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"The first one has to do with the fact that my very own RTX 2060 (mobile) is simply not capable of using any ray-tracing effects in any modern title. "

So you're using the mobile version of the weakest ray-tracing capable GPU in order to make your point about the RTX-3000 series and its future. This has to be one of the reddest red herring that I have ever seen.

You misunderstand the point. The point is that the RTX 3000-series GPUs will struggle with ray tracing in the future just as much as the RTX 2000-series GPUs--especially low-end ones--do today.

But of course, and it is not even really worth mentioning, high-end cards will age better than low-end ones. But you won't get a high-end RTX experience with 3000-series cards 2 or so years into the future.

Your quote/title and picture of HUB's Steve is confusing and clickbaitey. It gives the impression that this is Steve's quote until clicking on the article. I know that's the only reason I clicked on it.

I realized Nvidia was evil when I had 3 laptops die on me only to learn Nvidia bribed vendors to take failed GPUs. There was a class action lawsuit that we "won", but in reality we learned Nvidia and our own lawyers were in cahoots with each other. Lawyers made more than everyone combined, and Nvidia paid out less than 1/10th of what they promised.

And yes, I've been saying it all along, ray tracing simply doesn't dish out enough performance to be that useful yet. In a few years that might change with next generation cards, but at this point with limited game support and subpar performance it simply isn't worth it yet.

At this point its main selling point is taking pretty screenshots. But I'd opt for a card with better rasterization performance until we get better gpus.

The author is blaming 100 on NVIDIA, but what about AMDs lackluster to RT performance, DLSS-like alternative and they had years to work out the early RTX low performance that NVIDIA cards showed, especially with its new 6000 series that's on a much better 7nm process?

And what about MS, the ultimate supporter / SPONSOR for RT, MS doesn't get any blame for not FULLY supporting by now RT titles that has been on the market for 2-years+?

AMD is the bigger loser here considering the above facts that they had years to build RT features / support to crush NVIDIA due to its new consoles and gpus are directly working with devs more than NVIDIA.

Blame goes everywhere from the devs poor RT optimization to the the top dogs AMD, NVIDIA and especially MS.

SHARE THE BLAME, DO NOT CONTAIN IT!

@TruthIsThere - I think you are confused about something. AMD didn't oversell raytracing like Nvidia did. They fully knew ray tracing is a good time away and it wasn't their main focus. Their main focus was on things that did matter which is higher raw performance.

As for titles not supporting ray tracing, that's a given. Gaming titles are worked on for years, they can't just change their production cycle when release is around the corner. And considering how little users have cards that support ray tracing, many didn't think it was worth the resources to devote to yet.

Again, the title isn't raytracing is dead. It's that raytracing isn't that great in the current generation. This was the same thing with other previous technologies, remember how long tessellation took to take off? Of course it was also promoted at the time, but not as hard as ray tracing.

This is so ugly. You power-hungry hacks. People get an audience and they become drunk on power. They use the dark motives of bands anonymous followers also drunk on group power. And then all of them, the leaders and the followers, convince themselves they've done some great justice. You people are the evil ones. The "influencers" and the anonymous hordes acting without responsibility or consequence. Well, you overestimate your reach. No one cares what you think about the 3000 series and we can see your real reason for writing this post, anyway. No one will tremble before you. So crawl back in your hole.

Pretty sure if you purchased a rtx 3080 in 2 -3 years you'll upgrade your card to the next generation we are running computers after all not consoles so expecting something to run future titles at high frames in a few years down the track is pretty dumb.

I've just read a very strange article.
If you don't believe in the most powerful gaming gpu, then what do you believe in?
I'm not convinced by RT. It's way too subtle to be seen in the height of action. You can only see it when you stand and look. What happens to you then? Of course the enemy get you.
But there's way more to the 30 series than RT. There's brute force. Raw power. I have the 3090. Cyberpunk 2077 looks truly astounding at 4k ultra with RT and hdr. No other gpu can run the game at this level of quality.
Proper hdr is way more important than Rt at present. I don't mean the useless 400 nit version of hdr that most monitors deliver (at best) I mean hdr around 1000 nits.
Take a look at cyberpunk 2077 that's run at this level and tell me the 3090 is a card to be dismissed

Jeez, what a load of NVIDIA zealots doing justice for the evil green

Or are you guys already bought the card and commented such awful things just not to be feel so bad regarding your bad buying, huh?

Shame on you and shame on NVIDIA!

Quote from: Kieron Fleming on December 13, 2020, 07:24:54
Pretty sure if you purchased a rtx 3080 in 2 -3 years you'll upgrade your card to the next generation we are running computers after all not consoles so expecting something to run future titles at high frames in a few years down the track is pretty dumb.

Not everyone has enough money to buy flagship card every then and now and heck, it is rational for thinking that it MUST BE sufficient for further years considering the money one has to pay for it, if it ain't, then it doesn't deserve the 3080 name and high price tag

You cannot generalize that everyone can buy next generation card as they want and cannot one see that this is starting more and more like a planned obsolescence? The flagship from Maxwell and Kepler era's years of life are even longer than from Turing and Ampere era, now it is only sufficient for only further 2-3 years and we have to accept it? Hell no, use your mind, people, godammit!

I have used RTX 2070 laptop for months and I couldn't think of being  interesting with RT and DLSS despite I have some games support them. I would guarantee GTX 1660 laptops are the value for perfomance for years, until Nvidia wants to release newer GTX GPUs again.

@NVIDIA is evil
If someone cannot afford expensive hardware then too bad, I have never had top end GPUs but I fully understand the nee to develop RT until it gets more mainstream. Don't stop it because only few have money to use it. FYI, I use a 1660Ti and I don't complain. New technology was always expensive, I don't see people complaining about the price of first ssds..

I remember  back in late 90s I was upgrading my PC every 2 years just to be able to utilize latest achievements in graphics - look and performance always was related to graphics hardware but only most demanding graphics concepts push hardware forward. In last years rasterized 3D graphics was pushed to its limits with all the tricks in screen space to mitigate its weaknesses - througput was more important than raw power. Thats why you could live with your card for several years. For example in last 15 years I've upgraded my graphics three times - 8800GTX->580GTX->1080GTX and I never felt that I'm missing something. RT raytracing is a concept that will evolve now over several years with small steps every generation just like rasterized 3D graphics did in the 90s until mid 00s, and just as back then you will be forced to upgrade more often to praise quality and performance of whats comming in the future of realtime RT. At least I'm not suprised and honestly I'cant wait for what's comming.

@ Łukasz Romaniuk
I couldn't have put it better, the only problem is that people want that without spending money. Every new technology needs to develop over time with a lot if investment. I sincerely miss the times when you could talk with opposing fans without anyone getting offensive..

Quote from: L on December 13, 2020, 08:51:09
@NVIDIA is evil
If someone cannot afford expensive hardware then too bad, I have never had top end GPUs but I fully understand the nee to develop RT until it gets more mainstream. Don't stop it because only few have money to use it. FYI, I use a 1660Ti and I don't complain. New technology was always expensive, I don't see people complaining about the price of first ssds..

Then i feel "sorry" for ya for never see people complaining about the price of first ssds, it goes without saying that you are newbie to this world, venture out to more sites, will ya?

It is still vivid in my mind the years when 120GB SSD was three times the price of now and in the first phase  of the tecnology, when SSDs become "commercially" priced, i read a lot of complained regarding the price, heck, i even hear it from my own geek friends, it is not until now that one can buy SSD for cheap (and don't forget when those evil companies, especially Samsung, playing with the price of NAND flash as their heart's content by claiming that the stocks and producing yields are "low")

Read more before commenting, dear

The writer does not seem to have any kind of knowledge on this subject he is writing about.

He seems to be writing things based purely on feelings and his own believes and expectations.

