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NVIDIA's Ray Tracing Tech Will Soon Run On Older GTX Cards (engadget.com)

NVIDIA's older GeForce GTX 10-series cards will be getting the company's new ray-tracing tech in April. The technology, which is currently only available on its new RTX cards, "will work on GPUs from the 1060 and up, albeit with some serious caveats," reports Engadget. "Some games like Battlefield V will run just fine and deliver better visuals, but other games, like the freshly released Metro Exodus, will run at just 18 fps at 1440p -- obviously an unplayable frame-rate." From the report: What games you'll be able to play with ray-tracing tech (also known as DXR) on NVIDIA GTX cards depends entirely on how it's implemented. In Battlefield V, for instance, the tech is only used for things like reflections. On top of that, you can dial down the strength of the effect so that it consumes less computing horsepower. Metro Exodus, on the other hand, uses ray tracing to create highly realistic "global illumination" effects, simulating lighting from the real world. It's the first game that really showed the potential of RTX cards and actually generated some excitement about the tech. However, because it's so computationally intensive, GTX cards (which don't have the RTX tensor cores) will be effectively be too slow to run it.

NVIDIA explained that when it was first developing the next gen RTX tech, it found chips using Pascal tech would be "monster" sized and consume up to 650 watts. That's because the older cards lack both the integer cores and tensor cores found on the RTX cards. They get particularly stuck on ray-tracing, running about four times slower than the RTX cards on Metro Exodus. Since Metro Exodus is so heavily ray-traced, the RTX cards run it three times quicker than older GTX 10-series cards. However, that falls to two times for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and 1.6 times for Battlefield V, because both of those games use ray tracing less. The latest GTX 1660 and 1660 Ti GPUs, which don't have RT but do have integer cores, will run ray-traced games moderately better than last-gen 10-series GPUs.
NVIDIA also announced that Unity and Unreal Engine now support ray-tracing, allowing developers to implement the tech into their games. Developers can use NVIDIA's new set of tools called GameWorks RTX to achieve this.

"It includes the RTX Denoiser SDK that enables real-time ray-tracing through techniques that reduce the required ray count and number of samples per pixel," adds Engadget. "It will support ray-traced effects like area light shadows, glossy reflections, ambient occlusion and diffuse global illumination (the latter is used in Metro Exodus). Suffice to say, all of those things will make game look a lot prettier."

98 comments

  1. LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    What kind of admission is this!?

  2. I remember them doing this with phsyx by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Interesting

    for my old GTX 240. It sucks. Some games wouldn't let you turn it off, and since there was no hardware acceleration it all ran on my CPU. I was running a GTX 240, you can bet my CPU couldn't do physx.

    By all accounts Ray Tracing already cuts framerates in half. I can't imagine a world where this works.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:I remember them doing this with phsyx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gt_240_us.html

      Experience ultra-realistic in game effects in games like Batman: Arkham Asylum at speeds 2x faster than the competition with NVIDIA® PhysX® technology!

    2. Re:I remember them doing this with phsyx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd like to see a /. poll on who uses these high end cards. With NO bullshit.

    3. Re:I remember them doing this with phsyx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A poll without bullshit... on slashdot? Lol. I mean you'd have a better chance of slathering butter on a 12 inch donger with "Vladimir Putin" written on it in lipstick and not getting 20 Conservatives fighting to lick it clean. Not happening in 2019.

    4. Re: I remember them doing this with phsyx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

      If you mean RTX cards - almost noone. If you mean GTX 1060+ - about 25% of steam users, which probably applies outside of steam for gamers.

    5. Re:I remember them doing this with phsyx by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      By all accounts Ray Tracing already cuts framerates in half. I can't imagine a world where this works.

      Imagine a world where what works, raytracing on an old GPU? Some of us have 1080 Tis and 60Hz 1080p panels. If a modern game cut ray tracing in half we'd go from a hard 60fps to a hard 60fps. But you're right for the majority of gamers this won't work.

