2019 Hardware Thread

blackroseMD1 said:

I hope that it works with SLI. I'd like to check it out at playable framerates.

It's curious that they're enabling this on GTX cards though. I'm wondering if it's a sign that the 20xx series isn't selling as well as they'd hoped.

Nope, it's just a wise marketing idea.
Let the GTX "holdouts" get a taste of ray tracing, and maybe they'll shell out the dough for a new RTX card.

Cliff S said:

Nope, it's just a wise marketing idea.
Let the GTX "holdouts" get a taste of ray tracing, and maybe they'll shell out the dough for a new RTX card.

Yep, pure marketing. Ray tracing has been possible a long time even on slower cards. This decision helps game developers adopt the technology faster and helps nVidia sell more RTX cards, because they perform better in RT than older models.

Quake II looks stunning with latest Ray Tracing update:

blackroseMD1 said:

I have to say...I was tempted to grab a 2080 Ti and sell my 1080 Tis, and that was before the ray tracing announcement. Decided to upgrade my CPU and mobo instead. I'll probably stick with my current GPUs until at least the next gen, maybe the one after.

That Quake II demo does look amazing though.

No point for you to upgrade to 2080Ti if you're already on a dual 1080Ti system. Those are still very powerful cards. Only a slight performance bump per card and added RT support is not worth the heavy price tag. When Intel and AMD also have discrete GPUs with real time ray tracing support, all teams including nVidia work together on a unified API and the price comes down or your current card's are way too slow, it's a good time to upgrade. Unless you want to be on TOP and money isn't an issue then you need 2 RTX Titans.

@ThrashZone I bet bad sales is one reason for adding Ray Tracing support for older cards, but then we also have that CryEngine demo with Ray Tracing reflections running quite smoothly on a Vega 56. nVidia HAD to do something in order to not look bad.