NVIDIA RTX In 2020 - STILL Not Worth It

The Importance of Ray Tracing and DLSS in Modern Gaming

Ray tracing has become a staple feature in modern gaming, offering an unparalleled level of visual fidelity to gamers. However, the process of rendering accurate ray-traced images is computationally intensive, making it challenging for games to maintain smooth performance. In this article, we'll explore the current state of ray tracing and its impact on gaming performance.

Quake 2 as a Benchmark for Ray Tracing

One of the most iconic games that showcased the potential of ray tracing is Quake 2. With its simple yet detailed environments, it became an ideal candidate to test the capabilities of ray tracing technology. Even with proper rendering of shadows, the game's flat surfaces made it difficult to appreciate the true benefits of ray tracing. This led us to wonder: would a more complex game like Quake 2 be able to deliver impressive ray-traced visuals without sacrificing performance?

A Throwback to Ray Tracing in Early Games

To answer this question, let's take a look at some older games that featured ray tracing. One such example is the original Quake, which was released back in 1997. Its pixel art style made it an ideal candidate for testing the early stages of ray tracing technology. However, even with the best hardware available at the time, ray tracing proved to be a difficult feat to achieve without compromising performance.

A Modern Take on Ray Tracing: Metro Exodus

Fast forward to modern times, and we have games like Metro Exodus that showcase the true potential of ray tracing. This game's stunning visuals, including accurate shadows, reflections, and global illumination, make it an excellent example of how ray tracing can enhance a gaming experience. However, even with the latest hardware, performance remains a concern, especially when enabling all possible features.

Variable Performance: A Concern for Gamers

Another challenge faced by gamers is variable performance across different titles. Games like Metro and Control require more resources to achieve their desired level of ray tracing, which can lead to disappointing performance cuts in half. On the other hand, games like Modern Warfare and Tomb Raider seem to have struggled with optimizing their ray-tracing features, resulting in subpar performance.

DLSS: A Potential Solution for Ray Tracing

To address these concerns, NVIDIA introduced DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), a technology that leverages deep learning algorithms to improve image quality while reducing the computational requirements of ray tracing. Our testing revealed that DLSS has greatly improved since its initial launch, offering better performance and image sharpening without sacrificing detail. In games like Metro Exodus, which requires high-quality rendering for an immersive experience, DLSS is a must-have feature.

Real-World Testing: The 2060 and Its Performance

To put DLSS to the test, we used the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, which offers improved performance compared to its predecessor. Our results showed that in games like Metro Exodus, DLSS provides a noticeable boost in performance without compromising image quality. Even with reduced ray-tracing settings, the game's visuals are sharper and more detailed than before.

The Future of Ray Tracing: What to Expect

As we look ahead to 2020 and beyond, it's exciting to think about the potential of ray tracing technology. With new games on the horizon that promise to deliver improved lighting effects, reflections, and global illumination, gamers can expect even more stunning visuals in the future. However, until performance isn't cut in half, it's essential to remain skeptical about the feasibility of true ray-tracing experiences across all titles.

