The Importance of Ray Tracing: A Performance Test

gonna be more of a test of like CPU bottleneck so it's not gonna be an accurate representation of how those graphics cards perform in relation to each other with no ray tracing on so I just went straight into ray-traced benchmarks and with the gtx 1660 TI with all of the ray tracing settings on except for global illumination which I left off I got 15 frames per second which is brutal on a 20 year old game but it looked a lot better with the RT X 2060 which got 52 frames per second now that is already a very impressive performance jump but what makes it a lot more pressive is the fact that when I was running the benchmark with the r-tx 2060 I actually had global illumination on ultra on the highest setting available so it means that there was a lot more ray-tracing happening and it performed significantly better with the same settings it got about 80 frames per second so honestly this is a very good win for the marketing team over at Nvidia because it shows that those those RT cords are actually doing something now let's get to the final benchmark which is the Minecraft demo and honestly I think that most effectively illustrates the point that I'm gonna make with this video which I actually think let me make that point now before we look at the benchmarks now I think the biggest problem with the ray-tracing implementation at the moment is the software implementation it's very new the developers are still trying to figure out how to use this hardware and get the software to interact with it properly and the thing is this is very clear with battlefield 5 as well because there's no difference in performance hit between RT capable hardware and non RT capable hardware which means we might be getting a much more compelling reason for ray tracing over the next couple of months with doom eternal and the new Call of Duty game and cyberpunk and so on but again we don't know that for a fact that's just speculation based on a couple of tests that we have available for us today because again when looking at Minecraft you're getting 48 frames per second on the GTX 16 60 TI and you're getting 52 frames per second on the RT X 2060 and honestly that performance difference could be put down to the more powerful GPU in the RT x 2060 and that kind of just shows you that the developers need to learn how to implement the software on this hardware and that hasn't happened after 10 months which means that we're still gonna have to wait a bit however nobody buys a new graphics caught every generation and if you are in the market for a graphics card today I would at least consider the ray-tracing functionality so if you have to choose between like an a/v G the 5700 XT compared to the RT X 2070 I actually think if they cost the same and perform similarly go for the RT X capable one because we do have some tests that show that if the software is properly implemented there is going to be an appreciable performance difference between an RT X GPU and a non RT x GPU and because we know that the next generation of contest consoles is going to support ray tracing ray tracing is the future it is going to be something it's going to be implemented in a more widespread fashion because honestly if the consoles are doing it that's what all the games are gonna do and honestly when not taking RT X into account at all the RT X 2060 at about 320 dollars I think is quite a good deal it's not an amazing deal but it is a very powerful graphics card then even when you don't look at the RT X functionality I think it's a pretty good buy anyway I'll do a dedicated video on that graphics card so we'll actually discuss the value in more depth but I think it's three hundred and fifty dollars it's too expensive but if you get it for closer to three hundred dollars it makes a lot more sense anyway

Performance with Ray Tracing:

GTX 1660 TI without ray tracing: 15 frames per second

RT X 2060 with all ray tracing settings on (except global illumination): 52 frames per second

RT X 2060 with global illumination ultra setting: 80 frames per second

The Importance of Software Implementation:

* The biggest problem with ray-tracing implementation at the moment is the software implementation.

* Developers are still trying to figure out how to use this hardware and get the software to interact with it properly.

* This is clear in Battlefield 5, where there's no difference in performance hit between RT capable hardware and non-RT capable hardware.

Future of Ray Tracing:

* The next generation of consoles will support ray tracing.

* Ray tracing is going to be implemented in a more widespread fashion.

* Games are likely to implement ray tracing even if the consoles don't.

The Value of the RT X 2060:

* At around $320, the RT X 2060 is a good deal, despite not being an amazing one.

* The graphics card is powerful and capable of delivering high performance with ray tracing enabled.

