060 if it had a few tensor cores to play with.

Exactly. I dreamed about having tensor cores available at home and RTX 2060 was an interesting possibility.
And since it's unlikely I'll invest into a desktop and possibly move to a notebook, xx70 card seems out of range. That's assuming RTX/tensor cores will make it to notebooks in this generation...

spend all that money so you can, and end up having to do that . I like it

How would you know?
GPU market is an oligopoly (duopoly in case of discrete GPUs and monopoly for RTRT). You're paying an arbitrary sum of money for a piece of electronics. You can't make it yourself, you can't buy it from a cheaper local company and so on.

if your examples looks so good on this I got/run now why di I need to upgrade to these new $$ cards ?

Well, games can look great without RT. They have for a long time.
I think that at this point it's just about whether you admire RT or not. Most gamers had no contact with the topic, so why would they suddenly bother?
But we'll get used to it and in a decade or so it'll be as ubiquitous and cheap as 3D itself.