Conclusion

Ray tracing has come a long way since its early days as an experimental technology. While we've made significant strides in rendering accurate and detailed images, performance remains a concern for many games. However, with the introduction of technologies like DLSS, gamers can expect improved image quality and performance without sacrificing too much. As the gaming industry continues to evolve, it's essential to stay informed about the latest developments in ray tracing technology and its impact on gaming performance.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enladies and gentlemen the g-force rtx 20series reinvented Oh developers all overthe world are working hard on RTXingwe're gonna have all kinds of amazinggames coming your way yeah that wasAugust of 2018 when the RTX 20 serieslaunched we were promised a largelibrary of games to support ray tracingand the more realistic lightingenvironment that just works but thegeneral consensus right now is that RTXon equals FPS off as perfectly shown inthis game from 1997 where everything isray traced but still we cannot hit 60fpsbut it's 2020 now and now want toexplore the current state of RTX andgames and whether or not it is asgroundbreaking as we were led to believein terms of the whole visual experiencebut also what it has done to performanceI've already done detailed analysis forMetro access and ba5 when they werelaunched welcome to check out thatcontent I'll still be including them inthis video to give us a refresh plusmany other games that support raytracing so in this video we'll do avisual analysis of all current rate raysgames on the market we'll do performancetesting and see what the overallexperience this very expensivetechnology delivers after this the NMXt-50 ax air cooler now comes in thisgorgeous white finish with anaddressable RGB high-pressure fan alongwith a patented air guide grill toincrease air flow the vortexdifferential fin design helps increaseair convection around the heat pipes sothe your CPU can stay nice and coollearn more in the description down belowalright so the first thing I need toclarify with RTX are two forms ofimplementation so the first being ourgames that have some form of ray tracingwhether it be ray trace shadows globalillumination or reflections and all ofwhich aim to provide the most realisticlighting environment and this is thepart that Jensen was talking about asjust works everything just workseverything just works because raytracing just works because gamedesigners don't have to fake lightinginside a room for example if you haveRay traced lighting the engine does thewhole thing for you and the second thingwith RTX is DLSS which is deeplearning super sampling which aims toimprove performance by up sampling lowerresolution to your native resolution thedownside here is training the algorithmseeing what needs to be sharpened in aparticular game and so that takes timeas you'll see later in the videobut I really want to start with the funstuff first let's explore my favoritertx titles Metro excellence and controlso let's take control and see whatthey've done right and first of all gamecontext and level design must complementray-traced reflections as with controlwe have large open areas with glasswalls and all types of appropriatelyglossy surfaces like wood paneling floortiles and lots of lots of marble all ofwhich work beautifully to create therealistic reflections that you willnotice throughout the game so not onlyare you visible from these glassreflections but whatever is behind youas well and I find this example withrtx on just beautiful as the fireextinguisher the top light strip and thedoorframe are already traced very wellhowever it's not perfect as all glasssurfaces act as almost like transparentmirrors and lose that hazy texturethat's my only complaint with this gameother examples of ray-traced reflectionsinclude bf5 which you'll notice andreally shiny polish to destroy cars onthe street and mainly in puddles toothat in my experience is unnecessaryeven for single player because how fastthe gameplay is but you can see firesmoke and ricochets all properlyreflecting from this bottle while theart takes off reflections are pixelatedand overall less realistic and I reallythink pacing is important forray-tracing to matter as I've beenexploring another game called deliver usthe moon in which reflections are raytraced and we can see our characterreflecting in the pretty much all theglass surfaces which is great becausenot having anything reflecting it lookskind of weird but it's kind of the sametransparent mirror effect as we saw incontrol where glass loses texture andalso kind of looks off for exampleimagine having the glass texture of theleft image with the reflections of theright I think that would be the mostrealistic scenario now here's a weirdexample where some objects are notrendered in our reflections like themonitor should be visible with RTX onbut in fact the RTX off looks morerealistic because of that particularelement and one more example where Iconcede the character reflecting off theglass surface in front of us but thespacesuit behind the glass isn'trendered properly in the reflectionof that blue tile I've also seen this inthe game called bright memory wherethere's this massive puddle outside theelevator but only the light shape isproperly rendered where the rest of thescene inside the puddle actually looksbetter with rtx off and this game isstill in early access so I won't botherwith it too much but I mean this is theopening level and having these thingsnot working as they should is yeahwhirring so those are the four gamesthat currently support ray-tracedreflections as far as I know not a largesample size and only control has themfigured out I feel like it fits the gamecontext and level design while it doesgive you a better reflection job of likeseeing your character and deliver us themoon but some things are not workingproperly as they should and it throwsthe whole thing off now let's take alook at Metro Exodus where globalillumination is ray-tracedand now the title that I think benefitsgreatly with rate racing here's a sceneilluminated by a single exterior lightsource the Sun thus making all shadowyareas properly dark unlike that flatlook with RTX off now global nation withthis game means a more realisticenvironment that complements the wholeapocalyptic level design so all thelight sources have a more realistic rolloff this scene in the train for exampleis lit up by a single lamp to my rightgiving us a very dark but properlyrendered train car while rtx off isstill Moody and dark but