Let's take a closer look at NVIDIA's RTX series GPUs

NVIDIA’s Gamescom Celebrations started off slow with CEO Jensen taking everyone down memory lane, talking about how computer graphics have evolved over the last 25 years since the first GPU, GeForce 256. While the event may have gotten a bit too technical in the start, it set the stage for something truly amazing and while there were only 2000 lucky gamers in attendance, nearly 300K watched eagerly online as he unveiled the next big thing in gaming; the Turing GPU’s.

Almost 10 years in the making, Turing enables the newly christened RTX GPUs to efficiently handle Real-Time Ray Tracing; an intensive process to simulate physically accurate lighting possible only with it's new RT cores. While usually developers are slow to adopt new technologies; especially with games that have already been in development for a while: NVIDIA's new RTX platform was supported by big names in the Industry with games like Shadow of The Tomb Raider, Battlefield V, Hitman 2, Metro Exodus ll and Assetto Corsa, all featuring RTX powered visuals. All games were playable at the event running on high-end systems powered by RTX 2080Ti GPUs.

“GeForce RTX and NVIDIA’s Turing architecture provide an astonishingly powerful new foundation for game development by combining ray tracing acceleration, artificial intelligence hardware, and programmable shading in one GPU for the first time ever,” said Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games.

One of NVIDIAs key focus points with their GPU technology over the last few years has been Artificial Intelligence and deep learning; helping drive advancements in research, automation and medicine across the globe. However the new Turing Architecture now incorporates AI processes into its gaming GPU providing for a massive leap in performance; almost 6 times more than that of the previous fastest GPU, The flagships GTX 1080Ti.

Unlike previous launches, NVIDIA used the event to launch three new RTX GPU at quite amazing price points: effectively taking control of most of the gaming market. The three new GPUs the RTX 2070, 2080 and 2080Ti start at $499, $ 699 and $999 respectively. The recently revealed India pricing, as expected is much higher but given the performance jump and future proofing that comes with the new GPUs might not be too bad with the RTX 2070, 2080 and 2080Ti costing Rs 51,000, Rs 62,000 and Rs 1.02 lakhs respectively.

While in terms of Memory it's not a leap over current generation GPUs; the new architecture coupled with the new GDDR6 Memory and boosted by the RT cores gives a massive leap in performance surpassing that of even the current generation TitanX GPUs. The new chip actually enables the Turing GPU’s to compete with NVIDIA’s high-end AI and Deep Learning setups from the previous generation; surpassing them as well in certain demos and tests.

One major change in design for the new Founders Edition cards from NVIDIA's RTX GPUs is the shift to a dual fan cooling system that runs at almost 1/5 the noise levels of the current GTX 1080ti. This will certainly put a lot of pressure on partners like Zotac, ASUS and Gigabyte to really come through with some impressive performance and cooling numbers to keep up with the new Founders Edition GPUs. Once again, despite being available a little before partners, the Founders Edition GPU’s are priced $100-$200 more though in India I’m hoping to see the trend of lower price Founders Edition GPU’s continue with Turing.

Overall the new RTX GPU’s definitely have gamers around the world excited, especially with the starting price points! However what’s truly amazing is the potential this unlocks for game developers; surely we have just scratched the surface in terms the current performance boost and what are possible thanks to Turing and Real-Time Ray Tracing that will hopefully help bring in a new area of realistic game visuals in the coming years.

Pre-orders for the GeForce RTX GPUs are now open globally and expect to be available in India sometime soon as well with shelf availability set for 20th September.

By: Parth Bagaria