First of all the rtx 3000 series almost doubled the RT performance compared to 2000 series and that is a raw FACT.

I dont even bother to comment the other false claims he made in this peace of a rubbish article.

What an absolute load of nonsense. I wonder if the author has any idea what they are writing about or if they are just making things up. This bit in particular:

"The first one has to do with the fact that my very own RTX 2060 (mobile) is simply not capable of using any ray-tracing effects in any modern title. Yes, technically, I can turn RTX on, but practically I cannot"

That makes me think that the author hasn't actually tried it at all. I have a Legion 5i with the RTX2060 and cyberpunk works in Raytracing Medium settings, never dropping below 30fps. Watch Dogs Legion runs with Raytracing on and 60fps. Like, I've been playing cyberpunk all day like that yesterday and it's a hugely enjoyable experience. I also prefer it to playing on my desktop 1080Ti, which yes, has a higher details settings, but the game looks just so much better with RTX on.

Love this article. My summary: nvidia is trying to convince the world that quality is what's missing in games and raytracing will be a must. Little issue: it just can't deliver on the promise RTX is so much slower it actually HURTS the game play.

This has been a marketing push from nvidia since the beginning. Either they 10x the performance, or they can't ask for $1,500 for a card with a feature that Makes Games Worse.

@NVIDIA is evil

Was it to such a scale as this subject with so little content matter? This is new technology, same as those first SSDs, it needs to develop and first generation is always the most expensive as seen in the aforementioned SSD market.
As for the price fixing that is an entirely different subject. If you want to compare Nvidia to it the put AMD also in the scope as their prices are similar while having more expensive CPUs and motherboards than Intel, but I don't see such a big backlash, it's only Intel that is evil. Please be more objective and not everything is about "value", which has so much been brought about during the last few years..

You are right, please buy an ATI 😂. Destroyed in performance and technology.
The worst is their drivers... ATI never ever again.

This must be the shittiest article I've ever read. I'm going to block this website with my Pihole. I dont need this nonsense bullshit.

That's pretty good insight for someone who only owns a 2060.  I bought an OC model of 3090 because I didn't want to spend hours tweaking or choosing what graphics details to sacrifice when playing non-competitive games.

Alas an hour or so tweaking in Cyberpunk 2077 showed me that was somewhat naïve.  The choices seem to come down to these:

• Play with RTX off and DLSS off for crisp details at 70fps+ fluidness
• Play with RTX on and DLSS on for 70fps+ but blurriness in general and shimmering artefacts
• Play with RTX on and DLSS off for the most beautiful graphics experience but at hard-to-aim and motion-sickness inducing and ~30fps

Maybe DLSS fairs better at 4K but not at 3440x1440 where loss in fidelity is night and day.  No screenshots could ever convey the emersion difference.   Also, if I played with a controller rather than keyboard+mouse I might find 30fps more acceptable.

Having said that, I'm glad I bought the 3090 because at least I can play with RTX off and just enjoy the game at 70fps+.

Does the author really have a 2060 mobile? Because I have no issues with RTX in modern titles.

Control: 1440p, RTX Medium, DLSS Performance, medium volumetric lighting = rock solid 60 FPS
Wolfenstein Youngblood: High Image Streaming, everything else Mein Leben, RTX On, DLSS balanced= rock solid 60 FPS
Bf5 : Ultra, 1080p, High Textures, DXR medium: rock solid 60 fps.
Cyberpunk: 1440p, mix between medium and high, DXR reflections, DXR Shadows, DLSS Performance, rock solid 30 FPS (minus memory leak issues over time) 1080p60 with only dxr shadows and DLSS possible as well.

Plus this is only going to get better in the future. With DLSS, the 2060 mobile has more power than a series X and without DLSS, more than a Series S. So there will be lighter RT in the future.

Yeah, all these nvidia fanboys missing the point here. Raytracing is the future, but by the time raytracing becomes the present, ampere will be too weak to run it.

I mean, not even a 3090, the most powerful ampere GPU, is capable of running Cyberpunk at high framerates even with DLSS. I'd guess that it'll probably take another 3-5 years for RT to truly realize, and at that point your 3090 is gonna be doing, what, 20-30 FPS with DLSS?

The only thing ampere cards will ever be good for in terms of raytracing will be gorgeous cinematic titles where you're okay with choppy cinematic framerates.

This autor is just dumb, you should verify your article before making it public or you will lose lot of readers.

I'm running Cyberpunk on an RTX 2070 60+ fps, at 1080p with raytracing on high. Dlss on automatic.

Do with that what you will, but I think you're full of crap.

I actually don´t get the point of this article at all.
Maybe because it is plain gonzo, riding on the nVida s***-storm wave?

Nvidias step cutting ties with a journalist is plain stupid, I agree.
But that has nothing to do with the technology itself.

I understand that people are frustrated when buying a 700$/€ + graphics card, then having issues playing the latest games on Ultra with a feature that was promoted as much as this.
That is a lot of money for a feature that is not running as perfect as it should.
But there is always that one thing on "current" generation that will test technology to its extreme.

Using a gaming laptop and complaining about game performance is some kind of loss of reality. You just cannot expect to run this/other games on a mobile device at peak performance!?

Regarding the "unplayable" on RTX3000 chips I also am not sure what there actual benchmark reference of the author is.

Running the game at 4k Ultra, RTX On, DLSS ON with a I7 8700k + RTX3090 FE @ around 60 fps (+/-5) is quite solid for an RPG.
With some tweaks and downgrades in upscaling/resolution/raytracing quality i get into the 80-90fps even around 100.
This is not CS:GO where you aim for 300fps?!

Also the game looks fantastic without the raytracing.

If any, nVidias only fault regarding raytracing is promoting it the way they do, as a mainstream "everyone -can-have-it" feature.
It is still the peak feature of the current gen gaming technology (and probably will be for some time) and sadly reserved to people that pay 700$/€ and more for a GPU.

So still, don´t get the point of this articel except some clickbait free-riding.

Hey man , only play competitive on line , and not interested in Ray tracing ,how hard is for you see that ? Can you accept that? Well nvidia don't ....  , The beautiful and expensive must be a opcional choice , nvidia must launch a whole lineup of gpus without rt and will be more budget friendly but no they want to force the entire community to adopt this shitty feature , 

I fully support hardware unboxed here.

They put up votes in youtube, and their viewers overwhelmingly voted for benchmark to be rtx off, since most people would prefer 120+ fps to rtx enabled.

Nvidia didn't like that hardware unboxed's benchmark put the 6900xt above the 3090 and punished them. If nvidia is unhappy with the bench they should work on their cards, not blame the reviewers or force them into using specific settings to appear ahead..

Quote from: Hal on December 13, 2020, 13:58:58
I fully support hardware unboxed here.
They put up votes in youtube, and their viewers overwhelmingly voted for benchmark to be rtx off, since most people would prefer 120+ fps to rtx enabled.

lol what a nonsense, it's a lot simplier
NVidia 3060 Ti and 3070 cannot deliver high visual preset 1440p stable 60 fps with RTX enabled even with DLSS on.

The majority of games today are not ray tracing based. The majority of games played are not even AAA. No wonder why people voted to have RT off for benches. Nvidia is just evil here. No one is disputing the possibility of huge RT potential in the future and no one is saying DLSS is bad. Yet Nvidia still feels like it's ego got bruised. What a giant douche of a company, bullying independent reviewers.

I cannot believe the author is complaining about RT performance on their 2060 mobile. You literally have the absolute worst RTX enabled card. What do you expect? What are you doing using a laptop for gaming and writing reviews about brand new AAA titles.

Please do not post anything else from this author. You're just trying to click bait people to your site. Shame on you.
I own a 3000 series card upgraded from a 2070 super on a 5120x1440 ultrawide and it has a huge performance boost.

