NVIDIA’s RTX Speed Claims “Fall Short,” Ray Tracing Merely “Hype”

Megalith

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While the RTX veil will be lifted in just a few weeks, skepticism from both mainstream and enthusiast outlets appear to be growing regarding the actual worth of NVIDIA’s new cards. Engadget published a piece yesterday attempting to cut through the marketing, citing the omission of key figures and how ray tracing will take time to blossom, being relegated to future titles. ExtremeTech was a little more blunt about the latter, calling it a “bad idea” to buy into any first-generation feature. With information gleaned from our NVIDIA GPU Generational Performance article, that author also concluded the RTX 2080 family was “unlikely to deliver a huge improvement in current games.”

Simple math suggests the gains here are not particularly strong. When you combine that with the real-but-less-than-awe-inspiring gains from the incremental addition of ray tracing into shipping engines and the significant price increases NVIDIA has tacked on, there’s good reason to keep your wallet in your pocket and wait and see how this plays out. But the only way the RTX 2080 is going to deliver substantial performance improvements above Pascal, over and above the 1.2x to 1.3x suggested by core counts and bandwidth gains, is if NVIDIA has pulled off a huge efficiency gain in terms of how much work can be done per SM.
 
I think waiting for reviews is definitely prudent, for consumers.

Didn't nVidia have to issue small refunds to customers of the 8800 Ultra after the 8800gt came out? I seem to recall a similar fiasco where their top of the line card was quickly outdone by the next gen.
 
Most tech savvy people know that they aren't going to get the best performance from an old technology that is new in the form of these video cards. I hope most of us that know a thing or two about marketing and pre-orders get that the first generation of any newly implemented old tech as new hardware will take time to get right. So I truly believe that the results of the benchmarks will not be super duper amazing, we shall see soon I am sure.

Another thing to note, is usually with a paper release like these, AMD and Nvidia sample their cards for reviews to get people ready for that pre-order. This is not the case this go around, which makes you wonder....
 
I just want 1 thing from these, and thats drop the price a little on Vega cards, slash 500 DKkr of a Vega 64 and i would be all over it.

Glad im not a hardware news writer anymore, trolling thru all those tech sites every day and write up the best stuff took a lot of time for a unpaid job.
When these finally release there will be reviews left and right, reaching more or less same conclusion depending on games test suite.
 
I mostly agree with his article. It's true that any card that arrives with a new feature basically flounders with that feature. Usually takes 2-4 gens before or if the feature becomes mainstay and the hardware gets powerful enough to be efficient.

The sketchy part this time around is NV's new gag style NDA and their continued vagueness in like comparisons. The faster ram and increased cuda cores could make the TI impressive. Not so sure about the 80. Also concerned that at a time when so many want a 4k/60 fps card that the TI didn't increase in Vram size. Sure 11GB seems huge but I've regularly seen AAA games chew 8-11 with max settings. Aside from benching current stuff, the next round of games coming out in the next 6-9 months should prove to be demanding as well.

More than anything I've got a major bad feeling how many revisions these cards will get in even just a 12 month period. NV really seemed to go out of their way with mix matching parts in the last year. With HDMI 2.1 around the corner it's also odd that wasn't put in these flagships.

It's not just the reviews I want to see but also to know what NV is planning for the next year. Having a TI this early is weird. If RTX flops is there a GTX coming in spring? So many unknowns this time around.
 
When Nvidia introduced the 400 series cards with support of the new DX12 tessellation, yeah, tessellation tanked performance but at least with it turned off the cards were significantly faster than the previous generation.

This isn't about RT, this is about cards offering a new level of performance for lower prices.
 
Another thing to note, is usually with a paper release like these, AMD and Nvidia sample their cards for reviews to get people ready for that pre-order. This is not the case this go around, which makes you wonder....

This is exactly what has me thinking something sketchy is going on. Reviewers are on record as of yesterday saying they don't have samples in hand to test however not only are the RTX cards available for pre-order but there's a clear ship date. We may not see reviews out til AFTER the cards are available retail!

It's almost like Nvidia knows these cards are only marginally better than Pascal so they mark them up to $1000+, hype the hell out of them, sell as many as they can on pre-order. Then when people find out the cards fall short they take their price gouged profits, drop the prices accordingly then hunker down and ride out the PR shit storm.

That would be slimey at a new level of slimedom.
 
I agree with the article. Go back in time to the days of the 3DFx - first gen was cool, but there wasn't a lot of software that took advantage of it right away. I'd argue the killer app back then was glQuake - it certainly was something I played a lot of.
Eventually, second gen, then third gen cards came out. By then, there were lots of titles and it was basically a "standard" for most games.
Ray tracing might be similar. There are a few coming out soon - but honestly, none of them are on my must play list. I don't know if I ever will get around to them. I'm looking for way better performance than my current 970 with existing games. Can I game at 4k soon? We will see.
 
