Starting today, real-time ray tracing is supported not only by GeForce RTX graphics cards, but also by select GeForce GTX 16xx and 10xx graphics cards. The GeForce Game Ready 425.31 WHQL driver, which provides video cards with this feature, can already be downloaded from the official NVIDIA website or updated through the GeForce Now application.
The list of video cards that support real-time ray tracing was replenished with the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1660, Titan Xp and Titan X (Pascal), GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and GTX 1080, GeForce GTX 1070 Ti and GTX 1070, as well as the GeForce GTX version 1060 c 6 GB memory. Of course, ray tracing here will work with some limitations compared to GeForce RTX graphics cards. And the younger the video card, the stronger the restrictions will be. However, the fact that the owners of not even the most powerful GeForce GTX 1060 will be able to βtouchβ the new technology cannot but rejoice.
If GeForce RTX video cards have specialized computing units (RT-cores) that provide hardware acceleration of ray tracing, then GeForce GTX video cards simply do not have such elements. Therefore, they implement ray tracing through the DXR extension for Direct3D 12, and the processing of rays will be handled by conventional compute shaders on an array of CUDA cores.
This approach, of course, will not allow graphics cards based on Pascal and lower-end Turing GPUs to provide the same level of ray tracing performance that the GeForce RTX series models are capable of. NVIDIA's ray-traced performance test results slides published by NVIDIA demonstrate the huge difference between the GeForce RTX and GeForce GTX models.
For example, in the game Metro Exodus, where global illumination is provided using tracing, none of the GeForce GTX graphics cards could provide acceptable FPS. Even the flagship of the previous generation GeForce GTX 1080 Ti was able to show only 16,4 fps. But in Battlefield V, where tracing provides only reflections, the flagship of the Pascal generation still managed to reach 30 FPS.
However, NVIDIA tested the graphics cards at the highest graphics settings, with maximum intensity of ray tracing, and at a resolution of 2560 Γ 1440 pixels. That is, the conditions, to put it mildly, were not the most favorable: the same GeForce GTX 2060 in Metro Exodus averaged a little more than 34 fps. It will be possible to achieve a βplayableβ FPS on older video cards by lowering the resolution and graphics quality. But first of all, their performance will be affected by the ray tracing intensity settings.
Recall that at the moment you can get acquainted with ray tracing in three games: Battlefield V, Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. It is also available in three demos: Atomic Heart, Justice and Reflections. Both in the games and in the demos, we are offered various options for using ray tracing. Somewhere she is responsible for reflections and shadows, and somewhere for global illumination.
Source: 3dnews.ru