Write articles about something you know, because you clearly shouldn't be writing about gaming, video cards or computer hardware.

Of course a high end video card today will not give high end results in AAA RTX games in 2-3 years. How long have you been a PC gamer?!?!?!?!
I've been doing this for 30 years. At least videos card last longer than 6 months now.
That's how high end PC gaming is.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FUTURE PROOFING A COMPUTER!!!

What reality is everyone in? If you can't afford PC gaming that's why consoles exist. So quit whining and go buy a console. Leave the high end PC gaming to the enthusiasts. I'm not trying to be mean I only speak the truth. I know people will be upset over my comments but that's life. Sometimes the truth hurts.

This is e dumbest s*** I've read all week. Including Twitter and YouTube comments.

Complaining that a mobile 2060 can't run ray tracing well. Literally the lowest end first gen RTX gpu.

Claiming the cards that are the highest end most capable RTX cards have no future in ray tracing, that I'm currently using to run newly released titles to play games at 4k.

Claiming the cards are weak at rasterizarion and ray tracing when benchmarks put them at the top for both, without which AMD wouldn't have bothered implementing ray tracing.

This is a feeble gibberish filled smear peace that's a knee jerk response to what happened with hardware unboxed. No one likes what happened there, but to respond with abject nonsense makes your look low IQ.

So you brought a 2060m to the discussion about the 30 series performance and expect to be taken seriously? Rt performance did substantially go up for this gen as well. That's been extensively proven. I get you are salty at nvidia for good reason right now and also are desperate for clicks, but let's not become hack faux journalists over it. Who said a 3080 will be max settings rtx performance for a decade? Why is that point being debated when nobody claimed it? 1080ti is only three years old and it also struggles to max games out at 4k now. Nobody is screeching about a bad value there. It really seems like people made up their mind in 2017 and will keep feeling this way in the mid twenties when they are objectively wrong and rt is the basis of everything. Go shill for price fixing AMD some more. We all know how responsible their marketing is lmao. Remember being told they would have stock for everybody and then they sold less cards than nvidia and nobody wrote a little hissy fit blog post about it? Remember when they listed fake msrps for paper launched reference cards and then partners had to sell cards at scalper prices from official retailers while nvidia, who has many shared partners with radeon, has not raised prices on official retail outlets?  But I guess they are saints because they have worse performance for a feature that objectively is being used more now? Y'all are goofy af

TL:DR-

Ray tracing in games isn't very good right now. Neither are RTX video cards. My 2060 sucks. It's a compromise between having unplayable FPS with RTX on and DLSS off, of a compromise that I'm mad it if I lower the resolution.

Not sure why everyone here is pissy in the comments. He's right. All of his points are valid.

That's some of the stupidest s*** I've ever read about gpus. I recently upgraded from a 1070 to a 3070 and the improvement in rasterization was amazing.

Im loving ray tracing and it was a major part of the motivation for the upgrade.

Are hardware journalists going to start acting like gaming journalists now.. edgy clickbait backlash articles with no grounding in reality?

I've valued some of your content in the past but this is just garbage.

I cannot believe someone with such limited understanding of the problem actually writes for a tech website. This sort of entitlement reminds me of those people that complains that their airplane Wi-Fi is terrible. Who are you? Do you have any idea how complex this is?! "I bought a $200 card and now I deserve to play in 8K ultra! Otherwise, I will write a mean unsubstantiated little article on my blog". Just be grateful that you can witness such a historic moment in the industry. That rep made a mistake probably moved by Nvidia's greed, but that won't change the enormous engineer feat they pulled. Like with programmable shader they revolutionized the industry, and in a few years time you will take for granted photorealistic worlds just like you do with everything else in your life...

Also, just use GeForce now, you won't have to compromise on anything on your potato machine...

I understand what the point of this article is, but I don't think it's valid. Like the author I also own a 2060, a desktop one but a 2060 none-the-less. And all the games I have that support ray-tracing, particularly Minecraft, all look gorgeous with it on. I can always get at least 60 FPS at 1080p, and as for DLSS- why wouldn't you use it? In my experience there is pretty much no visual difference whatsoever with it on and with it off, because it's just gotten SO GOOD, and I get way more FPS. So with the same card as the author of this article, I've had a great experience. So. Take that as you will.

As for the issue with the journalist, I haven't had a whole lot of time to look into it yet but I would agree that NVIDIA are being jerks. I would say though, as others here in the comments have said, that doesn't effect the performance and quality of their video cards... Why would it?

As for the 30 series cards themselves- they're awesome cards and to say otherwise is kinda bs, ngl. Look at the benchmarks. They all have vast improvements in speed over the previous 20 series. And us for the argument that they're struggling to run the latest and biggest games at high resolutions- of course they are. The developers of these games are going to squeeze out as much possible performance as they can, and besides many of these 'fails to run at high FPS' are 4K benchmarks. What do you think is going to happen with such an already graphically-instensive game?

Anyway. The article has issues. If I misread then that's on me.

It's funny how you read the comments and the writing style of the people hating on the writer sound like the same person making posting with different names.

There can't be even this many people who will ride or die for a billion dollar organization who cares nothing about you. RTX is aight if you turn down the settings. It's not prime time and won't be for generations. FACT. You can't strong arm a relatively smaller YouTube media company into not reporting a feature that has better framerates and is more widely adopted. I mean, they can if they want. Because, that is what the mob does.

To be CONCISE:
Ray tracing is the future of gaming, but this generation of hardware is not practicably capable of taking advantage of it.

For those of you who are complaining about the article citing anecdotes and benchmarks without statistics, look it up. The author has a valid point.

Switching on RTX may be valid if you're still playing at a lower resolution like 1080p, but the RTX series cards are sold on the promise of taking us from our original world of 1080p fake lighting games at 30-60 fps, to a world in which even entry level cards can take us to near-4K 60-120 FPS gaming with real time ray-traced shadows.

That isn't a reality at all.

Even on the RTX 3080, there is some heavy visual compromises that have to be made in order to consistently hit those targets. The promise of Raytracing in a vacuum is really really impressive, but we can't pretend that this isn't a leap too far, to try to jump to widespread ray tracing adoption while also pushing a MASSIVE jump in normal performance metrics. 4K is a ridiculously huge, mostly pointless leap in performance, but more people are still targeting it instead of 1440p. 60 FPS to 120 fps is a difficult leap, but that's going to be the new bar for competitive games in a couple years.

We aren't going to hit all three of these targets simultaneously, and DLSS isn't a magic bullet to solve this problem, because it isn't universal. It has support in new AAA titles, but it won't come to everything, because it has to be something NVIDIA explicitly builds machine learning models for. Don't get me wrong, DLSS is truly amazing, it's the only way to get 4K 60 with Raytracing on consistently, and that's amazing. But we can't assume it'll be there to hold our hand and guide us to the promised land of perfect performance, and the RTX 3000 series can't get there without DLSS unless games are as optimized as the best optimized games out there, and you have a 3090.

Even if good points were made, it's hard to trust a tech writer with a mobile version of a 2060. Do they make a worse RTX card? Maybe you need to ask for a raise or a side hustle. Just saying, you might find it easier to buy a better graphics card than to change a corporation. I play with RT on in all single player games. It's this generation. Not with a 2060 though. That would just be a silly purchase. It's hard for me to trust anyone's opinion that owns a 2060 for RT. Maybe that's fine if you're right on money and only care about Minecraft at 1080, but that's a real niche audience. My gut tells me you just make bad choices. On another note, I really hope AMD steps up their ray tracing game. Even the author knows RT is the future.

Super polarising comments below. Exactly what Linus said that would happen once Nvidia sent that stupid email.

