Question 2020 how much extra are we really paying for raytracing components?

potato masher

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May 15, 2019
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Seems to me its almost to the point where the raytracing components are irrelevant in a price compare.. Said as an observer sitting here on the sidelines with with my rx580 and a wad of cash.

RX vs super.. looks like not much of $$ difference. What are we talking about these days $40?
 

railven

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2010
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Browsing reddit and other forums, seems some people aren't choosing RTX for the Ray Tracing. AMD driver issues are pushing people to pay the Nvidia tax.

I don't think Ray Tracing is an issue/topic for buyers right now.
 

beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
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We are not paying it directly so hard to judge. What I mean by that is that without RT hardware the NV cards could have more shaders and hence better graphics performance at same die size. So we pay by getting less performance/$.
 
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guachi

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Nov 16, 2010
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If I turn ray tracing on, how much does it tank performance? What GPU performs at that lower FPS? Compare the prices. That's how much extra I'm paying.

E.g., the $700 RTX2080 with ray tracing performs as fast as the $300 2060 with ray tracking off. Therefore, I'm paying $400 for ray tracing.

Because the cost to use is so high (in $ and FPS) and the number of titles is so low, ray tracing shouldn't enter in to any purchase decisions.

As for me, I own a 5700XT and really like it. Excellent performance for the price compared to the competition and no driver issues (I haven't downloaded 2020 Adrenalin drivers).
 
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railven

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2010
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We are not paying it directly so hard to judge. What I mean by that is that without RT hardware the NV cards could have more shaders and hence better graphics performance at same die size. So we pay by getting less performance/$.

That's only be true if we had an alternative. With AMD raising the prices themselves, on their side you aren't even getting RT yet still paying more.

So in the end we as consumers lose on both ends. If your options are drivers issues and no RT or $40 more, consumers are choosing the $40 more option.

Although credit to AMD, they are throwing what it seems everything they can to squash the driver issue. Hopefully they can fix it and regain their user's confidence back.

When the Vega line up was sold as "with FreeSync on it's the same" only to have the Navi launch have "disable FreeSync" in some situations, yeah it's kind of a bad look.
 

potato masher

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May 15, 2019
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Browsing reddit and other forums, seems some people aren't choosing RTX for the Ray Tracing.

Right, that was my motive to post... even if you intend to NEVER use the RT hardware EVER, the team green super cards are not looking too bad from a performance/price perspective these days.

I'm talking versus RX5700, RX5700xt and GTX1080ti, at what those sell for. I mean a whlile back I would not have even considered a RTX card. But heck if its like I'm getting it for free or just for $40 then for sure I would look at those RTX options.
 

Stuka87

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Dec 10, 2010
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AMD has fixed most of the launch issues that the 5700 XT had. And they just stated last week that their current goal for Radeon software is stability, instead of new features or new UI. They are aware of the issues people have been reporting.

As for the cost in monetary terms, RTX cards DID go up in price over the previous generation, even though traditional rasterized performance wasn't really that much better considering it had been 2+ years since the previous gen came out at that time. The 2080Ti, 2080, and 2070 all had really poor performance per dollar. Although the 2060 was actually quite good in this regard.

I think one way you have to look at it is, what could have performance been if RTX hardware had never been added? Lets say instead of all the die space used for those extra RT bits was used for traditional shaders. How fast could the 2x00 series cards be?

EDIT: Fixed a typo
 
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Thala

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Nov 12, 2014
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I think one way you have to look at it is, what could have performance been if RTX hardware had never been added? Lets say instead of all the die space used those extra RT bits was used for traditional shaders. How fast could the 2x00 series cards be?

Presumably less than 5% faster - given that RT units are just taking 7% space of a TPC. But its a moot point anyway - because it is like asking how fast GPU hardware could be today without programmable shaders using fixed function HW only - apparently quite a bit faster but your are loosing on image quality. Same argument with raytracing.

Likewise, RT adds about 25mm^2 to a TU102 - thats around 10$ adder give or take.
 

beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
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That's only be true if we had an alternative. With AMD raising the prices themselves, on their side you aren't even getting RT yet still paying more.

That was exactly my point. If NV omitted RTX for shaders the would have higher performance at the same price. Meaning AMD would have to lower their price.meaning the consumer gets better performance/$ without RTX.

AMD simply raised price because RTX doesn't matter enough and because they are using all their wafers for much higher margin zen 2 chiplets.
 

joesiv

Member
Mar 21, 2019
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If I turn ray tracing on, how much does it tank performance? What GPU performs at that lower FPS? Compare the prices. That's how much extra I'm paying.

E.g., the $700 RTX2080 with ray tracing performs as fast as the $300 2060 with ray tracking off. Therefore, I'm paying $400 for ray tracing.
I've never looked at it that way, it's an interesting thought.

