Last year Nvidia introduced its RTX GPUs that brought real-time Ray Tracing with them. Nvidia RTX GPUs feature RT Cores, which are responsible for the real-time Ray Tracing. However, it seems that we don’t really need RT Cores to support Ray Tracing as Nvidia Titan V supports it and it doesn’t even have RT Cores.
3dcenter has managed to run Battlefield 5 on Nvidia TITAN V with real-time Ray Tracing enabled. Interestingly, the $2999 GPU doesn’t even have RT Cores to support real-time Ray Tracing. Not only that, Titan V is based on the Volta architecture and RTX GPUs are based on the Turing architecture.
Does this mean Nvidia is fooling people with its RTX GPUs? Are RTX GPUs a scam? Not necessarily! 3dcenter has managed to support Ray Tracing at a software level using DirectX 12.
However, the only reason Nvidia Titan V managed to support ray tracing is the sheer amount of computational power the GPU has. That is why in this case, real-time Ray Tracing doesn’t require any dedicated hardware.
Furthermore, Nvidia Titan V not only managed to support ray tracing in Battlefield 5 but, the GPU also managed to run the game at a good frame rate at 1440p resolution with Ultra graphical settings.
However, enabling Real-time Ray Tracing in Battlefield 5 Rotterdam map takes a toll on the GPU. According to benchmarks, Nvidia Titan V managed an average of 56 FPS with ray tracing at high.
But, overall the results are incredible. On average, the GPU managed to run Battlefield 5, at Ultra settings and Ray Tracing at high, at an average of 80 FPS. Here is a comparison between Nvidia Titan V and Titan RTX while running Battlefield 5 with Real-time Ray Tracing.
| Titan V | Titan RTX | |
| Battlefield 5, Ultra, RT= High, 1440p | 80 FPS | 87 FPS |
| Battlefield 5 Rotterdam, Ultra, RT= Medium, 1440p | 67 FPS | 97 FPS |
| Battlefield 5 Rotterdam, Ultra, RT= High, 1440p | 56 FPS | 81 FPS |
As for the question “Are RTX GPUs a scam?” The answer is simple, if you have a GPU worth $2999 with sheer graphical computational power, only then you can run Ray tracing at the software level.
Speaking of Nvidia, the company is yet to reveal its mid-range RTX 2060 GPU. While we are waiting, leaks and rumors have almost confirmed Nvidia RTX 2060 reveal at CES 2019.
According to leaked marketing material, Nvidia will announce is mid-range GPU at CES 2019.
Another report suggests that along with a dedicated version of RTX 2060, Nvidia also plans to announce mobility versions of RTX 2060.
Furthermore, these mobility GPUs include Nvidia RTX 2060 and RTX 2060 Max-Q mobility. However, given that Nvidia confirmed RTX 2070 to be the minimum requirement for ray tracing, it is interesting to see the RTX brand with 2060 since it won’t support real-time ray tracing.
Also, what further confirms the imminent reveal of the Nvidia RTX 2060 is the support for RTX 2060 in GPU-Z.
However, these are not the only rumors. Another report suggests that RTX 2070 Mobility based laptops are coming in 2019. Reportedly, the RTX 2070 mobility laptops will be announced at CES 2019.
Seems like there is going to be a lot of interesting stuff at this year’s CES 2019.
Source: 3dcenter
