Nvidia reps suggest 2060 and below will not have Ray Tracing support

[AlTech]

In a Q&A, an Nvidia representative's wording of the 20 series launch hinted at the fact that the 2060 and lower will not feature ray tracing support.

 

Considering that the majority of GPU sales are in the $100-200 price range (as established by AMD and others), this would mean that the majority of Nvidia GeForce 20 series video cards would not support Ray Tracing.

Effectively forcing developers to make a choice to either commit to supporting Ray Tracing for the small minority of gamers or not take advantage of Ray Tracing until the majority of GPUs support it.

 

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During that Q&A, NVIDIA's Colette Kress put Turing's performance at a cool 2x improvement over their 10-series graphics cards, discounting any raytracing performance uplift - and when raytracing is indeed brought into consideration, she said performance has increased by up to 6x compared to NVIDIA's last generation. There's some interesting wording when it comes to NVIDIA's 20-series lineup, though; as Kress puts it, "We'll start with the ray-tracing cards. We have the 2080 Ti, the 2080 and the 2070 overall coming to market," which, in context, seems to point out towards a lack of raytracing hardware in lower-tier graphics cards (apparently, those based on the potential TU106 silicon and lower-level variants).

 

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The majority of the market games on sub-**70 tier graphics cards (the 20-series has even seen a price hike up to $499 for the RTX 2070...), and failing to add RT hardware to lower-tier graphics would exclude a huge portion of the playerbase from raytracing effects. This would mean that developers adding NVIDIA's RTX technologies and implementing Microsoft's DXR would be spending development resources catering to the smallest portion of gamers - the ones with high-performance discrete solutions. And we've seen in the past what developers think of devoting their precious time to such features.

 

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All in all, it seems to this editor that segregation of graphics cards via RTX capabilities would be a mistake, not only because of userbase fracturing, but also because the highest amount of players game at **60 and lower levels. Developers wouldn't be so inclined to add RTX to their games to such a small userbase, and NVIDIA would be looking at dilluting its gaming brand via RTX and GTX - or risk confusing customers by branding a non-RTX card with the RTX branding. If any of these scenarios come to pass, I risk saying it might have been too soon for the raytracing push - even as I applaud NVIDIA for doing it, anyway, and pushing graphics rendering further

 

I'm gonna be incredibly disssapointed if this turns out to be the case as there's really no point launching the RTX series and pushing it so hard if not every single GPU in the lineup supports it. This is just wrong on so many levels and I honestly just wanted more performance out of newer GPUs. This whole Ray Tracing performance is just a huge regression and step backwards in terms of performance. Not only that but AMD's Ray Tracing technology that they are currently working on does not require dedicated Ray Tracing hardware.

 

And it's becoming increasingly more likely that the next Console generation won't have Ray Tracing Hardware. Which just further puts pressure on developers to choose to support the small percentage buying GPUs above $200 or to just say no and keep using rasterization until all GPUs support Ray tracing in some way (be it hardware or software).

 

Sources:

https://www.techpowerup.com/247429/nvidias-20-series-could-be-segregated-via-lack-of-rtx-capabilities-in-lower-tier-cards

 

[AskTJ]

Yeah, it's literally in the name.

 

GTX 2060. Not RTX 2060.

[AlwaysFSX]

4 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

I'm gonna be incredibly disssapointed if this turns out to be the case as there's really no point launching the RTX series and pushing it so hard if not every single GPU in the lineup supports it.

 

This whole Ray Tracing performance is just a huge regression and step backwards in terms of performance.

:thinking:

 

Everything needs to support it, even if it can't run it. What an idea.

 

Honestly, there's no reason for the lower end cards to support ray tracing right now, they shouldn't be paying an early adopters fee for it. Also, the technology can't improve unless the first step is taken, guess what, it's not going to be quick. But it's amazing they've even got it in the first place. Just like 4k gaming was damn near impossible not too long ago, now almost anyone can play at that high of a resolution.

[Deus Voltage]

So AdoredTV's source was actually spot on about the GTX thing

 

I wonder how many other little details are true

[AlTech]

Just now, AskTJ said:

Yeah, it's literally in the name.

