GeForce at CES 2022 Community Q&A: You asked, We answered.

Following our GeForce at CES 2022 announcements, we hosted a community Q&A on r/NVIDIA and invited six of our top NVIDIA subject matter experts to answer your common questions about our announcements. Find your questions and their answers below. 

Q: What's the hardest part about making laptop versions of GPU while trying to maintain performance as much as possible? 

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The most challenging part of designing a gaming laptop GPU is delivering extreme efficiency. Efficiency is everything in a laptop. It determines the performance you can fit into thin, sleek form factors. Because of this, we’ve been focusing on improving efficiency with a set of technologies we call Max-Q. Our latest 4th generation Max-Q technologies take efficiency even further with CPU Optimizer, Rapid Core Scaling, and Battery Boost 2.0.

Q: Can you give us any insights as to your overall designs and goals regarding the launch of 3080ti in Laptops?

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The design goal for the RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU was to create the most powerful laptops in the world while continuing to push the boundaries for thinness and efficiency. With the most CUDA cores and the fastest GDDR6 ever shipped in a laptop, RTX 3080 Ti delivers the ultimate in laptop performance for gamers and creators, but still fits in ultraportable laptops slimmer than 16mm and under 4lbs

Q: At what temperatures will the 30 series cards throttle in laptops? Or rather is there a different maximum temperature compared to the desktop cards?

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Every laptop has a different cooling solution and different thermal characteristics, but all of them are engineered to not throttle under even intensive gaming or creator usage.

Q: How viable will the new laptops be for VR gaming? Will there be any models optimised specifically for that?

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GeForce RTX 30 Series Laptops from RTX 3060 and up are VR Ready. RTX laptops support DLSS and real-time ray-tracing, and have the performance to drive the latest VR headsets, producing incredible graphical fidelity and some of the most immersive experiences in PC gaming.

Q: What is the correct pronunciation of "Ti?" Is it like TIE or tee-eye? I have to know.

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There is no wrong way to pronounce Ti, as long as you spell it correctly. :)

Q: What kind of performance can we expect with the RTX 3050?

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The GeForce RTX 3050 is an awesome modern day 1080p GPU. It comes equipped with 2nd generation RT Cores for ray tracing and 3rd gen Tensor Cores for DLSS and AI. For the first time, you can play ray traced games on a 50-class GPU at over 60 FPS. In traditional raster performance, it’s far faster than the GTX 1050 and GTX 1650. The RTX 3050 brings a huge leap in performance and capabilities to the 50-class, making it a perfect opportunity to step up to RTX. Here’s a chart with some more numbers: 

Q: Is there any estimate when we can expect DLSS to become the norm, basically day 1 support for new titles?

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Day 1 support is becoming the norm for NVIDIA DLSS. You’ll see that many new AAA games are launching DLSS on day 1. Examples include Call of Duty: Vanguard, Battlefield 2042, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Grand Theft Auto: The Definitive Trilogy, F1 2021, and the upcoming God of War releasing this month.

Developers using popular game engines like Unreal Engine and Unity are leveraging NVIDIA’s easy-to-use DLSS plugins and integrations and launching new titles on day 1. Recent examples include Back4Blood, Bright Memory: Infinite, Icarus, Myst, The Ascent, Lego: Builder’s Journey, and F.I.S.T..  

Developers using their own proprietary engines often add DLSS into their proprietary engines first, then use that integration to release DLSS into their future titles. A good example would be Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Vanguard, which use a similar game engine. So the developer first launched DLSS in a Warzone patch, and then leveraged that integration for day 1 launch of Call of Duty: Vanguard.

Q: DLSS, how on earth does that voodoo magic work? I seriously cannot understand how it can gain more performance and yet look better or the exact same, it’s mind boggling to me. Can I get a simpler explanation? 

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Here’s a simple analogy to understand how DLSS works: imagine you’re capturing a long-exposure film. The longer you capture, the more detail you collect. DLSS looks at multiple frames and with each frame, collects different sets of samples on how an image should look so even more information is gathered than what’s presently rendered. DLSS then uses motion vectors to track moving objects across multiple frames, which helps leverage information from multiple frames. Finally, we use AI and the Tensor cores to crunch through all this information and reconstruct the final image. The AI network for NVIDIA DLSS is a key ingredient to making this “voodoo magic work” and it continues learning and making more improvements! We have a great video explainer here. 

Q: Do you think it will be possible to make DLSS open source so that it can be applied onto any game?

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NVIDIA DLSS offers the best image quality because it’s able to analyze multiple frames and track objects using motion vectors. It’s only possible to get this level of information via game integration. For games that don’t have DLSS yet, we offer a driver-level spatial upscaler, NVIDIA Image Scaling, available in the NVIDIA Control Panel or GeForce Experience. You can enable it for all games via our driver, and we have also made it available as an open source SDK so developers can deploy it across any GPU. Learn more here.

Q: Can we expect the esports scene to keep growing and reach new heights thanks to the recent advancements in monitor technology? Will NVIDIA Reflex, QD and 1440p G-SYNC ULTIMATE truly make such a vast difference in the competitive scene on the same level as the increase in refresh rate?