      However I'm hopeful for some kind of granularity. So far there are two games on the market with raytracing enabled. One game has gone through an optimisation process where the visual quality not only improved but the frame rates increased by about 30-40% (Battlefield V). Secretly I'm hopeful Metro Exodus (which is already a drop dead gorgeous game) can be optimised so there's no 4x fps hit.

      As it stands I'd happily play it with a 2x fps hit raytraced, but I'm not running a 1060.

    6. Re:I remember them doing this with phsyx by mrfaithful · · Score: 1

      I bought that card specifically to try out PhysX code as it was the cheapest way to see what the "real" version was. Sure, maybe it was 2x faster... over running it in software. You weren't getting a playable experience with PhysX dialed up and the graphics set to reasonable.

    7. Re:I remember them doing this with phsyx by jellomizer · · Score: 2

      Not all games need to be fast pace twitch action games. Some games can focus more on graphics detail, vs high frame rates. Also for the cut-scenes, They can be custom rendered in semi-real time, to give a cut scene customizable to the action at hand. having your character in the right spot. That item you had destroyed will show its current state.

      Also to a point, just because you don't want to upgrade, why should game designers try to stick so far behind that waiting for that one guy to upgrade.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    8. Re:I remember them doing this with phsyx by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      I have a 1070 on my laptop, Which I use for 4k gaming. I also use these high end cards, because they are great at massive parallel processing.
      It brings me back to my college days 20 years ago, where I took a course on Parallel processing and got to use a MassPar computer with 1024 processors setup in a SIMD 32x32 grid layout. Of course now my laptop has all that power on a chip in the laptop, that only has the downside of needing to be plugged in while in use.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    9. Re:I remember them doing this with phsyx by supremebob · · Score: 0

      So, in other words, not enough people upgraded to the new RTX series video cards yet so they need to cripple the existing GTX series cards with a driver "update" that forces real time ray tracing down everyone's throats whether or not their card can support it.

      I guess that's one way to make sure that they hit their 2019 earnings estimates. Bastards. Damn, I can't wait until Intel releases their own graphics cards and gives these guys some real product competition.

    10. Re:I remember them doing this with phsyx by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      So, in other words, not enough people upgraded to the new RTX series video cards yet so they need to cripple the existing GTX series cards with a driver "update" that forces real time ray tracing down everyone's throats whether or not their card can support it.

      Don't be daft, you can't enable ray tracing through a driver update. There is a long and complicated process getting games to support it and 100% of both games that support it offer it to be disabled due to crippling the performance of the games.

      Calm down, drink a beer, and realise that for the long history of people accusing NVIDIA and AMD of crippling older cards through driver updates it has been proven completely false time and time again.

    11. Re:I remember them doing this with phsyx by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      GTX 650 here.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    12. Re:I remember them doing this with phsyx by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      for my old GTX 240. It sucks. Some games wouldn't let you turn it off,

      You should have just not installed it, then. PhysX is optional.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    13. Re:I remember them doing this with phsyx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can't imagine a world where this works.

      I know it's hard to believe Grandpa, but we've made metal birds that can fly, and men have walked on the Moon.

    14. Re:I remember them doing this with phsyx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not all games need to be fast pace twitch action games. Some games can focus more on graphics detail, vs high frame rates.

      How about consistent, okay frame rates? RTX seems to at best barely manage that on the very high end.

      Also for the cut-scenes, They can be custom rendered in semi-real time, to give a cut scene customizable to the action at hand. having your character in the right spot. That item you had destroyed will show its current state.

      It really blows immersion when cut-scenes use different graphic settings or details versus in-game. So, no, that's a terrible idea.

      Also to a point, just because you don't want to upgrade, why should game designers try to stick so far behind that waiting for that one guy to upgrade.

      The point is, games shouldn't becoming crippling slow over time as some sort of method to try to force people to upgrade their hardware. That's patently absurd. If game designers want to optionally expand games on the high end without substantially changing the minimum or recommended specs, that's a whole other matter.

    15. Re: I remember them doing this with phsyx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Proud GTX 780 FTW user.

    16. Re: I remember them doing this with phsyx by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      Some games can focus more on graphics detail, vs high frame rates

      You mean like watching a movie?

