News RTX On: Nvidia Data Shows Surprising Amount of Gamers Use Ray Tracing, DLSS

[Admin]

The majority of RTX graphics card owners are gaming with real-time ray tracing turned on, indicates an Nvidia survey. Even with the oldest compatible cards, over 40% will choose RTX On, it says.

RTX On: Nvidia Data Shows Surprising Amount of Gamers Use Ray Tracing, DLSS : Read more

 

[tennis2]

One thing which isn’t very clear in the figures is how the GeForce Experience counts a user as one who has turned RTX On and DLSS On. We aren’t sure if you need to be applying these features in all compatible games, or you only have to occasionally dabble to be counted among the positive figures. It is probably best to apply some salt and skepticism to the figures overall, as companies will always positively spin data to 'prove' its technologies are successful.

Key point right there. Thanks for making it.

I also wondered how many games apply RT and DLSS automatically when compatible GPU is detected. My gut feeling is that these features would mostly be manual opt-in, but who knows...

 

[Giroro]

Where did these slides come from? It must be missing context, because otherwise these 3 slides would be some of most cherrypicked and wildly misleading non-information that Nvidia has ever put out. Maybe theres a lot of extra footnotes or Nvidia put out some actual data, but I can't find it.

Things that badly need clarification:
How does Nvidia define "RTX gamers" and "RTX capable games"?
How does Nvidia define "RTX" and "RTX On", because they are coming across as contradictory.
Which specific RTX technologies are being counted as "RT"
Does "RT" exclusively mean Ray Tracing, because RTX definitely does not exclusively mean Ray Tracing.

As far as I am aware and if nothing changed, "RTX On" Means to enable any of the RTX portfolio of technologies, Which collectively includes both Ray Tracing and DLSS, as well as other stuff. Basically, anything on this slide:

So with that definition of "RTX", a claim of 400 "RTX" games/apps would be a claim that 400 pieces of software can one or more of the features of the RTX portfolio (for games that's usually DLSS, and usually not RT), but I'm sure Nvidia would be very happy for a journalist to misread that claim and tell everybody "400 games feature real-time ray tracing".

But what we do know is that Nvidia isn't saying "Even among RTX 20 users, Nvidia says 43% play games with RTX On."
What they said is "Data from Millions of RTX Gamers who played RTX capable games in Feb'23 shows ... 43% of 20 series gamers turn RT on". There is a LOT of different ways to interpret this statement.
It's clear to me that they want people to think millions of people are regularly turning on Ray Tracing (on Nvidia hardware) and leaving it on long enough to play a game. But I do not think that is anywhere close to the right interpretation, because there are too many qualifiers for that to be the actual claim. This is why much more context is needed.
What I do know for sure is that "RT" and "RTX" are not the same thing, at least not in previous News-Marketing from Nvidia.

Where things are coming across as contradictory is due to the fact that the majority of RTX games do not have Ray Tracing (~127 RT games as of December 22).
There's a chance that Nvidia's definition of RT includes PC gamers using Ray Tracing on AMD hardware, or console games with Ray Tracing features (also AMD hardware). There's no way to know until they define it.

Another way to read these slides at face value, is that it looks like Nvidia is saying that 79% of their high-end 40 Series owners need DLSS upscaling. Which is funny to think about but probably not true.

 

[lmcnabney]

Curious what the data really is.
For the RTX40 cards the chart shows 83% 'Turn RT On'.

Does that mean that 83% of the time that those RTX cards are running they are RT or does it mean that they have turned RT on in at least one game for at least one minute? Nvidia can make statistics say almost anything.

 

[Jagar123]

Curious what the data really is.
For the RTX40 cards the chart shows 83% 'Turn RT On'.

Does that mean that 83% of the time that those RTX cards are running they are RT or does it mean that they have turned RT on in at least one game for at least one minute? Nvidia can make statistics say almost anything.

Yeah, this all reads like marketing slides. I don't buy any of it. I don't know many people personally, or online that use ray tracing in their daily games.

 

[hotaru251]

I can say most users don't install that Experience software (its so bloated) so take the data with massive amount of salt.

 

[bigdragon]

The 28% figure for gamers using 4K surprises me. I expected that number to be half as high. PC monitor makers seemed to be allergic to the idea of 4K for the longest time.

