Nvidia is proud that 83% of people with $1,200+ ray-traced GPUs are actually using RTX.

As part of promoting the RTX 4070, Nvidia’s new $600 entry point into the Ada Lovelace GPU series, Nvidia has some statistics that, depending on how you look at them, are either downright confusing or completely plausible.

In a blog post and press materials sent out prior to the 4070’s debut, Nvidia offers statistics from “the millions of RTX players who played RTX-enabled games”in February 2023. They show that:

• 83 percent of Series 40 players “turn on RT”(ray tracing)
• 56 percent of 30 episodes
• 43 percent of 20 episodes

As for DLSS, Nvidia’s AI-accelerated scaling and frame generation tool for games that support it, Nvidia writes that 79 percent of Series 40, 71 percent of Series 30, and 68 percent of Series 20 owners have enabled the feature.

Nvidia (or at least the person writing a copy of it) believes that “the basis of this story”to be taken away from these numbers is that “technology doesn’t just define how people create content, it redefines how it is consumed”, eventually becoming an integral part of its transformation.”Or, to put it another way, less like a high school party, ray tracing and DLSS is “how modern gamers achieve the best graphics and performance.” In other words, consider upgrading your graphics card.

Not everyone sees these numbers and comes to the same conclusions. On the r/hardware Reddit thread (first spotted by PC Gamer) many are asking what the exact criteria for “enabled”are. From experience, ray tracing or RT is something you can definitely turn on, play a game for a minute, notice it looks like a RealVideo stream from 2003, and then turn it off. If you did this in February 2023, did you “turn on RT”per se?

Another question would be what the sample sizes look like. Steam’s March 2023 hardware and software survey, which included data from October 2021 to March 2023, found that 15 percent of Steam users were using 20-series RTX cards, 34 percent were using 30-series RTX cards, and just 0.68 percent were using 40-series cards (thanks to u/nukleabomb for the math ). Will these early adopters be more or less likely to try out the same features as the rest of the gaming world when they eventually upgrade to more powerful cards? We must find out.

What’s most confusing about Nvidia’s numbers is the remnants. Among this very small group of people who were able to get a 40-series card and also afford to pay for it, the number who would try DLSS seems to be closer to 100 percent. Given that Nvidia’s numbers seem to come from who installs its card and uses the GeForce Experience app to install and maintain drivers, and the February 2023 date, it’s unlikely that those who disagree are crypto-opportunists or flippers.

And the 17 percent of Series 40 owners who have used them but haven’t turned on ray tracing in any game yet, can we set up an interview? Is it just transcoding and rendering video? Are they just completely unimpressed by lighting improvements, frame rate fanatics, or both?

Of course, Nvidia has something to celebrate. Over 80 percent of the GPUs featured in the Steam poll are made by Nvidia, and the fact that most 20, 30, and 40 series owners include DLSS gives them a significant advantage. Other companies can provide ray tracing, and there are DLSS alternatives like XeSS and FSR that can even work with Nvidia’s own cards. But DLSS is Nvidia’s own thing, it’s used and becomes a selling point. Catching up seems like a daunting task for AMD, Intel, and anyone looking to take on this heavy favorite.