 

GTX 2060. Not RTX 2060.

That GTX part was added by me. It was neither referenced as GTX nor RTX.

[Mihle]

The AdiredTV leak told you that this would be the case, so do not act surprised.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

Not really surprising, we had basically confirmed this already iirc

[MyName13]

Is this RTX ray tracing possible only on Nvidia's GPUs (because it's their technology) or would software made with ray tracing in mind work on AMD's GPUs too?

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, AlwaysFSX said:

:thinking:

 

Everything needs to support it, even if it can't run it. What an idea.

Nvidia is the one who chose to focus this generation on something nobody asked for.

 

Why should gamers be punished because of that?

 

The only thing that a large majority of gamers want is more performance. And instead of using die space to add a lot more Cuda Cores, Nvidia is using it to satisfy their fetish with RTX.

1 minute ago, AlwaysFSX said:

Honestly, there's no reason for the lower end cards to support ray tracing right now, they shouldn't be paying an early adopters fee for it.

And neither should the people buying the 2070, 2080 or 2080Ti.

 

Nvidia should have just launched the RTX Quadros this year and made sure to put it in the hands of game devs to start using.

 

And then in a year or two release a complete series supporting Ray Tracing from budget to high end.

1 minute ago, AlwaysFSX said:

Also, the technology can't improve unless the first step is taken, guess what, it's not going to be quick. But it's amazing they've even got it in the first place. Just like 4k gaming was damn near impossible not too long ago, now almost anyone can play at that high of a resolution.

But 90-95% of gpu sales are around GTX 1050 and 1060 level. If the GTX 1060 could play 4K60 then I would say almost anybody could but the truth is even with a GTX 1080Ti (a $700 graphics card) some games struggle to run 4K60.

 

That to me is not almost anybody. To me that is the 1% who spent around 4x more on a GPU than what the average person spends on a gpu.

1 minute ago, MyName13 said:

Is this RTX ray tracing possible only on Nvidia's GPUs (because it's their technology) or would software made with ray tracing in mind work on AMD's GPUs too?

RTX specifically is an Nvidia Technology but AMD is working on software which will work on their existing GPUs to support Ray Tracing.

[AlTech]

8 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Not really surprising, we had basically confirmed this already iirc

It wasn't actually confirmed. There was 1 or 2 anynoymous sources which said this was going to be the case but that was it.

[laminutederire]

14 minutes ago, MyName13 said:

Is this RTX ray tracing possible only on Nvidia's GPUs (because it's their technology) or would software made with ray tracing in mind work on AMD's GPUs too?

Amd has already showcased some kind or raytraced technologies. Funny thing is that are more truthful about it as well. They present it for what it is: an hybrid renderer. So it's somewhat the same idea as Nvidia, so if it can't be done well on every current and hardware, they do have it in mind.

[Linus_torvalds]

You know what?

 

 

[Taf the Ghost]

Mainstream class GPU will have only slightly bigger die than the 1060, which is important given the volume of that part.

[AlwaysFSX]

11 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Nvidia is the one who chose to focus this generation on something nobody asked for.

 

Why should gamers be punished because of that?

 

The only thing that a large majority of gamers want is more performance. And instead of using die space to add a lot more Cuda Cores, Nvidia is using it to satisfy their fetish with RTX.

Hah

 

Nobody has asked for ray tracing? I dunno where you have been but that's been the goal of modern graphics since it was theorized. We might be able to do it, you need a point to start. Just because you want to whine about the advancement of technology doesn't mean what Nvidia is doing is bad.

 

You should also know as well as anyone else that just slapping a whole bunch more CUDA cores on a die doesn't automatically scale your performance. RTX cards are already said to have the normal performance increases generation over generation in current games. And yet you're still going to complain.

11 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

And neither should the people buying the 2070, 2080 or 2080Ti.

 

Nvidia should have just launched the RTX Quadros this year and made sure to put it in the hands of game devs to start using.

 

And then in a year or two release a complete series supporting Ray Tracing from budget to high end.

Oh yes, release games that are going to have a feature that nobody can use, brilliant marketing. You should work for them.

