Nvidia Making Ray Tracing Graphics Affordable

Okay, you’ve probably heard of ray tracing right? When Nvidia announced its Turing GPU architecture last year, it couldn’t stop talking about ray tracing, which is some very cool technology that allows reflections and shadows in a digitally rendered environment (like a game) to behave as they would in real life. It’s using the GPU to trace each ray of light digitally created, and it looks really damn cool.

But when Nvidia announced Turing architecture, it shipped just three GPUs, the RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, and 2070, and the cheapest of them, the 2070, cost $500, which is still more than a console like the PS4 or Xbox One. People were impressed by the tech but not excited about the price, especially when the top of the line 2080 Ti goes for $1,200.

No, you probably should not drop $1,200 on a GPU—no matter how good ray tracing is (and it’s good). But you should probably get excited about the Nvidia RTX 2060, a new GPU capable of ray tracing and retailing for just $350.

The 2060 will have 6GB of GDDR6 RAM, and Nvidia claims it will do over 60fps in Battlefield V with the settings set to high and the resolution to 1440p. The company claims that it will be significantly faster than the Nvidia 1070 Ti, which you can find on Amazon for over $500.

We’ll know more later this week when we get to spend some time with the RTX 2060, but if you’re already eager to upgrade from your practically ancient GTX 980 then get excited. The RTX 2060 will ship January 15.