    17. Re: I remember them doing this with phsyx by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      QII RTX almost sounds like a good reason to hop onboard this premature train... ray-traced UT99 would be more my speed, though.

    18. Re: I remember them doing this with phsyx by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      Don't be daft, you can't enable ray tracing through a driver update.

      I'm pretty sure you can; these are programmable GPU's. You just shouldn't expect to enable efficient ray-tracing.

    19. Re: I remember them doing this with phsyx by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      No you missed my point. NVIDIA can't force a game without raytracing to suddenly have raytracing. That is something that is highly dependent on the game, and additionally due to the large performance hit is something that developers specifically make optional. All the driver updates in the world in this case don't "cripple" GTX cards. The choice is 100% the users.

      Providing a completely optional feature which didn't exist prior is the exact opposite of crippling.

    20. Re: I remember them doing this with phsyx by supremebob · · Score: 1

      I'm sure that you'll be able to turn it off in the advanced settings, like most video card features. That said, how many people actually bother to change the default settings past the default Medium/High/Ultra options?

  3. 2080, why bother? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1, Informative

    Yet another reason to take a pass on 2080. And 2060 doesn't even need another reason.

    Then there is this. Probably, Radeon VII is the ideal platform because memory bandwidth is everything.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    1. Re:2080, why bother? by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      Yet another reason is that even Microsoft rapidly goes away from Windows. nVidia's drivers for anything but Windows are of such low quality that Linus' word choice is way too mild.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    2. Re:2080, why bother? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      nVidia's drivers for anything but Windows are of such low quality that Linus' word choice is way too mild.

      Their macOS and Linux drivers perform very well, what issues are you having with them?

    3. Re:2080, why bother? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      His panties are in a twist because he's getting 0.3 fps less than his friend with the same card on a different OS.

    4. Re:2080, why bother? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Nvidia drivers are a royal pain on Linux compared to AMD, which play nicely with OS updates. Everybody seems to know this except you.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    5. Re:2080, why bother? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      To enjoy new and advanced computer games on Windows 10.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    6. Re:2080, why bother? by Kjella · · Score: 0

      Nvidia drivers are a royal pain on Linux compared to AMD, which play nicely with OS updates. Everybody seems to know this except you.

      Meh, most people installed Ubuntu, hit system -> administration -> hardware drivers, installed the blessed version and it worked. It still worked across distro upgrades too, that was my experience 10 years ago and I doubt it's gotten worse since. I know it was a giant pain for people compiling their own kernel or trying any other kind of match-up or used many other distros that didn't pull off the "uninstalled blessed version, upgrade, reinstall new blessed version" well but unlike AMD it actually worked to run shit too, you either had terrible buggy, unstable closed source Catalyst drivers or open source Radeon drivers that were still in their infancy. I got no idea how it is today though, but I guess I'll have to find out when Win7 expires...

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    7. Re:2080, why bother? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've been developing 3d graphics programs on Ubuntu since 9.10. I'm currently using Nvidia's 390.116 driver on Ubuntu 18.04.2 now, and I have no complaints.

      The only problem I ever had with Nvidia cards was: I had a few things break in 2015 when Nvidia started actually following the spec sometime between the 331 and 340 drivers. I initially feared it was the end of the world when the program crashed, but it took me less than an hour to fix everything and add a version check to require the 340 driver (or higher).

    8. Re:2080, why bother? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Wrong, Nvidia drivers also frequently break Ubuntu. (Two million results.)

      Linus put it best: fuck Nvidia.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    9. Re:2080, why bother? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      I've been developing 3d graphics programs on Ubuntu since 9.10. I'm currently using Nvidia's 390.116 driver on Ubuntu 18.04.2 now, and I have no complaints.

      Lucky you. That's one.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    10. Re:2080, why bother? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Look if you gushed anymore about AMD you'd need a diaper. Your response to "another reason to pass" is you advocate a 2x performance hit on other cards?

      If the 2060 can raytrace without speed impact over the 1660 then it's quite a good reason to go for it in a high end system. Then you go on to say memory bandwidth is everything, which if you've looked at benchmarks can only mean that you're not actually interested in ever playing games as much as you just want GPUs to play with moving data around your RAM.

