Recent reports suggest that Nvidia has ceased production of GTX graphics cards, with the GTX 16-series being the last to leave the factory. After seven years of the successful GTX 10-series, Nvidia introduced the RTX branding. How has this change impacted the PC gaming landscape? Did ray tracing meet Nvidia’s expectations? PCWorld’s Keith May answers these questions in his latest video essay on our YouTube channel.
The transition to the RTX 20-series and subsequent releases is known for two main things. Firstly, Nvidia’s focus on integrating real-time ray tracing and advanced lighting into gaming standards. Secondly, the significantly high prices of these graphics cards which are now slowly recovering from the initial price surge and subsequent shortage caused by cryptocurrency mining.
Keith argues that a more subtle technology, Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling, has had a bigger impact. Initially, DLSS was not well-received due to its blurry quality and the skepticism from gamers regarding its ability to enable ray tracing without performance issues. However, with the advancements in DLSS 2.0 and 3.0, ray tracing has become accessible on a wider range of hardware.
Competitors like AMD and Intel have also introduced their versions of high-powered upscaling (FSR and XeSS), but they are still behind Nvidia in this aspect. The significance of advanced upscaling is evident in the response to Bethesda’s Starfield launch, where immediate DLSS support was expected. It is clear that Keith’s position on advanced upscaling being the game-changer is justified.
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