Ray tracing is the future! But, I believed everyone is being fooled with new technologies. Nvidia and AMD advertising their technology can do this and that. I definitely believe that they are a few years away from truly delivering this Ray Tracing technology.
I've been a gamer a long time, mostly on console. My prime days were with Super Nintendo and sega genesis. But then, nobody complained about the hardware. Games were good.
Then about 8 years or so I was introduced to pc gaming. It is awesome. But that comes with a heavy price tag and the performance doesn't show. You can spend $1000 or $5000 on a rig and that still doesn't guarantee anyone, that will have consistent performance. You can see that video from Linus tech. He get a fresh, freaking expensive oringin pc and it fails to deliver. 
At least with consoles, you will pretty much the same performance on all consoles. Shitty or good performance, it will all be the same. Consistency.
At least for now, I feel like giving up on pc gaming cause no matter what I spend, consistency in performance is something that will still be missing.

Dang, all the people saying that the OP is just poor and should get a better job have absolutely zero clue what he is even talking about lol.  The complaints about Nvidia have nothing to do with your revenue but EVERYTHING to do with Nvidia's lack of care for their own market.  If I bought a 3090 right now (for over $1300), I'd get around 70fps on Cyberpunk with RTX enabled.  Now that's pretty dumb lmao.  Oh, and if you don't have the 3090, you'll get around 5fps with RTX enabled and only 60fps with RTX disabled if you're lucky lmao. 

Look at benchmarks - this is all, unfortunately, true.

First off, I really enjoyed the article and thought it was engaging.

But I'm nitpicking here because power consumption is a soft limit. We can always buy, and people can always make, bigger power supplies, even though it may not be practical. Now reducing transistor size is a hard limit. We may only see 7nm for a long time now and 5nm or even 4nm may be the hard limit. At this point the silicon layers are just a few atoms thick, and you can't make atoms smaller than atoms.

man u maybe be true but hey look i will only play with 1080p with my rtx 3060ti with ray tracing so, thats enough i guess
and ray tracing is still in developing.

What are you talking about sacrificing resolution and visuals kind of monitor and stuff are you playing on I play on 3480x1600 I have no visual degrading visuals clarity textures nothing when I have rtx on lol

Dude you are clearly just looking for attention and have no idea what you are talking about. I have a 3090 and I can play any games even cyberpunk at 4k 60 fps with everything maxed including ray tracing, so I don't know what performance hit you are talking about on the 30 series but you clearly did no research.

I bought a pc with RTX 3070. I was blown away playing CBP2077. I do agree with the statements here tho. That raytracing is the future.. not sure it's here in the now. It really kills the game with it on.

Regardless of whether or not I'm in agreement with the central argument, this is one of the single most terribly written tech articles I've seen since "Just buy it". This piece has the organization and writing quality of a high schooler's book report, with a logical thought process to match.

As many others have rightly pointed out, you have an RTX 2060 Mobile, which is the single lowest end RTX card in existence, bar maybe the RTX 2060 Max-Q. The thing has just over a third the performance in both rasterization and raytracing heavy games and benchmarks than even the last-gen 2080 ti. Now, your experiences with this GPU aren't invalid - there's a good argument to be made here that Nvidia never should have released it as an RTX-enabled card. But to then go and spin that into "No RTX cards are powerful enough, because mine isn't"? That's garbage.

Here's an idea - go get some experience with actual RTX 3000 cards, or even maybe just look up some benchmarks, before drawing conclusions about them.

Your second point goes so far out of the way of the main idea of this article that frankly I'm not sure why it's there. Your entire argument is "current-gen RTX cards are not powerful enough to run RTX", so why would you then go and put an entire paragraph talking about how current-gen RTX titles look bad? What does that have to do with anything? There are lots of issues with the way that paragraph was written too, but I'll choose to ignore them since, like I said, that paragraph is irrelevant.

And the third point - now this just has me confused. See, I can interpret this "efficiency gains" in two ways. One is "The RTX 3000 series only provides modest gains in RTX performance." The other is "The RTX 3000 series only provides modest gains in performance per watt".

If it's the former, then that's absolutely just not true. The RTX 3080 is nearly 50% more powerful in both Port Royal and the 3DMark DXR test than the 2080 ti - that's huge. Nvidia put a huge focus on RTX performance this generation, and that clearly shows.

I don't know what you would have expected - should the 3000 series have been 300% faster? 1000%? What's your cutoff for no longer being "modest gains"?

If it's the latter, then yes - the RTX 3000 series have worryingly high power consumption, and as a result overall performance per watt hasn't gone up much. But why is that relevant to performance? You're arguing here that the RTX 3000 series cards are not powerful enough, not that they're not efficient enough. The fact that the 3080 draws 350W isn't going to stop it from running games 3 years into the future.

And speaking of which - that's the last thing for today that I take issue with. "[The RTX 3000-series GPUs] offer neither enough rasterisation performance nor enough RTX performance to run very demanding ray-tracing-focused titles of the next 3 to 5 years."

You're absolutely right. The RTX 3000 series won't be enough to max a 2024 RTX game.

Hey, remind me again, can the GTX 980 max Valhalla at 1440p? What about RDR2? How about Far Cry 5?

But those are all pure rasterization titles!

Face it - it's never been the case that a 3-5 year old GPU can comfortably max all curreng-gen titles. You turn down some settings and continue on with your life. That's going to be the case for the 3080 as well - you might get used to RTX Ultra right now, but in 5 years you'll have to turn that down to RTX Medium or Low, and reduce a bunch of other graphics settings as well. That's just the way things are.

And that's why the premise of this article makes no sense. "what I do not believe is that Nvidia's RTX 3000-series GPUs will be a meaningful part of that future". You're right - once the RTX 4000 series are released, the 3000 series will be obsolete. 5000 series will make 4000 series obsolete. And so on, and so forth. We don't stick in this game of PC hardware for what current-gen hardware has to offer us 5 years into the future, expecting that it will always remain the latest and greatest - we're concerned about what it offers us now.

This article is poorly thought out, poorly structured, and poorly written, and does not reflect the standard of writing I'd expect from Notebookcheck. Even with "Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author," it does no favors for Notebookcheck's credibility that an article such as this one is allowed to be published.

Here's an idea, how about you actually get yourself a 3000 series before you spread a bunch of completely inaccurate "opinions". I mean seriously judging Ray tracing off a 2060 mobile? What next gonna judge a sports car by driving around a golf cart? Because as a few people here pointed out I also have a 3090 which does cyberpunk 2077 in 4k @ 60fps with Ray tracing so yah don't know what performance hit your talking about because the major difference between the 2000 and 3000 series is the 3000 series is designed to use dlss 2.0 in conjunction with Ray tracing in order to actually deliver higher frame rates at higher resolutions with Ray tracing on, something the 2000 series in incapable of. You however are clearly unaware of this and are looking at the non dlss benchmarks as the ones to look at not understanding that dlss 2.0 actually creates a sharper, higher fidelity image than a "native 4k" image meaning the only reason to not use dlss 2.0 with Ray tracing is well... If you don't know what your doing and aren't qualified to write articles on the subject.

L. M. A. O.

I hope some of y'all are getting paid by Nvidia for these comments. The point of the article is the author's doubt over the 3000 series effectiveness in future RTX titles.

As an owner of a 3080 and playing at 1440p. I can play CP2077 at maxed settings with RT on and I need to have DLSS (Auto) on to hit that 60fps target. I'm not complaining, I'm already privileged to have a 3080 at all. The point of the article still stands though, when considering the the 30 series as a whole you can see the problem looming in the future.

Generally PC games strive for at least 60 FPS. If you do not believe this to be the case, I'm willing to hear your arguments, but generally it seems us PC folks like our smooth at least 60fps gameplay.

