Impact of nVidia Turing RayTracing enhanced GPUs on next-gen consoles *spawn

[Tkumpathenurpahl]

I think you're being a little bit pessimistic. Even if the next round of consoles aren't RT ready, the technology will continue to cook in the PC space until it's mature enough for widespread adoption in consoles.

Even in your own example, you describe a situation in which compute shaders become wildly prevalent. Just not as quickly as you might like.

Also consider mid-gen consoles: both Sony and Microsoft are in a better position than ever to introduce a technology like RT waaaay in advance of the traditional 6-8 year cycle. The Pro and X1X have given Sony, Microsoft, and devs the requisite time and experience necessary to hit the ground running with 4K gaming next generation. RT could well see the same fate: introduced mid-gen to quietly give everyone a chance to get their tools and techniques in place, ready for the next generation.

As exciting a prospect as RTRT is, it's still very much in its infancy, and we should all just be excited that this is even possible right now, albeit at a prosumer price.

Relax iroboto, and join the rest of us console peasants in the slow lane. It's nice here really. You'll get used to it

 

[Shortbread]

PC gaming is bigger then ever, even bigger then console gaming in total, nvidia knows this. The 20 series are going to be popular in special when cheaper variants arise.

The PC gaming market is very fragmented... more specifically the vast amount of hardware/software configurations that exist in the PC space. Of course PCs outsell consoles hands down every year (262 million sold in 2017), but that's about it. Game market software sales (revenue dollars) for PCs accounted for 28% of the market, while consoles accounted for 29%, and mobile, a whopping 43% share of software sales.

Software / revenue wise PC and console gaming sales were very close in 2017, but that doesn't negate how fragmented the PC side is, when it comes to hardware, software and end-user usage for such product. That being said, PCs will always lead the charge for more-and-more advanced GPUs/CPUs because of the nature of the business. While console and mobile gaming will lead the forcible future as the starting development platform (SDKs) for the vast majority of multi-platform titles.

 

[iroboto]

I think you're being a little bit pessimistic. Even if the next round of consoles aren't RT ready, the technology will continue to cook in the PC space until it's mature enough for widespread adoption in consoles.

Even in your own example, you describe a situation in which compute shaders become wildly prevalent. Just not as quickly as you might like.

Also consider mid-gen consoles: both Sony and Microsoft are in a better position than ever to introduce a technology like RT waaaay in advance of the traditional 6-8 year cycle. The Pro and X1X have given Sony, Microsoft, and devs the requisite time and experience necessary to hit the ground running with 4K gaming next generation. RT could well see the same fate: introduced mid-gen to quietly give everyone a chance to get their tools and techniques in place, ready for the next generation.

As exciting a prospect as RTRT is, it's still very much in its infancy, and we should all just be excited that this is even possible right now, albeit at a prosumer price.

Relax iroboto, and join the rest of us console peasants in the slow lane. It's nice here really. You'll get used to it

ha, I left PC gaming partly for this reason. I was no longer seeing the value in getting the greatest video card. We sat on our CPUs and GPUs for a very very long time because things just were no longer progressing. Minimal requirements stopped moving upwards.

Devs had plenty of time to learn compute shaders before this generation and most of our launch titles were entirely DX9 derivatives.

I dunno, if Mid-Gen is a thing for next gen, then imo, it makes sense to start next gen with RT hardware support and follow up with strong Mid-gen RT performance afterwards.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

But I do know that if consoles miss the boat on it, RT isn't going to move forward at all.

Last gen consoles "missed the boat" on hardware accelerated physics processors and that didn't prevent physics being huge last gen. PS3 "missed the boat" on unified shader hardware lastgen and that didn't prevent it having some great looking games.

You seem to think that Nvidia's RT hardware is the only way for RT to move forward. I do not. There are a lot of ways to solve this technical problem, Nvidia's RT processor is the latest until the next solution which will likely be better because thats how technology has moved forward for six decades.

Jumping on the first new solution to any problem rarely works out well and the console space is littered with the corpses of consoles that invested in new interesting hardware that failed to change the world.

