At CES this evening we launched new GPUs for gamers around the world, revealed new GPUs powering a record number of gaming laptops and extended our G-SYNC line of gaming monitors.
We’re also showing new games and demos featuring RTX ray tracing and DLSS technology. Blockbusters Battlefield V and Anthem are adding RTX DLSS. Justice and Atomic Heart showed new tech demos featuring ray tracing and DLSS, and a 3DMark ray-tracing benchmark is coming to test GeForce RTX’s mettle.
Built to Deliver an Unrivaled Experience in Today’s Games
We showed how our family of GeForce RTX GPUs delivers great performance on the games you play today.
And with the new Turing shader architecture to more efficiently handle the compute-heavy workloads of modern games, GeForce RTX can deliver even faster performance in modern games. It supports concurrent execution of floating point and integer operations, adaptive shading technology and an all new unified memory architecture with twice the cache.
Modern games can utilize these features to achieve up to 2x performance of the prior generation GTX 1060.
NVIDIA RTX Brings Real-Time Ray Tracing and AI-Enhanced Graphics to Games
Since that launch, the gaming industry has rallied around the NVIDIA RTX platform. Over the past six months, it has seen many milestones, including:
- Introduction of the first GPUs fast enough to deliver real-time ray tracing
- An industry-standard application programming interface (API) in the form of Microsoft DirectX Raytracing (DXR)
- Support from the world’s leading game engines, including DICE/EA’s Frostbite Engine, Epic’s Unreal Engine, Remedy Entertainment’s Remedy Engine, Square Enix’s Luminous Engine and Unity’s UnityEngine
- Release of the first game to feature real-time ray tracing, Battlefield V
- Up to 50 percent performance increases with the Battlefield V Chapter 1: Overture Update
- Release of the first game to feature DLSS, Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition
- Introduction of the GeForce RTX 2060. At $349, it puts RTX within reach of tens of millions of PC gamers worldwide
- Introduction of GeForce RTX for gaming laptops with 40+ models from every major OEM
Ray Tracing Is the Future of Gaming
The people creating tomorrow’s games are excited about what’s coming.
“Ray tracing will transform the way games are created, look and play,” said Kam VedBrat, partner group program manager for DirectX at Microsoft. “DirectX Raytracing will pave the way for developers to deliver the future of games.”
These changes mark a big shift. Programmable shaders were a revolution when NVIDIA introduced them 15 years ago. But they’ve reached their limit.
NVIDIA RTX represents the next revolution in visual fidelity by combining next-generation shaders with specialized RT Cores for real-time ray tracing and Tensor Cores to execute deep learning algorithms that enhance graphics and improve performance.
“GeForce RTX has made real-time ray tracing a reality,” said Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. ”By making RTX technology available in Unreal Engine 4, we are shaping the future of game graphics.”
“Real-time Ray Tracing moves real-time graphics significantly closer to realism, opening the gates to global rendering effects never before possible in real-time domain,” said Natalya Tatarchuk, vice president of graphics at Unity Technologies.
With the necessary tools now in place, game adoption for RTX is set to accelerate.
Battlefield V, First Real-Time Ray-Tracing Game, Adding DLSS
In October, EA, DICE and NVIDIA delivered the first game to feature real-time ray-traced reflections in Battlefield V. At CES, we announced that Battlefield V will also adopt DLSS.
“With the realistic visuals of ray-traced reflections and the higher resolution DLSS brings, RTX On is the way to play Battlefield V,” said Eneko Bilbao, head of technology at DICE.
With RTX On in Battlefield V, gamers will get both beautiful real-time ray tracing and smooth frame rates with DLSS.
Anthem Will Support DLSS
Anthem is the highly anticipated online multiplayer action role-playing game from BioWare and represents Electronic Arts’ first original IP in over a decade. Anthem is also the latest AAA title to announce support for DLSS.
“By merging traditional computer graphics and deep learning, DLSS represents the next step in performance for us,” said Jon Warner, game director at BioWare. “We are excited to partner with NVIDIA to bring RTX technology to Anthem.”
After winning more than 90 awards at E3, Anthem is poised to be the biggest game in the history of BioWare, a record that includes blockbuster franchises such as Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Baldur’s Gate and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
Justice, One of China’s Most Popular MMOs, Gets Enhanced with Ray Tracing and DLSS
Game developers in China are stepping up to the world stage in terms of graphics realism, led by NetEase and their hit game, Justice. Announced at GTC China in November, Justice will also use real-time ray tracing and DLSS at the same time. At CES, we featured a Justice tech demo that shows the power of RTX.
“NVIDIA RTX real-time ray tracing and DLSS are the perfect combination,” said Zhipeng Hu, head of studio and vice president of NetEase. “Justice can present the detailed environment brought to life by real-time ray tracing without additional performance cost. It makes the Justice universe more vivid.”
The Justice demo is the first RTX game content out of China. The demo features ray-traced reflections, shadows and caustics. It’s the first time that real-time ray tracing has been used for caustics.
3DMark Port Royal Tests Ray Tracing with DLSS
Illustrating that ray tracing is the way forward for game developers, leading benchmark creator United Laboratories has launched a new benchmark to measure real-time ray-tracing performance. The 3DMark Port Royal benchmark will support ray tracing for realistic specular reflections and pixel-perfect hard shadows as well as DLSS. 3DMark Port Royal will be available Jan. 8, with a DLSS update coming shortly thereafter.
Atomic Heart Showcases Benefits of Ray Tracing and DLSS
Moscow-based Mundfish is currently crafting Atomic Heart, an alt-universe first-person shooter with a unique look, feel and style set during the height of the Soviet Union. Gamers got a look at an Atomic Heart tech demo highlighting ray-tracing and DLSS at CES.
“RTX will change PC gaming forever,” said Mundfish CEO Robert Bagratuni. “Ray tracing and DLSS make the impossible possible.”
First previewed at Gamescom, Atomic Heart features RTX with DLSS and multiple varieties of ray tracing. Using visual cues made popular by the great Hollywood directors, long creeping shadows and reflections of what is behind the player give a hint as to the new immersive gameplay made possible by using RTX technologies.