16 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

But 90-95% of gpu sales are around GTX 1050 and 1060 level. If the GTX 1060 could play 4K60 then I would say almost anybody could but the truth is even with a GTX 1080Ti (a $700 graphics card) some games struggle to run 4K60.

 

That to me is not almost anybody. To me that is the 1% who spent around 4x more on a GPU than what the average person spends on a gpu.

I know this might be SHOCKING news to you, but all those benchmarks you see where the tester cranks up the settings so you see a GTX 1060 is running at piddly frame rates at 4k, can be undone. You don't have to run everything maxed out to have an enjoyable visual experience. And you get more frames. Amazing, it's almost like PC gaming has settings for a reason. Whodathunkit?

 

Any other complaints? I don't feel like responding to paragraphs this early in the morning though.

[Trixanity]

I'd be surprised if it did have ray tracing. Who would want to run a slide show?

 

Haven't we just seen the 2080 Ti running 30 fps with it on? Granted it was at 4K but if I recall, without it, it ran 75 fps or something like that.

[schwellmo92]

I thought we already knew this for a while now?

[Blademaster91]

3 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Nvidia is the one who chose to focus this generation on something nobody asked for.

 

Why should gamers be punished because of that?

 

The only thing that a large majority of gamers want is more performance. And instead of using die space to add a lot more Cuda Cores, Nvidia is using it to satisfy their fetish with RTX.

But 90-95% of gpu sales are around GTX 1050 and 1060 level. If the GTX 1060 could play 4K60 then I would say almost anybody could but the truth is even with a GTX 1080Ti (a $700 graphics card) some games struggle to run 4K60.

RTX specifically is an Nvidia Technology but AMD is working on software which will work on their existing GPUs to support Ray Tracing.

Not sure what you're complaining about but RTX does deliver more performance, at the same time with much better graphics,it was a surprise to some gamers because its a ground breaking tech that does more than simply give you more fps, sure it is expensive now but so is anything new.

Neither Nvidia or AMD make profits at the low end, which is why AMD is choosing to remain pretty much dead in the water on consumer gpu's and focus on compute and console instead,yet still disappointing IMO after they made record profit thanks to mining. I'd like to see something somewhat competitive to RTX so at least Nvidia would have to bring prices down a bit.

If  "nobody" is asking for it then why are pre-orders so backed up for RTX and AMD is panicking to come up with a software version of ray tracing?

[Bouzoo]

On 9/8/2018 at 12:48 PM, AluminiumTech said:

Nvidia is the one who chose to focus this generation on something nobody asked for.

 

Why should gamers be punished 

At some point, I'm sure, no one asked for AA or AF, because when you turn it on BuT MuH fPS. Guess what. It is useful. I will defend NV that what they are doing is new groundbreaking tech and it should go wide. I won't defend their pricing and whole take on situation though.

[Morgan MLGman]

Did anyone even think otherwise?

You've seen the early tests of raytracing and how it works in Shadow of the Tomb Raider with a 2080Ti, and that's the highest-end GPU.

What's the point of putting fewer cores for raytracing on a smaller, slower GPU? It won't be able to handle any of it anyways so it's just a waste of money and it's more than logical.

Here's a more detailed explanation: https://www.techpowerup.com/247429/nvidias-20-series-could-be-segregated-via-lack-of-rtx-capabilities-in-lower-tier-cards

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Did anyone even think otherwise?

You've seen the early tests of raytracing and how it works in Shadow of the Tomb Raider with a 2080Ti, and that's the highest-end GPU.

What's the point of putting fewer cores for raytracing on a smaller, slower GPU? It won't be able to handle any of it anyways so it's just a waste of money and it's more than logical.

Here's a more detailed explanation: https://www.techpowerup.com/247429/nvidias-20-series-could-be-segregated-via-lack-of-rtx-capabilities-in-lower-tier-cards

That is one of the sources that I listed in the OP.

[Morgan MLGman]

Just now, AluminiumTech said:

That is one of the sources that I listed in the OP.

