After what felt like forever, NVIDIA has finally unveiled their new range of graphics cards. Say hello to the RTX 2070, RTX 2080, and RTX 2080 Ti.
All three cards were showcased during NVIDIA’s Gamescom press conference earlier this week. It’s safe to say that these cards are about to blow everything else out of the water.
If you’re looking for a new graphics card, you’ve got something to get excited about because the new RTX series has basically just broken every record, ever.
Here is a look at everything there is to know about the new RTX graphics card range from NVIDIA.
RTX Stands for Ray-tracing – Here Is What It Does
The majority of the recent NVIDIA Gamescom conference focused on one thing and one thing only – ray-tracing.
Apparently, before the new RTX range, real time ray-tracing in video games and 3D scenes was practically impossible.
Support for ray-tracing in the RTX range was developed alongside other new releases at NVIDIA, like the GTX 10 series, and it has taken them 10 years to get it right.
But what even is ray-tracing?
Well, simply put, it’s a powerful lighting system that can turn any 3D environment into one filled with an insane level of depth, realism and beauty.
The idea is simple – if a light source is created, ray tracing will help it to reflect off all surfaces like it actually should in real time.
For example, light bounced off of a mirror or other reflective surface will create a mirrored reflection. Or, one great example used in the NVIDIA Gamescom conference showcased the muzzle flash of a tank’s gun in Battlefield 5 as it reflected off into the eyes of a player nearby.
The tank wasn’t even rendered in the same scene, but ray-tracing is smart enough to take every lighting element into account as it takes place in the background.
I’ll just put the footage below for you. I think it does a better job at explaining it.
So, this is obviously big news for the gaming industry, but what do the new RTX cards bring to the average gamer?
Well, we are still waiting for the cards to launch so that we can get real benchmark tests, but NVIDIA did throw around some stats during their launch event that should give us an idea.
The NVIDIA RTX Series Vs The 10 Series – Comparison and Analysis
So, without benchmarks, we can’t get a clear view of how the new cards will actually perform, but we can take a look at the specs to see the kind of jump in performance that is possible.
So, starting with the CUDA cores. This is the number of processors that work in parallel inside a graphics card. It’s the same way a CPU may be eight core or quad core. Yes, there’s a lot of them.
The New Cards:
- RTX 2080 Ti – 4352
- RTX 2080 – 2944
- RTX 2070 – 2304
The Old Cards:
- GTX 1080 Ti – 3584
- GTX 1080 – 2560
- GTX 1070 – 1920
Up next, we have the memory bus width. In simple terms, the larger the memory bus width, the more ‘lanes’ of traffic (data) can be sent at once.
All cards are 256-bit, including the RTX series. However, the GTX 1080 Ti and the RTX 2080 Ti have a memory bus width of 352-bit.
Finally, the single precision performance, which is basically a measurement of how well a computer performs in 32 bit applications.
The New Cards:
- RTX 2080 Ti – 13.4 TFLOPs
- RTX 2080 – 10.1 TFLOPs
- RTX 2070 – 7.5 TFLOPs
The Old Cards:
- GTX 1080 Ti – 10.6 TFLOPs
- GTX 1080 – 8.9 TFLOPs
- GTX 1070 – 6.5 TFLOPs
After looking at the stats, I’ll be listing how each of the cards rank alongside each other. Take this information with a grain of salt because real world performance is a different story.
Also, the new RTX cards are using a new architecture, which could mean huge things for performance.
- Rank 1 – RTX 2080 Ti
- Rank 2 – GTX 1080 Ti
- Rank 3 – RTX 2080
- Rank 4 – GTX 1080
- Rank 5 – RTX 1070
- Rank 6 – GTX 1070
The stats shown above paint a picture where each RTX card has slightly more at its disposal than its predecessor. For example, the RTX 2080 has 10.1 TFLOPs single precision performance whilst the GTX 1080 has 8.9.
We then have the RTX 2080 Ti, which is on another level. Everything about the Ti puts it strides above the other cards in terms of hardware specifications.
Now, once again, this doesn’t mean anything until we see real world performance, but it’s clear to see that the RTX 2080 Ti will offer a significant performance increase over every GPU we’ve ever seen so far.
The other RTX cards will offer improved performance, but perhaps not by much than what we’ve already seen in the 1080 Ti.
Are The RTX Cards Worth Buying?
With the data above, I’d make the prediction that the RTX cards are only worth buying if you want a system that can play 4K at a reliable frame rate.
In this case, it makes sense to purchase a 2080 Ti or 2080. For everything else, the 10 series is more than efficient.
If you have a 1070 or anything worse in your current system, then an upgrade may make sense. But, in my opinion, I’d suggest waiting for a good deal on a 1080 or 1080 Ti because prices will inevitably drop as stock is shifted out for the new RTX cards.
If you’re not worried about going second hand, there are bound to be great deals on the horizon.
Finally, I want to emphasise this point even further. All of this information only paints a very rough picture. We need to wait for the launch of the cards so that we can see real performance before we can accurately rank the cards.
The RTX cards will be dropping on September 20.
Here is a look at the pricing:
- RTX 2070 – $599
- RTX 2080 – $799
- RTX 2080 Ti – $1,199
Summary
What are your thoughts on the new cards? Are you excited, or are you not too fussed?