* If you get it for closer to $300, it makes more sense.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ennow it's been about ten months since the initial release of any r-tx hardware by Nvidia and honestly we still don't have many ray-tracing games available but with all of the announcements at e3 of new games that are going to support rate racing I decided to test the cheapest r-tx graphics card on the market and see whether or not it can actually r-tx now before we get any further look I got some liners tech tip swag in what is hopefully not too obvious an attempt at getting a cheap shoutout now currently the cheapest r-tx graphics card on the market retails for about three hundred and fifty dollars but you can quite regularly get them on sale for about three hundred and twenty dollars which in my opinion is quite a good deal but what we're gonna do today is see whether or not this occasionally three hundred and twenty dollar graphics card actually has a perceptible difference in ray-tracing performance compared to something that doesn't have r-tx in the name like for example at gtx 1660 TI in other words is the minimum according to nvidia actually enough to make a difference in ray-tracing performance now i'm going to test how much of a difference the RT course makes is by actually running all of the games with ray-tracing settings off and then with ray-tracing settings on on both of the graphics cards and then i'm going to calculate the percentage performance difference between the two runs and then compare the two graphics cards that way now the first title we're gonna test today is obviously going to be battlefield 5 because that's the first like rate race capable game but in my opinion that the rate racing functionality in the game is really badly implemented and it's the kind of thing they just stapled on as an afterthought at the end of the development cycle so that Nvidia could have something to be like look we have ray tracing somewhere and they didn't even hide that fact very well I mean they patch to the functionality into the game after the actual release and honestly this whole thing kind of reminds me of the release of diuretics ten back in like 2008 I think it was there was the 8 800 series of graphics cards which it cost quite a lot more than the previous generation they did perform a lot better but you did pay for that performance and there weren't really turned x10 games around for you to test your new expensive graphics card worth and then we finally got a game called Mike I think was Lost Planet which performed really badly and it also had like really lame diode x10 implementation it was again that kind of thing where like it seemed like it was stapled on at the end of the development cycle and it would bring even the 8800 ultra to its knees which was a very expensive graphics card at the time honestly the whole r-tx launch is very similar to donna x10 back in the day let me know if you want to see a more dedicated video to that topic where we kind of discussed the similarities but I'll get back to the RT X 2060 the second game we're gonna test is called Metro Exodus which in my opinion has a better rate racing implementation because it doesn't only have reflections through ray-tracing and also uses shadows through ray tracing but it doesn't have proper full ray tracing yet in fact we don't have a triple a game that has full ray tracing support at the moment it's been 10 months and we still don't I could also use shadow of the Tomb Raider but honestly I don't want to have to buy a shadow of the Tomb Raider because I'm never gonna play it and then the ray tracing functionality and that is also really bad it just uses the ray tracing to supplement shadows but we have one game here which i think is a very good test of how much of the difference the RT caused actually makes and that's weirdly enough a twenty-year-old game called quake 2 now the reason I think quake 2 is a very good use case is because the rest of the game is really easy to render the only taxing part of the game is the actual ray tracing in it and the game uses global illumination ray tracing which means it's a proper ray tracing implementation and then finally just for fun I'm also going to involve the ray tracing demo of Minecraft now we do have to bear in mind with the results from these tests that the guy it's a single person who's doing the development for the minecraft ray tracing setup and honestly I don't even think he actually has access to RTX Hardware all of the demos he shows is with the GTX 970 so we have to bear in mind that it's not really optimized to use the arty cause necessarily and that kind of will be one of the main points that I make at the end of this video so with that out of the way let's have a look at the actual benchmarks now with battlefield 5 things aren't looking good for invidious marketing because at 1080p Ultra settings with no ray tracing settings on with the GTX 1660 Ti you get 82 frames per second and then when you turn DXR on on medium settings which is weirdly the lowest r-tx setting you get 64 frames per second which is a 22% frame rate cost for ray tracing on an on RTX graphics card when you get to the RT X 2060 performance Nvidia you done screwed up with this demo because you get 96 frames per second with no RT X on and you get 74 frames per second with RT X on on medium now if you're good at maths you'll realize that that's a 23% frame rate hit so with RT x hardware you're getting a bigger hit in frame rate than you are with non RT X capable hardware you should have just kept the product and development for a year longer so that you have software that properly utilizes it because obviously this is embarrassing and now let's move on to Metro Exodus which is looking a lot better for foreign videos marketing team here so with all of the settings at Ultra at 1080p with no ray tracing on on the GTX 1660 TI you're getting 47 frames per second