Is RTX a COMPLETE Waste of Money??

[ivycomb]

With real-time raytracing availability almost being around for 3 years, people starting to actually ask if they should "future proof" for RTX. But can you tell if RTX is even on?

 

 

[dean_5234]

Well it would be a super relevant question if you could buy one

[pythonmegapixel]

That thumbnail makes zero sense - Linus's face is a bitmap from a digital camera, not a CG image being rendered by a GPU - so the use of ray tracing is irrelevant - unless Linus's face is being treated as a texture in a game, which would be very strange. But in any case ray tracing doesn't change facial expressions.

 

Yes, I know what it's meant to illustrate, but still, it's inaccurate, and what are web forums for if not gratuitous overanalysis?

[CommanderAlex]

I never play any games with RTX, as the performance penalty is too great and rasterization is fine in my eyes. 

[ivycomb]

1 minute ago, pythonmegapixel said:

That thumbnail makes zero sense - Linus's face is a bitmap from a digital camera, not a CG image being rendered by a GPU - so the use of ray tracing makes no sense - unless Linus's face is being treated as a texture in a game, which would be very strange. But in any case ray tracing doesn't change facial expressions.

We just turned ray tracing off in real life to take the right half of the photo 

[emosun]

Id say considering how incredibly small the percentage of people who use it is , yes it could be considered excess expense that a massive majority dont want or need.

[pythonmegapixel]

5 minutes ago, JBee said:

We just turned ray tracing off in real life to take the right half of the photo 

Well, if by "turn ray tracing off in real life" you mean make the lighting so wrong that there are barely any rays to trace in the first place, then..........

[emosun]

8 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Well, if by "turn ray tracing off in real life" you mean make the lighting so wrong that there are barely any rays to trace in the first place, then..........

 

[TVwazhere]

My brain read: "Is LTX a COMPLETE Waste of Money??"

 

And I don't know why

[Uttamattamakin]

RTX will only be a must have when it is filtered down to the lowest level cards or IGP/APU level graphics.  By then we'll be on some other new candy for the high end GPU's. 

[pythonmegapixel]

7 minutes ago, emosun said:

 

I refer you to something I previously posted:

25 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

what are web forums for if not gratuitous overanalysis?

 

[da na]

10 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

RTX will only be a must have when it is filtered down to the lowest level cards or IGP/APU level graphics.  By then we'll be on some other new candy for the high end GPU's. 

Yep, GTX 580 gang

[Egg-Roll]

Nice title swap from:

"Is RTX a COMPLETE Waste of Money"

to:

"DON'T Waste Your Money on RTX!!"

LTT has finally seen the light (), or at least till analytics states otherwise.

1 hour ago, TVwazhere said:

My brain read: "Is LTX a COMPLETE Waste of Money??"

 

Thanks now I can't unsee that

[RejZoR]

Main problem is that RTX or ray tracing is not an universal thing. If games used ALL the RTX features without exception, it would be easy to spot. Ray traced reflections, shadows and global illumination are dead giveaway. Another issue is selective application of ray tracing. As much as everyone is selling it as "it just does everything on its own", most of current implementations today are super selective and they seem to blend them with rasterized features, meaning if you don't know what features game uses, you can't even compare them properly, because you'll be looking at typical ray traced surface, thinking it should be ray traced but really isn't because developer decided not to ray trace it.

[Dusty The Lion Esq.]

The part that bugs me is Nvidia pushing 2060s and 3060s as ray-tracing devices when they really aren't capable of it.   Until mid-range graphics cards can give a compelling ray-tracing performance its going to struggle to be more then a marketing blurb.

[Neoquazar824]

2 hours ago, JBee said:

With real-time raytracing availability almost being around for 3 years, people starting to actually ask if they should "future proof" for RTX. But can you tell if RTX is even on?

 

 

well, in my humble opinion, yes. I honestly do not really care for looks *too too* much I just need those sweet frames. I will take a 6900xt over a 3090 any day.

[SolarNova]

My biggest concern with RTX is the affect it will have on Developers, especially those under heavy pressure from publishers.

