loading
loading
The PC gaming ray tracing obsession began with the first RTX 20 graphics cards released on this day in 2018 — the GeForce RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti led the charge, but games were thin on the ground Nvidia said the video game hardware and software-disrupting Turing architecture was '20 years in the making.' Nvidia’s Turing GPUs became available to enthusiasts for the first time on this day eight years ago. This wasn’t just another accelerated GPU generation, though, at least according to Nvidia. The GeForce 20 series pioneered a “20 years in the making” ability to deliver hybrid graphics enhanced by real-time ray tracing. Nvidia made this new technology available at the high-end first, via the GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti (review links). The more mainstream RTX 2070 wouldn’t become available until October. In a blog post a month ahead of the release day, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang didn't hold back in heralding the arrival of Turning for PC gaming graphics. “Turing opens up a new golden age of gaming, with realism only possible with ray tracing, which most people thought was still a decade away.” He went on to claim that “Once you see an RTX game, you can’t go back.” Despite Huang’s boasts we can look back and confidently say that many gamers still don’t care about ray tracing. Nor do they wish to endure the performance impact even the latest generation mainstream graphics cards from Nvidia (and AMD, and Intel) still suffer from when this feature is turned on. Moreover, at the time of launch back in 2018, and for quite a few months onwards, there was little in the way of content that made the new RTX 20 series' distinguishing feature seem worthwhile. Early in-game showcases that garnered a lot of pixel peeping and chin rubbing included Battlefield V, Metro Exodus, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Our review of the RTX 2080 Founders Edition noted that this new second-fastest Turing architecture card managed to outpace the legendary GTX 1080 Ti. However, we grumbled about it being $100 more expensive than the former flagship. During this era, Nvidia Founders Editions were actually more expensive than the base models from AIBs. Thus the RTX 2080 FE had an MSRP of $799, but you might have been able to pick up an Asus, Colorful, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, Palit, PNY, or Zotac for $699. Our review of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti flagship was more positive, despite the conclusion that the “$1200 price tag is out of reach for most gamers.” The 71% uplift in price wasn’t really worth it for the ~26% faster performance vs the GTX 1080 Ti. It was also about 20% faster in gaming than the pro Titan V, though. Our review of the RTX 2080 Ti was 14 pages long, but here’s a direct link to some gaming benchmarks featuring the likes of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, The Witcher 3, and World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth. During gaming, this new consumer flagship would typically consume about 280W. Eight years later, we can say that realtime ray tracing has indeed proved popular. Even consoles and mobile games now use and boast of this visual tech, and probably couldn’t ignore it without getting sidelined. But adoption has been slow, and it has taken yet more layers of technology, such as DLSS for the green team, to make ray tracing at all accessible for budget / mainstream gamers, even in 2026. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Do you still rock a Turing GPU in 2026? If you do, or are just curious about how well an 8-year-old card would do in 2026, I'm sorry to say that Turing has slipped off the end of our famous graphics card hierarchy. However, the following generation RTX 3070 at $499 offered very similar performance to the prior-gen $1,199 flagship. Those were the days (except that the cryptomining craze happened). Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason. - Trake_17 Still waiting for the impact of Ray tracing to matter. I guess it's just 30 years in the making now.Reply - PEnns Aside from certain techie writers and a few moneyed gamers, there is no such thing as "ray tracing obsession"!Reply - thisisaname Reply 30 years of marketing has made Nvidia some money just not as much as Crypto mining or the AI boom.Trake_17 said:Still waiting for the impact of Ray tracing to matter. I guess it's just 30 years in the making now. - MobileJAD I miss the GTX 1080 era, graphics cards were way more affordable back then, used less power and produced way less heat. And it was before all of this crypto and AI madness.Reply - usertests ReplyTrake_17 said:Still waiting for the impact of Ray tracing to matter. I guess it's just 30 years in the making now. It could start to become mandatory for the majority of games some time after the PS6 launches. Like 3-5 years (around 2030-2032). So we're over halfway to the starting line.BTM18 said:No one wanted it. No on e uses it. First thing i turn off. And i CAN run it on my 5080. - thestryker Ray tracing is very much a transformative technology, but too much depends on implementation. Of course if there was better RT hardware then this would probably solve itself. The current state of linear RT performance means the vast majority of players don't have a capable enough GPU. I've really wished there would be a minimum level of RT performance rather than the linear scaling across the entire stack.Reply I definitely use RT depending on the game, but the slowest RT capable GPU I've used is a 3080 12GB. If the RT capability of the forthcoming consoles is good enough the transformative promise might actually come true. It's not going to replace the render pipeline but the current consoles have such poor RT capability that it tends to be an afterthought on anything multiplatform. - Nick_C Reply There was an attempt to start it here....PEnns said:Aside from certain techie writers and a few moneyed gamers, there is no such thing as "ray tracing obsession"! - -Fran- Not sure if "obsession", but definitely the "end goal" for games graphics.Reply Ray Tracing as a technology has always been the pinnacle of what you want to achieve. And not even with unlimited bounces, but just 2 or 3, with a very small number of rays (compared to real light). What most don't really get is the computational baggage of what RT introduces for graphical engines which are not prepared and, to this day, no one as actually built from the ground up for whatever reason. I wouldn't marry the engine to how nVidia wants you to do RT and Khronos is just not moving the needle for anyone, then Microsoft just doesn't care anymore. The formulas and way of calculating the rays are all there, but I still don't understand why there's nothing being re-build from the ground up for it? I'm guessing regular Raster is still what they want due to "legacy" computing. Oh welp, I'd really like to see someone building an engine from the ground up to use RT, but with the advent of DLSS5 and AI, I doubt we'll get there and instead go back to faking it, but harder this time. For those wondering, think about this: current raster engines fake reflections (at best) using textures as it's cheap and effective, so when you look in a mirror, the computational baggage is still reasonable. For RT, you can't fake it via a texture, you need to render not just what you have in front, but what is behind and all around you so the bounces are "true". So, this means, instead of drawing just 70°-100° in front of you, you need to do 360° instead so the bounces are real (or reasonably close). Then you have the noise, since the "rays" are absolutely discrete, when you know light (while technically discrete), they're so dense that no computational model can really calculate all of them, so you have to choose a density and then deal with the noise, which is another somewhat expensive element. The passes on RT for an engine are more costly, but the "math" should be simpler for a game developer, since you just put a light and then everything else just works. No need to pre-bake anything when it comes to lights and such. Remember that what nVidia calls "Path Tracing" is the closest to actual Ray Tracing. Anyway, I'm still waiting for "proper" ray tracing. Regards. - Vicecrow The last 3 games I have player it's pixeled games from unknow developers. The last game have played with some kind of lightting have the name of god rays.Reply Ray tracing are good for Photo mode.
document fetched 2026-09-21 02:46 · canonical https://tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/the-pc-gaming-ray-tracing-obsession-began-with-the-first-rtx-20-graphics-cards-released-on-this-day-in-2018-the-geforce-rtx-2080-and-2080-ti-led-the-charge-but-games-were-thin-on-the-ground