How important is RTX

[Loabzz]

I am trying to figure out if I should choose an RTX Graphics Card or not

[vanished]

That's something only you can answer for yourself.  Do you play the games that support it, and/or believe future games that you want will support it?  Do you find the visual change vs traditional graphics to be worth the cost in money and framerate?

[Slottr]

Do reflections and light calculations with a significant drop in fps wow you?

[MartinKweh]

im waiting for a proper implementation of raytacing on PC that doesn't kill FPS that much..

 

if the next gen Nvidia, AMD or even the Intel GPU makes a  Raytracing GPU that works well, ill spend $500 on that

[emosun]

rtx isn't very important currently with the number of programs supporting it being extremely low

[Slayer3032]

You should choose whichever graphics card provides you the best performance in the games that you want to play at the price point you are looking to spend. If the RTX card does that for you, then yes you should buy it.

[Fasauceome]

U could just look in a mirror for like, free.

 

Boom, realistic reflections

[Drak3]

Currently, it’s a feature that is mostly attractive to tech enthusiasts. It’s a fairly hefty performance penalty right now, but that should change in a generation or two of GPUs.

[Hugh54321]

 Let a filthy rich person invest in the latest technology, save your money for when it matures.

[xAcid9]

I say wait for 2nd or 3rd gen unless you looking for 2080 Ti tier performance right now.

[hollyh88]

On 11/22/2019 at 2:20 AM, Loabzz said:

I am trying to figure out if I should choose an RTX Graphics Card or not

now? not so much. within a year? very big. cyberpunk 2077, dying light 2 come around february/march and will support rtx. and with the new consoles also supporting it. it will come with even more games. and it will soon be widely adapted. 
since its pretty much the next step in graphically upgrading games. 

i would say though. for now. even my 2070 super has no issue doing raytracing at 1440p high settings. like in metro exodus. still getting around 70-90 fps. 
so if you want to get an rtx gpu and you have around a 1070ti or below get the 2070 super. nothing more nothing less its a good middle ground that doesnt cost much and still performs extremely well. i do say though. have at least a 2700x or equivallent since my 2600x doesnt keep up in some games even at 1440p. so make sure you pair it with a good cpu. any ryzen 3000 will be fine tho like 3600/x or 3700x.

[jones177]

I view ray tracing the same as ENB, Reshde and HDR. They are fluff. Not needed but nice to look at.

 

As long as you can see what it looks like to know what people are talking about there is no need to play with it on.  

Consider it a feature for screenshots. 

 

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

The primary feature of RTX, hardware accelerated ray tracing, is still in its infancy. Developers are still figuring out the best practices for it so that there's a compromise between the quality it brings and the performance hit. And like most other graphics features, it may be not be used as realistic lighting isn't the main issue. However, considering that both Sony and Microsoft have seemed to put some emphasis on ray tracing as a feature of their new consoles, I'd imagine it'll be used more in the future.

 

Also spoiler because side rant:

Spoiler

I've heard some people go "but AMD is proving that NVIDIA is BSing us about needing its RTX hardware for ray tracing." I'll just go over why this is a misinformed statement:

• Ray tracing never required specialized hardware to do it. Intel's Larabee was doing it without specialized hardware. NVIDIA had a tech demo named Design Garage for the GeForce 400 series and that card didn't have specialized hardware. Also ray tracing has been used in lighter variants for effects like screen space reflections
• What NVIDIA is offering is hardware accelerated ray tracing. You can get away with doing the same operations at a good enough speed if you have a powerful enough generic processor to do it. But, assuming it's kept up to date, hardware acceleration will always beat out pure software-based implementations which is how ray tracing is done without RT cores.
• I've heard once next gen consoles come out, everyone will just use AMD's method for ray tracing, whatever that is. As far as I can tell, the most common way of ray tracing is traversing what's called a bounding volume hierarchy or BVH. This is what performs the ray intersection step which is basically the meat and potatoes of ray tracing. This idea has been around for a long time (here's a paper on it whose original version was from 2006), so unless AMD has found an even better way to do it,  I doubt there's an "AMD way" of doing it. The only "AMD way" of doing it would likely come from the API, which Microsoft already has a standardized version of "how to do it"
• On a side note, NVIDIA wasn't the first one to offer hardware accelerated ray tracing on a GPU. Imagination was trying to push this years ago: https://www.imgtec.com/blog/powervr-gr6500-ray-tracing/

