With the launch of the GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs, NVIDIA unveiled a new and improved NVIDIA Studio - an initiative intended to empower content creators and graphics professionals.
The NVIDIA Studio brand encompasses the tools and studio-centric drivers released in tandem with the graphics cards. The RTX 40-series GPUs are hardware and software optimised to enable creators to do their best work.
In this article, we’ll explore what features are most useful for content creators and discuss some of the benefits of splashing out for an RTX 40-series card!
NVIDIA RTX 40-Series: Overview
NVIDIA’s mainline GPU series has been the leviathan of the graphics card industry for over a decade, constantly innovating and elevating their products to the next level. Each new generation of NVIDIA GPU ushers in new technologies that become the industry standard, and the 40-Series takes this further for digital creators specifically.
With the three flagship models — the RTX 4090, 4080, and 4070 Ti — all vastly improving on their predecessors, there’s never been a better time to look to NVIDIA for content creation. Some of the key reasons to look to the RTX 40-Series for content creation are —
- Performance: All around, the 40-Series has a gigantic performance advantage over the 30-series. For creators specifically, any given 40-series can be multiple times more powerful than its 30-series predecessor.
- AI Features: NVIDIA’s focus on AI through RTX and NVIDIA Studio technologies has meant that using their products can truly enable your creativity. For example, NVIDIA Canvas is an AI tool that helps digital artists conceptualise their creations with ease.
- Improved Ray Tracing: Ray tracing is a graphics rendering method that algorithmically calculates the positions of lights and shadows within a workspace. From VFX, to animation, to games development, NVIDIA’s developments in ray tracing is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the digital space.
All of these features are part of NVIDIA’s vision to help take the creative capabilities of the RTX series forward.
What are the benefits of the RTX 40-Series for Creators?
The NVIDIA RTX 40-series of GPUs is truly the next level when it comes to performance. Compared to its predecessor — in this case, the RTX 3090 Ti as compared to the RTX 4090 — the 40-Series is twice as fast at video encoding within DaVinci Resolve.
The 40-Series also enables creators to record video up to 8K 60FPS flawlessly with dual encoding support, using OBS. This is a powerhouse for any gaming creator. Plus, the 40-Series supports the AV1 encoding format — the biggest leap in encoding since H.264’s release two decades ago.
All of these advancements mean that any creator working with visual media will experience a boost in render times and encoding times, enhancing your workflow and allowing you to take your work to the next level.
This can be attributed to the sheer power behind the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture. Vastly superior to Ampere — the architecture of the 30-series — and focused on AI and ray-tracing performance, this architecture greatly improves the experience of creation for creators worldwide.
AI Accelerated Features
NVIDIA’s core focus on AI integration and acceleration has meant that a host of new powerful AI features have become available with this newest generation of GPU. These features are able to help creators massively.
For example, NVIDIA’s latest iteration of their Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology will further help creators make the most of their hardware. DLSS uses AI to improve graphical performance and boost the graphical output power of your hardware.
Using the 40-Series’ new RTX Tensor cores, DLSS is a game changer for 3D artists and environment designers. This new generation allows anyone to make use of ray tracing whilst also improving performance in design software such as Unity, Unreal Engine 5, and Blender — as well as NVIDIA Omniverse.
Real-Time Ray Tracing
Ever since its debut with the RTX 20-Series, ray tracing has become one of the key technologies that NVIDIA is pushing the envelope with.
Real-time ray tracing allows 3D interactive environments to use ray-tracing in a way that’s both responsive and reactive to the interactions of the user. This is not only important for gaming but for any creator working within 3D environments, as it greatly improves the realism of the environment as a whole.
This has its obvious uses within gaming, however ray tracing is taking over creative industries such as the animation and VFX industry — with even Pixar utilising it to great extent within its productions.
The 40-Series’ third generation of RTX ray tracing is built to make ray tracing more accessible and powerful for creators worldwide. The Ada architecture is built in a way to empower ray tracing performance while also greatly reducing the strain that the process can have on the GPU compared to older hardware.
This generation of NVIDIA GPUs also enables technology such as RTX Remix to exist, which creates a host of possibilities for creators who mod games. RTX Remix allows modders to use RTX with older games, which can breathe new life into old games and help communities remaster projects that they love — as was done to breathe new life into a classic with RTX Portal.
How the RTX 40-Series Revolutionizes Creative Workflows
Streamlined Workflows and Improved Productivity
The RTX 40-Series can greatly improve your workflow and productivity levels through its use of ingenious AI tools to speed up day-to -day tasks and processes.
The AI advancements and performance increase that are seen in DaVinci Resolve is an example of an application that you can utilise the 40-Series within to greatly increase productivity and improve workflow.
Complex key processes like rotoscoping can be completed instantaneously with the AI power of the 40-Series. For rotoscoping (the process of highlighting motion footage frame-by-frame) specifically, the ‘Object Select Mask’ within DaVinci Resolve is an AI tool that greatly benefits from the power and ingenuity of the RTX 40-Series.
This is just an example of how the AI capabilities of the 40-Series can improve the workflow within a specific application. Other tools — from Adobe Creative Cloud tools like Premiere Pro and Photoshop, to development engines like Unreal Engine, and tons of other software — are able to greatly take advantage of the AI aided workflow of the RTX 40-Series.
Enhanced Visual Quality and Realism
The visual benefits of the RTX 40-Series are unparalleled. With ray tracing and DLSS 3 being NVIDIA’s key focuses for this generation of GPUs, the visual quality and realism attainable is unlike ever seen before in the graphics industry.
The combination of RTX and DLSS 3 means that higher levels of graphical quality and realism can be achieved without the performance strain that would once be a dealbreaker, due to how important performance is to workflow.
For game and 3D environment designers, as well as digital artists and VFX artists, these improvements push the boundaries of what’s possible. This video is a great example of the difference between the last-gen RTX 3090 and the RTX 4090 within Unreal Engine.
Which 40-Series GPUs are right for creators?
While there’s no specific one that’s right for any creator, there are three ‘tiers’ of GPU models currently within the 40-Series. Each of these models provide different levels of performance at different price points.
PugetBench Benchmarks - RTX 40-Series
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