Exactly, I didn't notice that but that's precisely what I meant since raytracing is so demanding for current hardware that it needs a dedicated piece of it to run reasonably well...

If it's so demanding and even a 2080Ti has issues with it at 1080p, cutting down that hardware to fit lower-end chips is unreasonable and it would just be a waste of time, effort and money

[Arika]

3 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

If it's so demanding and even a 2080Ti has issues with it at 1080p, cutting down that hardware to fit lower-end chips is unreasonable and it would just be a waste of time, effort and money

and would be unusable if they did gimp it, and then people would be complaining about paying for ray-tracing when the card cant even utilize it right.

 

ray tracing on anything under the 2070 makes no sense, so NVidia chose the right option, but hey, NVidia are the devil right?

[Trik'Stari]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

But 90-95% of gpu sales are around GTX 1050 and 1060 level. If the GTX 1060 could play 4K60 then I would say almost anybody could but the truth is even with a GTX 1080Ti (a $700 graphics card) some games struggle to run 4K60.

I've had no issues with any games I've played with my 1080ti so far. Although I am overclocking on water cooling.

[Tech Enthusiast]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

This is just wrong on so many levels and I honestly just wanted more performance out of newer GPUs.

 

Some agree with you on that. Others don't.

What makes you entitled enough to demand NVidia to do exactly what you wanted, over what is best for the long term. Or /gasp,... something others like me wanted?

9/10 times you get what you want, this one time I got what I wanted. Deal with it.

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

This whole Ray Tracing performance is just a huge regression and step backwards in terms of performance.

2

Pure performance can be gained by setting everything to low quality. Would you want that? No? Well, I want better quality and RT does that.

Just looking at FPS is kinda silly, don't you think? If only FPS would matter, why have 4k in the first place? Why have shadows, details, lightning? 

Just remove all that and enjoy the pretty 3-4 digit fps on 240p resolution! RT is just an added method of gaining better quality. And the first major advance in a decade as well.

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Not only that but AMD's Ray Tracing technology that they are currently working on does not require dedicated Ray Tracing hardware.

 

Oh, Nvidia is doing that as well. You can bet on that. As a matter of fact though,... plenty of companies do that. And they have been doing that for at least 2 decades now. It did not work out as you may have noticed. So Nvidia is accelerating this with dedicated hardware. You know, a GPU is a graphical accelerator. If we can brute force RT in a few years, great! Right now, we can't. If you think AMD can magically do this, just when bad guy NVidia launched new GPUs, what others (including AMD, duh!) failed at for 25 years,... you may want to step back into reality.

 

If they manage it and surprise us, great! But don't get your hope up.

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

And it's becoming increasingly more likely that the next Console generation won't have Ray Tracing Hardware. Which just further puts pressure on developers to choose to support the small percentage buying GPUs above $200 or to just say no and keep using rasterization until all GPUs support Ray tracing in some way (be it hardware or software).

 

You mean, like supporting Linux or MacOS?

They do that as well. Also, RT is easier to implement than all the tricks they have to do in order to get semi okish result now.

That and Developers asked for RT for decades as well and it is now included in Unreal. It won't be long before it hits all engines.

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Nvidia is the one who chose to focus this generation on something nobody asked for.

 

*You did not ask for.

According to preorders, quite a few people would rather have better graphics over faster graphics.

There are plenty of options for FPS junkies. Including turning settings down. After all: You seem to not care about graphics, but only for FPS.

Those that enjoy pretty graphics will LOVE RT. And not everyone is interested in 4k either. 1440p looks pretty great with maxed out settings and possible RT in the near future.

 

What we got was an OPTION. Don't act like you can't buy a GPU now. You still can buy a 1080ti which would blow your current GPU away. Plenty of fps to be had right there.

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Why should gamers be punished because of that?

Why are gamers punished here?

Are you forced to turn on better graphics? You can set everything to low as much as you want! And you don't even have to buy a new GPU in order to enjoy 1.000fps that way!

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

RTX specifically is an Nvidia Technology but AMD is working on software which will work on their existing GPUs to support Ray Tracing.

Now that is just wishful thinking and basically a marketing stunt to diminish the damage.

