NVIDIA CEO: Buying a New Graphics Card without Ray Tracing Is “Crazy”

[Tsing]

Jen-Hsun Huang doubled down on his belief in gaming's ray-traced future during a recent Q&A session for NVIDIA's Q2 2019 earnings call. He thinks the technology is so pivotal that nobody should consider buying a graphics card without ray tracing.

“At this point, it’s a foregone conclusion that if you’re going to buy a new graphics card, it’s going to last you two, three, four years,” Huang says, “and to not have ray tracing is just crazy.”

“You know ray tracing content just keeps coming out. And in between the performance of super and the fact that it has ray tracing hardware, it’s going to be super well positioned for all of next year.”

Jensen's comments were likely prompted by AMD's Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT, which lack dedicated ray-tracing hardware.

AMD’s RX 5700-series does not feature dedicated ray tracing hardware, but the company is expected to rollout its own silicon solution with the second generation of the RDNA architecture. Both the next-gen PlayStation and Project Scarlett from Microsoft will feature hardware-accelerated ray tracing later next year, so we’ll likely here more from team red on the discrete PC graphics variations around that time.

 

[AntiQuark]

Paying more for a card that has poor raytracing is crazy.
None of them are good enough, the prices are too high and general performance isnt good enough either, its a no win.
More seriously, it might have to last 4 years plus because of the silly prices, and it surely wont!

 

[SeymourGore]

They're really banking on ray tracing early adopters.

 

[DrezKill]

Buying a card today without ray-tracing is "crazy?" Today's RTX cards can barely handle ray-tracing, so they sure as **** won't be able to handle it in 2, 3 and 4 years from now. Instead, 2-4 years from now is the more likely time to buy a card with ray-tracing support. Not now. So call me crazy then, Jen-Hsun Huang, cuz I'm calling you bat-**** ****ing insane (and also a greedy bastard, but that goes without saying). If your 2070 Super was $400 or less I might've been inclined to make a purchase (and not for the ray-tracing support either), but if I intended to buy a card this year, 5700 XT is the most likely candidate. So yeah, I must be outta my ****ing mind.

 

[AntiQuark]

A developer of Assetto Corsa Competizione spells it out

Developer sees "no reason" to add promised RTX support to Assetto Corsa Competizione - OC3D

Developer sees “no reason” to add promised RTX support to Assetto Corsa Competizione Nvidia RTX support still remains rare in the world of PC gaming, despite the company’s best efforts to bring developers on board. Now, it looks like some of Nvidia’s previously announced RTX titles will not...

www.overclock3d.net

Our priority is to improve, optimize, and evolve all aspects of ACC. If after our long list of priorities the level of optimization of the title, and the maturity of the technology, permits a full blown implementation of RTX, we will gladly explore the possibility, but as of now there is no reason to steal development resources and time for a very low frame rate implementation.

 

[Zarathustra]

Whatever.

Unless you are pixel peeping it is actually pretty difficult to tell if you are rendering a supported game in RTX mode or not.

Ray tracing is clearly a higher quality render mode than raster, but the levels at which we can do so with current hardware doesn't necessarily produce the best results.

I'd much sooner run with ray tracing off and at 4k on my screen than lower resolution and turn on raytracing.

 

[Zarathustra]

Some might argue spending more than $1k on even a very high end GPU is crazy

(I mean, I've done it, but...)

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Some might argue spending more than $1k on even a very high end GPU is crazy

(I mean, I've done it, but...)

I'm now a part of that crowd. I used to ridicule people buying Titan's for gaming and now I've paid as much or more than the Pascal gens. Already saving for whatever is next.

edit: I also used to say the same about other expensive tech products which led me to wanting Celebrity Death Match to make a special episode of this:

 

[xGryfter]

This statement is, without a doubt,100% true... 5 to 8 years from now.
This was obviously a comment made by future Huang because there's no way he'd be dumb enough to believe this to be true today... right?

 

[magoo]

Well......

when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

I agree with others.....spending 1100 dollars on a GPU that sort of gives you "some" thrills of ray tracing, is the first one,
and there are few if any games that use it........a......well.....no.

 

[Grimlakin]

Come on folks. Nvidia right now is the only game in the market for RTX cards. OF COURSE they want everyone to think it's silly to buy card without RTX. Hell in reality for them to be all in they shouldn't be making any cards without RTX. All RTX all the time.

I mean if he said ANYTHING else... that xxx cards were good for xx percentage of games and such so buy our lower end non RTX line it would just make AMD look like a smarter choice for a high performance card without RTX stuff.

And I have an RTX 2080. I'm happy with it and look forward to the coming RTX titles. Secretly I hope that they get more refined and better coding then it becomes clear that the RT cores on these cards are drastic overkill for modern gaming and I can use it until the capacitors pop.

 

[Ready4Droid]

Come on folks. Nvidia right now is the only game in the market for RTX cards. OF COURSE they want everyone to think it's silly to buy card without RTX. Hell in reality for them to be all in they shouldn't be making any cards without RTX. All RTX all the time.

I mean if he said ANYTHING else... that xxx cards were good for xx percentage of games and such so buy our lower end non RTX line it would just make AMD look like a smarter choice for a high performance card without RTX stuff.

And I have an RTX 2080. I'm happy with it and look forward to the coming RTX titles. Secretly I hope that they get more refined and better coding then it becomes clear that the RT cores on these cards are drastic overkill for modern gaming and I can use it until the capacitors pop.

So... Would I be crazy if I bought 1660? Kind of odd that they dissed half of their own market. More people buy low end cards than anything else. Does that make Nvidia crazy for still building non RT hardware? Lol, that guy is just trying too hard and is getting worried that amd has a little momentum and money.