and then when you switch ray tracing on at high settings which again weirdly is the lowest r-tx setting just call it low I mean why are you calling at high you're getting 19 frames per second that's a pretty tough performance hit of about 60 frames per second on non r-tx hardware and then with the RT X 2060 when you have non ray-tracing settings at 1080p ultra you get 55 frames per second and then when you turn ray-tracing on at high you get 44 frames per second which is 20% performance cost for ray tracing and honestly that's pretty good that's the kind of payoff I'd be willing to do I kind of think especially for a game that's about like the visual fidelity like Metro Exodus and then I did another test ad ultra ray tracing settings which got me 38 frames per second which means there's a 31% performance cost from no ray tracing at all and supposed to the 60% on lower r-tx settings on the 1660 ti and honestly things are looking quite a lot better for invidious marketing team here but I do have to say I couldn't really tell the difference I sat looking at each run of the benchmark and really tried very hard to identify the difference between ray tracing on and ray tracing off and honestly I really couldn't tell so that means you're giving on RT x hardware at 20% or a 31% performance hit for visual fidelity that honestly I can't tell I'll play more of Metro Exodus and I'll see if I can notice eventually and all that you know in the comment section below but it's really difficult to see the difference now let's move on to what is in my opinion the most important test that I'm gonna be looking at today which is quake two's performance now I didn't actually do an on rate race to run before testing the ray tracing so that I can actually compare the results because honestly my microwave can run quake 2 at 200 frames per second at 4k and it's gonna be more of a test of like CPU bottleneck so it's not gonna be an accurate representation of how those graphics cards perform in relation to each other with no ray tracing on so I just went straight into ray-traced benchmarks and with the gtx 1660 TI with all of the ray tracing settings on except for global illumination which I left off I got 15 frames per second which is brutal on a 20 year old game but it looked a lot better with the RT X 2060 which got 52 frames per second now that is already a very impressive performance jump but what makes it a lot more pressive is the fact that when I was running the benchmark with the r-tx 2060 I actually had global illumination on ultra on the highest setting available so it means that there was a lot more ray-tracing happening and it performed significantly better with the same settings it got about 80 frames per second so honestly this is a very good win for the marketing team over at Nvidia because it shows that those those RT cords are actually doing something now let's get to the final benchmark which is the Minecraft demo and honestly I think that most effectively illustrates the point that I'm gonna make with this video which I actually think let me make that point now before we look at the benchmarks now I think the biggest problem with the ray-tracing implementation at the moment is the software implementation it's very new the developers are still trying to figure out how to use this hardware and get the software to interact with it properly and the thing is this is very clear with battlefield 5 as well because there's no difference in performance hit between RT capable hardware and non RT capable hardware which means we might be getting a much more compelling reason for ray tracing over the next couple of months with doom eternal and the new Call of Duty game and cyberpunk and so on but again we don't know that for a fact that's just speculation based on a couple of tests that we have available for us today because again when looking at Minecraft you're getting 48 frames per second on the GTX 16 60 TI and you're getting 52 frames per second on the RT X 2060 and honestly that performance difference could be put down to the more powerful GPU in the RT x 2060 and that kind of just shows you that the developers need to learn how to implement the software on this hardware and that hasn't happened after 10 months which means that we're still gonna have to wait a bit however nobody buys a new graphics caught every generation and if you are in the market for a graphics card today I would at least consider the ray-tracing functionality so if you have to choose between like an a/v G the 5700 XT compared to the RT X 2070 I actually think if they cost the same and perform similarly go for the RT X capable one because we do have some tests that show that if the software is properly implemented there is going to be an appreciable performance difference between an RT X GPU and a non RT x GPU and because we know that the next generation of contest consoles is going to support ray tracing ray tracing is the future it is going to be something it's going to be implemented in a more widespread fashion because honestly if the consoles are doing it that's what all the games are gonna do and honestly when not taking RT X into account at all the RT X 2060 at about 320 dollars I think is quite a good deal it's not an amazing deal but it is a very powerful graphics card then even when you don't look at the RT X functionality I think it's a pretty good buy anyway I'll do a dedicated video on that graphics card so we'll actually discuss the value in more depth but I think it's three hundred and fifty dollars it's too expensive but if you get it for closer to three hundred dollars it makes a lot more sense anyway with that I think it brings me to the end of this video if you like this video share it with your friends so you can discuss the kind of performance difference between RT x hardware non RT x hardware subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one like and follow my instagram and twitter