Nvidia RTX Graphics Cards May Become Minimum Requirement For Some Games By 2023

Or AMD, or traced graphics cards from Intel.

A graphics market analyst and ray tracing expert who has worked with Nvidia over the past decade has made an interesting prediction: AAA games will require ray tracing graphics cards as early as 2023.

In other words, if you don’t have a GeForce RTX graphics card – or AMD, or a ray-traced equivalent from Intel – you won’t be able to play the most up-to-date games.

Of course, keep in mind that this is just a prediction from Nvidia’s Morgan McGuire – some kind of educated pundit’s guesswork who also believes that every gaming platform will offer hardware-accelerated ray tracing in 2023 (even Nintendo?).

In any case, the theory is that ray tracing will become “widespread” at this stage – present as an option in many or even most games – but it will become a requirement for launching AAA projects, according to McGuire.

Certainly, the widespread adoption of ray tracing in four years time seems to be part of the graphics puzzle of future games. Most games that offer this feature make it right, and not only on PCs but also on consoles, given that the next-gen Xbox Scarlett and PS5 will support ray tracing (the latter will work with Radeon Navi graphics cards capable of ray tracing).

But the really controversial point is that a major publisher will take the risk of releasing a game that requires absolute ray tracing support on the PC, which will put some users in a position where the user is forced to update their graphics card or simply cannot play.

Does this seem likely? Well, at some point the “forced upgrade mark” will be reached, assuming ray tracing remains the only route for graphics card manufacturers, of course. And as we mentioned, this is the path the industry is following …

NOT UNINTELLIGIBLE

Obviously, the projected requirement by popular games of mandatory ray tracing in just four years is difficult to assess from 2019, but this is not an unthinkable scenario.

Also remember that McGuire is talking about the hybrid ray tracing solution currently used by Nvidia, meaning only certain parts of any scene are ray traced while rasterization is used in other parts.

This decision was made for the sake of economy of performance – and, indeed, the hit to the frame rate is quite heavy even in this performance – but interestingly, McGuire believes that full ray tracing will be adopted by 2035. So everything is ahead.

Another thing to keep in mind, of course, is that some games are always striving for cutting edge specs: just look at Control, where an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is recommended and the minimum requirement is GTX 1060.

So this does not mean that the requirements for PC players have not yet been announced, even if they are not as explicit as “you have to buy a ray-traced graphics card to play”.

In general, opinions on this matter seem to be divided, but McGuire’s prediction no longer seems outlandish, as at first glance – and support for technology from Microsoft and Sony’s next-generation consoles will most likely contribute to the further development of ray tracing. It is possible that these consoles are really stimulating ray tracing and, accordingly, PC players play cross-platform games.

Here are the best graphics cards you can buy in 2019.