      Each to his own I guess.

    11. Re:2080, why bother? by TimothyHollins · · Score: 1

      Are we talking old Linus or new Linus?

    12. Re:2080, why bother? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Radeon VII is "ideal"? Are you a fucking moron or something?

    13. Re: 2080, why bother? by Type44Q · · Score: 2
      If you'd in fact been following nVidia driver evolution in Unix/Linux for the past twenty-plus years, you'd realize that it takes more points of data than you've got and far more analysis rhan you've performed before you can reach any conclusion, much less the one you did.

      Nvidia - along with their bullshit binary blob - is the standard on Posix-compliant OS's, even if AMD does sound better on paper.

      For what it's worth, I've been pretty impressed with Radeons after years of driver improvements... but if I was going to take my chances with a new GPU architecture - on any OS - I know from experience to go with nV.

    14. Re:2080, why bother? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I've been using mostly nVidia with the occasional stab at using ATI/AMD throughout, and I've regretted every single ATI card I've ever installed because the drivers were garbage without exception. By all accounts that's better now, but the power consumption is pretty terrible. Hopefully that will be fixed soon as well, and then there will be no advantage to nvidia.

      It's not that I've never had a driver problem with nvidia, it's that those problems were all solved by driver updates. With ATI drivers, I had to get third party patches just to get them working acceptably.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    15. Re:2080, why bother? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that the Radeon software and drivers continue to suck ass. As they always have since they were ATI.

      Great hardware ruined by absolutely shit software. So buggy.

    16. Re: 2080, why bother? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Google just gave Nvidia a huge kick in the nads by announcing AMD/Radeon as the exclusive platform for Stadia. Nvidia not invited to the party has a lot to do with banning their binary blob but I'm sure that's not the whole story.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    17. Re:2080, why bother? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      ATI drivers are so far in the past it's not funny.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    18. Re: 2080, why bother? by Type44Q · · Score: 1
      That's server-side. If this is even remotely a serious move on Google's part, they won't close their doors to 3/4 of gamers.

      Mind you, "serious" and "streaming gaming" don't belong in the same sentence. The morons'll figure that out in a few years, after ithe bubble runs its course - the whole insidious phenomenon ia obviously still in its infancy...

    19. Re: 2080, why bother? by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      I just bothered to inform myself a wee bit and I got the impression that this uses a set-top box of some sort...at which point I lost interest... but truth be told, I was never that interested to begin with; the "cloud" is the proverbial fucking cliff and I prefer to go against the lemming flow. ;)

    20. Re: 2080, why bother? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And it's Google, who knows how long that platform will be supported.

    21. Re: 2080, why bother? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      That's server-side.

      Huh? Game streaming needs nothing more than some video decode hardware on the client side, typical of any low end PC or handset. Your "serious" gamers are a small fraction of all gamers. They will keep building PCs, more power to them. That's me, to be honest. But I'm not going to deny reality, which is that the vast majority of people who play games are not "serious" and will be perfectly content with streaming, provided that they have the bandwidth and no philosophical objecting to this extreme form of DRM.

      By the way, the ping time for a streamed game where the game server runs on the lan in a data center is about the same as the ping time for any online game. So if you're using ping time as your criterion for whether a gamer is serious or not, you basically just left out all the professional gamers in the world, who only play offline in their team houses or marquee tournaments.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    22. Re: 2080, why bother? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Sorry, you failed to inform yourself. It actually runs on anything with a browser and will probably have standalone clients as well. No special hardware required with the possible exception of video decode. Chromecast or similar is an option. Now that you know what it actually is, feel free to hate on it. I'm not giving up my gaming PC by any stretch of the imagination but I can see why somebody else might.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    23. Re: 2080, why bother? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      To be honest I only care that it lasts long enough for all major AAA titles to port to Linux+Vulkan, which seems to be well underway as we speak.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  4. Now my plans for the cyber can include by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now my plans for the cyber can include a vagina and a butthole. I had had trouble with raycasting the butthole before the changes. Now it's rendering perfectly. And I mean perfectly, if you know what I mean... And I think you do. Perfectbutthole.com check out the source. Perfect rendering of buttholes is a passion of mine. We all have our interests

    1. Re:Now my plans for the cyber can include by Z80a · · Score: 1

      You probably want to use a neural network for that.
      You will need a large dataset, but you're on the freaking internet, so i bet it's not that hard to find it.