On another note, there also seems to be a misunderstanding of what ray tracing does. A lot of people think it's only about realistic reflections (I of which used to think this). It's not. It's about figuring out how light behaves in general. This includes other optical phenomena like refractions, shadowing, and indirect lighting to name a few things. While all of this can be done using traditional shading, they're also very expensive to do if you try to push the quality on them. This is why, for example, shadows in games tend to look like garbage when either the object gets too large or you get too close. They're rendered at a fixed resolution regardless of the output resolution.

 

[hollyh88]

3 hours ago, jones177 said:

I view ray tracing the same as ENB, Reshde and HDR. They are fluff. Not needed but nice to look at.

 

As long as you can see what it looks like to know what people are talking about there is no need to play with it on.  

Consider it a feature for screenshots. 

 

 

 

once you see what rtx global illumination can do in metro exodus you kinda want all games to have it. especially the spring mission with the bridge as you go in the hanger to get that one traincard. turning it off and on inside there really shows the difference in graphical quality. It just looks so damm realistic with it on. 

[jones177]

7 hours ago, hollyh88 said:

once you see what rtx global illumination can do in metro exodus you kinda want all games to have it. especially the spring mission with the bridge as you go in the hanger to get that one traincard. turning it off and on inside there really shows the difference in graphical quality. It just looks so damm realistic with it on. 

I have seen it.

I have played Metro Exodus with ray tracing.  You don't need it on to enjoy the game. 

 

I think the game Control is a better sample since it does not look good at all without ray tracing but with is some parts are stunning.

[hollyh88]

9 hours ago, jones177 said:

I have seen it.

I have played Metro Exodus with ray tracing.  You don't need it on to enjoy the game. 

 

I think the game Control is a better sample since it does not look good at all without ray tracing but with is some parts are stunning.

you dont need it on no. but it looks dammm fine with it on. really makes it more realistic. i really hope that dying light 2 will also have global illumination. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 hours ago, hollyh88 said:

you dont need it on no. but it looks dammm fine with it on. really makes it more realistic. i really hope that dying light 2 will also have global illumination. 

I think this is the biggest reason why we need realistic global illumination:

 

 

It bugs the snot out of me that the light hitting the ground isn't occluded correctly.

[hollyh88]

1 hour ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

I think this is the biggest reason why we need realistic global illumination:

 

 

It bugs the snot out of me that the light hitting the ground isn't occluded correctly.

same. if you have an eye for detail you can get annoyed quickly. Dying light is an amazing game but the lighting bugs me. i reaaaly hope dying light 2 will have global illumination ray tracing. I asked the devs directly fyi. they (techland  ofc) said this : " Hey, it's hard to answer this question  at this point, we're currently experimenting with new technologies. " i asked whether they could keep me updated. they said that they could do that.  

[Midnitewolf]

If your not considering a 2080 ti, then don't concern yourself about RTX and ray tracing because that is the only current gen graphic card that reach 60+ fps with ray tracing on at the higher graphics settings in the AAA titles that support ray tracing.  Even there performance is borderline because a 9900k at 5.0 ghz with a 2080 ti can't keep Metro Exodus above 60 fps on extreme settings in 4k.  Even at 1080p it seems you can see FPS drop into the low 60s on Extreme settings and you have to consider that games are just going to get more demanding.

 

Also I honestly can't see much difference in the side by side comparison videos I have seen most of the time and where I could see a difference, generally speaking I have felt the picture was much clearer with ray tracing off but of course this is a matter of opinion.

 

So honestly, right now anyway, I wouldn't let ray tracing sway you though it is possible with the next generation cards that should be coming out relatively soon, if your willing to spring for the flagship card, there might be enough of a performance gain to make ray tracing worth is. 