 

[mrcorbo]

PC gaming is bigger then ever, even bigger then console gaming in total, nvidia knows this. The 20 series are going to be popular in special when cheaper variants arise.

Not for the type of games that demand high-end hardware. Fortnite players probably aren't too bothered by hard shadows, innacurate lighting and missing reflections.

 

[milk]

Relax iroboto, and join the rest of us console peasants in the slow lane. It's nice here really. You'll get used to it

I like that analogy. You may want to blaze through the Autobahn to get as fast as possible to your final destination, but you know what, you miss on all the great scenery along the journey. The real joy of real time graphics is seeing dedicated devs squeeze every last ounce of juice out of the meak and dried up lemons they are given. Seeing their inventiveness and MacGyverisms. Enjoy the ride man.
I myself take great pleasure in seeing pico8 demos. They've got some raytracers there too. At the glorious pre-defined 16 colours palette of the platform, 128x128 resolution at silky smooth 0.25 frames per second (checkerboarded)

 

[iroboto]

You seem to think that Nvidia's RT hardware is the only way for RT to move forward. I do not.

I don't either. It's not Nvidia's implementation that I'm impressed with, it's that I know it's possible.
It's RT that I want to see support for, the vendor or how they accomplish it does not matter. It's without a doubt by as time goes on, how RT is supported will slowly move from fixed function RT support to more flexible RT support. Quite a bit like how rasterization had moved from fixed function to compute.

 

[mrcorbo]

Greater than the risk of missing on the latest tech is heavily investing in obsolete-by-next-year tech. No doubt if you were posting here in 2006 you would have been advocating for Sony and Microsoft to be incorporating PhysX hardware in their consoles. How stupid would Microsoft and Sony have been to pass on that!

I think the PhysX comparison is apt. Raytracing is definitely on the come-up. Microsoft delivering DXR is a dead giveaway that this is something that is wanted/needed in the industry. What is in question is if bespoke hardware is the best or only way to deliver it in the medium to long term.

In the time it took PhysX to gain traction, GPUs became powerful/flexible enough to make the dedicated hardware unnecessary. AMD's TrueAudio never did gain any traction (unfortunately), but even the custom hardware that drove this was eventually replaced with software running in dedicated time slices on the GPU once the tech was in place to guarantee QoS for those operations.

We could very well see something similar here.

 

[milk]

Quite a bit like how rasterization had moved from fixed function to compute.

Actually rasterization is still mostly fixed function. It's shading that's very programmable and vertex processing that has been moving more and more towards compute. Some guys here and there fiddled with doing software texturing (with shaders of course) and all the tricks with custom screenspace resolves of MSAA and checkerboarding are the most we've got. But interestingly, the core of RASTERIZING those damn triangles is still a black box to devs. I eagerly wait for it to become less and less so.

 

[dten]

The Nvidia RT demos were rough. Some of the textures and lighting looked worse with RT on. Obviously it was quickly put together but there's no denying there will be a lot of growing pains over the years. More so if Navi doesn't have hardware RT, which is most likely the case.

Also, remember, we won't have hardware that doesn't support a raster pipeline for the foreseeable future or that'll break all "legacy" games which is a huge no-no.

 

[vipa899]

The PC gaming market is very fragmented...

It might be fragmented, thats the whole point of pc gaming, you dont need a RTX 2080Ti or Titan V with a 32c/64t @ 4.5ghz cpu with 64gb ram, to match PS4 non pro you dont need more then a GTX660/i5 to match console specs on a pure hardware level. Some people can live with 30fps with dips, you know that very well as your on the console side.

PC gaming is fragmented, so is console gaming. What about people with a switch, wii, or 3ds? Anyway, in total pc gaming is much bigger then console gaming.

https://mygaming.co.za/news/feature...world-and-pc-gaming-dominates-the-market.html

Here on Beyond3d console is bigger, but its an exeption really, strangely enough, as the pc is home to where hardware tech evolves fastest and dynamicly. Yes consoles, or console i should say as PS4 is the only one that gets exclusives that really push the hardware.
But MS is growing and expanding with AAA games too, and most of them will land on PC too, any game maxing the next xbox will max most pc's as pc gaming offers the ability to have high fidelity in combination with atleast 60fps and 4k or higher.