This is exactly what has me thinking something sketchy is going on. Reviewers are on record as of yesterday saying they don't have samples in hand to test however not only are the RTX cards available for pre-order but there's a clear ship date. We may not see reviews out til AFTER the cards are available retail!

It's almost like Nvidia knows these cards are only marginally better than Pascal so they mark them up to $1000+, hype the hell out of them, sell as many as they can on pre-order. Then when people find out the cards fall short they take their price gouged profits, drop the prices accordingly then hunker down and ride out the PR shit storm.

That would be slimey at a new level of slimedom.

Plus I am sure they (Nvidia) put a lot of money and time to invest in that new technology (RTX). So the first adopters are typically the main source of buying into that new tech.
 
IMO, you can't buy any technological high-end piece and think of "future" uses. No. The time is now. A $1200 gpu needs to perform good TODAY, when I buy it (yes, I acknowledge that the 2080 and 2080 TI have yet to be released), not 18 months later, when the next generation is on the market.

So, I'd forget about Ray-tracing altogether, and simply judge the card for its standard performance, and add Ray-tracing as a bonus.
 
IMO, you can't buy any technological high-end piece and think of "future" uses. No. The time is now. A $1200 gpu needs to perform good TODAY, when I buy it (yes, I acknowledge that the 2080 and 2080 TI have yet to be released), not 18 months later, when the next generation is on the market.

So, I'd forget about Ray-tracing altogether, and simply judge the card for its standard performance, and add Ray-tracing as a bonus.

In my opinion, Ray Tracing is..... something I didn't think possible in real time, but here it is. Personally I care more about NVlink on the consumer level. This is huge in my opinion. So I'm planning on buying (after reviews and benchies) two RTX 2080's instead of one 2080ti. I'm excited for this launch, being a big Vive guy.
 
The Nvidia presentation at Gamescom of their RTX cards with ray tracing processing was just hot air.

AMD is defining the narrative of gaming, for now. They are producing the CPU/GPU for the playstation/xbox systems currently and the next gen. Ray tracing will become standard in games when it's standard on consoles. It's not economically logical to buy an overpriced RTX to play some first gen ray tracing show pieces.
 
I'll be honest , I don't give a shit about the ray tracing.

If the 2080 ti gives me 15+ % more FPS in 4k than my Titan Xp I'll take it , if not going back,
 
Personally I care more about NVlink on the consumer level. This is huge in my opinion. So I'm planning on buying (after reviews and benchies) two RTX 2080's instead of one 2080ti. I'm excited for this launch, being a big Vive guy.

I'm going to admit that I've done all of zero investigation into NVlink. My current 1080Ti replaced to GTX970s in SLI, and I actually thought it worked quite well- would you mind sharing a quick explanation of how NVlink is something that you believe will provide an improved experience, especially over a single faster GPU?
 
AMD is defining the narrative of gaming, for now.

They really aren't; the consoles are running customized APIs, which are static, which have long since been defined.

Nvidia is the clear technology, performance, and efficiency leader, and they are absolutely steering the industry. What AMD puts in the next consoles will be defined in part or even in whole by Nvidia's current technological leadership.
 
Welllll, most of the guys I know are jumping on the 1080ti cards for 350 on eBay instead of a 800$ card with minimal performance boost.

Which is perfectly fair, but when comparing prices, new vs. new should be the point of comparison.
 
Pulling the trigger on an Evga Black edition GTX1080Ti . I have waited long enough to replace this damn beautiful 980Ti. Plus from my understanding I have a 90 day step up window if I want to get a 2080? (Ti out of the question) I think we are going to see SLI getting put in more games as 4k is still too hard for one card in my eyes, and Nvidia knows that.
 
Hmmmm,
$600 for 2070 (new) or $350 shipped for used 1080 on ebay?

I would go with the GTX 1080 now and wait till next year when GPU prices are more reasonable

Right now there are some Brand New GTX 1080s for $430; seen and EVGA model on Ebay for that price, and a Gigabyte one on Newegg. Likewise brand new 1080 Ti are down to $629 on ebay. Those are going to make the GTX 2070 a hard sell at $600.
 
Right now there are some Brand New GTX 1080s for $430; seen and EVGA model on Ebay for that price, and a Gigabyte one on Newegg. Likewise brand new 1080 Ti are down to $629 on ebay. Those are going to make the GTX 2070 a hard sell at $600.

Now that's a solid comparison!
 
Welllll, most of the guys I know are jumping on the 1080ti cards for 350 on eBay instead of a 800$ card with minimal performance boost.

Plus they are oc 1080ti so even less gap.

