The NVIDIA Turing GPU Architecture Deep Dive: Prelude to GeForce RTX
by Nate Oh on September 14, 2018 12:30 PM ESTUnpacking 'RTX', 'NGX', and Game Support
One of the more complicated aspects of GeForce RTX and Turing is not only the 'RTX' branding, but how all of Turing's features are collectively called the NVIDIA RTX platform. To recap, here is a quick list of the separate but similarly named groupings:
- NVIDIA RTX Platform - general platform encompassing all Turing features, including advanced shaders
- NVIDIA RTX Raytracing technology - name for ray tracing technology under RTX platform
- GameWorks Raytracing - raytracing denoiser module for GameWorks SDK
- GeForce RTX - the brand connected with games using NVIDIA RTX real time ray tracing
- GeForce RTX - the brand for graphics cards
For NGX, it technically falls under the RTX platform, and includes Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). Using a deep neural network (DNN) specific to the game and trained on super high quality 64x supersampled images, or 'ground truth' images, DLSS uses tensor cores to infer high quality antialiased results. In the standard mode, DLSS renders at a lower input sample count, typically 2x less but may depend on the game, and then infers a result, which at target resolution is similar quality to TAA result. A DLSS 2X mode exists, where the input is rendered at the final target resolution and then combined with a larger DLSS network.
Fortunately, GFE is not required for NGX features to work, and all the necessary NGX files will be available via the standard Game Ready drivers, though it's not clear how often DNNs for particular games would be updated.
In the case of RTX-OPS, it describes a workload for a frame where both RT and Tensor Cores are utilized; currently, the classic scenario would be with a game with real time ray tracing and DLSS. So by definition, it only accurately measures that type of workload. However, this metric currently does not apply to any game, as DXR has not yet released. For the time being, the metric does not describe performance any publicly available game.
In sum, then the upcoming game support aligns with the following table.
| Planned NVIDIA Turing Feature Support for Games | |||||
| Game | Real Time Raytracing | Deep Learning Supersampling (DLSS) | Turing Advanced Shading | ||
| Ark: Survival Evolved | Yes | ||||
| Assetto Corsa Competizione | Yes | ||||
| Atomic Heart | Yes | Yes | |||
| Battlefield V | Yes | ||||
| Control | Yes | ||||
| Dauntless | Yes | ||||
| Darksiders III | Yes | ||||
| Deliver Us The Moon: Fortuna | Yes | ||||
| Enlisted | Yes | ||||
| Fear The Wolves | Yes | ||||
| Final Fantasy XV | Yes | ||||
| Fractured Lands | Yes | ||||
| Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice | Yes | ||||
| Hitman 2 | Yes | ||||
| In Death | Yes | ||||
| Islands of Nyne | Yes | ||||
| Justice | Yes | Yes | |||
| JX3 | Yes | Yes | |||
| KINETIK | Yes | ||||
| MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries | Yes | Yes | |||
| Metro Exodus | Yes | ||||
| Outpost Zero | Yes | ||||
| Overkill's The Walking Dead | Yes | ||||
| PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds | Yes | ||||
| ProjectDH | Yes | ||||
| Remnant: From the Ashes | Yes | ||||
| SCUM | Yes | ||||
| Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass | Yes | ||||
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | Yes | ||||
| Stormdivers | Yes | ||||
| The Forge Arena | Yes | ||||
| We Happy Few | Yes | ||||
| Wolfenstein II | Yes | ||||
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
111 Comments
View All Comments
gglaw - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link
Why bother to make up statements claiming the prices are completely as expected with inflation added without even having a slight clue what the inflation rate has been in recent history? Outside of the very young readers here, most of us were around for 700 series, 8800, etc. and know first hand what type of changes inflation has had in the last 10-20 years. Especially comparing to the 980 Ti, and 1080 Ti, inflation has barely moved since those releases.Spunjji - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
This. Most people here aren't stupid.notashill - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link
700 series wasn't even close. 780 was $650->adjusted ~$700, 780Ti was $700->adjusted ~$760. And the 780 MSRP dropped to $500 after 6 months when the Ti launched.Santoval - Monday, September 17, 2018 - link
Yes, Navi will be midrange, at around a GTX 1080 performance level, or at best a bit faster. They initially planned a dual Navi package for the high end, linked by Infinity Fabric, but they canned (or postponed) it, due to the reluctance of game developers to support dual-die consumer graphics cards (according to AMD). They might release dual Navi professional graphics cards though.Tensor and RT cores should not be expected either. These will have to wait for the post-Navi (and post-GCN) generation.
TropicMike - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link
Good article. Lots of complicated stuff to try to explain.Just a quick typo on page 2: "It’s in pixel shaders that the various forms of lighting (shadows, reflection, reflection, etc) " I'm guessing you meant 'refraction' for one of those.
Smell This - Wednesday, July 3, 2019 - link
Super **Duper** Turbo Hyper Championship EditionYaldabaoth - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link
For the "eye diagram" on page 8, the texts says, "In this case we’re looking at a fairly clean eye diagram, illustrating the very tight 70ns transitions between data transfers." However, the image is labeled as "70 ps".Ryan Smith - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link
Nano. Pico. Really, it's a small difference... =PThanks!
Bulat Ziganshin - Friday, September 14, 2018 - link
It's not "Volta in spirit". It's Volta for the masses. The only differences- reduced FP64 cores
- reduced sharedmem/cache from 128 KB to 96 KB
- added RT cores
Now let's check what you want to change to produce "scientific" Turing GPU. Yes, exactly these things. So, despite the name, it's the same architecture, tuned for the gaming market
Yojimbo - Saturday, September 15, 2018 - link
You don't really know that. This article, as explained in the beginning, focuses only on the RT core improvements. There are other Turing features that were left out. I think we have no idea if Volta has variable rate shading, mesh shading,or multi-view rendering. I'm guessing it does not.Besides, what you said isn't true even limiting the discussion to what was covered in this article. The Turing Tensor cores allow for a greater range of precisions.