If you really buy into AMD magically creating software that outdoes 60.000$ server hardware, with a 200$ card. Yeah uhm... how is that Vega patch coming along?

[AlTech]

1 hour ago, Tech Enthusiast said:

Some agree with you on that. Others don't.

What makes you entitled enough to demand NVidia to do exactly what you wanted, over what is best for the long term. Or /gasp,... something others like me wanted?

9/10 times you get what you want, this one time I got what I wanted. Deal with it.

Hostile and agressive much?

 

If i am a paying customer then Nvidia should be the one dealing with it and bending over backwards to give me what I want. Not the other way around.

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Pure performance can be gained by setting everything to low quality. Would you want that? No? Well, I want better quality and RT does that.

Just looking at FPS is kinda silly, don't you think? If only FPS would matter, why have 4k in the first place? Why have shadows, details, lightning? 

Just remove all that and enjoy the pretty 3-4 digit fps on 240p resolution! RT is just an added method of gaining better quality. And the first major advance in a decade as well.

What i wanted was substantially increased performance at the same resolution and graphics settings as the previous gen cards.

 

Ideally at some point within the next 5 years I'd like to see a $200 GPU which can handle 4K 60fps at High Settings. AMD is actually try to make something like that a reality with Navi whilst Nvidia is finding new ways of selling slighly nicer looking 1080p 60fps.

 

Nvidia's philosophy is to provide the best looking experience no matter the cost to framerate. AMD's approach is more towards great framerate with good looking visuals.

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Oh, Nvidia is doing that as well. You can bet on that. As a matter of fact though,... plenty of companies do that. And they have been doing that for at least 2 decades now. It did not work out as you may have noticed. So Nvidia is accelerating this with dedicated hardware. You know, a GPU is a graphical accelerator. If we can brute force RT in a few years, great! Right now, we can't. If you think AMD can magically do this, just when bad guy NVidia launched new GPUs, what others (including AMD, duh!) failed at for 25 years,... you may want to step back into reality.

 

If they manage it and surprise us, great! But don't get your hope up.

 

You mean, like supporting Linux or MacOS?

Respectfully, I think the RTX vs Rasterization is nothing like Windows vs macOS and Linux argument.

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They do that as well. Also, RT is easier to implement than all the tricks they have to do in order to get semi okish result now.

That and Developers asked for RT for decades as well and it is now included in Unreal. It won't be long before it hits all engines.

They can create a fake version of Ray Tracing using Rasterization and it looks great. See the new Spider Man game on PS4 Pro for how amazing looking fake Ray Tracing looks on an RX 470 class of graphics hardware.

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*You did not ask for.

According to preorders, quite a few people would rather have better graphics over faster graphics.

There are plenty of options for FPS junkies. Including turning settings down. After all: You seem to not care about graphics, but only for FPS.

I play at 1080p Ultra and High. I do care about Graphics but I want above 60fps and severely sacificing visuals to get 60fps is not what I want to do. 

 

The last time I had to severely compromise how a game looked to be even remotely playable was the day i decided I had enough of my Nvidia card.

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What we got was an OPTION. Don't act like you can't buy a GPU now. You still can buy a 1080ti which would blow your current GPU away. Plenty of fps to be had right there.

Yes but it's still out of reach for most people. If a 1080Ti cost $300 instead of $700 then I might be inclined to consider buying it and I would say that it's accessible. But at $500-700 USD I can't reasonably purchase a 1080Ti or even a 1080.

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Why are gamers punished here?

Because Nvidia made the choice to put Ray Tracing cores and Tensor Cores in their GPUs instead of substantially increasing cuda core count.

 

At the very least if they wanted to sell Ray Tracing then they should have imho sold the 2080Ti, 2080 and 2070 alongside Rasterization focussed 1170, 1180 and 1180Ti so that people who care about ray tracing could buy the RTX cards and people who want better performance could buy the GTX cards.

1 hour ago, VegetableStu said:

how about DLSS? o_o

Probably not since that requires Tensor Cores.

So basically 2060 and below would likely only get performance increase from more cuda cores and potentially higher clockspeeds.