Prediction: RTX Cards Are Barely Faster Than Pascal

[Majinhoju]

Yeah, the lack of benchmarks has me wondering what sort of boost they'll actually give over the 10 series.

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 hours ago, KarathKasun said:

MS has a game focused RT API.  RT is where things are going to be heading as far as lighting and effects.

 

We are moving back to specialized hardware for specific types of graphical effects.  Actually, this is what any person who pays attention to tech was expecting.  We cant make general purpose compute units any faster if transistors dont shrink, and specialized hardware is many times faster than GP hardware.

Though since this eats into the GP shader budget, I will rue the day when we have hardware that is amaze balls in then-current games, but performs worse than hardware now-generations old.

 

Hopefully they'll figure out how to leverage the specialized hardware for applications developed back then through some driver magic.

[ryao]

18 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

What do you mean, Raytracing itself?  Seems unlikely seeing as its part of DirectX rather than something nVidia came up with on their own.

 

Screen space reflections are REALLY jarring when you are moving the camera around and see all reflections on large bodies of water vanish, I can see why this is the area a focus as reflections/lighting can make the biggest difference to how a game feels.

Microsoft was likely forced to implement it after Nvidia told them that they were going ahead with shipping it. Nvidia has OptiX to backport ray tracing to OpenGL and Direct3D 10/11 and the VK_NV_raytracing vendor extension to bring ray tracing to Vulkan. Without adding it to Direct3D 12, the API would have lacked feature parity and developers might find OpenGL and Vulkan as compelling alternatives given that it should integrate more easily there from Microsoft not having the same level of control.

 

I am not a graphics developer though, so I could be misunderstanding something. OptiX might work with Direct3D 12. However, I could not find anything to suggest that it did and I am not going to go study the API documentation to figure it out. In any case, Microsoft wants people using their APIs and not someone else’s. It would be harder to lock people into their platform if developers were to start using cross platform APIs.

 

edit: I was missing something:

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OptiX#Ray_tracing_with_OptiX

 

OptiX is CUDA based and likely will not benefit from the new hardware’s raytracing acceleration unit. That would mean that unless Microsoft added support for ray tracing to Direct3D, the only way to use the new hardware properly would be through Vulkan. There is no way that Microsoft could allow such a thing.

[KarathKasun]

18 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Though since this eats into the GP shader budget, I will rue the day when we have hardware that is amaze balls in then-current games, but performs worse than hardware now-generations old.

 

Hopefully they'll figure out how to leverage the specialized hardware for applications developed back then through some driver magic.

Nah, your old games will be stuck in a time capsule of "never going to be any faster".

 

This happened back when we started seeing multicore CPU's as well.  Old single thread games still run like crap today.

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Nah, your old games will be stuck in a time capsule of "never going to be any faster".

 

This happened back when we started seeing multicore CPU's as well.  Old single thread games still run like crap today.

Well I mean, if we get say a 3080 with less than 2000 CUDA cores and the speed is more or less the same because more die space was given to RT cores or something, then theoretically the performance should be worse than the GeForce 10 series if running in pure CUDA core mode.

 

I'm assuming no other improvements.

[KarathKasun]

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Well I mean, if we get say a 3080 with less than 2000 CUDA cores and the speed is more or less the same because more die space was given to RT cores or something, then theoretically the performance should be worse than the GeForce 10 series if running in pure CUDA core mode.

 

I'm assuming no other improvements.

Its going to happen like that.  Like I said, look at what happened with CPU's... More cores = less clocks = older games will theoretically get to a point to where they run slower on modern hardware.

[Danoniero]

3 hours ago, xg32 said:

my minimum target for the 2080 ti is 4k/98fps with RT enabled, high settings; and 4k/120fps without RT on medium settings (oc'd 1080 ti does 90-100fps on most of AAA games), if RTX falls short of that, it's gonna be a very tough decision (no alternatives), not going sli.

Sorry to burst your bubble but there is already an hands on review from techradar, on of the guys played tomb raider on 2080TI 4k ultra details and recorded 54-57 FPS with rtx on...

 

Honestly look at those presentation again, especially tomb raider and you can literally notice fps drop with rtx. As of now it looks like another hairworks.

[Jrasero]

16 minutes ago, Danoniero said:

Sorry to burst your bubble but there is already an hands on review from techradar, on of the guys played tomb raider on 2080TI 4k ultra details and recorded 54-57 FPS with rtx on...