Now as you could use information currently available to us to infer how things are going to look in the future. The performance on a 3070 and 3060 ti (two brand new cards I might add) get 60 fps with ultra settings in CP2077 with both RT and DLSS on. Here's the catch, these are the results at 1080p. You think somebody spent at minimum $500 USD on a 3070 to play at 1080p? Is it unreasonable to expect that the 30 series cards should be able to play at 60 fps on their 1440p or 4k monitor with a $500 dollar GPU? (Hint: You can with RT disabled) It seems that a reasonable person could assume that if 30 series cards are at their limits for RT titles currently that the future isn't bright for their RT dreams. Obviously, you can drop your other settings from Ultra to be able to have RT on and try to hit the 60 fps target but why would you when the single biggest hit to performance is going to be RT and simply disabling will get you there alone. Another disconcerting thing is the amount of VRAM on these cards seems it won't be enough for upcoming RT titles (see HWU video Cyberpunk 2077 Ray Tracing and DLSS Benchmark, What GPU You Need For 1080p, 1440p, 4K
for info on that).

Benchmarks for points I've made are from TechSpots article. (can't post links but you can look it up)

tldr; Keep malding Nvidia shills. This article doesn't make your 30 series card not great, they're just not the RT beasts they're cracked up to be (and that's ok)

People need to chill. Hes only saying rt isnt as great as it could be and rtx 3000 series wont set the bar for future games. As for people bashing on him for saying "what lower resolution, I get 60fps with rt on and dlss on at 4k/2k." You're already wrong cause you're not truly playing on 2k/4k when dlss is on. Dlss is just nvidias upscaling tech like what TVs already have. It's the only reason you see a boost in performance cause it renders at a lower resolution then upscalss it. But I do agree 2060 mobile is a bad  comparison/product for ray tracing. It would be equivalent to like a 1650 desktop gfx card or worse.

Okay I'd this some sort of multi millionaire moot between all you tech reviewers?  All because hardware unboxed refused to show hugely important features of its card so Nvidia stopped sending them FREE gpus?  Gpus that two 3D modellers I work with have been able to get while people like jayz have been sent SIX of them so he can ln2 them like these weren't vital hardware components to running industry? You know what, good. They should stop sending review copies out, these should be purchased to avoid bias and the sure as hell shouldn't be given out to reviewers when consumers can't get the.

Also of you think these aren't capable of raytracing then explain how they function perfectly fine in 1080, 1440, 2k and he'll the 3090 even managed 4k? Traditionally I buy and parts since I need to buy large amounts of cards for work, but it's undeniable that the 3000 can easily handle DXR workloads .
Did you just feel some compulsion to ride on this band wagon and wrote this nothing burger of an article? I'm starting to agree more and more with what Nvidia did tbh. All reviewers should be cut off or not given permanent sample. Justmail one card out and make them pass it around.

Haha, comparing the full lineup of current generation desktop GPUs to the lowest end mobile version of last generation GPUs is just stupid. Plus you seem to have completely ignored DLSS 2.0 which is what Nvidia created so you can run games with RTX on.

Also I'm sure that over the lifespan of ampere we'll see many optimizations to the drivers  and the accompanying software like DLSS which will dramatically improve performance just like last generation. Remember how BFV wouldn't run on a 2080ti when it came out but now it runs fine on the same card?

Essentially I'm just saying there's a ton of stuff you've ignored in your 'analysis' of the 3000 series GPUs and a ton of stuff that's likely coming down the pipe that nobody outside Nvidia knows about.

Finally my last point is that the 3000 series has come just at the time that real time ray tracing is becoming mainstream. If the foundations (I consider the ampere cards to be the final pieces of the RTX foundation) of a new technological norm doesn't have an impact on the future of that technology I don't know what does.

Quote from: light on December 13, 2020, 12:16:41
Yeah, all these nvidia fanboys missing the point here. Raytracing is the future, but by the time raytracing becomes the present, ampere will be too weak to run it.

I mean, not even a 3090, the most powerful ampere GPU, is capable of running Cyberpunk at high framerates even with DLSS. I'd guess that it'll probably take another 3-5 years for RT to truly realize, and at that point your 3090 is gonna be doing, what, 20-30 FPS with DLSS?

The only thing ampere cards will ever be good for in terms of raytracing will be gorgeous cinematic titles where you're okay with choppy cinematic framerates.

Yeah and a VooDoo3 wasn't capable of running MechWarrior4 or Crysis. What's your point? Eventually all GPus hit a performance wall. This is a nothing burger article meant to stroke the ego of Linux in the hopes of a hangout from the multi millionaires who whine about not getting enough free hardware.

Us game developers work our asses to the bone and we have to pay for this stuff with maybe at best a small percent off unless you are one of the big names then they can get 20% off. And guess what, you need to update before old GPUs eventually become outmoded...

Who knew that eventually GPUs and hardware gets to old... Oh wait, anyone with common sense. The 3000 series DOUBLED DXR performance over the 2000, what more can you ask? Do you not realize how much of a leap that is?

As someone who owns an EVGA 3090 ftw3 ultra, I genuinely feel like I lost major brain cells reading this article. The dude who wrote it clearly has no idea what he is talking about and this article is nothing but clickbait. The guy who wrote it clearly states he only owns a 2060 mobile (do y'all mind if I puke) and doesn't even own a 30 series GPU. Talk about lack of credibility. That is incredibly laughable.

Personally I have been playing cyberpunk 2077 in 2k 60fps at maxed settings including all ray tracing set to psycho settings. I have been getting 60fps constantly and it does not drop below that at all.

Sincerely, me laughing at how pathetic this article is. ;)

I have not seen any games that I must have ray tracing to find it enjoyable. The author is right, ray tracing may be the future, but presently there is little to definitively showcase its full abilities, both hardware and software.

Excellent article but I must point out that I don't think your mobile 2060 has VRAM. I have a 2060 KO on my desktop and with RTX on in COD MW the frame rate drops from 90 fps at 1440p with average settings to high 40's with RTX on but the game does look amazing with it on. I could only imagine that with a 3090 that it would work at 90 fps with RTX on but that is a guess at this point. I am unsure about COD BOCW as I have yet to buy it because of Activision's control of the the Playlist's and maps in MW and I decided that if I can't have Shoothouse 24/7 and was forced to play multiplayer maps I don't like that I wouldn't buy the new game.

The article seems less incorrect that it is unnecessary. Of course the RTX 3000 series isn't the future, just like my geforce 2 ti, 5600u, 8800gts, gtx 260, gtx 580, 7970m,  gtx 965m sli, and titan v weren't the future. The titan v was my most future proof gpu ever. 3 years and it still kills at rasterization. It's the same story every time something new comes out - "Oh, you don't need a DirectX 10 card because by the time it's used, your card will be too slow to use it." Yes, that's true. It's also a waste of time to point out the obvious.

Yawn. 3000 series are king and will only be dethroned by one of it's own successors.  The author of this piece is probably new to PC gaming.

I feel bad for all of you trying to rationalize why a card you don't own must be bad. Sorry but my 3080 was an incredible grab and the difference is mind blowing.
I'm glad I used the evga step-up program to my card in a reasonable time frame too. Waited 53 days before my spot came up in queue and I got to use my 2070s while I waited.
Zero regrets, ray tracing looks incredible, loving 2077

The 3000 series as well as the new AMD cards offer the largest generational leap in raw performance as well as performance per dollar than we've seen for at least a decade. There's literally no reason to bash these cards unless you're bitter that you can't get ahold of one or you're a fanboy for one or the other team.

The whole point of ray tracing is in how impractical it is. Ray tracing is Nvidia's 10 year plan around why you'll continue to need GPUs instead of just incorporating that feature into CPUs or onto the motherboard -- raytracing does this.