[hollyh88]

1 hour ago, Midnitewolf said:

If your not considering a 2080 ti, then don't concern yourself about RTX and ray tracing because that is the only current gen graphic card that reach 60+ fps with ray tracing on at the higher graphics settings in the AAA titles that support ray tracing.  Even there performance is borderline because a 9900k at 5.0 ghz with a 2080 ti can't keep Metro Exodus above 60 fps on extreme settings in 4k.  Even at 1080p it seems you can see FPS drop into the low 60s on Extreme settings and you have to consider that games are just going to get more demanding.

 

Also I honestly can't see much difference in the side by side comparison videos I have seen most of the time and where I could see a difference, generally speaking I have felt the picture was much clearer with ray tracing off but of course this is a matter of opinion.

 

So honestly, right now anyway, I wouldn't let ray tracing sway you though it is possible with the next generation cards that should be coming out relatively soon, if your willing to spring for the flagship card, there might be enough of a performance gain to make ray tracing worth is. 

eh i had around 75 fps average on my current setup with rtx on and settings to high at 1440p. so you dont need a 2080ti (metro games have always been extremely demanding). You dont see the differences so much until you see it ingame yourself. 

[MartinKweh]

have anyone seen the crytek noir ray tracing? my 580 can handle it for 60fps on ultra raytracing (at 900p lol) I think if this is implemented, i think everyone can enjoy ray tracing without the extremely expensive hardware. 

[xAcid9]

5 hours ago, Martin2132 said:

have anyone seen the crytek noir ray tracing? my 580 can handle it for 60fps on ultra raytracing (at 900p lol) I think if this is implemented, i think everyone can enjoy ray tracing without the extremely expensive hardware. 

I need a full game that use Crytek rt technology to judge how it really perform. 

[Eigenvektor]

13 hours ago, Martin2132 said:

have anyone seen the crytek noir ray tracing? my 580 can handle it for 60fps on ultra raytracing (at 900p lol) I think if this is implemented, i think everyone can enjoy ray tracing without the extremely expensive hardware. 

It's not full ray tracing though. They're basically just doing reflections. If you look closely, they seem to have zero dynamic shadows or other lighting effect anywhere in the scene.

Ray tracing can do a lot more than just reflections. If you add global illumination/photon mapping/caustics stuff will get even more "expensive" in terms of hardware requirements. Ray tracing has never been about speed, it's always been about quality. I've never understood why they chose fast paced action games for their initial implementation.

 

As @xAcid9 said, we'd have to see a full blown game to compare. Ideally we'd get a game that can utilize both, this technology and DXR/RTX so we can compare hardware requirements and visual quality in the same engine.

[Midnitewolf]

16 hours ago, hollyh88 said:

eh i had around 75 fps average on my current setup with rtx on and settings to high at 1440p. so you dont need a 2080ti (metro games have always been extremely demanding). You dont see the differences so much until you see it ingame yourself. 

I use Metro Exodus as the benchmark because it is the only really demanding game on the market right now.  The key words are "Right Now".  If past history is anything to go by, many games, 12-24 months out that use ray tracing, will be as or even more demanding than Metro Exodus.  This is why I say you need a 2080 Ti because it is the only RTX card that has the performance to run Metro Exodus with its highest setting and ray tracing on. 

 

I guess my point is if you buy RTX 2070 Super just for the ray tracing capability, the likelihood is, your going to have to either drop the settings considerable or turn off ray tracing on AAA titles 18 months down the road anyway. That being the case, unless you plan on replacing the card in that time span, there is no real point to ray tracing capability being a deciding factor in your purchasing decisions.  You would be just as well off saving money with a 5700XT.  However, this changes at the 2080 ti level because it is powerful enough to run full ray tracing currently on the most demanding game so it is likely to be able to give you an adequate ray tracing experience for the foreseeable future at least up to 1440p.  This is why I say, don't bother with RTX unless you are willing to purchase a RTX 2080 ti.

[SolarNova]

On 11/22/2019 at 1:20 AM, Loabzz said:

I am trying to figure out if I should choose an RTX Graphics Card or not

The performance deficit of running RTX in most games isnt worth it imo.

 

Perhaps next gen or the following gen of cards will better handle RTX, as it stand though.... not worth it.