What version and dimensional universe are these "guys" from? Not this dimension! I have been watching ebay for 1080Ti for the last month. I have seen maybe 3 or 4 cards at $400 and was used as heavy mining cards. Most right now are going for $500-550 period. I am crippled up on workers comp and have nothing but all day to watch these "FABULOUS" prices everyone keeps talking about and no one sees.

Besides, if you are spending $500 bucks on someone else used crap, why not just save an extra $100 and watch the one day sales and get new one for $600. Lowest new one I missed this week was $599! I am getting my black Evga 1080Ti with rewards for just under $600.

P.S. Nope deal was expired, back to 649. Still buying it.
 
"ray tracing will take time to blossom, being relegated to future titles. ExtremeTech was a little more blunt about the latter, calling it a “bad idea” to buy into any first-generation feature"...

anyone with half a brain knows this is the truth...if you're buying the card for ray-tracing you're insane...there are people that bought the card for 4K or 1440p 144hz gaming and that's fine...but it is always the same people on [H] and other places that always buy a new card every generation...those people don't care about anything except having the latest card
 
odd ? Not at all, I'd say it's expected from nVidia, how are they gonna sell their 5k Euro 65" tv with gsync if they include hdmi 2.1 ?
Just like the 780ti only had 1.4 while AMD card had 2.0.

I understand the sentiment but I’m pretty damn sure Nvidia implemented HDMI 2.0 before AMD did. I distinctly remember complaints about Fury using 1.4 while the 9xx series had 2.0.
 
I hope that RTX flops so that NVIDIA has a setback and comes to their senses. I believe that the raytracing implementation is done in software and runs on CUDA cores at the hardware level. These cores have been partitioned and are not accessible by the user. If you think about it, it makes sense. Of course, I don't know that much about GPU at the silicon level.

Still, I hope they flop. NVIDIA has been pulling all kinds of crap for a while now and they need to stop and act accordingly. I remember when the GTX 1080 launched and I was able to order a pair shortly after from NVIDIA's own website. Why now we have a one to two months launch delay? These new cards are priced higher, so clearly existing 10 series inventory would have sold anyway. The real reason is that these new cards don't perform that much better, and who knows how they do with raytracing. Gamers who shell out big bucks in 4K 120Hz diaplays of ultrawides with G-Sync don't want to play at 30 to 60 FPS at native resolution. No one who shells out so much money wants to game at 1080p.

No one asked for ray-tracing. More CUDA cores would have been fine this generation.
 
In my opinion, Ray Tracing is..... something I didn't think possible in real time, but here it is. Personally I care more about NVlink on the consumer level. This is huge in my opinion. So I'm planning on buying (after reviews and benchies) two RTX 2080's instead of one 2080ti. I'm excited for this launch, being a big Vive guy.

I'm going to admit that I've done all of zero investigation into NVlink. My current 1080Ti replaced to GTX970s in SLI, and I actually thought it worked quite well- would you mind sharing a quick explanation of how NVlink is something that you believe will provide an improved experience, especially over a single faster GPU?

NVlink still isn’t fast enough to make it appear as one GPU AFAIK so I am staying the hell away. It’s only 50GBps. Until I know otherwise you’re still relying heavily on the games to implement it right and not break it every other patch.
 
A friend of mine just told me that the new DLSS anti-aliasing cannot be used at the same time as the RTX ray tracing in games. It's one or the other. That really deflates this launch for me.
 
Nvidia is a publically traded company. They need to impress share holders. With the latest financial details shared by Nvidia, Nvidia makes a significant portion of their money from the gaming market. Gaming.

Negative talk about Nvidia's gaming product could seriously harm their profits, and stock price. Compared to the other markets Nvidia is involved in, gaming makes them the most money. They cannot allow negative press.
 
I hope that RTX flops so that NVIDIA has a setback and comes to their senses. I believe that the raytracing implementation is done in software and runs on CUDA cores at the hardware level. These cores have been partitioned and are not accessible by the user. If you think about it, it makes sense. Of course, I don't know that much about GPU at the silicon level.

Still, I hope they flop. NVIDIA has been pulling all kinds of crap for a while now and they need to stop and act accordingly. I remember when the GTX 1080 launched and I was able to order a pair shortly after from NVIDIA's own website. Why now we have a one to two months launch delay? These new cards are priced higher, so clearly existing 10 series inventory would have sold anyway. The real reason is that these new cards don't perform that much better, and who knows how they do with raytracing. Gamers who shell out big bucks in 4K 120Hz diaplays of ultrawides with G-Sync don't want to play at 30 to 60 FPS at native resolution. No one who shells out so much money wants to game at 1080p.

No one asked for ray-tracing. More CUDA cores would have been fine this generation.

Can't agree. Ray tracing is the future, and has been the future for about 40 years now. I for one am excited that the future is almost here. Once cards are fast enough to run it in real time @ 4k 60 fps, it will be worth the wait. But to get to that point, we first need to take steps to get there. This is one of those steps.
 
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