and all of those things and until the next video bye byenow it's been about ten months since the initial release of any r-tx hardware by Nvidia and honestly we still don't have many ray-tracing games available but with all of the announcements at e3 of new games that are going to support rate racing I decided to test the cheapest r-tx graphics card on the market and see whether or not it can actually r-tx now before we get any further look I got some liners tech tip swag in what is hopefully not too obvious an attempt at getting a cheap shoutout now currently the cheapest r-tx graphics card on the market retails for about three hundred and fifty dollars but you can quite regularly get them on sale for about three hundred and twenty dollars which in my opinion is quite a good deal but what we're gonna do today is see whether or not this occasionally three hundred and twenty dollar graphics card actually has a perceptible difference in ray-tracing performance compared to something that doesn't have r-tx in the name like for example at gtx 1660 TI in other words is the minimum according to nvidia actually enough to make a difference in ray-tracing performance now i'm going to test how much of a difference the RT course makes is by actually running all of the games with ray-tracing settings off and then with ray-tracing settings on on both of the graphics cards and then i'm going to calculate the percentage performance difference between the two runs and then compare the two graphics cards that way now the first title we're gonna test today is obviously going to be battlefield 5 because that's the first like rate race capable game but in my opinion that the rate racing functionality in the game is really badly implemented and it's the kind of thing they just stapled on as an afterthought at the end of the development cycle so that Nvidia could have something to be like look we have ray tracing somewhere and they didn't even hide that fact very well I mean they patch to the functionality into the game after the actual release and honestly this whole thing kind of reminds me of the release of diuretics ten back in like 2008 I think it was there was the 8 800 series of graphics cards which it cost quite a lot more than the previous generation they did perform a lot better but you did pay for that performance and there weren't really turned x10 games around for you to test your new expensive graphics card worth and then we finally got a game called Mike I think was Lost Planet which performed really badly and it also had like really lame diode x10 implementation it was again that kind of thing where like it seemed like it was stapled on at the end of the development cycle and it would bring even the 8800 ultra to its knees which was a very expensive graphics card at the time honestly the whole r-tx launch is very similar to donna x10 back in the day let me know if you want to see a more dedicated video to that topic where we kind of discussed the similarities but I'll get back to the RT X 2060 the second game we're gonna test is called Metro Exodus which in my opinion has a better rate racing implementation because it doesn't only have reflections through ray-tracing and also uses shadows through ray tracing but it doesn't have proper full ray tracing yet in fact we don't have a triple a game that has full ray tracing support at the moment it's been 10 months and we still don't I could also use shadow of the Tomb Raider but honestly I don't want to have to buy a shadow of the Tomb Raider because I'm never gonna play it and then the ray tracing functionality and that is also really bad it just uses the ray tracing to supplement shadows but we have one game here which i think is a very good test of how much of the difference the RT caused actually makes and that's weirdly enough a twenty-year-old game called quake 2 now the reason I think quake 2 is a very good use case is because the rest of the game is really easy to render the only taxing part of the game is the actual ray tracing in it and the game uses global illumination ray tracing which means it's a proper ray tracing implementation and then finally just for fun I'm also going to involve the ray tracing demo of Minecraft now we do have to bear in mind with the results from these tests that the guy it's a single person who's doing the development for the minecraft ray tracing setup and honestly I don't even think he actually has access to RTX Hardware all of the demos he shows is with the GTX 970 so we have to bear in mind that it's not really optimized to use the arty cause necessarily and that kind of will be one of the main points that I make at the end of this video so with that out of the way let's have a look at the actual benchmarks now with battlefield 5 things aren't looking good for invidious marketing because at 1080p Ultra settings with no ray tracing settings on with the GTX 1660 Ti you get 82 frames per second and then when you turn DXR on on medium settings which is weirdly the lowest r-tx setting you get 64 frames per second which is a 22% frame rate cost for ray tracing on an on RTX graphics card when you get to the RT X 2060 performance Nvidia you done screwed up with this demo because you get 96 frames per second with no RT X on and you get 74 frames per second with RT X on on medium now if you're good at maths you'll realize that that's a 23% frame rate hit so with RT x hardware you're getting a bigger hit in frame rate than you are with non RT X capable hardware you should have just kept the product and development for a year longer so that you have software that properly utilizes it because obviously this is embarrassing and now let's move on to Metro Exodus which is looking a lot better for foreign videos marketing team here so with all of the settings at Ultra at 1080p with no ray tracing on on the GTX 1660 TI you're getting 47 frames per second and then when you switch ray tracing on at high settings