 

Honestly look at those presentation again, especially tomb raider and you can literally notice fps drop with rtx. As of now it looks like another hairworks.

I will not discount RTX and what it does improve since lighting does look more real but after looking at a HairWorks demo again man are you spot on.  Yeah HairWorks also looked great but you literally had to slow the game down to pay attention to someones head.  I am not sure we are going to stop playing a game to admire the reflections and lighting in a game like Nvidia featured.  With this being said yeah RTX should have been just a feature not a new moniker, $1200 is a ton of money but if it can go 30%+ better than a 1080 Ti in traditional benchmarks then maybe more some psychopaths like myself it can be somewhat justified.  

[MadPistol]

2 minutes ago, Jrasero said:

I will not discount RTX and what it does improve since lighting does look more real but after looking at a HairWorks demo again man are you spot on.  Yeah HairWorks also looked great but you literally had to slow the game down to pay attention to someones head.  I am not sure we are going to stop playing a game to admire the reflections and lighting in a game like Nvidia featured.  With this being said yeah RTX should have been just a feature not a new moniker, $1200 is a ton of money but if it can go 30%+ better than a 1080 Ti in traditional benchmarks then maybe more some psychopaths like myself it can be somewhat justified.  

If the 2080 Ti is 30% faster than a 1080 Ti across the board AND you can turn on RTX effects without a performance penalty, I will concede that the price is "reasonable" (albeit very expensive).

 

How much do you want to bet that turning on the RTX effects hurts performance quite a bit?

[KarathKasun]

2 minutes ago, Jrasero said:

I will not discount RTX and what it does improve since lighting does look more real but after looking at a HairWorks demo again man are you spot on.  Yeah HairWorks also looked great but you literally had to slow the game down to pay attention to someones head.  I am not sure we are going to stop playing a game to admire the reflections and lighting in a game like Nvidia featured.  With this being said yeah RTX should have been just a feature not a new moniker, $1200 is a ton of money but if it can go 30%+ better than a 1080 Ti in traditional benchmarks then maybe more some psychopaths like myself it can be somewhat justified.  

Lighting is really the last frontier in computer generated imaging.  We can already make more polygons than pixels in real time.

[Jrasero]

1 minute ago, MadPistol said:

If the 2080 Ti is 30% faster than a 1080 Ti across the board AND you can turn on RTX effects without a performance penalty, I will concede that the price is "reasonable" (albeit very expensive).

 

How much do you want to bet that turning on the RTX effects hurts performance quite a bit?

RTX on probably does negatively effect performance.  Yeah I guess I wonder, is RTX a thing you can turn on and off?  Was that mentioned.  I just figured it is something games are developed for so either your GPU can or can't handle it

[Dunzaus]

1 hour ago, Jrasero said:

RTX on probably does negatively effect performance.  Yeah I guess I wonder, is RTX a thing you can turn on and off?  Was that mentioned.  I just figured it is something games are developed for so either your GPU can or can't handle it

You will probably have an option to turn it on or off in the settings, like so many other things. If you turn it on and your card does not support I imagine that things will look weird, crash or just not work. All this is speculation, of course.

[Alex Atkin UK]

You will DEFINITELY be able to turn it off as new games still have to include lighting methods for none RTX card anyway, so it would be dumb to exclude the option.

 

I still say its not "another HairWorks" because honestly, hair moving a bit more realistically is meaningless compared to lighting and shadows looking more realistic.  As shown in the demos, being able to see what direction explosions are happening outside the viewport is going to be BIG for a lot of games.

 

Any game taking place at night time is going to absolutely stunning.

 

This is something that will affect game play, unlike HairWorks that was just a "nice to have".

[Zeitec]

23 hours ago, Max_Settings said:

 

I think you'll basically just move everything down a peg like we did when Kepler was refreshed with the 700 series.

2080ti = 20% faster than 1080ti

1080ti = 2080

1080 = 2070

1070 = 2060

[Zeitec]

23 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

You will DEFINITELY be able to turn it off as new games still have to include lighting methods for none RTX card anyway, so it would be dumb to exclude the option.

 

I still say its not "another HairWorks" because honestly, hair moving a bit more realistically is meaningless compared to lighting and shadows looking more realistic.  As shown in the demos, being able to see what direction explosions are happening outside the viewport is going to be BIG for a lot of games.

