RTX On GTX: Nvidia's Latest Driver Unlocks Ray Tracing On Geforce GTX Graphics Cards

Nvidia also released three new ray-tracing tech demos.

- Brad Chacos

It was promised at GDC (go.pcworld.com/enrt), and now it’s here. Nvidia recently released Game Ready drivers (go.pcworld.com/gmrd) that unlock DirectX Raytracing support on the GeForce GTX 1660 (go.pcworld.com/g160) and 1660 Ti (go.pcworld.com/16ti), and on GTX 10-series graphics cards from the 6GB GTX 1060 on up. You read that correctly: You no longer need a pricey GeForce RTX 20-series graphics card to experience ray tracing in games that support it. Nvidia and its partners also released a trio of new tech demos that allow gamers to see the power of ray tracing for free.

If you want to experience the best possible ray tracing, you’ll still want to upgrade to an RTX graphics card. (Our guide to the best graphics cards [go. pcworld.com/grcd] can help you choose one.) Those GPUs feature dedicated RT cores that accelerate ray tracing, paired with dedicated tensor cores that leverage Nvidia’s supercomputers to make games run faster via AI-enhanced supersampling.

While Nvidia coaxed ray tracing into working on non-RTX GPUs with this driver, the experience won’t be optimal. Nvidia’s blog post announcing the new Game Ready driver says it’s “giving gamers a taste, albeit at lower RT quality settings and resolutions, of how ray tracing will dramatically change the way games are experienced.”