Uploaded December 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Non-RT Capable GPU Uses Software Ray Tracing Fallback no matter the settings in this game. I tested the game at "Medium" and "Ultra" presets on my GTX 1080Ti using Balanced and Performance upscaling running at 1440p (using the "fixed" scaling option in game instead of the "biased" setting which upscales to 4k before down sampling to native res.) The FSR 3 implementation in this game honestly looks better than XeSS in my tests. The gameplay featured is running on my GTX 1080 Ti with an intel i9 11900k for the CPU. RT shadows can be disabled in favor of shadow maps at "very low" shadow settings. I was curious about this game considering it doesn't have RT cores yet it requires ray tracing for the global illumination at a bare minimum and uses it for shadows at all but the lower than low settings in game. This game is honestly super beautiful at medium settings and uses many ray tracing features like transparency reflections, global illumination, rough specular reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion and probably other things too however you would word them. To enable frame generation in this game I needed to install DLSS enabler (nexusmods.com/site/mods/757) for some reason even though it uses FSR 3 software frame gen no matter what. But it works pretty well once enabled. There are no noticeable image artifacts and the frame pacing is good, but it is still noticeable that there is more input latency when upscaling from 30 fps at least. I would chose to play the game at medium without frame gen, but with performance upscaling to get a near 60 fps experience with a VRR FreeSync/GSync monitor preventing tearing and feeling smooth.
0:00 - 3:47 Medium Settings FSR 3 Balanced (No Frame Gen)
3:47 - 5:09 Medium Settings FSR 3 Balanced (Frame Gen On, Locked 60fps)
5:09 - 9:22 ULTRA SETTINGS!!! FSR 3 Performance (Frame Gen On)
These are the ideas inspiring this video and the other ones about raytracing on GTX cards: RTX on GTX, software accelerated ray tracing, software RT vs hardware RT, software lumen vs hardware lumen, GTX 1080 Ti ray tracing, RT on GTX, old GPU ray tracing, ray tracing on non-ray tracing cards, CUDA cores ray tracing, RT cores necessary, is RTX a scam? No obviously I don't think RTX is a "scam" I think RT cores are the future of GPUs but I think the necessity of ray tracing is over hyped and there are other alternatives like highly performant software RT solutions (like in Avatar Frontiers of Pandora and apparently Cyberpunk 2077 too.) Granted, that is when using upscaling. But I am perfectly happy to use a good upscaling solution at a low internal resolution for ray tracing on my old high end GPU. I want to try to get Doom Eternal ray tracing working on my GTX 1080 Ti software fallback because I know it's possible because it's possible to enable RT on the GTX 16 series (Non-RT Turing cards) which means it is using a software fallback layer for acceleration. So I'm gonna find a way to enable raytracing on my GTX card that doesn't have RT cores also. I didn't think it was possible in Cyberpunk until I found the launch argument that lets you force it in game and it worked suprisingly well and made a suprising impact to the visuals. It almost looked like path tracing on a GTX 1080 Ti which was kind of awesome to see. Now I'm not saying I would play through every game I own like this but in games like Avatar or Cyberpunk or even Indiana Jones and The Great Circle I would like to play those games with ray tracing even if I need to upscale from 720p (or lower!) because part of the appeal for me is the graphical features and technology and triumphs and I know part of the ray tracing exclusion from GTX cards is arbitrary, esspecially when games like Avatar and almost every Unreal Engine 5 game prove it so with Lumen software acceleration and Nanite. This is to spite the opinion of some Digital Foundry members (Alex) who I deeply respect and admire but who regularly dismisses older technology as irrelevant and in the era of environmental consciousness and the affordability crisis I believe strongly in making what you have last. So that's why I love my old high end GPU and also love ray tracing and these games prove those things don't have to be incompatible, despite Nvidia marketing trying to sell more new GPUs to you. #avatarfrontiersofpandora #gtx1080ti #gtx1060 #raytracing #rtx #pathtracing #fsr3 #dlss3