 

RTX gives devs an excuse to get lazy with rasterization optimization and just lean on RTX. This will result in visually good looking games, since its RTX ..but at a significant performance cost vs what could be achieved with traditional rasterization.

With unoptimized games already being a relatively big problem in the game space due corner cutting and more so porting from consoles, and powerful hardware now being available to just 'power through' poorly optimized games, RTX will give yet another avenue for devs to 'drop the ball' in terms of performance and optimization.

 

I mean.. realistically in the last decade, have we really seen THAT much of an improvement in the average games visual fidelity ? . I'd argue no. BUT have we seen the required GPU power for these games increase... i'd argue yes most certainly. Why ? , imo its down to lack of optimization and leaning on powerful hardware to make up for it, and RTX has the opportunity to make this worse.

 

Add ontop of that, that both AMD and Nvidia are (imo 'obviously') sneakily increasing GPU MSRP for minimal 'relative' gains* ..its a real shitty time for PC gaming.

 

*I pointed this out with the 20 series at launch AND 30 series at launch, multiple times. Finally a big youtuber has pointed it out. See GamersNexus.

Spoiler

 

 

[dogwitch]

hell solar. i seen a regression on physic in games.

[Nena Trinity]

Screw RTX Nvidia think we are suckers.

[Quackers101]

Wish I could ray trace a Linus too, sad Linus Rossmann.

"We don't make mistakes, we create happy accidents."

[SorryBella]

59 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

RTX gives devs an excuse to get lazy with rasterization optimization and just lean on RTX.

Already happened in Control. Remedy heavily lean on RTX for their reflections its not even funny, the reflection on any shiny surfaces looks horrible with RTX off and the worst part is the fact that player basically got to see the difference the 1st second the gameplay starts as there's a lot of shiny ceramic floors and marble walls in Oldest House lobby. The performance tanks is horrible too, atleast with cards that need to use DXR Fallback Layer as i dont have an RTX cards at hand (or maybe till next 2-3 years)

[darwin006]

RTX might be the future but I dont care about it right now and I dont know that I ever will. Right now RTX just seems like a AAA game check box that Nvidia is pushing them to get.

 

I think most games look amazing today, AAA and Indy games. I dont think I have ever or will ever buy a game just because it looks good, game play is far more important.

 

I think the number of people that have bought a game because it has RTX is infinitesimally small and most of them are reviewers and dont think it will meaningfully increase in the next few years.

 

I think if Nvidia offered a 3080 with out RTX for $50 or $100 less even without the GPU shortage and mining craze atm it would be more popular then the RTX version.

[Alexeygridnev1993]

So, the bottom line is pretty much: ray tracing adds maybe 5-10% to the game visuals (to the extend the normal person cannot even always see it) at the expense of 70% performance drop and 200% cost increase. Worst. Deal. Ever.

[Blademaster91]

RTX is a nice feature, but not a main selling point or worth paying extra for in my opinion. And you can't even play an RTX game on a RTX 3080 without a performance drop unless you use DLSS, that doesn't seem like a good deal to me because that tradeoff isn't usually worth the decrease in image quality.

[Quackers101]

12 minutes ago, Alexeygridnev1993 said:

So, the bottom line is pretty much: ray tracing adds maybe 5-10% to the game visuals (to the extend the normal person cannot even always see it) at the expense of 70% performance drop and 200% cost increase. Worst. Deal. Ever.

Depends on the GPU you have, else it might be 20-70% difference, also in what way the also implement this too.

The worst part, there can be errors or more costly problems that will take a lot of performance or all of it, depending on how they tackle or treat it.

Although there can be systems later on, that detects and removes such issues. Like reflecting "endlessly" or more than they should, think wolfenstein had some tools and did some mangement of what needed to be raytraced or caused issues with raytracing. Some items could also be more costly to raytrace and look decent or as decent compared to other methods and wouldn't need to be raytraced. When on mix methods, but not sure how well that can be and all that.

 

Also what features they will be able to get with raytracing, like options and select what you want to raytrace?

Like certain games, and if this is good in CyberPunk?