First Gen Ray Tracing, 6 Years Later

Benchmarking the Nvidia Geforce RTX 2080 Ti and Titan RTX in 2024 using ray tracing and path tracing, in games released during the 6 years since their initial launch.

When the RTX series was first announced in 2018, ray tracing was touted as the future of gaming. Like it or not, whether you can even tell the difference or not, RT has spread throughout the gaming landscape over the last 6 years. The best of those first generation GPUs, the RTX 2080 Ti and the Titan RTX, were the only ones really capable of showcasing RT at the time, and cost a small fortune for the privilege; are they still up to the task six years later?

Track names: “Future Tomorrow", "Welcome to Cerberon", "Binary Sunrise", "Neon Nights", "Midnight Racer" and "Vercetti Forever"

Games tested:
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)
Control (2019)
Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)
Forza Horizon 5 (2021)
Plague Tale: Requiem (2022)
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (2023)
Alan Wake 2 (2023)
Star Wars: Outlaws (2024)
Black Myth Wukong (2024)

00:00 RTX 6 Years Later
00:50 First generation RTX GPUs
02:08 Test system & card specifications
02:49 Ray tracing benchmarks
17:07 DLSS benchmarks
24:16 AMD RDNA 2 GPUs & ray tracing
25:06 RX 6900 XT benchmarks
30:00 Conclusion

A D S
The following links are affiliated. Everything costs the same to you, but I get a commission.

G E A R
Audio:

Video:

C O N T A C T
Twitter/Insta @IcebergTop10s

#RTX #Geforce #scalperpandemic

[IcebergTech]

Soooo… the charts 😅
I usually use Google Sheets, which is handy because I use several different computers as well as my phone for noting down data. Unfortunately, it couldn’t handle this one, so I found myself using Libre Office for the first time. I kinda had to learn the program on the fly, and I dare say that I could have done a better job with more practice. I’m not sure if I’m going to use Libre again, but if I do, I’ll definitely work on making the charts more readable!

[sevenatenine_]

there is no way its been 6 years since the rtx20xx, damn.. im growing old

[ZeroHourProductions]

When it launched, the meme was that the 2080ti could do 4K raster, but only 1080p ray tracing. The 2060... 1080p raster, 480p ray tracing. Time has not been kind to either.

[ToastenButter]

The titan rtx is such a beautiful looking card.

[QuentinStephens]

I had a RTX 2080 Ti. To me, RTX on the 2080 Ti was never more than a demo, a taster of things to come.

[fortunefiderikumo]

wished you separated the two GPU bars by color

[Oraceon]

As a long-time 2080ti user, I've been gaming at 1440p since 2020, and, if you don't use raytracing, it is still a great experience. Even newer games you can usually pull a 1440p60fps high preset experience. Love this card. Definitely starting to feel its age a bit, but its still very capable. Asus ROG strix version, myself.

[Hi_Im_o]

Man 6 years and 90% of people still cant use it

[JamesSmith-swnk]

I just gave away my rtx 2060 to someone who was using integrated graphics. (I have 6 other rtx cards that are faster than the 2060) They think the card is amazing for their 1080p game playing. Perspective always matters.

[pfandahalf]

Yes, for ray tracing you need lots of vram, sometimes surprisingly a lot more than you'd think you'd need. The worst part of this whole rtx thing besides it being so hard to run is how nvidia has been consistently skimping on vram while acting like everything is fine. Then you have hordes of nvidia fanboys making fun of you for insisting on more vram while they pretend everything is fine. That peaked with the 4070 ti. "12gb vram is fine bro." No, it's not.

[JamesSmith-swnk]

90% of the time I think Ray Tracing is nice but not really necessary for a game. I recently got a "WOW!" moment in Cyberpunk, I was walking around a corner, I thought I had taken out all the guards when I saw the reflection of a guard above me on a ledge in a puddle! (I'm using a 4090)

[Ivan-prku]

An important detail about Turing's RT implementation is that the RT hardware acceleration couldn't run concurrently with the rest of the GPU pipeline -- very similar of how RDNA serializes its RT implementation. That's why the 6900XT is able to match even or top out the 2080Ti despite having much less dedicated hardware RT support, by simply brute forcing itself with more FLOPs capacity (76% advantage). This deficiency of Turing was the first thing that Nvidia mended in Ampere together with doubling of the FP32 throughput.

[Kreeschon]

to anyone potentially saying the performance isn't that bad, please remember that the majority of Turing owners didn't have a Titan RTX or 2080 Ti
any numbers you see here will be cut in half if not more by using a 2060. a 6GB buffer is an absolute no go on many games in 2024 withOUT RT enabled. if you think it's shocking to see a 6900XT to struggle in Ratchet and Clank 1440p with ray tracing, imagine how bad the rasterization performance is for a card with just over a third the VRAM

[lolpl]

i've got an rtx 2080 laptop, which i dont use anyway because my main rig is more powerful, but you know what, it still runs games at high settings to this day, at +60fps pretty much across the board! :) (at 1080p)

[fireball]

the 2080 ti is the only 2000 series that could do raytracing, and only just, and still somehow throws hands (at 1080p)

[ragnarok]

A little hack for yall who use a first gen RTX card, install the DLSS to FSR3 frame gen on SINGLEPLAYER GAMES (IMPORTANT BECAUSE MULTIPLAYER GAMES WILL GET YOU BANNED). Since DLSS frame gen is locked behind 40 series cards, this mod has helped me a lot with Cyberpunk Ray Tracing. I may have an RTX 3070 Ti but adding the DLSS to FSR3 frame gen mod to singleplayer games, i got more than comfortable performance on games like Cyberpunk and Alan Wake 2 maxed out. Just remember that frame gen will add latency to your games so the closer to 60 FPS you can get the game without, the lower latency. 40 to 50 FPS is still playable, just try to counter the latency by predicting moves (which aint too hard).

[oOZellzimaOo]

Raytracing is a neat feature, but it hasn't wowed me as much as the performance impact when turning it on.
Going from 120fps to 45 even on an RTX 4090 isn't a good look. We'll eventually get there, but it might take another 6 years.
The next feature I want to see implemented is Gaussian Splatting in video games. That'd be neat.

[ADo_Bad_Idea]

Holy shit, I love the... intro screen? (not sure what it's called) banger that one.
Your thumbnails are so recognisable, I put the video on as soon as I see them. Your branding is fucking immaculate, so recognisable, so clean.

It's a thing I don't feel like a lot of YouTubers get, sure bright contrasting colours and big red arrows may get clicks, but a well branded thumbnail guarantees my view.

[J.Wick.]

Still have my 8700-2080 rig that got me into PC gaming for real. I had dabbled here and there over the years, but never took the plunge. In late 2018 I found a clearance deal on an HP Omen tower at Best Buy w/ the 8700 and a 2080. It was a blower style card, stayed fairly warm, and definitely loud. But after some tweaking, that little system served me well for about 5yrs. I didn't need to replace it honestly, but I found another deal on a Legion Tower (13700K-4070Ti) and took the plunge on that. It's obviously more performant, but I still use that Omen from time to time. And as long as you stay at 1440p or below with reasonable settings, it will play anything. After following the 10 series, and the price increase, I can see why the 20 series got hate at the time. But for things like prebuilts, it made more sense.

[jacobiebrian]

I've been on a 3070ti and I swear DLSS just feels like a free upgrade on the PC itself, if DLSS is available I always run it at Quality, I appreciate the 20% performance boost and the upscaling in what I think is near most situations makes the game look even better