Computers

Nvidia's latest GPU brings ray-tracing down to entry-level

Nvidia has unveiled the RTX 2060, an entry-level GPU that rounds out its recently-released RTX 20 series
Nvidia
Nvidia has unveiled the RTX 2060, an entry-level GPU that rounds out its recently-released RTX 20 series
Nvidia

At CES this week, Nvidia has unveiled a new entry-level graphics card for its recently-released RTX 20 series. The RTX 2060 has the same focus on ray tracing techniques as the RTX 2070, 2080 and 2080 Ti, but strips away some of the higher-end features to bridge the gap between last generation and the new one.

Like the rest of the series, the RTX 2060 is built on the Turing architecture, which Nvidia says is up to six times more powerful than the Pascal system of last generation. But Turing's big selling point is its focus on ray tracing, a rendering technique that simulates how light rays travel through a virtual scene and how they reflect and refract off objects, which is supposed to create more realistic lighting and shading effects.

The RTX 2060 is loaded with 6 GB of GDDR6 RAM and 240 Tensor Cores, giving it a speed of up to 52 teraflops – as an example, the card can apparently run Battlefield V with ray tracing at 60 frames per second. Those Tensor Cores are designed to tap into deep neural networks to help churn out high quality images in real time, Nvidia says. The card is 60 percent faster than its last-gen counterpart, the GTX 1060, and it even outperforms the older middle-tier card, the GTX 1070 Ti.

Nvidia has also announced that a suite of gaming laptops would be built with the RTX 2060, as well as the rest of the RTX 20 series.

The RTX 2060 will launch on January 15 for US$349.

Source: Nvidia

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Flipboard
  • LinkedIn
2 comments
fb36
Ray Tracing graphics cards are the future!
Daishi
In some of the benchmarks I have seen turning on ray tracing caused a notable drop in framerate. I still think the technology has potential partly because nobody needs to run 2560x1440 in ultra quality at 160 frames a second. Gaming at 4k is still a challenge to GPU's but gaming at 1080p can often be done without even needing a dedicated GPU. As we are approaching a point where increasing resolution makes less and less sense due to diminishing returns it will begin to make more and more sense to throw the horsepower available from GPU improvements at things like enabling ray tracing. Ray tracing should benefit developers by saving time not having to resort to tricks like individually rendering reflective surfaces like mirrors and windows.