Maybe 5 years from first RTX launch, cards will be fast enough that turning on ray tracing makes any sense at all. 5 years after that, and ray tracing will still be so resource intensive that it makes sense to buy a GPU -- it still won't make sense to fold that feature into integrated graphics units on CPUs. 5 years after that, and Nvidia had better be releasing the next big performance hog, or risk becoming irrelevant like sound blaster.

So if you're saying "wow, ray tracing is great but there isn't any silicon out there capable of doing it justice" -- that's the F'ing point!

Hilarious, you start the article off about yet another storm In a teacup about free review cards, where all tech journalist stand together  on their soap box against the evil corporate injustice! (yawn) and then proceed to trash the 3000 series. What a waste of time reading this.

So here is my two cents after reading the comments. The writer of this article is exaggerating a moot point. I do not expect the 30 series to run rtx games the same in 4 years and anyone making that statement is ignoring the fact that they themselves did not expect the 700 series to run a game like The Witcher 3 as good as a 10 series card. It is the nature of technology. That is the reason I want a 30 series card because my 10 series gpu is starting to show its age, as well as it has served me. What this article inflates unnecessarily is the point Hardware unboxed alreday made is that, pound for pound, the rtx performance of a 30 series card is EXACTLY THE SAME as a 20 series card when you normalize for the uplift in rasterization performance. The design choices made by Nvidia this generation are rubbish. Yes, the rt cores perform twice as fast, but they only included half as many. Nvidia this generation is being overly bullish and going for mindshare grab over quality products because AMD actually has something to compete with for once in a great while. Are they bringing ray tracing to the masses? Absolutely, by giving us a card that is moderate in price and performance like the 3060ti. The author's comparison with his 2060 mobile, probably max-q to boot, is hilariously skewed, no $#!+ sherlock your experience is sub-par. Nvidia should have maybe not even released that product, but I don't know what to tell you if you were expecting something out of it, i didn't and that is why I don't own one, and if I had purchased a laptop with one would not have expected much in the way of rt performance, would be happy with the higher performance than a 1660ti mobile, and viewed rt as more of a tech demo. So don't get mad about your own bad purchasing choices, and at least call the situation for what it is. Nvidia has become greedy. If they wanted to push ray tracing the way they say they would have taken a hit on rasterization to add more rt cores and equalize rt vs non rt performance, but they allowed themselves to get caught in a 'who has a bigger rasterized penis' game with the consumer and AMD and in this case we the consumer have lost. They say that they care about the proliferation of AI but yet the same die in the A6000 has twice the tensor cores as a 3090, which also does not get titan drivers btw, forcing the consumer to either deal with geforce game drivers not suited for that type of workload or spend $3000 plus on a workstation card, and if its the same die that means they are turned off in software, they are a part of the sm complex this gen. It's this whole 'Nvidia is a company that cares' bs that has me irked.
That email they sent to hardware unboxed was total garbage, this article is total garbage, most of the comments are uninformed garbage (to no ones fault), this year has been total garbage, and I've been told that whats in between my ears is total garbage. Screw this, I'm opening up a recycling center.

Here's my perspective. I only care about a smooth experience. No freezes and no jittery performance. Sub-60 FPS is totally fine for most titles. If you play online shooters, you don't need raytracing or even maxed settings. FPS doesn't matter to me even less because I don't play online shooters. I do think a game using old technology should have high FPS on modern graphics cards. But some games are poorly coded and will always run like s***.

GAMERS are spoiled and don't think logically. Yes, these companies can hype a product a little too much but Nvidia never said 120fps raytracing performance or even 60 fps locked.  Raytracing is for immersion. Why do you need so many FPS to enjoy a game world? Did we care about FPS on the first Playstation? Do we get upset that our 2008 Honda gets worse gas mileage than a 2020 model? How about TVs? TVs introduce new technology but may not be great at first. We aren't hard on TV companies.

I get 50 to 55 fps in Cyberpunk. Everything maxed, DLSS quality. This is awesome for such a demanding title and can't wait for future titles with better implementation. But I also have a 3090. If you buy anything in life, the most expensive is usually always better. More comfortable. Faster. Better on the eye. These graphics cards allow us to witness something revolutionary in gaming. If gamers weren't hung up on FPS, they'd sleep better at night. You can enjoy great looking games at a lower FPS knowing it can only improve but it takes time, or you can whine about FPS which could have a ripple effect in the industry that may cause raytracing not to embraced.  I remember when there were arguments about polygons vs sprites.  People made fun of virtual fighter because of the bland looking characters and backgrounds.

GAME DEVELOPERS have to embrace and utilize hardware more efficiently. Why does my expensive GPU and CPU struggle with flight simulator? For one, it uses DX11. I feel like these developers are lazy. Games should perform faster on more cores instead of solely relying on GHZ. Do you know who benefits from single thread high frequency in gaming?  Intel.  If gamers made a stink about developers not caring about cores, we would have games that run much faster.  Do you know why SLI died? Because developers were lazy and the technology wasn't embraced by them. Also, gamers complained about the cost of two graphics card.  But imagine if you could plop in another 1060 for cheap instead of getting a newer, more expensive graphics card. You have to think long term. Game developers can make or break emerging tech if they are lazy, can't see the benefit or cater to certain companies. AMD did not invest in any new technology to make games look even better. Nvidia did. If it was just AMD, light and shadows would look the same for the next 10 years. DLSS and ray tracing are forward thinking to benefit gamers. Give Nvidia credit.

Seriously.  All this anger is about FPS. Whereas first person shooters (especially competitive online gaming) benefits the most from high FPS.  Resident Evil, RPGs, adventure games, fighting games, sports games need a smooth experience and not an immersion breaking stuttering. High FPS in these games will not make you beat a boss quicker.

I also see a trend with gamers rejecting 4K (1440p is enough for me says John) and/or HDR.  ONLY because to experience 4K and HDR, it takes money.   But when these technologies come down in price, wouldn't it be great to have a huge catalog of older games that look great in 4K, HDR, and ray tracing?

Think ahead.  Yes, not everybody's bank account is the same.  But two things are true in tech.  It takes time for things to improve and it takes money to experience the best.  But those who spend the cash on new emerging technology are funding the R&D to bring this technology to the masses.

These tech reviewers should be better influencers and tell everyone that FPS doesn't matter in most games. They should focus more on smoothness and if the game has bugs or other problems. We are FPS whores because that's all we hear in these damn benchmarks and reviews.  If we go back to wanting games to look great (remember Super Mario 64?  Did we have Youtube to complain about the FPS?) and not care about how many frames, things would be so much better in this industry.  But game developers have to cut back on graphics because they have to appease the masses who only care about FPS.

This is all my opinion.

Lol! Are you serious? I suppose you still use your 3Dfx Voodoo card then? Each piece of hardware is a step, not the end. The cost for the 3000 series is less than the 2000 series. A step in the right direction. Just like the with the introduction of 'Normal Maps', the hardware isn't capable of using it Ray tracing everywhere...yet. To argue against progress, because it's insufficient for you, is assinine. As both a hardware, and game developer, I find your post somewhere between comical and pathetic.

Judging ray tracing when you are using a laptop 2060m is completely unfair. You talk about taking FPS, basically your user experience scope is sooo tiny, the 2060 is the entry level crap card of the 2000 series, and the 2000 series overall was underwhelming. This article is clickbait garbage. Play those games on a 3070 or better and then talk about the future of the 3000 series

Here's what I don't understand about Cyberpunk and Raytracing issues. I just read someone is pulling 50-55 fps with maxed out settings DLSS on quality with a 3090. I'm making the exact same fps, with exact same settings maxed out on a 2070 super. How? Granted I don't think he states his resolution but mine at 1080p.

