Now in 2020, has RT become very worthwhile to you?

[SteveGrabowski0]

I was looking at maybe getting a 2070 Super but ouch, to get those great reflections in Control on RTX High it sounds like I'd be looking at doing DLSS from 720p to get a consistent 1080p60. Are there any games besides Control where you guys feel RTX adds a lot to? Because ouch, $500 with RTX on to get GTX 1660 Super level performance kind of stings. Though at least DLSS seems to look pretty good in this game, unlike how it looked in Battlefield V a few months back.

[Stu_Bear]

RT is a gimmick IMHO.  If your head is in the game...you will never notice any amount of RT.  If you are noticing RT in the game...the game must be a dud because you find staring at the RT more fun than focusing on the game itself...ymmv.  I'd still buy a 2070 Super for it's rasterization power if I had money to blow...though a used 1080 Ti would do a better, non-RT, job me thinks.  

[BarackOBatman]

17 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

I was looking at maybe getting a 2070 Super but ouch, to get those great reflections in Control on RTX High it sounds like I'd be looking at doing DLSS from 720p to get a consistent 1080p60. Are there any games besides Control where you guys feel RTX adds a lot to? Because ouch, $500 with RTX on to get GTX 1660 Super level performance kind of stings. Though at least DLSS seems to look pretty good in this game, unlike how it looked in Battlefield V a few months back.

I bought an RTX 2080 ti on launch day. (coming from GTX 1080)

I'm not very competitive nowadays and I'm really more of an eye candy kind of guy. I played BFV at max RTX for a while. I thought the ray tracing was neat, but not really worth the extra cost. I dont own any other RTX games.

Control looks sweet though and is supposedly a really cool implementation. I just might have to buy it and see for myself. I can't really give an opinion on RT much past this since I only have experience with BFV.

[Mister Woof]

It's probably one of those things you'd think was cool for a little while but eventually miss the performance with it turned off, and never turn it on again for actual use.

[Mira Yurizaki]

I'm still building a library of the games that have it, but so far I have:

• Battlefield V, which I did spend a lot of time ogling at the reflections whenever I could
• Quake II RTX, probably the one I've played around with the most
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider, haven't touched it yet

I'll probably pick up Metro Exodus once it loses its ESG exclusivity and Control at some point. If anything though, it's not really the RT that tickles me more than annoyance I get from lighting artifacts that pure raster rendering still produces on top of the limitations of screen-space reflections.

 

However, I also believe that the ray tracing part of Turing is overshadowed by its other, potentially powerful features like:

• The INT and FP core split
• Variable rate shading (which I think combined with image sharpening, which is basically a free filter, would really be a game changer)
• Mesh shaders

And from 3DMark's DLSS test, I think DLSS does greatly enhance the RT, because it smooths out the noise even more.

 

Honestly though, everything that Turing introduced likely won't be mainstream until another two or three generations. It took that long for DX9 to be finally dropped after DX10 was a thing and I'd say about that long before DX10 support was finally dropped in favor of DX11 only. Which, as a broken record, DX10 and DX11 also had performance hurting features, with DX10 being as bad as DXR in a lot of cases (and worse yet, not a whole lot of obvious image quality improvements)

 

EDIT:
Something to add, it's possible to get RTX features, maximum quality settings (except maximum texture quality due to VRAM capacity), at 1440p, and achieve 60FPS on average on a 2060 Super:

 

[Princess Luna]

I own a 2080 Ti and I still haven't used Ray Tracing in any game

[NumLock21]

Most of today's triple A titles look so good to being with, it's really difficult to tell if RT is actually there or not, unless you're trying to look really hard, just to spot the difference. Does that mean to avoid current cards with RT, not at all. It all depends your current card and are you satisfied with the performance you're getting. Get the card you think it's best for you. Do not get persuaded by what everyone else is saying, because at the very end, it's you who is going to use that PC not someone else.

 

 

[SteveGrabowski0]

3 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

Most of today's triple A titles look so good to being with, it's really difficult to tell if RT is actually there or not, unless you're trying to look really hard, just to spot the difference. Does that mean to avoid current cards with RT, not at all. It all depends your current card and are you satisfied with the performance you're getting. Get the card you think it's best for you. Do not get persuaded by what everyone else is saying, because at the very end, it's you who is going to use that PC not someone else.

 

 

My current card is a GeForce 8400GS.  

 

 

[NumLock21]

2 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

My current card is a GeForce 8400GS.  

EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0

[SteveGrabowski0]

Just now, NumLock21 said:

EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0

Died a few months back

[SteveGrabowski0]

That 970 was a great card though, stayed relevant way longer than I could have hoped for when I bought it in 2014.

[SteveGrabowski0]

So basically RTX is still a bust a year and a half later. Guess I probably need to wait for the official PS5 reveal to see how much of a role it will play in console's first year, to see if it drives its use for anything worthwhile on PC.

[Mira Yurizaki]

11 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

So basically RTX is still a bust a year and a half later. Guess I probably need to wait for the official PS5 reveal to see how much of a role it will play in console's first year, to see if it drives its use for anything worthwhile on PC.

It's hard to tell when we're still on the first generation of hardware.

 

I'm going to keep telling people to look at past versions of DirectX, what they brought, what impact they had on first generation hardware, and how long it took for them to get up to speed. Almost everything had issues similar to what we're seeing with DXR when you tried to take advantage of the new fangled feature(s) on first generation hardware. It wasn't until the second or third generation of hardware before things settled down.

 

It also doesn't even have to be an API or new feature of the API. Ambient occlusion was receiving similar flak for a few years after it made its debut and now everyone says to turn it on because it's not that expensive to do so and it provides more depth to the image quality: https://linustechtips.com/main/profile/359972-mira-yurizaki/?status=215654&type=status

 

Maybe in another 5 or so years we can revisit this and see where it's at.

[SteveGrabowski0]

13 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

It's hard to tell when we're still on the first generation of hardware.

 

I'm going to keep telling people to look at past versions of DirectX, what they brought, what impact they had on first generation hardware, and how long it took for them to get up to speed. Almost everything had issues similar to what we're seeing with DXR when you tried to take advantage of the new fangled feature(s) on first generation hardware. It wasn't until the second or third generation of hardware before things settled down.

 

It also doesn't even have to be an API or new feature of the API. Ambient occlusion was receiving similar flak for a few years after it made its debut and now everyone says to turn it on because it's not that expensive to do so and it provides more depth to the image quality: https://linustechtips.com/main/profile/359972-mira-yurizaki/?status=215654&type=status

 

Maybe in another 5 or so years we can revisit this and see where it's at.

I phrased that wrong. I mean RTX being a bust for the kind of hardware and games we have right now, at least in the $500 price range.  I don't think there is anyone who isn't excited about what it can eventually do for games when you can use laws of optics instead of hacks that fake it to light scenes.