I think it doesn't take into account any gains in image quality though.

I think a more realistic look would be, looking at just raster performance, and finding an equally priced card from Nvidia. Say 2080 vs 1080ti. Both were $700 at launch.. oh that doesn't work. I guess you need to take into account the improvements gen on gen with price ratios. That makes it hard too.

Perhaps we need to look at die sizes, as that's more comparible gen on gen. Seems people think it's only 7% or so for raytracing. Comparing 1080 ti and 2080 die sizes is around 16% differences, I guess that would also be tensor cores and other changes in architecture in there too. Either way, for a given defect rate, and the size of die, you'd get around 1.22x more dies per 300mm wafer (71 vs 58), but I have no idea how much a 300mm wafer on 12nm costs. Apparently the wafer costs would be around $400, but obviously samsung/tsmc would charge much more to cover their manufacturing and research costs, perhaps $5000?

if it was around $5000 per 12nm 300mm wafer charged to Nvidia, it would be around $70 for a 1080 Ti die, $86 for a 2080 die. Obviously these are losey goosie numbers, since I don't know the actual cost of the wafers that Nvidia is charged, could be $2000 could be $8000, I also don't know the defect rate.

But for any arch changes from 1080 Ti to 2080 (ray tracing, tensors, etc..) it's around $16 give or a few bucks, since raytracing is only about half of those transistors, perhaps it's more like $8 for just the raytracing. Perhaps with more power usage, the boards need to be populated with more VRMs, and better cooling, which would add additional cost. Nvidia would also want to cover those "millions" of hours of development of the real time ray-tracing too.

I donno... perhaps $20, and then $80 for Nvidia to cover their 'costs' ? $100?
 

potato masher

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May 15, 2019
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I don't really care how much "nvidia pays for R&D" or 'how the space could have been better utilized on the pcb" stuff like that. For the user in the real world, its all down to the wallet hit isn't it..

If I end up paying an extra $40 to MAYBE, potentially be able to get a couple of jollies screwing around with this pixie dust, I don't mind so much that risk of having dormant RT hardware. At $50 to $100 to $150... I'll pass on the pixie dust and go with AMD.

Looking at current prices and benchmarking it seems like its in that realm where its cheap enough to take the RT junk just for the hell of it. Unlike months back...
 
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Ottonomous

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May 15, 2014
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I am scared they will keep existing RTX options and place the upcoming generation above them, despite the obvious performance benefits of the new process and rumoured 30-45% increase. 2080 Ti around the 3080/3070+ meaning all three will be around 600-750

Its an opportunity to resegment existing pricing schemes further through ray-tracing, alongside raster.
 

potato masher

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May 15, 2019
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Right, like you say the risk is the next gen stuff is going to be the first tracing hardware with usable fps. But hell you wont have to feel bad to just turn RT completely off on your 20xx super if you didn't pay booku bucks for it. You would be no worse off than if you bought team red.

Anyway thats how I'm looking at it for the moment.. price adjustment could change all that before I buy.
 

Ottonomous

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May 15, 2014
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Right, like you say the risk is the next gen stuff is going to be the first tracing hardware with usable fps. But hell you wont have to feel bad to just turn RT completely off on your 20xx super if you didn't pay booku bucks for it. You would be no worse off than if you bought team red.

Anyway thats how I'm looking at it for the moment..
There going to be very aggressive with partners/developers and ray-tracing effects this time round to ensure its firmly established and something beyond the reach of AMD's first response. And of course next-gen consoles will help. This time it could be a much bigger consideration for buyers

We might actually see the same raster performance with different ray-tracing levels
 

AtenRa

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Presumably less than 5% faster - given that RT units are just taking 7% space of a TPC. But its a moot point anyway - because it is like asking how fast GPU hardware could be today without programmable shaders using fixed function HW only - apparently quite a bit faster but your are loosing on image quality. Same argument with raytracing.

Likewise, RT adds about 25mm^2 to a TU102 - thats around 10$ adder give or take.

The problem arises due to both RT AND Tensor cores , not only RT cores.

GTX1080Ti (GP102) has 11.8B transistors, RTX2080Ti (TU102) has 18.6B transistors and that is a huge ~58% more transistors to only gain a 38% (according to TPU review) in Rasterizing performance.


If we look at GTX980Ti (GM200) with 8.0B transistors against the GTX1080Ti (GP102) of 11.8B transistors , the difference is 47% more transistors for the GTX1080Ti but the performance increase was substantial at almost double the performance (85% according to TPU review) over the GTX980Ti at 4K.

If RTX2080Ti allocated all those extra transistors for rasterizing performance we would have way higher performance/$ today even at those high prices ($1000-1300), and that higher perf/$ would be felt all the way to the lower segment.
 