      Then you can create a "thisbuttholedoesnotexist.com"

  5. Re: Still IMPERSONATING me JEALOUS "Lil' Jowie"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you were successful at all, you'd have ported your hosts file software to MacOS in the past three months during which you've had a Mac Mini. Before then, you made excuses saying you were waiting for a friend to build the software for you. And prior to that, you said that you were waiting for people to test the MacOS version. You've been making these excuses for well over a year now. Meanwhile, you hypocritically attack other people and tell them they're not successful. Your successes are "buying" a house from your daddy for $1, writing a program to sort and concatenate strings, and being able to make "unlimited" anonymous posts on Slashdot. You are a loser and these posts draw attention to that.

  6. Really? by fodder69 · · Score: 2

    > 18 fps at 1440p -- obviously an unplayable frame-rate.

    Mother f**kers aint seen me overclocking my celeron to 233MHZ with a box fan to cool it to get 25 FPS in Quake.

    1. Re:Really? by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      Then your machine sucked ass. Quake was damn slow on 486 but pretty snappy on Pentium; a single Pentium 2 was enough to send four 320x240 streams over X forwarding to IRIX boxen at a semi-playable frame rate.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    2. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed. I was a former Amiga user. Built my first PC back in 1997, I think. AMD K6 200Mhz with an Nvidia Riva 128 GPU. It wasn't until sometime after Quake II was released that Nvidia finally released OpenGL compatible drivers in beta. But I remember playing Quake with zero problems at full frame rates. Quake II ran worse, I think in part because ID's engine took advantage of the Pentium's better FPU. AMD had a shitty, non-pipelined FPU until the Athlon.

    3. Re:Really? by fodder69 · · Score: 1

      Joke ------>
            Your Head

  7. No new NVidia GPUs at GDC? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If its not 7nm ITS CRAP.

  8. Huxley is a Huxster by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fuck off idiot salesgirl.

  9. Irrelevant to Normal Humans by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

    I played through Metro Exodus with a 2080 ti on a shiny new machine on a 4K monitor.

    I remained unaware through the whole experience as to whether RTX was on and if it was, what difference it made.
    Side by side you might be able to tell, but you don't play games side by side.

    Maybe it looks a little better, but if it does, I don't care. The game was pretty good and fun to play, albeit with a stupid ending, which seems normal these days. Issues of frame rate, RTX, DLSS or anything else never really impinged on anything I care about.

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    1. Re:Irrelevant to Normal Humans by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      I remained unaware through the whole experience as to whether RTX was on and if it was, what difference it made.

      Then you may not be paying attention. The difference is night and day. I don't use that in the traditional english way, I mean literally the difference is like standing in a room with a sun in it, or having the moon stream light through the window.

      There's no doubt Metro Exodus is a gorgeous game. Absolutely amazing. The amount of detail they put into lighting and shadows as it was is breathtaking. However if you're creeping in the shadows, moving within buildings, hiding behind things at night, the difference is as obvious as a punch in the face. Running around in the desert at high noon shooting things .... well couldn't tell the difference in the slightest.

      On the flip-side DLSS is a load of shit. If my choices were RTX on with DLSS or RTX off as the only two options to get a playable framerate, then the latter wins hands down, and ultimately framerate definitely matters. If I wanted a blurry screen I'd take off my glasses.

    2. Re:Irrelevant to Normal Humans by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      ^ I played the game in my Amazon trousers and all was good. Get over it and your overpriced, "hand wash only", polyester pantaloons.
       

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    3. Re:Irrelevant to Normal Humans by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      >Then you may not be paying attention.

