.jpg) Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 fromMSI, released in 2018. The GPUs of theGeForce 20 series are the first of Nvidia's RTX line of hardware. | |
| Release date | September 20, 2018; 7 years ago (2018-09-20) |
|---|---|
| History | |
| Predecessor | Quadro |
Nvidia RTX (also known asNvidia GeForce RTX under theGeForce brand) is a professional visual computing platform created byNvidia, used inmainstream PCs for gaming as well as being used inworkstations for designing complex large-scale models in architecture and product design, scientific visualization, energy exploration, and film and video production (especially under the RTX PRO and formerlyQuadro RTX brands).
Nvidia RTX featureshardware-enabledreal-time ray tracing. Historically, ray tracing had been reserved to non-real time applications (likeCGI in visual effects for movies and in photorealistic renderings), with video games having to rely ondirect lighting andprecalculated indirect contribution for their rendering. RTX facilitates a new development in computer graphics of generating interactive images that react to lighting, shadows and reflections.[1] RTX runs on NvidiaVolta-,Turing-,Ampere-,Ada Lovelace- andBlackwell-basedGPUs, specifically utilizing theTensor cores (and new RT cores on Turing and successors) on the architectures for ray-tracing acceleration.[2][3][4]
In March 2019, Nvidia announced that selectedGTX 10 series (Pascal) andGTX 16 series (Turing) cards would receive support for subsets of RTX technology in upcoming drivers, although functions and performance will be affected by their lack of dedicated hardware cores for ray tracing.[5]
In October 2020, Nvidia announced Nvidia RTX A6000 as the first Ampere-architecture-based graphics card for use in professional workstations in the Nvidia RTX product line, replacing the formerQuadro product line of professional graphics cards.[6]
Nvidia worked withMicrosoft to integrate RTX support with Microsoft'sDirectX Raytracing API (DXR). RTX is currently available through NvidiaOptiX and forDirectX. For the Turing and Ampere architectures, it is also available forVulkan.[7]
In addition to ray tracing, RTX includes artificial intelligence integration, common asset formats, rasterization (CUDA) support, and simulation APIs. The components of RTX are:[8]
In computer graphics, ray tracing generates an image by tracing rays cast throughpixels of animage plane and simulating the effects of its encounters with virtual objects. This enables advanced effects that better reflect real-world optical properties, such as softer and more realistic shadows and reflections, as compared to traditional rasterization techniques which prioritize performance over accuracy.[9]
Nvidia RTX achieves this through a combination of hardware and software acceleration. On a hardware level, RTX cards feature fixed-function "RT cores" that are designed to accelerate mathematical operations needed to simulate rays, such asbounding volume hierarchy traversal. The software implementation is open to individual application developers. As ray-tracing is still computationally intensive, many developers choose to take a hybrid rendering approach where certain graphical effects, such as shadows and reflections, are performed using ray-tracing, while the remaining scene is rendered using the more performantrasterization.[10]
Nvidia OptiX is part of Nvidia DesignWorks. OptiX is a high-level, or "to-the-algorithm" API, meaning that it is designed to encapsulate the entire algorithm of which ray tracing is a part, not just the ray tracing itself. This is meant to allow the OptiX engine to execute the larger algorithm without application-side changes.
Aside fromcomputer graphics rendering, OptiX also helps inoptical andacoustical design,radiation andelectromagnetic research,artificial intelligence queries andcollision analysis.
Chat with RTX is anAI-based assistant that runs locally on the user'sWindows PC.[11][12] It uses alarge language model and requires an RTX 30 or 40 series GPU with at least 8GB ofVRAM.[12] It can be downloaded from Nvidia's website.
RTX Remix is agame modding platform designed by Nvidia to remaster older titles by implementing modern technologies such asray tracing,DLSS, and enhanced assets.[13]
Nvidia has released many cards that support RTX, including the 20, 30, 40, and 50 series:[14]