DrMrLordX

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That's only be true if we had an alternative. With AMD raising the prices themselves, on their side you aren't even getting RT yet still paying more.

That was generally true with Radeon VII and 5700XT (to an extent; Radeon VII is a steal now if you can find one for $499, and 5700XT is coming down already). 5700 prices are actually pretty nice, and they have been for a few months. Launch was $349 for the reference card. Not so long ago, there were some reference cards (or reference-level cards) for less than $300, and now you can get an overclocked XFX DD Ultra for $310.
 
Feb 4, 2009
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Browsing reddit and other forums, seems some people aren't choosing RTX for the Ray Tracing. AMD driver issues are pushing people to pay the Nvidia tax.

I don't think Ray Tracing is an issue/topic for buyers right now.

Yeah, feels like ray tracing is possible at the high end but the net result isn’t game changing.
My gut tells me we are still a generation or two away before it becomes affordable & feasible.
Then we will need to wait for programmers to catch up. Sort of like DX12/Vulcan, yeah it is great on paper but in game not so much.
 

sontin

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Sep 12, 2011
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Yeah, feels like ray tracing is possible at the high end but the net result isn’t game changing.
My gut tells me we are still a generation or two away before it becomes affordable & feasible.
Then we will need to wait for programmers to catch up. Sort of like DX12/Vulcan, yeah it is great on paper but in game not so much.

Raytracing goes hand in hand with AI upscaling (like DLSS). I have a RTX2060-Q (80W) notebook and i can play Deliver us to the Moon with Raytracing and over 60FPS in 1080p. Wolfenstein 2 archives over 60FPS w/o DLSS or 100FPS with it.

And with the price cut down to $299 Raytracing has come to the mainstream market.
 
Feb 4, 2009
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Raytracing goes hand in hand with AI upscaling (like DLSS). I have a RTX2060-Q (80W) notebook and i can play Deliver us to the Moon with Raytracing and over 60FPS in 1080p. Wolfenstein 2 archives over 60FPS w/o DLSS or 100FPS with it.

And with the price cut down to $299 Raytracing has come to the mainstream market.

So a generation or two away
 
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GodisanAtheist

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Raytracing goes hand in hand with AI upscaling (like DLSS). I have a RTX2060-Q (80W) notebook and i can play Deliver us to the Moon with Raytracing and over 60FPS in 1080p. Wolfenstein 2 archives over 60FPS w/o DLSS or 100FPS with it.

And with the price cut down to $299 Raytracing has come to the mainstream market.

- Its a little weird to tie together an IQ enhancing feature like ray tracing in conjunction with an IQ reducing feature such as upscaling. I can see how on a 17" or 15" laptop screen the negative effects are much less noticeable due to the higher pixel density, but doing the same might not be tolerable on a standard 24" 1080P screen.
 
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Guru

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May 5, 2017
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Browsing reddit and other forums, seems some people aren't choosing RTX for the Ray Tracing. AMD driver issues are pushing people to pay the Nvidia tax.

I don't think Ray Tracing is an issue/topic for buyers right now.
What driver issues? When you are making such outlandish general claims, please back them up, otherwise you seem like an Nvidia fanboy. For real, these type of things have gone on for long enough, outlandish claims with no evidence, no source, no links, etc...

There were some issues with the latest Adrenalin 2020 driver when it was first released, but that is common with such a massive features upgrade in the drivers, they've ironed out most of those since then!

There has not been any major AMD driver issue, in fact being with Nvidia right now and owning a GTX 1060 6GB, I'd say its Nvidia that's had most of the driver issues and problems and game crashing issues like with Gears of War, God of War, GTA 5, etc... that we've waited for literally YEARS to be fixed!

Its Nvidia who have outdated graphics console, outdated graphic settings, outdated driver installation, outdated graphics features. They need to massively upgrade their Nvidia control panel, make it faster, snappier, and bring it to the 21 century with new slick UI and more options and features!

So I'm in the Nvidia camp, but I'm not going to sit here and allow for your misinformation to be repeated over and over. Nvidia for sure have the worst drivers and have had worse drivers for the past 3 years, at least since when I bought the GTX 1060 6gb.

Calling others "fanboys" or other
types of insults is not allowed.

AT Mod Usandthem
 
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pauldun170

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Sep 26, 2011
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2060 Super owner here. I don't give a crap about ray tracing or DLSS. Heck, I don't even care about DX12/Vulkan.

I got the card because I wanted my existing games to run well, and I find nVidia's drivers are excellent overall for my needs.

Exactly
Also RTX2060 owner.
Set a budget. Bought card that offered best performance and characteristics for that budget as supplied by manufacturer with best reputation on build quality and return policy as per that budget.
No regrets.
I didn't care about drivers since I haven't had issues with either AMD or Nvdia driver where it forced to me care.