How to enable DXR Ray Tracing on GTX 10 series pascal GPUs

What if I told you that your Nvidia GTX 10 series GPUs based on Pascal architecture can now support DXR or Real Time Ray Tracing? Yes, you heard us right, with the latest driver update on the select Nvidia Pascal GPUs, such as the GTX 1080 Ti or the GTX 1060, these GPUs can now ray-trace on select games like the Shadow of the Tomb Rider or the Battlefield V.

Supported GPUs

Here is the list of Nvidia GeForce GTX GPUs, which can support real-time ray tracing. To support realme-time ray tracing, these GPUs should have at least 6 GB of V-RAM

• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
• GeForce GTX 1660
• NVIDIA TITAN Xp (2017)
• NVIDIA TITAN X (2016)
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB

How to enable ray-tracing on GTX GPUs?

Download and install the latest driver update from Nvidia official website or via GeForce Experience app. Open the game and turn on Ray Tracing on Battlefield V or the Shadow of the Tomb Rider to enjoy ray-tracing.

Do note that, if you are running on an older version of the driver, you will not be able to enable ray-tracing, so, make sure that your Windows 10 OS is up-to-date and the latest patch of graphics driver is installed.

Should you enable ray-tracing on GTX GPUs?

If you own GPUs like the GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti, you will be able to use ray-tracing at medium or low-graphics settings with 1080p resolutions. According to the official numbers shared by Nvidia, the GTX 1080 Ti offers an average FPS of 30 with high-graphics settings at 1440p, and toning down the ray-tracing quality might improve the performance of the game a bit, but there will be no significant improvement.

You can experience the goodness of ray-tracing on the GTX GPUs. However, to get a complete idea, you need to buy an RTX GPU, which comes with Tensor cores and DLSS support, which improve the ray-tracing by a considerable margin, compared to the GTX GPUs.