Ray Tracing for everybody!

[Shamrock]

https://www.pcgamer.com/windows-10-update-for-october-brings-directx-raytracing-to-everyone/

The new Windows 10 update fully supports raytracing, through DX12

 

[pcslookout]

Nice!

 

[pcslookout]

Does it support Battlefield 1 or just Battlefield 5 ?

 

[alcoholbob]

What's this gonna be, 720p30 run on shaders if you don't have RT cores?

 

[pcslookout]

What's this gonna be, 720p30 run on shaders if you don't have RT cores?

At least you can see what all the fuss is about then see if it is worth it!

 

[LFCNZ]

So are there any ray tracing demos you can download?

 

[PeterScott]

Everybody is an exaggeration. DXR is one part of the puzzle. GPU makers still have to supply driver that support it, and then you need a game/demo that actually uses it.

Then when all of that is in place, you can run your game/demo at 4fps if you don't have actual RT HW.

 

[arandomguy]

So are there any ray tracing demos you can download?

There's ray tracing demos but not DXR demos.

Probably only few select partners have had access to DXR until now.

 

[AtenRa]

if you don't have actual RT HW.

What is an RT HW ??

 

[SirDinadan]

Probably only few select partners have had access to DXR until now.

You only had to turn on "Developer Mode" in Windows 10 RS4. Now DXR is accessible without Developer Mode in the October update.

 

[realibrad]

What is an RT HW ??

Ray Tracing Hardware I suspect.

 

[AtenRa]

There's ray tracing demos but not DXR demos.

Probably only few select partners have had access to DXR until now.

There is a DXR Demo, just not publicly available yet.

https://benchmarks.ul.com/news/watch-our-new-directx-raytracing-tech-demo

 

[AtenRa]

Ray Tracing Hardware I suspect.

Yes, I mean what makes a Hardware to be RT ???

 

[realibrad]

Yes, I mean what makes a Hardware to be RT ???

Probably the optimization to be able to do it. That is why the new Nvidia chips have something that is made specifically to run RT.

 

[Kenmitch]

Everybody is an exaggeration. DXR is one part of the puzzle. GPU makers still have to supply driver that support it, and then you need a game/demo that actually uses it.

Then when all of that is in place, you can run your game/demo at 4fps if you don't have actual RT HW.

Even if a person was to just get 4fps running the demos at least they could see what their potentially missing in the end. I'm doubting it'll be enough to get end users to pony up for a card that's capable. It will be interesting to see the reviews showing the RT hit and how much visually the differences are.

 

[AtenRa]

Probably the optimization to be able to do it. That is why the new Nvidia chips have something that is made specifically to run RT.

What im trying to point out here is that everyone talks about specifically RayTracing Hardware but nobody really understand what this hardware is exactly.

Its nothing more than the ability to execute FP16.

And something else about Microsoft and Machine Learning (Win ML and Direct ML)., this is from Siggraph 2018.

http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/si...-gpu-inferencing-directml-and-directx-12.html

 

[realibrad]

What im trying to point out here is that everyone talks about specifically RayTracing Hardware but nobody really understand what this hardware is exactly.

Its nothing more than the ability to execute FP16.

And something else about Microsoft and Machine Learning (Win ML and Direct ML)., this is from Siggraph 2018.

http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/si...-gpu-inferencing-directml-and-directx-12.html

Then is "RT HW = FP16 enabled HW"? That would seem to be the answer to your question of what is RT HW no?

 

[Stuka87]

What's this gonna be, 720p30 run on shaders if you don't have RT cores?

As far as we can tell (without more information) there is nothing really special about the tensor cores in RTX cards. Just another name for compute only cores. Although if nVidia gives up more information, this may turn out to be not the case.

But even if this does make use of those, even a 2080Ti is most likely looking at sub 30fps at lower resolutions. Even their demos which lacked in scene detail were 30fps at 1080P.

 

[Qwertilot]

There's a lot of entirely dedicated hardware in there for RTS along with the tensor cores. Then there's the neural network code needed to run the denoising on the tensor cores (definitely not trivial) and tying it all altogether coherently.

Always much easier to copy, but it definitely isn't a trivial thing.

 

[Headfoot]

Nobody but nVidia understands the specific details on how the hardware works, but it was pretty clear that it does the BVH search. Seems like a pretty straightforward conclusion to say they've reduced parts of that algorithm to fixed hardware so that it would run at the speed of fixed function hardware. To say its just regular FP16 resources is pretty clearly wrong and FUD. If it was just that, then it would be available as FP16 resources like the FP16 resources already on the chip...

 

[PeterScott]

As far as we can tell (without more information) there is nothing really special about the tensor cores in RTX cards. Just another name for compute only cores. Although if nVidia gives up more information, this may turn out to be not the case.

But even if this does make use of those, even a 2080Ti is most likely looking at sub 30fps at lower resolutions. Even their demos which lacked in scene detail were 30fps at 1080P.

Tensor cores are not just another name for compute cores. The are highly specialized Machine Learning units. They have many uses but will provide the denoising needed for quick ray tracing. You could possible do without these, but they probably give a small overall boost to denoising/improve its quality.
https://cloud.google.com/blog/produ...k-at-googles-first-tensor-processing-unit-tpu

OTOH, RT cores are totally dedicated to Ray Tracing. They only exist to calculate ray and triangle intersections. This is the biggest speedup, and the most critical part that enables RT to function in games. IMO without this dedicated RT element, it really isn't feasible to do RT in games.

 

[LTC8K6]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13282/nvidia-turing-architecture-deep-dive/6

The Tensor cores are very interesting.

 

[Kenmitch]

OTOH, RT cores are totally dedicated to Ray Tracing. They only exist to calculate ray and triangle intersections. This is the biggest speedup, and the most critical part that enables RT to function in games. IMO without this dedicated RT element, it really isn't feasible to do RT in games.

Without knowing how the 20xx series performs with RT on using the lower tier cards it might be safe to say RT isn't even feasible anyways. If the 20xx series in the mortal mans price range doesn't even have RT or the grunt if so then the adoption rate will be even lower. Playing at 720p with RT on doesn't sound like what the pc gamer is striving for.

 

[psolord]

What's this gonna be, 720p30 run on shaders if you don't have RT cores?

720p/30 will be for the 2080 and below. The 2080ti will be full 1080p. Dunno if above 30fps tho.

 

[LTC8K6]

Since we are apparently only talking about a hybrid of rasterization and ray tracing, with only a small amount of ray tracing actually going on, perhaps frame rates will be faster than expected when everything gets going properly?