      Yes. That was my point. I was playing the game, not paying attention to the lighting. It looked good, especially compared the to Apple //e sitting next to it.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    4. Re:Irrelevant to Normal Humans by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Just because you aren't focused on something doesn't mean it's irrelevant to normal humans. I'm happy you enjoyed the game. I enjoyed it too. I was also far more immersed in it when RTX made it look even more realistic.

      Hell we're on Slashdot here. The Venn diagram of Slashdot users and Normal Humans doesn't have a lot of overlap.

  10. Competition is Good! by nateman1352 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Surely nVidia's decision to enable their older cards to run ray tracing has nothing to do with Crysis demoing real time ray tracing on AMD GPUs a couple days ago. As Cryengine has shown, real time ray tracing can be done in software without the need for specialized hardware accelerators. This kinda makes the main selling point of the GeForce 20 series more or less moot.

    1. Re:Competition is Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Raytracing in software is nothing new. It's been done on ancient double digit mhz speed CPUs since the 80's. How quickly you can do it is a whole nother matter. Does it take hours to render a single 640x480 frame, or can you get real time 1080p60 rendering is a whole nother question

    2. Re:Competition is Good! by Cederic · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I was thinking that.

      I had real time ray tracing on my Atari ST. Frame rates weren't great but you did usually get over one a week.

    3. Re:Competition is Good! by sad_ · · Score: 1

      640x480? those cpu's you talk about would render it in much, much lower resolution.
      still it was sooooo cool to see.

      don't know what everybody is complaining about, this is the first version of this tech, in 5 years it will be just as fast as regular 3d is now.

      --
      On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
    4. Re:Competition is Good! by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      The point is that right now, ray tracing on the RTX cards substantially hurts performance and is not playable on older GTX cards. This feature doesn’t make the NVidia cards that favorable.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    5. Re:Competition is Good! by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Surely nVidia's decision to enable their older cards to run ray tracing has nothing to do with Crysis demoing real time ray tracing on AMD GPUs [techspot.com] a couple days ago.

      Unlikely. This was going to happen one way or the other anyway. Microsoft's DXR specifically has fallback modes when dedicated hardware isn't availble and this was announced back when RTX was first released as well. The timing here isn't even convenient since nothing a consumer can buy actually runs on the engine which has been demoed.

      real time ray tracing can be done in software without the need for specialized hardware accelerators. This kinda makes the main selling point of the GeForce 20 series more or less moot.

      Oh man I remember and early Slashdot post in the 90s talking about the fact that we don't need 3D Accelerators we just need to optimise our CPU rendering software. Along that time there were many people promising the earth too with newer better graphics that don't require dedicated hardware. The reality was always, just because you can, doesn't mean you should, and definitely doesn't mean it works nearly as good as having dedicated hardware to do it.

    6. Re:Competition is Good! by Saffaya · · Score: 1

      I know the feeling !

      http://www.atarimania.com/util...

  11. Sigh by ledow · · Score: 0

    If there's one thing I've learned, and one thing that nVidia in particular has taught me, it's never to expect a product to have properly any feature that's only introduced post-launch on other models.

    They'll just half-arse it, cut the drivers in a year's time, and it'll never do what could have been done so that they can sell next year's card.

  12. But Ray Tracing isn't very good by 91degrees · · Score: 1

    Sure, it allows for super-realistic reflections and shadows, but we can fake those, and spend the resources on other effects or simply a higher resolution and better frame rate.

    1. Re:But Ray Tracing isn't very good by dohzer · · Score: 1

      I guess that will make GTX the second series of cards that ray-tracing doesn't really work on.

    2. Re:But Ray Tracing isn't very good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can only fake them if you can anticipate them. Vampire or Medusa game? Every reflective object needs to be anticipated, or you can just do ray tracing, throw a bunch of reflective object skins in the game, and let the players be inventive on how to proceed.
      Same with shadows. If you're using real shadows, players can be inventive with light sources to benefit themselves.

  13. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  14. Re:APK Hosts File Engine now runs on MacOS... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't download this! It is a virus.