lacks thenatural contrast the lamp should createwhile going outdoors I found thisexample really interesting as the snowwith rtx on just gets much brighterbecause of that bright skybox thatactually gives us more detail in thehelmet of the soldier and again bettercontrast in areas that aren't receivingas much light like his left side if youhave the means to play Metro withray-tracing enabled I highly recommendit especially the N levels arebeautifully done in terms of lightcontrast shadows and dark areas thatray-tracing really kind of like sums itup together for a beautiful atmosphereand the last ray-traced implementationwe can talk about our shadows so thelatest call of duty modern warfare isawesome and I finished the single-playercampaign without realizing that I hadRTX enabled and that's because raytraceshadows is probably the least excitingrtx technology in my opinion theshadows are softthe lighting is very harsh anyway plusno shadow for our digital Fred come onwhile other scenes look more realisticwith RTX off because raytrace shadowsbecome just too soft and difficult tonotice like with this corner and theyellow washing bucket plus after youdone with the campaign who else goesinto the graphics settings and turnseverything to minimum I mean this is amultiplayer game so I'm all about givingme the best FPS and least visual clutterand finally we have shadow of the TombRaider as the name suggests we haveraytrace shadows and in two words thisimplementation is disappointing still Imean we waited for over a year after thegame launched to finally have RTXsupport and it doesn't even look thatgood so many shadows in the environmentgets so soft by the time they hit thesurface that they lose all contextualmeaning while there's very little visualdifference between closer objectsgetting hit by my flashlight regardlessif arti is enabled perhaps in this scenethe shadows from the wall are properlycast but RTX off already looks very goodI think global illumination whichshadows would be a much better visualcell because even with properly renderedshadows everything in this scene is soflat that I simply lose appreciation forray-tracedproper shadows now let's come back to avery special throwback quake to RTX thisis a very special example as everythingin the game is ray traced and thatincludes shadows reflections and globalillumination so obviously it looksbetter versus the pixel art of 97 butlook what it does to performance andthis is a clear example why ray tracingis so difficult because even with thebest hardware and something is visuallysimple as quake 2 it is difficult tohave full ray tracing and also have someperformance which surprise surprisebrings us disappointing performanceacross the board and it really sucks tohave some games like Metro and deliverus the moon literally cutting framerates in half when RTX is enabled andless severe performance hits with Codba5 Tomb Raider and surprisingly brightmemory - which is still in the earlyaccess and this is all with the 2080 tithere's something that really needs tobe called out here - and that is howvariable performance impacts are inthese games I can see ba5 metro andcontrol needing tons of resources sincethe actual lookbe different with their features enabledbut modern warfare and Tomb Raider Imean come on they just feel liketerrible optimizations one thing to notehere are all my ray-tracing settingswere set to maximum so they're yourworst case scenario and then all ofthese games the level of ray-tracing canbe reduced to lower performance impactbut you also end up sacrificing thefeatures you end up paying for when itcomes to RTX so think about that nowwhen we bring in the lower tier RTX2060 onboard performance it is actuallyconsistent to what we saw with the 2080TI per game quite bad especially incontrol and metro but you could get awayplaying them with ray tracing enabledand some visual settings tone down whichi think is worth it which brings me toDLSS or deep learning super sampling andmy opinion and its performance andimplementation has changed since itsfirst launch which is a good thing inthe beginning would be a 5 and MetroExodus that made everything too soft welost too much detail but now that hasgreatly improved so on bf5 the overallimage is still sharp and only thesmaller details like tree leaves and thefine texture on a soldier gets slightlysmoother but performance is so worth itI tested this with the RTX 2060 whichis how you're able to play Metro withultra ray tracing preset as we gain over10 FPS and actually think it makes theimage sharper with DLSS enabled whichagain was not the case when it firstlaunched and control the image to melooks identical this is with the highestsettings but on the leftI had the render resolution set to 1080pto give me a little bit extra playableframerateswhile DLSS delivers a much betterperformance and still a very similarimage unfortunately while in game you dolose a bit of detail in the distance andtextures are not loading until you getcloser which is just not very prettyas for deliver as the moon performanceis greatly improved and image sharpeningis present with a tiny loss of sharperedges around text for example but at1440p which I tested all these gamesadds DLSS is a must for ray tracingwhile getting a nice performance boostas well so DLSS definitely haspotential but as with ray tracingrollout I feel like it's going to be awaiting game and ifLincoln's going to be a long one so bf5and Metro Exodus look much better nowthan they did a year ago when the DLSSwas first launched and that whole yearof training has definitely paid off butI feel like we're never gonna get likethe sharper best deal s as possible atlaunch of certain games and that's kindof disappointing something else I shouldmention is that ray tracing was unlockedon gtx cards as well but withoutdedicated tenser course it's more of atease as performance absolutely tanksnot recommended even on some powerfulcards I will leave on a positive notebecause we have so many exciting gamescoming out in 2020 that promiseray tracing potentially they are notlaunched but sometime in the future andat least that's kind of exciting butuntil performance is not cut in half Ithink we should remain skeptical I'mDimitri thanks much for watching let meknow if you tried rate racing and what'syour experience been likedo you like the visual or is it kind oflike a-- yeah shadows are not my thingglobal nation looks great andreflections only in certain games asusual this whole video has been rateraised fully I hope you appreciate thatI'm a Dmitry thanks much for watchingI'll talk to you in the next video\n"