I know most wont like my comments, but some competition in beyond3d thats mostly console focused cant hurt

 

[vipa899]

ha, I left PC gaming partly for this reason. I was no longer seeing the value in getting the greatest video card. We sat on our CPUs and GPUs for a very very long time because things just were no longer progressing.

You dont need to upgrade to the latest and greatest for a whole console generation span, one of my pc's has a i7 920, 8gb ram and gtx670, holds upp pretty well still. With the next gen it wont though.

 

[Shortbread]

PC gaming is fragmented, so is console gaming. What about people with a switch, wii, or 3ds

Fragmented in the contextual sense of user experience(s). PS4/Pro users have the same experiences because the hardware/software are universally the same within Sony's Playstation ecosystem. The same applies to Xbox and Switch users and previous generations of console systems. For the most part, PC gamers experiences from one person to another - can be (is) vastly different because of all the gazillions of configurations PCs have. This alone makes PC game development more challenging and complex.

 

[mrcorbo]

You dont need to upgrade to the latest and greatest for a whole console generation span, one of my pc's has a i7 920, 8gb ram and gtx670, holds upp pretty well still. With the next gen it wont though.

OT: An i7 920 with 8GB? That's an odd config. x58 supports triple-channel memory. I've got 12GB in my system. Also, if you want to see if you can push back that upgrade a little longer I recommend checking ebay for a used x58-compatible Xeon hexa-core. They run between $30 and $50 dollars and are a major upgrade in terms of the extra cores and are great overclockers (Mine does 4.2 Ghz on air cooling). Lots of info here.

 

[vipa899]

Fragmented in the contextual sense of user experience(s). PS4/Pro users have the same experiences because the hardware/software are universally the same within Sony's Playstation ecosystem. The same applies to Xbox and Switch users and previous generations of console systems. For the most part, PC gamers experiences from one person to another - can be (is) vastly different because of all the gazillions of configurations PCs have. This alone makes PC game development more challenging and complex.

Yes thats true, was thinking as console gaming in general, all consoles combined Only talking PS or Xbox etc then yes it isnt fragmented like with pc gaming.

OT: An i7 920 with 8GB? That's an odd config. x58 supports triple-channel memory. I've got 12GB in my system. Also, if you want to see if you can push back that upgrade a little longer I recommend checking ebay for a used x58-compatible Xeon hexa-core. They run between $30 and $50 dollars and are a major upgrade in terms of the extra cores and are great overclockers (Mine does 4.2 Ghz on air cooling). Lots of info here.

Yes on a X58 board, when i build it in early 2009 it had 6GB (3x2gb), later upgraded to 12 but then another pc needed some ram and the 920 system could come by perfectly with just 8gb. Yes thanks, i have two more 920 systems in the house, all running stock with aftermarket air coolers I know i know, but they still are suffice to my needs. Been playing BF3, BF4 mostly (before that BC2), but also modern games no problem. My 920 systems have soon been in service for 10 years, only upgraded GPU on them, aside from abit of ram. One could complain about progress, but im not having any trouble with that

Edit: Have also skylake i7 system but thats mostly for the tv room/emulation. PCSX2 needs a fast intel CPU.

My then very expensive AMD FX60/X1900XTX system didnt live long, tech was progressing much faster back then. Same for the Ti4600/XP2100 system i had, and the systems before. On the other hand, my launch PS2 from october 2000 is still running strong, no laser problems, reads everything it should read and more (freemcboot), same for my other PS2's and Xboxes and GC's, consoles last too Yeah i love the 6th gens, dont know how many i have but my last catch was a satin silver, still hunting a aqua blue

 

[Lalaland]

Yeah hold on here, the PS4 has an install base of 75 million units, if there's a single consistent PC config with more than a 5 figures install base I'll eat my hat. Hell if there's a single GPU with a 7 figure install base I'll eat my other hat as well.