  15. Complicated by DrYak · · Score: 1

    real time ray tracing can be done in software without the need for specialized hardware accelerators

    Let me rephrase that for you, {...} "transform and lighting can be done in software without the need for specialized hardware accelerators".

    Actually only this last part is comparable to the discussion.

    When T&L was introduced by Nvidia, it wasn't offering magnitudes more than what a beefy CPU with the latest SIMD extensions could offer.
    Transforming a larger collection of geometry was equally possible by adding separate specialised single puprose blocks to the GPU, or adding even larger faster SIMD with multithreading capabilities to the CPU.

    It's only later, when the shader got unified (it's not anymore extra specialized single purpose blocks, it's blocks that can be used for pixel shaders too, depending on the load) and at a time where most of the data stays resident on the card.
    (In fact, if you squint at it - or just are used to CUDA - they ARE the apex evolution of xxx-large SIMD with epically wide multi-threading. Except they are "geographically" situated closer to the graphic card than the main x86 CPU)

    Here we have again a somewhat similar situation.
    Nvidia is adding separate different units to their GPUs, specialized to handle deep-neural-nets (different data types and operations than the general purpose shaders used for graphics), because a sizeable chunk of their market (the data center market) asks them to.
    But how do you market the same GPUs to gamers ? Well, turns out you can run a specially trained denoising net to make graphics using fewer rays.
    And now you have a selling point in conferences.

    But it turns out, it's also possible to run the de noising using other type of approaches (whatever AMD is using) and not rely on "exclusive for neural net" separate cores.

    So now, they are stuck, and try to push the technology, but running the denoising on the normal graphic shader (the same way most AI research has been done with GPGPU before "dedicated tensore cores" were a thing). Turns out, on older hardware it's a bit taxing on the overall computing power available for graphics (for obvious reasons), and depending on how much raytracing is goin, it slows down.

    TL;DR: So it's not a question of "before high speed dedicated hardware could do it, it was also possible with software on CPU (although slower, but nobody noticed it yet, because no game leveraged that many yet)" like rendering textured triangles.
    It's a question of "at the current level, there's more than a way to do it. There are different hardware solution to this problem, not all of them necessitating new single-purpose cores that can only do that (x)", like whether a new type of single-purpose shader taking precious silicon real-estate on the GPU, or new mass-computation extensions on the CPU should be the one handling T&L.(*)(^).

    ----

    (*): and in the end, it turned out to be "in between". A new class of "more general purpose mass-computation blocks" but "on the GPU" (shared shaders) that could also be repurposed for even different needs (the rise of the GPGPU... all the way to modern AI on GPUs and even Raytracing on standard shaders".

    (x): it's single purpose from the point of view of gamers.
    That's why it's fast on RTX cards: it's using an otherwise left untouched part of the GPU and not taxing the normal graphical shaders.

    Of course those cores can also run neural-net in data centers (so a different purpose) which was the whole reason for Nvidia adding them in the first palce.

    (^): to take your Commodore 64 metaphor, the idea isn't *hardware* sprite (C64) vs. *software* on CPU (PC).
    it's hardware *sprites* vs. hardware *blitter* vs. hardware *affine-textured stripe*.
    with different advantage brought by each solution.
    (here: the second one is more complex, but gives you more flexibility.
    the last one is even more complex, but gives you a roto-zoomer for free, and could even be used to implement primitive polygons)

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Complicated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it wasn't offering magnitudes more than what a beefy CPU with the latest SIMD extensions could offer.

      This is complete and utter shite because if the GPU was doing it the CPU was free to do something else. If you fucking fail in the first paragraph, you can imagine I'm not going to bother reading the rest of your turgid opinion piece.

    2. Re: Complicated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting that you focus on the tensor cores, but ignore the RT cores.

  16. Re: APK Hosts File Engine now runs on MacOS... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dumbass. We don't use host files on macs. We use public DNS. We don't get viruses. Haha. Go cry in a corner APK. Even if you make a host file its ignored.

  17. The relevance of this? by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

    I am not dissing it; I am just trying to understand its relevance - not being a gamer, I guess that it won't be very relevant to me. Nevertheless, I would be interested to learn in what other areas this is likely to have an impact.

