ray-tracing
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Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT review: AMD returns to high-end PC gaming
AMD's Radeon 6800 and 6800 XT prove that it can still build great high-end GPUs. They're solid NVIDIA competitors, though their ray tracing performance still needs some work.
NVIDIA RTX 3070 review: A hot rod GPU for the practical gamer
NVIDIA's RTX 3070 is a phenomenal deal for $499. It's basically just as fast as the $999 RTX 2080 Ti.
NVIDIA RTX 3080 review: A huge leap for 4K gaming and ray tracing
NVIDIA's RTX 3080 is an absolute beast, delivering solid 4K speeds while also running ray tracing.
'Fortnite' will add ray tracing and DLSS on September 17th
'Fortnite' will get NVIDIA's ray tracing and DLSS tech on September 17th.
'Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War' will have ray-tracing support
It'll tap into NVIDIA's new low-latency Reflex tech as well.
'Crysis Remastered' can run in 8K, if your PC can handle it
It's coming to PS4, Xbox One and Epic Games Store on September 18th.
NVIDIA's RTX GPUs now support DirectX 12 Ultimate
As of today, NVIDIA's GPUs officially support Microsoft's DirectX 12 Ultimate framework.
'Control' is headed to PS5 and Xbox Series X
You might get a taste of its ray-tracing capabilities on console.
'Minecraft' looks like a whole new game with NVIDIA's RTX ray tracing
Minecraft gets the full ray tracing treatment with the new NVIDIA RTX beta. This is what the future of games looks like.
Minecraft's ray-tracing beta arrives on PC this week
Minecraft will still retain its blocky aesthetic, but it’ll look breathtaking as it does.
Microsoft's DirectX 12 Ultimate brings ray tracing effects to more games
More efforts are underway to bring ray traced visuals to more of your games. Microsoft has introduced a DirectX 12 Ultimate framework that makes ray tracing and other visual effects both more efficient and more flexible. A new inline ray tracing technique gives more control over the lighting effects that make more sense for certain games, GPU shaders can invoke ray tracing without talking to the CPU and streaming engines can more efficiently load ray tracing shaders as you roam around. Your games won't demand as much from your system as they did before.
Ray tracing comes to more games thanks to new software tools
You haven't seen much ray tracing in games due in part to the limited frameworks for it. Outside of Microsoft's DirectX, creators have usually had to lean on proprietary approaches. Soon, though, it might be relatively ubiquitous. The Khronos Group has released "provisional" ray tracing extensions for Vulkan, the open graphics standard effectively replacing OpenGL on multiple platforms. You should see sophisticated reflections, fewer light artifacts and otherwise more natural-looking lighting in titles that support the technology.
'Quake II RTX' update delivers more realistic ray-traced visuals
NVIDIA is still committed to sprucing up Quake II RTX's graphics after the novelty has worn off. The GPU maker has released a 1.2 update that adds significant realism to the ray tracing effects -- insofar as you can have realism in a sci-fi game, anyway. Water is now considerably more realistic, with "god rays" that are visible even in reflections and refractions. Many textures have been updated to look sharper or just plain better. Glass is also considerably more realistic, including more "god rays," tinted glass and an experimental option that calculates the reflection and refraction inside thicker glass.
NVIDIA's latest RTX Studio drivers make Blender four times faster
NVIDIA's latest Studio RTX driver isn't just speeding up commercial production renderers like V-Ray. If you use the free, open-source Blender 3D animation software, you'll also get a boost, NVIDIA announced. With the new driver, the Blender Cycles renderer will provide real-time rendering and boost performance by four times compared to using a CPU alone.
NVIDIA's RTX Studio driver speeds up ray-traced V-Ray rendering
When you see a particularly shiny, photorealistic 3D scene, there's a good chance it was created on Autodesk's 3DS Max or Maya using Chaos Group's V-Ray renderer. It can take a long time for workstations to crunch through V-Ray scenes, however, so NVIDIA has just unveiled an instant speedup. If you have an NVIDIA GeForce RTX or Quadro RTX card, the latest Studio driver will speed up V-Ray GPU renders by 40 percent on average, NVIDIA announced.
NVIDIA will remaster more games with RTX ray tracing
Quake II RTX is far from the last game to receive an NVIDIA ray tracing upgrade. DSOG has discovered that NVIDIA is hiring a producer for its Lightspeed Studios unit to lead work on a "game remastering program" that will add RTX ray tracing to more classic titles. The GPU maker is unsurprisingly shy about just which games are in the pipeline. The next project is a game "you know and love" -- not a real clue, but promising nonetheless.
Square Enix’s ‘Back Stage’ tech demo is all about ray-tracing
Square Enix, the JRPG behemoth behind Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, has released a tech demo titled Back Stage, which is rendered almost entirely with a technique called path tracing. This is an offshoot of ray tracing that specializes in processing realistic lighting, shadows and reflections in real time. While ray tracing has become a bit of a buzzword, the render quality in the video below serves as proof that the technology will be a highlight of the next generation of consoles and PC graphics cards.
NVIDIA ray-tracing on 'Minecraft' looks surprisingly cool
Minecraft's blocky world might be the last place you'd think would need more realism. However, NVIDIA and Microsoft have announced that they've done exactly that, bringing RTX ray-tracing powers to the ever-popular game. "In normal Minecraft, a block of gold just appears yellow," said Minecraft's Saxs Persson, "but with ray tracing turned on, you really get to see the specular highlight, you get to see the reflection, you can even see a mob reflected in it."
NVIDIA revamps Moon landing recreation in time for Apollo 11's 50th
You knew NVIDIA couldn't resist reviving its GPU-based Apollo 11 recreation for the Moon landing's 50th anniversary. Sure enough, the tech firm has updated the demo to take advantage of its RTX ray tracing technology, allowing a more faithful rendition of the moment Buzz Aldrin followed Neil Armstrong to the lunar surface. The biggest improvement, as you might suspect, is the lighting. Real-time raytracing captures how the Sun's rays bounced off the lunar lander and even the spacesuits -- the glowing highlights and varied shadows are closer to what you saw in the TV footage and photos than the slightly dulled look of the 2014 demo.
AMD tells all about its $449 Radeon RX 5700 XT GPU
After unveiling its first 7-nanometer "Navi" GPUs a few weeks ago at Computex, the Radeon RX 5000 series, AMD finally gave us more details at E3. Its first cards from the new "RDNA" family will be the $449 Radeon RX 5700 XT, which will take on NVIDIA's RTX 2070, and the $379 RX 5700, which competes with the NVIDIA RTX 2060. AMD says the more powerful 5700 XT will feature 40 compute units, boost speeds upwards of 1.9GHz, and up to 9.75 teraflops. In an on-stage gameplay demo, it outperformed the RTX 2070 by around 20 FPS in 1440p. The 5700, meanwhile, has 36 compute units and speeds up to 1.7GHz. Both cards will be available on July 7th.
