As we move past the hard times of 2020, the results can still be felt today but some in more positive ways than others. With many facets of our daily lives being forced into the digital realm, demand for computers have soared more than ever and it goes both entertainment, work, learning and content creation and sharing.
Many of these are thrust upon modern computing devices who have luckily evolved to the point to handle many of these digital needs to an unprecedented level. Back in 2018, nobody told NVIDIA that the world is on a collision course with a global pandemic but regardless they released the NVIDIA RTX 20-series to the world debuting real-time ray tracing technologies to consumers as well as deep-learning super sampling or DLSS alongside a plethora of other technologies. Fast-forward in time and this has evolved to include RTX Studio, NVIDIA Broadcast, and many more.
It all sounds so expansive but today with modern NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30-series powered systems, you have the power of all these technologies in your system? Whether it’s a laptop or a desktop PC, your device is ready to let you enjoy the latest games, improve your content creation workflow, learn faster with accelerated learning tools as well as broadcast effectively and more efficiently than ever before.
Didn’t know your GeForce RTX-powered system could do that? Read on to find out more why you’re PC is now a unified platform to learn, game, create and share all in one machine. This is never more true for laptops which now have a solution for every scale of usage. In this article, I’ll detail the current status so far of the various segment where GeForce RTX offers and why these features need to be highlighted.
How DLSS is Helping Gamers Reach New Performance Heights
NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX library alone comprises of various technologies spanning games and hardware. To list them all and detail everything would be an article unto itself, lucky for you we already covered in detail some of them. To make it simple though, NVIDIA’s latest-generation RTX 30 GPUs features 3rd-generation Tensor cores for deep-learning as well as 2nd-generation RT cores for realtime ray tracing. Both of which act independently of each other but when utilized to their fullest, it combines NVIDIA’s marquee gaming technology to bring gaming to the next-generation: DLSS and ray tracing.
Between both of them, I feel DLSS needs more stressing as it is the crutch that gamers need to get over that ray tracing performance hump. In other cases though, its just good ‘ol free FPS boost.
How DLSS Works
Deep-Learning Super Sample or DLSS is an AI-based technology where a lower resolution image is taken and then enhanced to a higher resolution. This is done through the powers of AI and constant training and software development has allowed NVIDIA to currently support various presets on DLSS-supported games. You have to see it to believe it:
Its not some hacky upscaling method; DLSS is AI at work. NVIDIA trains their network to recognize a high-resolution image and tell the GPUs how and what something looks like in a certain resolution so that the AI can predict and paint pixels on those areas.
This is an excellent deal for laptop owners who don’t always have the option of upgrading. DLSS-supporting games allow NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30-powered laptops to achieve faster performance, taking gamers to greater performance levels than ever before. With newer laptops also entering the QHD space and 4K, RTX-30 powered laptops get a free boost in performance in games that support DLSS.
More DLSS Games Coming
More than 55 games currently support DLSS and more are coming joining some of the most popular games today that take advantage of DLSS like Call of Duty: Warzone, Cyberpunk 2077, Minecraft for Windows and so much.
New games getting DLSS support are Rainbow Six Siege, No Man’s Sky, LEGO Builder’s Journey, DOOM Eternal, Red Dead Redemption 2 and will also arrive for Unreal Engine 5 which we’ll talk about more later.
Just those games alone are AAA titles in their own right and many gamers who may be shying away in cranking Ultra in the detail settings may now try it now to see how close they hit the player’s preferred refresh rate thanks to DLSS.
NVIDIA for Learning
Now I mentioned earlier about Unreal 5 and how DLSS is now integrated with the new development engine. If your learning games development and are interested in developing for Unreal Engine 5, this is good news but NVIDIA’s technologies also makes parallels into education, in more ways than one.
Most students that reach out to us ask about which laptop is the best and the answer is a resounding “find an RTX-powered” laptop but why is that? Of course, this is a generalization but for anyone investing in a laptop, the logic is easy: NVIDIA just presents so much more value. We’ll cover the rest after this segment but let’s focus on STEM education first. Hardware-accelerated STEM are now more prevalent with the likes of Matlab and SciKit-Learn. Visual fidelity in presenting information from these tools help students visualize ideas easier and make it quicker for them to process these ideas and build their own.
Content Creation and RTX Studio
NVIDIA has partnered with many industry-leading software to help accelerate their software and tools and help creators accelerate their workflow as well. Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, SolidWorks, AutoCAD, DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere Pro, Blender3D and many more rely on NVIDIA hardware for better performance on consumer systems like laptops. Thanks to RTX Studio, we’re seeing more workstation software on consumer systems than ever before thanks in part to the hardware acceleration and development partnership offered by NVIDIA.
If you’re a 3D artist, a video professional or a photographer, you’re probably using some of the software listed above. If you want to best experience, RTX Studio laptops are highly recommended so you get purpose-built hardware specially for creators.
And last but not the least, we move on to livestreaming and broadcasting.
NVIDIA Broadcast
A lot of us have probably spent a good chunk of 2020 indoors and your laptop has probably been your best friend throughout those times. With work-from-home becoming a standard now and some schools employing remote learning, communicating is more important than ever.
As someone who is used to speaking in front of people, it is of utmost importance that you get yourself heard. But when livestreaming or video conferencing, this isn’t always guaranteed. Some of us buy expensive headsets with expensive mics or even spend to make a fully-treated recording room but what if you don’t have all that? Thankfully NVIDIA brings us NVIDIA Broadcast: an all in solution that incorporates everything you need to get started for a professional setup.
Let’s start with the microphone: NVIDIA AI-powered noise removal technology allows you to be heard more clearly with nearly untraceable results than traditional one. Present your business report, your lessons or presentation with clarity and confidence thanks to NVIDIA Broadcast’s noise removal. As an extra, NVIDIA Broadcast also allows you to remove noise *FROM* the one you’re listening to! If you’re speaking with someone who has a whirry fan or clacky keyboard, you can enable noise removal on your from incoming audio so it comes out clean.
Moving over to the visuals, NVIDIA Broadcast app’s camera tools now allows you to stack two effects at the same time so you can digitally remove your background while keeping autoframe active. NVIDIA Broadcast App’s camera filters allows background removal, background blurring, background replacement, autoframing and now noise removal on your camera feed so your camera is as clean as your audio.
Pro-tip: it still helps if the noise isn’t as stronger than your voice for audio and cameras love light so you want to be as well-lit as possible. Try moving around the house to see what’s best for you.
Conclusion
And that’s the power of your RTX-powered device. You’re not just buying for performance, you have a complete hardware-accelerated ecosystem at the touch of your fingertips. From gaming to learning. To content creation and broadcasting. NVIDIA has come from gamer’s best friend to everyone’s best friend. Even non-gamers can take advantage of something from NVIDIA’s technologies.
While its easy to take these features for granted especially when NVIDIA is offering them completely free for RTX GPU owners, there’s a large development effort happening behind the scenes and those contributing in developing these technologies further deserve a special shout-out.
For anyone on the lookout for a new device, its easy to get lost in the sea of choices. Talk to me about your requirements and I’ll be happy to help you out. Do you have a favorite NVIDIA technology? Let us know in the comments as well.