I think you're right, i have a 2080 Ti (a graphic card superior than 3070 basically for the VRAM) and i have big problems with the frame rate and raytracing, Although the card is very powerful, it suffers from large fps drops when I activate the RTX is on, in cyberpunk i can play ultra and 4k by 60-70 fps or ultra with rtx in ultra in 1080p by 40-60 fps (dlss in quality because de performance mode is fckn horrible) its a huge drop because if i play in 1080p without RTXon i literally have more than 110 fps. Obviously that doesn't mind that i cant play with rtx at 60 fps or more in other games but allways the drop is huge, in Metro Exodus i can play 60-70fps extreme graphics and RTXon, without the RTX i get 144 fps, the maximum frame rate that my monitor support. same with control, shadow of the tomb rider, watch dogs legion, minecraft RTX, Quake II RTX, Deliver Us The Moon, Wolfestein Youngblood, COD MW, COD BOCW, BF5, Bright Memory, DIRT 5 & obvously cyberpunk. but im not that pesimist, i belive in Nvidia to do a nice work in RTX 4000 and bring us more RTX cores MORE VRAM and more cuda cores, the VRAM i think is one of the big problems of the RTX 3000 cards.

Quote from: Star on December 13, 2020, 05:31:27
You misunderstand the point. The point is that the RTX 3000-series GPUs will struggle with ray tracing in the future just as much as the RTX 2000-series GPUs--especially low-end ones--do today.

Thing is, most people can't even afford a laptop with RTX 2060, they buy with 1650, 1650 Ti, 5300M or 5500M. And even though that card isn't cheap, it performs poorly in ray-tracing. Nvidia promised us ray-tracing and DLSS. There are only a few games with both and things don't look good. Power efficiency of Ampere is disappointing.

Quote from: Peter McLean on December 13, 2020, 14:34:52
I cannot believe the author is complaining about RT performance on their 2060 mobile. You literally have the absolute worst RTX enabled card. What do you expect? What are you doing using a laptop for gaming and writing reviews about brand new AAA titles.

Please do not post anything else from this author. You're just trying to click bait people to your site. Shame on you.
I own a 3000 series card upgraded from a 2070 super on a 5120x1440 ultrawide and it has a huge performance boost.

Write articles about something you know, because you clearly shouldn't be writing about gaming, video cards or computer hardware.

Nvidia claimed 3080 to be 100% faster than 2080 which is not and claimed 90% more efficient which is not.

Nvidia also has a problem with people who prefer 120 fps gaming than ray-tracing enabled. 6900 XT is a better choice for them.

this has to be fake...

@ Todd H
You say you care about a smooth experience but then say sub 60fps is fine... I'd personally say anything below 60fps is poor. I'm guessing this is where your love of 4k is coming from.

The reason I and a lot of other people prefer 1440p is not due budget requirements at all but due to a preference for smoothness (144hz/144 fps) and graphical detail over resolution, as you've stated even with the 3090 you can't have both in all games. I could have saved myself a pretty penny when I got my 2k 144hz monitor and gone for a 4k 60hz instead. But I looked at the difference between the two (and tested two different 4k 60hz monitors) and it was pointless me having a 27-30" 4k monitor as there is no noticeable difference when you're talking those sizes as far as resolution goes, but there is very noticeable difference between any sort of action game (not just First person shooters) running at 60hz vs 144hz. Fair enough if we're talking 50" and up TV's then yes there would be a point in 4k, but I personally have never used my TV for PC gaming and never would. Also anything above 30" is just too big for desk use IMO.

Also you seem to contradict yourself you say FPS don't matter then say "Resident Evil, RPGs, adventure games, fighting games, sports games need a smooth experience and not an immersion breaking stuttering" one of the main and most obvious causes of stuttering gameplay is having low FPS so I'm not sure what you're trying to say there.

Don't get me wrong I would love to have 160hz 8k with all settings maxed out but the reality for now is that for now 144hz 2k maxed out is about the best we can hope for, or with your choices 60hz 4k maxed out.

"The 30-series add-in-boards are crap because my last-gen mobile GPU can't do it."

That's what I read from this article.  Nice logic.

Hey author, you realize there's a reason that these guys are strapping those huge heat sinks onto the sides of those GPUs, which your laptop doesn't have, right?  And that mobile GPUs have completely different design constraints than what they put into desktops?  Probably because in a desktop the GPU can use 10x the power that your entire laptop does when running full throttle?  And the primary purpose for that energy isn't to create heat for a fan to blow out the back - it's doing work with it.

And quite possibly a 1st gen mobile implementation of a state-of-the-art technology, where power consumption is a primary concern so that the laptop's battery isn't run flat in 15 minutes while scorching the owner's thighs isn't exactly the highest performer in that technology.

Also, drivers and game developers never improve their implementations with time and more wide use in the public.  Nope, the same half-assed early implementations are the only way to ever do it, apparently.  Why would a software engineering manager spend his team's valuable time on a flawless implementation of a early-life feature that 1% of GPUs support properly, with drivers that are only half-baked?  When that number becomes 10% and the driver matures, the results change.  We've seen this over and over in the GPU space for 20 years.

What a piece of trash this article is.  Completely foolish assertion with unbelievably boorish conclusions drawn from it.

Wow, this one really brought in all the comments. To address the most obviously wrong-headed responses:

It makes no sense to defend the 2060 mobile's useless RTX performance just because it's "cheap". Look at the cost difference between designs with the RTX 2060 and the GTX 1060, its direct predecessor, or even the performance-equivalent 1070. Then check the cost difference from the 2060 to the 1660Ti vs. the (relative) lack of performance difference. Nvidia added features that increased the die size of their mid-range chip and they *charged for it*; it's no defence at all to point to it being the bottom of the RTX range to justify those features being useless - they could have easily made that the 2070 the bottom-end RTX card and kept the 2060 as a GTX chip, but they didn't, and that makes it fair game for a critique.

As for the criticisms about the 3000 series not running future RT games, people seem to be deliberately missing the point here when they talk about their own habits of changing hard every 2-3 generations. The fact is that you can still run AAA rasterized games with modern features perfectly acceptably on an R9 290X from 2013, but I very much doubt you'll be able to run RT titles from 2027 acceptably on *any* 3000 series card. For context, the 3080 has an equivalent MSRP to the R9 290X when you account for inflation. I expected that situation with the beta-test 2000 series, but the 3000 series really did not move the needle much at all on Rt performance and that really sucks.

Nvidia are selling top-end cars for top-end money, and insisting that reviewers talk about the "future" of RT, but these cards simply will not be a meaningful part of that future. These are just the facts.

Quote from: MachineShedFred on December 14, 2020, 15:12:42
"The 30-series add-in-boards are crap because my last-gen mobile GPU can't do it."

That's what I read from this article.  Nice logic.

Nice reading comprehension, bozo. That's what's known as a straw man, because it's not even close to the argument being made.

To summarise:
What a piece of trash this [comment] is.  Completely foolish assertion with unbelievably boorish conclusions drawn from it.

Looking at all the image shots including the ones in this article makes me question why I should even care about ray tracing. I honestly can't say if the two images of the woman in this article are so different that I might prefer one. In fact, I find the one without RT to be more realistic.

I accept the immature state of RT, so I'm open to seeing how it develops. More and more games that are attractive to me lately haven't been photo-realistic stuff. I'm enjoying better stories and interactions and find them way more engaging than gawking at some shiny spots. I remember how disappointing Doom 3 was when it came out, the graphics were way too dark and the game play was just lather-rinse-repeat. Unless the average game development cycle is lengthened to allow for more time for both graphics and narrative development, I see this as partly a zero-sum game where prettier graphics = shittier narrative and interactions. In the last decade we also witnessed the rise of E-sports and a large portion of gamers went that route. For that, I can't see the need for RT.