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Absolutely. As technology continues to improve, it helps unlock the full potential of esports athletes. 1% aiming improvement can make or break a match. Our research shows that there is about a 3% improvement going to 1440p/27”. While that number may seem small, it’s certainly not. As reference, that’s about the same aiming improvement going from 144Hz to 360Hz at the same latency. If you are curious, here is a link to our research blog.

Q: What's your biggest concern regarding current monitor technology and are there any improvements/more availability you are hoping to see to make best use of your new technologies?

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We’ve been working with the display ecosystem for years to bring the latest display tech to market to make gaming better. We’re always driving higher refresh rates, resolutions and response times. At this CES, we’re pretty excited about the latest mini-LED backlight tech and oxide transistor tech for gaming.

Q: Hi there, coming from an older GTX 1070 and wanted to ask about Nvidia Reflex most games are now adding like Rainbow Six Siege. I personally love this new addition but I do see the tool seems to affect the frame rate a decent amount as in lowering my FPS. Is this normal and will continue with more powerful GPUs? Or is my PC just too weak to handle it properly, or do newer GPUs can easily handle it?

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Hello! Are you using Reflex ON or ON + Boost? Reflex ON is designed to reduce latency with no trade off while ON + Boost will reduce latency even further, but at the potential cost of some FPS. 

Q: How closely do you work with the esports community? Do you bring pros in and have them test out screens? What do you do to keep the esports community involved?

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Great question! We do bring pros in and have them test the displays. There is even an esports lab/studio dedicated to hosting teams. Before COVID, many teams would also bootcamp with us! We also just released a video where n0thing came in and took an early look at new 1440p 360Hz displays here.

Q: According to some graphs I've seen on GeForce blog, the Nvidia Reflex latency reduction seems relatively greater on a lower end GPU compared to a higher end GPU. Why is this?

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That is correct. Reflex Low Latency helps by reducing the render queue and by removing CPU backpressure. The lower the framerate, the larger that back pressure on both the render queue and CPU are. Therefore, there is more latency to reduce with Reflex at lower FPS (which you typically see on lower end GPUs)

Q: Canvas seems like a really useful tool for us artists and designers! Does it render a landscape based on the input or does it choose from a preselect number of outputs that most closely match the input and then adapts it?

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The Canvas AI generates a realistic output image based on what the artist paints and what the AI has learned a landscape should look like based on studying millions of images. Every image that Canvas generates is brand new.

Q: Will there be more productive applications shared for free by NVIDIA, or will canvas continue to evolve as the main platform?

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NVIDIA offers Omniverse, Canvas and Broadcast, free for creators to use in various use cases. Canvas is an app specifically for concept artists and illustrators who want to paint beautiful landscapes using AI. Our Broadcast app is for enhancing audio and video of livestreams and video chats. And Omniverse, which we announced today is generally available and free to individual content creators, is a platform for creating and collaborating on 3D content more quickly and easily. We have more capabilities planned for all three of these.

Q: Do you have any plans for further support in 3D content creation using DLSS, Ray Tracing, and AI?

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NVIDIA is engaged with many 3D content creation applications to add Ray Tracing, NVIDIA DLSS, and AI features. In fact, nearly every major 3D renderer is now RTX accelerated. You can take a look at the latest set of applications supported here. NVIDIA has also integrated RTX ray tracing, DLSS, and AI in the NVIDIA Omniverse platform for 3D content creation and collaboration.

Q: How can someone casually get into NVIDIA Studio, Canvas? I have never messed around with graphics design, but I found your idea interesting. Being able to draw something that I could do (I literally suck at drawing) and it will automatically use AI to upscale it to something that looks amazing? Sounds almost too good to be true.

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NVIDIA Canvas is an easy to use and very forgiving app. All you need to do is paint rudimentary shapes and the AI turns it into a photorealistic landscape image. Anyone with an RTX GPU can download the free Canvas app from here and try it out.

Q: What does the process look like to make game ready drivers? Is it largely a validation process to make sure a new game plays correctly, or are there individual optimizations that have to happen for each game?

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NVIDIA’s Game Ready Driver process is the result of a massive effort spanning many groups and thousands of employees within NVIDIA. Our team works closely with game developers throughout the various stages of development, providing prerelease drivers, QA test results, and a wealth of performance data back to the game developer. Here, there are fixes and optimizations being made on both the driver-side and game-side to improve the overall experience. Our Game Ready Drivers are then tested across thousands of hardware configurations spanning multiple generations of CPUs and GPUs. Lastly, each Game Ready Driver is independently WHQL-certified by Microsoft to be production quality - so you can focus on gaming, not beta-testing software.

Q: What do game ready drivers do? What's the difference between them and the studio ready drivers?

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In 2014, NVIDIA created the Game Ready Driver program to provide the best day-0 gaming experience. In order to accomplish this, the release cadence for Game Ready Drivers is driven by the release of major new game content giving our driver team as much time as possible to work on a given title. In similar fashion, NVIDIA now offers the Studio Driver program. Designed to provide the ultimate in functionality and stability for creative applications, Studio Drivers provide extensive testing against top creative applications and workflows for the best performance possible.

All NVIDIA drivers provide full features and application support for top games and creative applications.

• If you are a gamer who prioritizes day of launch support for the latest games, patches, and DLCs, choose Game Ready Drivers.
• If you are a content creator who prioritizes stability and quality for creative workflows including video editing, animation, photography, graphic design, and live-streaming, choose Studio Drivers.