 

Any game taking place at night time is going to absolutely stunning.

 

This is something that will affect game play, unlike HairWorks that was just a "nice to have".

Yeah but if you turn off ray tracing then you're defeating the entire point of the new cards. The RTX 2080ti (let alone the much slower 2070) can't maintain 60fps at 1080p in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Even if they manage to use driver enhancements to bring it up to 60fps (which in and of itself would be a miracle) then there's no way the 2070 will be able to do it. So they're selling a feature that they can't really run just because it's better than other stuff at it.

[Zeitec]

7 hours ago, xg32 said:

my minimum target for the 2080 ti is 4k/98fps with RT enabled, high settings; 

Bad news, 2080ti can't even do 1080p 60fps with RT enabled in SOTR

[Alex Atkin UK]

3 minutes ago, Zeitec said:

Yeah but if you turn off ray tracing then you're defeating the entire point of the new cards. The RTX 2080ti (let alone the much slower 2070) can't maintain 60fps at 1080p in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Even if they manage to use driver enhancements to bring it up to 60fps (which in and of itself would be a miracle) then there's no way the 2070 will be able to do it. So they're selling a feature that they can't really run just because it's better than other stuff at it.

I guess it depends if the bottleneck is entirely within RTX or actually some other option that can be turned off to help.  Demonstrations are naturally going to want to crank everything to Ultra and probably not fully optimised yet either.

 

Also surely there will be RTX profiles that scale things back a bit to maintain frame rate?  Just an on/off would make the 2070 rather useless at higher than 720p I'd think.

[Princess Luna]

Am I the only one who's not impressed at all with Ray Tracing 'visual enhancements"? Pretty much if you don't care to it and leave it off on these few upcoming titles that will support it then there will be no real difference between Pascal and Turing.

[Zeitec]

24 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Am I the only one who's not impressed at all with Ray Tracing 'visual enhancements"? Pretty much if you don't care to it and leave it off on these few upcoming titles that will support it then there will be no real difference between Pascal and Turing.

I mean it looks really good in some cases, but most of the time it just looks pretty good. Like that Battlefield 5 demo was pretty impressive, and so was the lit room Metro demo. However the tomb raider one, and the Metro one from a while ago just looks meh. 

[Biggerboot]

31 minutes ago, Zeitec said:

I mean it looks really good in some cases, but most of the time it just looks pretty good. Like that Battlefield 5 demo was pretty impressive, and so was the lit room Metro demo. However the tomb raider one, and the Metro one from a while ago just looks meh. 

Which kinda re-affirms to me that only a hand full of devs out the gate are going to be using ray tracing, and using it well.

It could be seen as an investment if new APIs in the future really mature with the tech.  But at the end of the day, investing is gambling, and people gambled on Vulkan/DX12.

 

(Keep in mind this is from a gaming perspective only)

[TigerClaw]

RTX is new tech that hasn't been fully tested yet. I think we have to wait about a generation or 2 until they perfected it. You don't want to be an earlier adopter of new technology that hasn't been proven yet.

[Gazereths]

 

Wow £1340! That's 1700 dollars...insane.

[PrinnyExplodes]

No it will be better, but not a huge change.

 

All the gains was in the GDDR6. When it came to clock speeds and cuda they didn't change much. Instead they wasted all that valuable space on RTX and Tensor cores. 

 

Or just release the damn card without the RTX and tensor cores and price things the same as the last generation but with GDDR6.....raytracing is a gimmick 

[xg32]

1 hour ago, Princess Cadence said:

Am I the only one who's not impressed at all with Ray Tracing 'visual enhancements"? Pretty much if you don't care to it and leave it off on these few upcoming titles that will support it then there will be no real difference between Pascal and Turing.

Not impressed at all, just...darker shadows, have to see it in person though.

 

"Nvidia ShadowWorks"

[Princess Luna]

5 minutes ago, PrinnyExplodes said:

Or just release the damn card without the RTX and tensor cores and price things the same as the last generation but with GDDR6.....raytracing is a gimmick 

It'd have been funny to see a GTX 2080 Ti along with no tensor cores, no RT cores, just a hell bunch, like 6000 or more CUDA Cores indeed... probably would outsell RTX though making it useless and nVidia really wants to milk some money back from all the pointless investments they made on Ray Tracing technology.