so RTX - high end, pricey. no RTX - mid range, mass market. why would any developer want to spend resources on Ray tracing now that its clear that the mass market won't support it....?

HardwareCaps:

so RTX - high end, pricey. no RTX - mid range, mass market. why would any developer want to spend resources on Ray tracing now that its clear that the mass market won't support it....?

It's a transitional phase, I guess in the next one or two generation of cards, raytracing will be supported in a wider range of cards. Right now there's a limit to what can be done, but gotta start somewhere, right? Raytracing is a long term thing, kinda the end goal I guess.

ezodagrom:

It's a transitional phase, I guess in the next one or two generation of cards, raytracing will be supported in a wider range of cards. Right now there's a limit to what can be done, but gotta start somewhere, right?

maybe but don't forget that RTX is nvidia's exclusive implementation. so AMD GPUs, consoles and even the future intel GPUs will not support it. this is worse than Gameworks.

also this is ridiculous if true. the 1660 is basically a refreshed 1060 and 3GB variant in 2019

The RTX sales numbers have spoken and shareholders are not happy. Money is king. It will be interesting to see what Nvidia does with their lineup next gen. Will they abandon the RTX series, or will they still offer it when they've had some time to mature it further for better performance? Interesting times indeed.

Not only is raytracing going to be the future of everything, it is also the endgame -- true photorealism. As we've seen before with everything from 3D acceleration itself to tesselation to now raytracing, Nvidia is investing in something that we will all take for granted in the photoreal VR/AR of tomorrow. It may not be worth buying this for gamers today. But it sure as hell will be in the coming years. That I can guarantee you. 🙂

People: We think that the way in which Nvidia names their cards ti, 3/6GB VRAM and generation jump from 10- series to 20- series is confusing. Nvidia: hold my beer.

Cards are coming in february 15 or so i heard.

HardwareCaps:

also this is ridiculous if true. the 1660 is basically a refreshed 1060 and 3GB variant in 2019

Yeah, 3GB sounds stupid and as we know mr. Hilbert won't review anymore 3GB gfx cards variants 😀

If those specs are correct then the plain 1660 is going to be quite interesting in that it'll highlight the generational difference between Pascal and Turing, as it's running the exact same core/memory configuration as the 1060.

Whatever it is that the RTX GPUs actually do--I believe it to be a huge stretch to call it "ray tracing." It's sort of sad, but I read yesterday over on the Steam SOTTR forums several posts wondering when they were going to get the "ray-tracing patch"--and the sad thing is that many of these people believe it will dramatically change the entire look of every frame rendered...some of them say that the game sans the "RTX patch" looks like dog dung (sheesh!)! What visual changes, pray tell, do they imagine?...Makes you wonder... Oh, boy...what a disappointment they have coming! According to the CD info on that very subject, the only thing they are planning for the game is a shadows option for the RTX tensor cores (as I understand what they are doing) --wait--the option is "Screen space contact shadows," I believe. I'll be surprised if a difference is visually noticeable--and also be curious to see how much of a frame-rate penalty it imposes. AMD is wise beyond words not to market a GPU feature for which AMD itself is incapable of supplying a *real-time* demo of that feature actually working... ! (Not a compiled 2d video clip of how it *might look* should game developers figure out how to make it work one day in the distant future...! Aiyeee!) "It just works"...? Uh, no!...;) *cough* EDIT: Hard to say what is really going on with respect to that option. I turned it on for a SOTTR bench run--to High--and my average (@ 3840x2160) fps is 58; turned off the average is 62 fps. But visually I can see no difference.

spajdrik:

Yeah, 3GB sounds stupid and as we know mr. Hilbert won't review anymore 3GB gfx cards variants 😀

I hope not. No one should review, recommend or buy a 3gb card in 2019.

HardwareCaps:

maybe but don't forget that RTX is nvidia's exclusive implementation.

RTX is NVIDIA, but DirectX Raytracing (DXR) is a standardized API that any vendor can implement on top of DX12 - and that is what games leverage.

nevcairiel:

RTX is NVIDIA, but DirectX Raytracing (DXR) is a standardized API that any vendor can implement on top of DX12 - and that is what games leverage.

That's right. DXR... that DXR that AMD said they won't support in the near future? that DXR that is only avaliable on windows 10 and DX 12? it's not enough to push developers to actually adopt RTX, now ofc Nvidia will force "nicely" some developers to use RTX in exchange for ads, bundles and collaborations but it won't make RTX wide spread. look at BF1, Dice had to optimize it for weeks just to make sure you don't lose 50% of your performance, that's insane. SOTR cancelled support for RTX after showing big performance losses. I think BF1 is best case scenario for RTX. EA is a big and rich company. they use physical based rendering which works great with Ray tracing.

HardwareCaps:

so RTX - high end, pricey. no RTX - mid range, mass market. why would any developer want to spend resources on Ray tracing now that its clear that the mass market won't support it....?

....it's the first iteration Your comment makes no sense That's like saying how tessellation could not be done even remotely well on anything but high end when originally released, that somehow made it so it never caught on...oh wait it's in basically all games now.

HardwareCaps:

the 1660 is basically a refreshed 1060

Not sure you understand the definition of "refresh"

well if nvidia can release a 1180ti, i would be a buyer, would be a nice upgrade for my 1080ti, because i aint payinng 1700 $ cnd for a 2080ti and rtx i cant use

HardwareCaps:

also this is ridiculous if true. the 1660 is basically a refreshed 1060 and 3GB variant in 2019

Yes....a refreshed GTX1060 on a new uarch.....lol

HardwareCaps:

That's right. DXR... that DXR that AMD said they won't support in the near future? that DXR that is only avaliable on windows 10 and DX 12?

They won't because their hardware is just not up for that. NVIDIA worked on this for years, getting it anywhere close to usable performance, anyone that expected the competition to come out with a response within a few months is a bit misguided. The big engines are going to implement it though, and once they have, more games will more readily be able to use it. Add to that another generation of hardware improvements in the next year, on 7nm to boot, and it'll suddenly become much more mainstream. Thats always how new graphics features start. They start slow in the high-end with lousy performance, then one or two generations in the future, its fast and everywhere. Ray Tracing is the biggest change in consumer real-time rendering since programmable shaders, and people were quite concerned about those at first as well. Now, its the only truth we know.

HardwareCaps:

so RTX - high end, pricey. no RTX - mid range, mass market. why would any developer want to spend resources on Ray tracing now that its clear that the mass market won't support it....?

So, they can show better in-game trailers to catch more people? Same thing as implementing Ultra-Details which do cost you 50% of performance at minimal visual gain. But there are games where those fps costly features look really good in comparison to lower details. (Like BDO.)

1660 Ti launching Feb 15 @ $279 and 1660 in early March @ $229 according to [H]. https://www.hardocp.com/news/2019/01/23/nvidia_1660_ti_will_launch_on_february_15_at_279/