NVIDIA has achieved a new milestone in its "RTX ON" journey with the total number of RTX games & applications now surpassing the 500 mark.
NVIDIA RTX First Launched In 2018 & Has Completely Reshaped PC Gaming With The Introduction of Ray Tracing, Path Tracing & DLSS Technologies
NVIDIA's RTX technologies first made their debut in 2018 when they were introduced with GeForce RTX 20 "Turing" GPUs. RTX had a suite of features but the two most prominent ones were support for ray tracing "RT" and DLSS, a brand-new upscaling technology that utilized the power of AI to deliver higher FPS and great image quality.
500 RTX Games and Apps: IT’S ON!
RTX encompasses an ecosystem of technologies that make high-performance, high fidelity gaming a reality. Ray Tracing, powered by dedicated RT Cores, brings immersive and realistic lighting and reflections to games. NVIDIA DLSS, made possible by Tensor Cores, enables industry-leading AI graphics acceleration, capable of delivering up to 5 times faster performance in Cyberpunk 2077.
Today NVIDIA celebrates a milestone years in the making, five hundred #RTXON games and applications!
NVIDIA's RTX Journey - From 2018's Battlefield To 2023's Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition
DICE's Battlefield V was the debut title for RTX which gave users a taste of Ray Traced Reflections. It was a very taxing technology at the time and remains to date but the visual improvement was something that couldn't be ignored. As such, DLSS came to save the day, doubling the FPS in games and offering a smoother gameplay experience. Later on, NVIDIA would begin implementing other RT techniques such as Ray Traced Global Illumination (RTGI) and Ray Traced Shadows in games but it was Quake II RTX that first implemented full RT effects (RT GI, RT Shadows, RT Reflections).
Throughout 2019, DLSS & RT continued to get updates to enhance the visual fidelity and further improve image quality but the next major update came in the form of DLSS 2.0 in 2022 which was first available in Minecraft RTX for Windows 10. This new update utilized a brand new AI model that allowed faster game integration and tackled some of the biggest issues with the technology related to upscaled image quality.
Cyberpunk 2077 was amongst one of the newest titles to feature support for DLSS 2 at launch. The game also offered various RT technologies but this was the beginning of a breathtaking journey for the game which ended up being the testing ground for bleeding-edge RTX technologies including Path Tracing and DLSS 3.5.
With NVIDIA's DLSS 3, we saw the introduction of Frame Generation, the first frame interpolation technology of its kind which boosted FPS by up to 4x. This technology has become a staple of the PC platform as it can help deliver FPS increases in games using these taxing RT/PT visual effects.
Furthermore, most game developers now recommend the use of upscaling technologies and as always, NVIDIA was the first to bring this feature to gamers ahead of the competition. Once again, NVIDIA further enhanced DLSS 3 with the 3.5 update which we thoroughly tested in Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake II, both of which are amongst the most visually impressive games we've ever seen.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Gamers Take Full Advantage of RTX ON
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 GPU owners are taking full advantage of the RTX suite by utilizing RT On to increase visual immersiveness and DLSS to boost FPS. In an infographic, NVIDIA shows that over 95 percent of RTX 40 GPU owners enabled RT or DLSS in the latest titles such as:
- Alan Wake II (99%)
- Cyberpunk 2077 (97%)
- Diablo IV (96%)
- Minecraft RTX (99%)
- Naraka Bladepoint (98%)
To make the integration of RTX technologies such as DLSS faster, NVIDIA introduced "Streamline" which is an open-source cross-IHV solution that simplifies the integration of NVIDIA and other independent hardware vendor's upscaling and super-resolution technologies into applications and games. Streamline supports the following technologies:
- DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling)
- DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing)
- Image Scaling (Spatial Upscaler)
- Real-Time Denoisers (NRD)
- Reflex (Low-Latency SDK)
And to celebrate the RTX500 milestone, NVIDIA is giving away 20 $500 GOG gift cards and RTXOn keycaps throughout December.
NVIDIA has been ahead of the curve in implementing technologies that would become the staple of modern-day gaming. We see Ray Tracing now being implemented in the latest titles on consoles from Sony and Microsoft and upscaling technologies have been on the rise ever since the debut of DLSS. NVIDIA has shown the world that software matters just as the hardware and their team of engineers are always working intensely to bring the next-gen of graphics to a gaming PC near you!
