NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti vs GTX 1660 Ti vs RTX 2080 – which GPU is better for DirectX Ray Tracing

If Ray Tracing has such a negative effect on the performance of the NVIDIA RTX graphics, it is difficult to explain that the brand now enables this technology for the graphics cards of its GTX series, both modern and Pascal (from the GeForce GTX 1060). Because, as you are going to be able to see, its use ends up being translated in a reduction of the performance that makes, in many occasions, the games unplayable.

Effect of Ray Tracing on NVIDIA GeForce GTX graphics

For the tests have been used three sets (Battelfied V, Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider), plus the benchmark Port Royale of Futuremark.

Battlefield V

Battlefield V is a good example of what we are discussing. With DXR enabled, the performance of NVIDIA graphics cards in the GTX series is seriously depleted. So much so that they fall behind the “least powerful” (in theory) RTX 2060.

NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti vs GTX 1660 Ti vs RTX 2080 (1)

Exodus Metro

The case of Metro Exodus is, perhaps, more bloody, given that with DirectX Ray Tracing, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti can only crawl through the game. However, if you play a little with the game settings, you can get 30 FPS more or less stable. Come on, we would be playing with the settings and performance of a console. And we all know well that playing on PC is superior to playing on the console.

NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti vs GTX 1660 Ti vs RTX 2080 (2)

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a curious title with the use of Ray Tracing. On the one hand, the areas where there are not too many of these effects, the NVIDIA GTX graphics cards present a quite acceptable performance. However, when there are many elements of Ray Tracing in the scene, the game creeps on those graphics cards. And, in the end, the user can not be constantly changing the DXR level in the game according to the scene he is playing at that moment. Which can be quite cumbersome and impractical.

In the end, it is fine that NVIDIA now allows owners of GeForce GTX 1000 series cards (starting at 1060) and GTX 1600 to enjoy the benefits of DXR technology. But the cost in performance is so high that, in reality, we do not believe that there will be many users who use this technology on a regular basis in the few games that support it. The current generation of Turing RTX graphics is a glimpse into what the future may holdin terms of realism in the games. But until there are many more games that implement Ray Tracing, until they do not lower the prices of the graphics that implement this technology and, above all, until AMD does not follow the same path with its graphic cards, this technology is going to be just something quite marginal in its use in the desktop environment.