Non-RT Capable GPU Uses Software Ray Tracing Fallback no matter the settings in this game. I tested the game at "Medium" and "Ultra" presets on my GTX 1080Ti using Balanced and Performance upscaling running at 1440p (using the "fixed" scaling option in game instead of the "biased" setting which upscales to 4k before down sampling to native res.) The FSR 3 implementation in this game honestly looks better than XeSS in my tests. The gameplay featured is running on my GTX 1080 Ti with an intel i9 11900k for the CPU. RT shadows can be disabled in favor of shadow maps at "very low" shadow settings. I was curious about this game considering it doesn't have RT cores yet it requires ray tracing for the global illumination at a bare minimum and uses it for shadows at all but the lower than low settings in game. This game is honestly super beautiful at medium settings and uses many ray tracing features like transparency reflections, global illumination, rough specular reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion and probably other things too however you would word them. To enable frame generation in this game I needed to install DLSS enabler (nexusmods.com/site/mods/757) for some reason even though it uses FSR 3 software frame gen no matter what. But it works pretty well once enabled. There are no noticeable image artifacts and the frame pacing is good, but it is still noticeable that there is more input latency when upscaling from 30 fps at least. I would chose to play the game at medium without frame gen, but with performance upscaling to get a near 60 fps experience with a VRR FreeSync/GSync monitor preventing tearing and feeling smooth.
0:00 - 3:47 Medium Settings FSR 3 Balanced (No Frame Gen)
3:47 - 5:09 Medium Settings FSR 3 Balanced (Frame Gen On, Locked 60fps)
5:09 - 9:22 ULTRA SETTINGS!!! FSR 3 Performance (Frame Gen On)
These are the ideas inspiring this video and the other ones about raytracing on GTX cards: RTX on GTX, software accelerated ray tracing, software RT vs hardware RT, software lumen vs hardware lumen, GTX 1080 Ti ray tracing, RT on GTX, old GPU ray tracing, ray tracing on non-ray tracing cards, CUDA cores ray tracing, RT cores necessary, is RTX a scam? No obviously I don't think RTX is a "scam" I think RT cores are the future of GPUs but I think the necessity of ray tracing is over hyped and there are other alternatives like highly performant software RT solutions (like in Avatar Frontiers of Pandora and apparently Cyberpunk 2077 too.) Granted, that is when using upscaling. But I am perfectly happy to use a good upscaling solution at a low internal resolution for ray tracing on my old high end GPU. I want to try to get Doom Eternal ray tracing working on my GTX 1080 Ti software fallback because I know it's possible because it's possible to enable RT on the GTX 16 series (Non-RT Turing cards) which means it is using a software fallback layer for acceleration. So I'm gonna find a way to enable raytracing on my GTX card that doesn't have RT cores also. I didn't think it was possible in Cyberpunk until I found the launch argument that lets you force it in game and it worked suprisingly well and made a suprising impact to the visuals. It almost looked like path tracing on a GTX 1080 Ti which was kind of awesome to see. Now I'm not saying I would play through every game I own like this but in games like Avatar or Cyberpunk or even Indiana Jones and The Great Circle I would like to play those games with ray tracing even if I need to upscale from 720p (or lower!) because part of the appeal for me is the graphical features and technology and triumphs and I know part of the ray tracing exclusion from GTX cards is arbitrary, esspecially when games like Avatar and almost every Unreal Engine 5 game prove it so with Lumen software acceleration and Nanite. This is to spite the opinion of some Digital Foundry members (Alex) who I deeply respect and admire but who regularly dismisses older technology as irrelevant and in the era of environmental consciousness and the affordability crisis I believe strongly in making what you have last. So that's why I love my old high end GPU and also love ray tracing and these games prove those things don't have to be incompatible, despite Nvidia marketing trying to sell more new GPUs to you. #avatarfrontiersofpandora #gtx1080ti #gtx1060 #raytracing #rtx #pathtracing #fsr3 #dlss3
