Nvidia’s RTX graphics cards offer the pinnacle of consumer-focused features and performance, even rivaling some high-end professional cards. RTX cards tell buyers that they have RT and Tensor cores on board, the dedicated hardware used to accelerate ray tracing and artificial intelligence calculations.

RTX is a brand name introduced by Nvidia in 2018 with its RTX 2000 series graphics cards. The name describes the hardware itself, marking it as distinct from previous-generation, “GTX” options.

The GTX cards included the beloved GTX 1080 Ti and the extremely popular GTX 1060. They lacked the RT or Tensor cores, which accelerate ray tracing and AI calculations like deep learning super sampling (DLSS).

The “RT” in “RTX” is actually short for “ray tracing,” the card’s signature feature, which renders light in real-time to create realistic, dynamic shadows and reflections. Originally, having “RTX On” in a game meant that hardware-accelerated ray tracing was active, with Nvidia being the only company offering the feature on its GPUs at the time.