Can you use ray tracing without RTX?
A not so important feature but a nice one to have so can you run it?
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Some Nvidia RTX functionality, such as DirectX Raytracing, can now be used without an Nvidia RTX card. Any game that supports DXR can now be activated by anyone with a GTX 1060 6GB or above. Download the most recent driver update from the GeForce Experience app.
Ray tracing is crushing, though, even for RTX cards. Nvidia, though, has some responses to that. In general, you will receive 60 frames per second at 1440p on high settings. However, certain ray-tracing implementations will perform better on older devices than others.
Developers are now using Ray tracing to create reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion, and global lighting. In general, an RTX card will be necessary to produce playable global lighting. On a GTX 1070 or 1080, however, reflections, shadows, and ambient occlusion might operate smoothly.
DXR has so far been most frequently used to give games reflections and shadows. Battlefield V served as Nvidia’s first demo workhorse and exclusively uses DXR for reflections. And among the implementations, that one might function properly on GTX cards.
DXR vs RT
Finally, any non-RTX video card will probably struggle to provide global lighting. You can only tone down GI slightly, in contrast to reflections or shadows. It would help if you had a lot of rays in any setting for this effect to be effective.
It has incredible visuals when it functions well, as in Metro: Exodus. But to do that, you will need an RTX card. DXR may therefore operate on GTX, but should you actually activate it?
Yes, but most likely to check how it appears. With DXR on low, you should be able to play some games at 1080p if you have a 1080 Ti. However, most users only have graphics cards comparable to the GTX 1060; thus, this function really exists to persuade you to upgrade.
You’ll also observe that only a few games truly support DXR. So long as that holds true, this ability allows you to see the future before it actually happens.
But for full proper ray tracing you do require a newer card, an RTX Nvidia GPU or RX 6000 AMD card and above. But it is a hard processing feature.