I don't find the RTX figures to be anywhere near as surprising. The tech has come a long way since it's weak rollout years ago. Implementing some variant of RT has become as easy as clicking a button in some game engines.

 

[mrv_co]

Makes sense that someone buying an expensive GPU with a much hyped feature would try it out at least once. And maybe even try it on each game that supports it. The question remains, what % of those folks leave it on and how does that vary by game?

 

[BaRoMeTrIc]

This truly is surprising , considering ray tracing is enabled by default on most aaa games these days, along with dlss if youre using 1440p/4k

 

[usernamist]

40 series card owners are people who spent over a 1000 bucks on this gimmick, of course they're going to try it. How is anyone surprised by this?

 

[KyaraM]

40 series card owners are people who spent over a 1000 bucks on this gimmick, of course they're going to try it. How is anyone surprised by this?

Did you follow any hardware news at all this year? Neither the 4070 nor the 4070Ti costs 1k... and both can indeed do RT and any other tech covered under RTX.

About thise slides, they need the same amount of salt applied as any benchmark slides or other marketing slides put out by any company. Personally I think it's "uses any of these features"; though most games only let you choose RT or DLSS, some may let you choose to enable Reflex (eg. Hogwarts Legacy) separately. The other stuff sounds like something that will be turned on in the background when RTX is enable, buth which the user doesn't directly interfere. It's probably not even there in all games.

 

[Elusive Ruse]

I'm pretty sure Nvidia counted people who just turned on RT to see how the game looked like and ran compared to non-RT and then turned it off as well as those who keep RT on because they enjoy it.

 

[jkflipflop98]

Raytracing is awesome. I can't wait until it's just the norm. It will be so much easier for developers and it looks amazing.

 

[PEnns]

Well of course! Nvidia is trying hard to peddle that gimmick and asking extra cash for it.

Do we really expect them to say anything else and not post data grabbed from thin air?

 

[AloofBrit]

Key point right there. Thanks for making it.

I also wondered how many games apply RT and DLSS automatically when compatible GPU is detected. My gut feeling is that these features would mostly be manual opt-in, but who knows...

I don't know how Experience behaves on a 40 series, but possibly hitting "optimize" enables these features?

With my 3080 if you choose that for Fallout 76 it wants to render at 4K on a 1440 monitor, which seems like the opposite of 'optimization'

For whatever reason, BF V doesn't let you use DLSS unless you move the quality slider to one below max

 

[evdjj3j]

40 series card owners are people who spent over a 1000 bucks on this gimmick, of course they're going to try it. How is anyone surprised by this?

20 Series user here, I always turn RT on and my video card cost $500.

 

[blacknemesist]

I'm pretty sure Nvidia counted people who just turned on RT to see how the game looked like and ran compared to non-RT and then turned it off as well as those who keep RT on because they enjoy it.

That would just make the % flat across the board.
I think it is pretty clear that as soon as the technology became better it also started having more users.
2000 gen RT was very hit and miss and game impact was huge,
3000 gen RT was better but only realistically the top card could perform good enough.
4000 gen RT with frame gen just makes RT easier to get into.
Or you can think of it as "has RT became more readily available, it's usage rate also increased".

 

[watzupken]

I feel the data is pretty meaningless. Based off the data, the number is not surprising at all. Considering that Nvidia have just released their top and mid/high range of RTX 40xx GPUs, it is not surprising to see that many people using RT and DLSS. If you buy such expensive and high end GPUs and not use RT (or at least try), it is quite silly. And with RT on, you will need DLSS to boost frame rates.

 

[in_the_loop]

The 28% figure for gamers using 4K surprises me. I expected that number to be half as high. PC monitor makers seemed to be allergic to the idea of 4K for the longest time.

I don't find the RTX figures to be anywhere near as surprising. The tech has come a long way since it's weak rollout years ago. Implementing some variant of RT has become as easy as clicking a button in some game engines.

Lot's of people (me included) play on a 4k TV.
There are great gaming TV:s now, like the LG Oleds that have 120 Hz@4k with 10 bit HDR and Gsync (Variable Refresh Rate) and the lot.
Instead of playing on a smaller montior which compared to the Oleds aren't any better anyway.