RT is cool in theory and in 5 years it might be cheap, accessible and practical for most things. For now, I really don't care. DLSS is neat, but deep learning is infiltrating into most everything we do and graphics is no exception.

This depends... How can I say it, if you play at 1440p RT On... Is more than fine, 4K is the problem, but with DLSS thats less a problem.

The future would be with dlss 3.0 and its implementations, all the current 30 series would have a big improve, the problem is that nvidia didn't have that particular tech available at launch.

Its true that currently RT is not the most plausible if you play at 4K but is just second gen rt on nvidia and first gen on amd, so people shouldn't expect perfect performance just yet, most APIs features weren't usable in the first years of last gen (heck, you could even say it took way more time).

There are games that have problem implementing good use of intel higher clock or the more threats of the ryzen processors.

So waiting is best right know which is not good to say that for consumers but thats literally the only deal.

I believe in nvidia technology and is the way to go, so I'll buy a 30 series card but I know what I'll got for what the tech is in this moment, the hardware improve is big, but the software side of things is not yet 100% :/, if the dx12U is coold thats fine but if the software of the card is not completely optimized then you should not expect the best performance.

Most of this seems very clearly to be an issue of the struggle to make the leap to higher resolutions. With tweaking, I was able to get my 2080 super to average around 90fps at 2560×1440 in Cyberpunk w/ 'medium' ie low rtx settings and mostly high or ultra settings.

That is likely due to Asus's new bios for my mobo allowing the equivalent of SAM, liquid cooling and modest OCs abound. The thing is, at 4k every leap in performance is very incremental. Just on the software end, dlss 2.0 took a bigger leap at 4k than any of the hardware improvements made from either Nvidia OR AMD.

To the people crying 'this 7yo gpu is still viable (lmao no its not)' are overlooking reality. To get a picture of how the implementation of rt is going to play out over card cycles, you actually need to look back at the implementation of rasterization. This isn't 'just' new architecture, its an entirely new rendering technique for this medium. And when you do look back, you see much the same compared to whats going on today.

Terrible optimization, seemingly rendering brand new hardware obsolete. Existing games with hamfisted implementation making the new tech look like a step back. The one difference, games could have a muuuuch shorter development cycle back then. So adoption seemed to happen a faster.

Today, we have only just entered the actual adoption window. It's only now universally available across all major platforms. Which is why we see pretty much every game being released now supporting it. As opposed to six months ago, where less than 10% of all gaming machines had any sort of ray tracing support. Even then, most of those were on hardware that basically supported it in name only.

As an aside, even if AMD and Nvidia return to 15-25% generational cycle  leaps in performance, the 30 series will be obsolete in 2-3 cycles. In large part bc of the leap the 30 series itself made. That would be comparable to as much as the leap the 30 series itself made, nearly doubling the 30 series performance in 4 years.

Do you know how much hard work Nvidia has done for us...for workers...for gamers...for the future...yeah, the fps sucks with RTX but that is just the beginning of a new generation. The Pandemic had almost ruined the company...the stocks are very low...and everyone is mad...but when you get your hands on the new RTX-30 series...now you will understand. Right now, Im also using an RTX 2060 on my pc...and when I play games with RTX in Modern Warfare...it changes a lot in terms of gameplay and graphics...real time illumination...flashbangs and explosions light up the surrounding to detect any enemy nearby using explosion light source...this is just the tip of the iceberg...and funny thing is that you complain about FPS with ray tracing on with your RTX 2060 mobile graphics card and yes, I do agree about performance issue...but you should be thankful and even though Cyberpunk 2077 with High settings and RTX on and you get only 55fps with dlss...then the only way to improve this is just set it to medium and RTX on with dlss quality...that should satisfy you.

Quote from: TengkuJG on December 14, 2020, 19:05:28the stocks are very low...

It's very far from reality. Those who started 4 years back in the company are now millionaires, because stocks went up 18 times. NVIDIA went out of the stock drop a year ago and increased the stock price 3.5 times in a year. The stock performance is unprecedented, you will hardly find another company that is doing so well on the stock market.

Quote from: TengkuJG on December 14, 2020, 19:05:28Do you know how much hard work Nvidia has done for us

I actually do. Not enough. NVIDIA must fire half of its incompetent management. Its internal culture is in disarray. Because of the stock market the fast track to wealthy life attracted too much mediocrity, favoritism and internal circle everywhere, at the same time brilliant engineers left.

Being critical is not the same as being ungrateful. In fact, that's precisely what's needed now instead of ignoring issues.

Quote from: TengkuJG on December 14, 2020, 19:05:28
Do you know how much hard work Nvidia has done for us...for workers...for gamers...for the future...yeah, the fps sucks with RTX but that is just the beginning of a new generation. The Pandemic had almost ruined the company...the stocks are very low...and everyone is mad...but when you get your hands on the new RTX-30 series...now you will understand. Right now, Im also using an RTX 2060 on my pc...and when I play games with RTX in Modern Warfare...it changes a lot in terms of gameplay and graphics...real time illumination...flashbangs and explosions light up the surrounding to detect any enemy nearby using explosion light source...this is just the tip of the iceberg...and funny thing is that you complain about FPS with ray tracing on with your RTX 2060 mobile graphics card and yes, I do agree about performance issue...but you should be thankful and even though Cyberpunk 2077 with High settings and RTX on and you get only 55fps with dlss...then the only way to improve this is just set it to medium and RTX on with dlss quality...that should satisfy you.

Wow, 6 pages of comments in a day, this has got to be (at least) the hottest article of the year on this site! I was gonna say something else but forgot what I was gonna say seeing all these comments.

Nvidia and Intel have been sharing best practices? I saw the first half of Linus's rant and he actuallt made a ton of good points. RT is still in the oven and we will see in 5 years. Lots of innovations did not pan out in the mainstream.

Muricans are not too smart, like wtf.. capitalism fried your tiny yet overweight brains.

You are so good, you just spent 1000$ on 30 series to play 2018 rtx titles under 60 FPS (unless u toggle some shi**y upscaler called DLSS)

In a year or less, your 30 series will be incapable of running new rtx games. Lol, it already cant hold 60FPS with RTX and no DLSS in CP2077 xDD
And you will have to spend 1000$ again just to play RTX titles released past 2 years with 40fps.

Thanks for the USA, the only place u can so easilyy make money on shi**y products - manipulation and marketing is all u need if u wanna sell product to muricans.

Exactly, European people are much smarter. We built, um, better GPUs. Our GPUs are awesome and much faster than American branded stuff like Nvidia or AMD or Intel or Apple. That's why capitalist Americans haven't even heard of our awesomeness. Our product prices are high to begin with, so we can't even tell the difference between scalping and regular pricing. Silly Murica.

Quote from: Smart European Customer on December 15, 2020, 05:05:14
Muricans are not too smart, like wtf.. capitalism fried your tiny yet overweight brains.

You are so good, you just spent 1000$ on 30 series to play 2018 rtx titles under 60 FPS (unless u toggle some shi**y upscaler called DLSS)

In a year or less, your 30 series will be incapable of running new rtx games. Lol, it already cant hold 60FPS with RTX and no DLSS in CP2077 xDD
And you will have to spend 1000$ again just to play RTX titles released past 2 years with 40fps.

Thanks for the USA, the only place u can so easilyy make money on shi**y products - manipulation and marketing is all u need if u wanna sell product to muricans.

Thing is, to fully path-trace actually photorealistic games in 16K VR 240 fps, we would need a hundred thousand times more rays per second than Turing. Unfortunately (as seen in Control), Ampere doesn't even double Turing's ray-tracing performance.

With doubling every two years, it will take 33 years. With +60% every two years (like Ampere), it's gonna take as long as 50 years. I find 50 years unreasonable and unacceptable and that's assuming they won't go below 60% because of the end of transistor shrinking.