When NVIDIA announced its RTX graphics cards, compatible with DirectX Raytracing (DXR), ray tracing capabilities should only be available on RTX-branded, latest-generation graphics cards. In fact, they have computation cores specifically designed for ray tracing (called RT), as well as others for deep learning (tensor cores), used for certain effects (notably DLSS).

Ray tracing was everywhere : Unreal and Unity announced and released engine integrations, developers presented and attended ray tracing panels in droves, and studios demonstrated their latest ray-traced game builds, whilst also sharing insights on how ray tracing can also assist with game development.

NVIDIA has given us a big surprise. Shortly after the introduction of DirectX 12 for Windows 7, one year from the end of the support of this version, here is NVIDIA which integrates the API DXR in its drivers for all its GTX cards (Pascal and Volta generation, as well as the cards Turing generation without ad hoc hearts).

Source : Ray-Tracing