which again weirdly is the lowest r-tx setting just call it low I mean why are you calling at high you're getting 19 frames per second that's a pretty tough performance hit of about 60 frames per second on non r-tx hardware and then with the RT X 2060 when you have non ray-tracing settings at 1080p ultra you get 55 frames per second and then when you turn ray-tracing on at high you get 44 frames per second which is 20% performance cost for ray tracing and honestly that's pretty good that's the kind of payoff I'd be willing to do I kind of think especially for a game that's about like the visual fidelity like Metro Exodus and then I did another test ad ultra ray tracing settings which got me 38 frames per second which means there's a 31% performance cost from no ray tracing at all and supposed to the 60% on lower r-tx settings on the 1660 ti and honestly things are looking quite a lot better for invidious marketing team here but I do have to say I couldn't really tell the difference I sat looking at each run of the benchmark and really tried very hard to identify the difference between ray tracing on and ray tracing off and honestly I really couldn't tell so that means you're giving on RT x hardware at 20% or a 31% performance hit for visual fidelity that honestly I can't tell I'll play more of Metro Exodus and I'll see if I can notice eventually and all that you know in the comment section below but it's really difficult to see the difference now let's move on to what is in my opinion the most important test that I'm gonna be looking at today which is quake two's performance now I didn't actually do an on rate race to run before testing the ray tracing so that I can actually compare the results because honestly my microwave can run quake 2 at 200 frames per second at 4k and it's gonna be more of a test of like CPU bottleneck so it's not gonna be an accurate representation of how those graphics cards perform in relation to each other with no ray tracing on so I just went straight into ray-traced benchmarks and with the gtx 1660 TI with all of the ray tracing settings on except for global illumination which I left off I got 15 frames per second which is brutal on a 20 year old game but it looked a lot better with the RT X 2060 which got 52 frames per second now that is already a very impressive performance jump but what makes it a lot more pressive is the fact that when I was running the benchmark with the r-tx 2060 I actually had global illumination on ultra on the highest setting available so it means that there was a lot more ray-tracing happening and it performed significantly better with the same settings it got about 80 frames per second so honestly this is a very good win for the marketing team over at Nvidia because it shows that those those RT cords are actually doing something now let's get to the final benchmark which is the Minecraft demo and honestly I think that most effectively illustrates the point that I'm gonna make with this video which I actually think let me make that point now before we look at the benchmarks now I think the biggest problem with the ray-tracing implementation at the moment is the software implementation it's very new the developers are still trying to figure out how to use this hardware and get the software to interact with it properly and the thing is this is very clear with battlefield 5 as well because there's no difference in performance hit between RT capable hardware and non RT capable hardware which means we might be getting a much more compelling reason for ray tracing over the next couple of months with doom eternal and the new Call of Duty game and cyberpunk and so on but again we don't know that for a fact that's just speculation based on a couple of tests that we have available for us today because again when looking at Minecraft you're getting 48 frames per second on the GTX 16 60 TI and you're getting 52 frames per second on the RT X 2060 and honestly that performance difference could be put down to the more powerful GPU in the RT x 2060 and that kind of just shows you that the developers need to learn how to implement the software on this hardware and that hasn't happened after 10 months which means that we're still gonna have to wait a bit however nobody buys a new graphics caught every generation and if you are in the market for a graphics card today I would at least consider the ray-tracing functionality so if you have to choose between like an a/v G the 5700 XT compared to the RT X 2070 I actually think if they cost the same and perform similarly go for the RT X capable one because we do have some tests that show that if the software is properly implemented there is going to be an appreciable performance difference between an RT X GPU and a non RT x GPU and because we know that the next generation of contest consoles is going to support ray tracing ray tracing is the future it is going to be something it's going to be implemented in a more widespread fashion because honestly if the consoles are doing it that's what all the games are gonna do and honestly when not taking RT X into account at all the RT X 2060 at about 320 dollars I think is quite a good deal it's not an amazing deal but it is a very powerful graphics card then even when you don't look at the RT X functionality I think it's a pretty good buy anyway I'll do a dedicated video on that graphics card so we'll actually discuss the value in more depth but I think it's three hundred and fifty dollars it's too expensive but if you get it for closer to three hundred dollars it makes a lot more sense anyway with that I think it brings me to the end of this video if you like this video share it with your friends so you can discuss the kind of performance difference between RT x hardware non RT x hardware subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one like and follow my instagram and twitter and all of those things and until the next video bye bye