Don't confuse Steam has X users or X million PCs sold (which always include sad min spec MS Office boxes) as implying that the PC is anything but a pain in the ass for trying to code to a baseline. It's why since the x360/PS3 era the consoles have defined and constrained what devs aim for in 3D titles. I bought a Power VR card back in the day, I was there when PC was defining the spec and now is not then, hell most advanced PC features are "gilding the lily" style features that let you feel like the millions of extra transistors over a console are worth while. RT will be fiddled with and refined on PC as a halve your framerate feature for a console gen before it gets adopted in a console and devs start to seriously work with it.

 

[vipa899]

It's why since the x360/PS3 era the consoles have defined and constrained what devs aim for in 3D titles.

In the PS2 era, PC only got half assed ports if even that. Gotta say that the state of pc gaming is much better then it ever was before. Yes your right consoles have the advantage of that the hardware gets used to max, games optimized for it, which will never happen on pc as theres no baseline configuration. But on console you gotta live with 30fps, or whatever drawbacks devs make to get it to their likings. On pc if you want you can get more then that. Theres disadvantages and advantages to both console and pc gaming. Im not either saying either is better, its all to each own what people want.
I own consoles and pc's, like them both, but im a pc gamer at heart, no problem with you or anyone else being console gamer at heart. Were very offtopic now btw, might be my fault

 

[Nesh]

Yeah hold on here, the PS4 has an install base of 75 million units, if there's a single consistent PC config with more than a 5 figures install base I'll eat my hat. Hell if there's a single GPU with a 7 figure install base I'll eat my other hat as well.

Don't confuse Steam has X users or X million PCs sold (which always include sad min spec MS Office boxes) as implying that the PC is anything but a pain in the ass for trying to code to a baseline. It's why since the x360/PS3 era the consoles have defined and constrained what devs aim for in 3D titles. I bought a Power VR card back in the day, I was there when PC was defining the spec and now is not then, hell most advanced PC features are "gilding the lily" style features that let you feel like the millions of extra transistors over a console are worth while. RT will be fiddled with and refined on PC as a halve your framerate feature for a console gen before it gets adopted in a console and devs start to seriously work with it.

The Consoles have improved the state of affairs on PC since they became similar in arcitecture. Devs have a PC architecture to optimise their games on which wasnt the case before. Now ports run better on PC than they used to and it's easier to make PC games run better on higher specced PCs from the baseline arcitecture found on consoles. Despite that the PC will always have issues due to the fragmented configurations as you said. The PC exclusives also have an issue with performance and dont touch the true potential of enthusiast PCs. Unless they want to risk limiting their audience with a game like Crysis that could barely be enjoyed by a great deal of PC owners unless they owned a super specced PC

 

[Lalaland]

In the PS2 era there was far less flow from console to PC, in the modern era everything comes out more or less everywhere. During the PC 3D heyday DX seemed to change every other week and Nvidia and AMD both could define baselines by launching new must have features. With the 360/PS3 era that changed, console defined the standard and PC started to get console games with bells on and it's stayed that way since. This is why I say consoles define the baseline and you won't see significant investment from software makers in PC specific features let alone GPU specific features such as Turing RT. They'll get a minimal investment if NV stumps up the cash via the TWIMTBP but certainly teams won't be building RT into the base design.

Oh and I think we're mostly on the same page I prefer PC for most single player titles as I have an unhealthy obsession with decent levels of AF that console can rarely satisfy.

 

[Scott_Arm]

PC games already offer features that won't be used by every player, so I'm not sure why RT would be different. Some games include screen-space reflections, but you can turn it off fully, which many players do. They may also offer cube-map reflections at a lower setting. Some games offer multiple implementations of AO.

Nvidia dedicated what seems to be a large portion of transistors to ray tracing and tensor. They could have just improved the cuda core and released a new GPU using all of those billions of transistors for rasterization. This isn't a little tacked on feature. It seems to be the major design point of the overall Turing architecture.

I'm expecting, from the excitement of a lot of game developers on twitter etc, that adoption will be pretty quick for cases where it makes sense, like reflections, global illumination. Sure, they'll have fallbacks, but most games already do when you scale settings from ultra to low.