  18. Re:I like Linux so it's a waiting game... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what holds me back from FIRING UP my Mac to do the port & when I do, I'll need it so then only it gets made.
    The real reason is you are too fucking to figure out how to open the box.

  19. Still IMPERSONATING me JEALOUS "Lil' Jowie"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    MacOS model's not done: Stop IMPERSONATING me lying & proof portfilter err's can't happen https://news.slashdot.org/comm... in my work!

    u ADMIT u have a /. acct & STALK me by UNIDENTIFIABLE ac https://hardware.slashdot.org/... - YOU got ISSUES.

    That's "best ya got"?

    u WISH u were ME (as ur POOR imitation = the sincerest form of flattery).

    WASTING ur life STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anon OR IMPERSONATING me?

    Make a Wheel https://isc.sans.edu/forums/di... as I did giving users more speed/security/reliability & anonymity NATIVELY doing more for less vs. ANY single 'solution' via the best hosts file multiplatform:

    APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r L i n u x . z i p

    APK Hosts File Engine 10++ SR-1 32/64-bit for Windows https://hosts-file.net/?s=Down...

    APK

    P.S.=> I BLOW U AWAY https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... + https://it.slashdot.org/commen... + https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

  20. I like Linux so it's a waiting game... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: It's what holds me back from FIRING UP my Mac to do the port & when I do, I'll need it so then only it gets made!

    * I've only had the Mac for a month or two, & I'm in no hurry... & as far as "successful"? You never have been (especially vs. me - hence WHY you HIDE behind UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous STALKING me - worms like YOU? Can never EVER be successes - only failures YOU in particular, evidence for me, lol...)

    APK

    P.S.=> Necessity will be the mother of my invention because I will have necessity for it, 1st... apk

  21. You can't download it, link doesn't work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can't download it, link doesn't work: As I said, it is some JERK (YOU) impersonating me https://games.slashdot.org/com...

    * GROW UP ASSHOLE!

    APK

    P.S.=> You have SERIOUS mental issues - NO questions asked... apk

  22. BS! launchd reads & uses it... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    BS! launchd reads & uses it + caches it (like Linux's systemd resolve daemon can) & you update hosts, flush/restart that part of launchd.

    * That's from Apple's people by the way...

    APK

    P.S.=> I speak to 1, in my nephew, who is on a "Tiger Team" there (which means he is GOOD) & into his 7th yr. @ Apple, who informed me what I have to do/look into but HOSTS FILES DO WORK ON MACS stupid... apk

    1. Re: BS! launchd reads & uses it... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      dude, you are running late for your shift and the truckers are waiting!

    2. Re: BS! launchd reads & uses it... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dude, APK made you look totally stupid.

  23. Three times quicker by aliquis · · Score: 1

    ... or three times as quick?

    1.6, 2 and 3 times as fast or 1.6, 2 and 3 times faster?

  24. The relevance of size and power? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ray-tracing? Not so much. The tech going from "monster size" and 650 watts to something much more manageable? A lot more significant. Just think of all the other things that could be shrunk down.

  25. I'm "too fucking" WHAT, illiterate moron? apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The real reason is you are too fucking to figure out how to open the box. by Anonymous Coward STALKER of me/APK on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @09:43AM (#58297700)

    See subject & you QUOTED moron: I', Too SMART for you STUPID https://games.slashdot.org/com... where YOU BLEW IT AGAIN vs. me?? Yes.

    APK

    P.S.=> FACT which YOU PROVED: You are TOO FUCKING STUPID to live - now you have to LIVE w/ THAT FACT, loser, lol... apk

  26. Re:Still IMPERSONATING me JEALOUS "Lil' Jowie"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey shit stain, how is making an initial post stalking you? In reality you are the stalker who feels the need to reply to every parody that anyone posts. Your responses are a rather sad statement about your life and general mental well being. Seek professional help.

  27. Re:Still IMPERSONATING me JEALOUS "Lil' Jowie"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you have any idea how stupid you look saying that? He has no Mac model of his ware and he put you in your place showing you lie.