Nvidia Optix 9 and Neural Texture Compression technologies will use 96% less memory in games

NVIDIA has updated its developer tools with RTX Mega Geometry and Neural Texture Compression (NTC) technologies. These innovations will help reduce memory consumption, speed up rendering, and improve game performance.

Neural Texture Compression (NTC)

NTC is a texture compression method that combines multiple material maps (color, bump, gloss, etc.) into a single, compact file. It uses a neural network to restore textures, which saves memory and speeds up game loading.

Testing at 1440p with DLSS showed that translating textures from NTC to the traditional BCn format reduces their size by 64% (from 272 MB to 98 MB). And when using NTC in real time, the file size is reduced to 11.37 MB – a 95.8% savings compared to classic compression.

The technology supports Vulkan 1.3 and DirectX 12, and decompression is possible on all GPUs with Shader Model 6. However, NTC demonstrates maximum efficiency on video cards from RTX 20 and higher.

NVIDIA OptiX 9

The updated ray tracing engine now builds BVHs faster for complex models and supports new noise reduction algorithms. Among the key innovations:

• RTX Mega Geometry — technology for accelerated processing of powerful dynamic models.
• Cooperative Vectors — launching small AI models directly in shaders with acceleration on tensor cores.
• Optimized Rocaps curves — the fastest curve intersection for graphics applications.

OptiX 9 is suitable not only for games, but also for film production, providing more realistic simulation of light and materials.