NVIDIA ray-tracing now available on GeForce GTX graphics cards!
NVIDIA brings ray-tracing to GeForce GTX graphics cards
Note: This article was first published on 11th April 2019.
NVIDIA has finally released drivers that will enable select GeForce GTX series graphics card to support real-time ray-tracing.
Real-time ray-tracing used to be the exclusive domain of NVIDIA's new RTX graphics cards.
The GeForce GTX series graphics card that will support real-time ray-tracing are as follows:
- GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
- GeForce GTX 1070
- GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
- GeForce GTX 1080
- GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
- NVIDIA TITAN Xp (2017)
- NVIDIA TITAN X (2016)
- GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
- GeForce GTX 1660
Note that only GeForce GTX 1060 cards with 6GB of framebuffer can do real-time ray-tracing.
Note also that this means that any notebook with equivalent Pascal and Turing-architecture GPUs will also support real-time ray-tracing.
NVIDIA also explained that lesser cards won't be able to support real-time ray-tracing because of the lack of graphics performance.
In addition, NVIDIA reiterated that the best performance is still to be had only with the new RTX series of graphics card.
To reinforce this, they showed off a couple of graphs showing that even the entry-level GeForce RTX card, the GeForce RTX 2060, was significantly faster than even the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.
Still, this offers owners of the older GeForce GTX series cards a chance to experience real-time ray-tracing and it just might spur them to upgrade to a new GeForce RTX graphics card.
Finally, to let new users get a taste of real-time ray-tracing, NVIDIA is releasing a trio of showcase demos. They are the Atomic Heart, the Justice, and Reflections. The demos can be downloaded here.
Breathe new life into your GeForce GTX graphics cards with the new drivers here.