The AI craze is officially underway in every single iota of the technology market. Not to be left behind, gamers are next on the list to benefit from the technology being developed in the mass market. NVIDIA, the current leader for hardware and software powering the current AI zeitgeist, is sprinkling some magic for gamers with new optimizations.
At Microsoft Build, NVIDIA is pushing the integration of what it calls RTX AI PCs and workstations to integrate with Windows PCs. Microsoft recently announced a new lineup of Copilot+ AI PCs, such as the refreshed Surface Pro, all of which are initially being powered by Qualcomm’s Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite and Plus processors with built in neural processing units (NPUs). Eventually, however, Microsoft will expand its Copilot+ initiative to include x86-based systems powered by AMD and Intel. This is where NVIDIA’s RTX GPUs are likely to come into play for a new generation of AI PCs.
Technologies such as NVIDIA’s RTX Broadcast and RTX Video continue to improve every day usability for users, an important component of AI being mass adopted.
With the latest ‘Game Ready’ driver (R555), large language models (LLMs) run as much as three times faster with ONNX Runtime and DirectML. This is run locally on Windows PCs, which is going to be a vital component of AI systems going forward with data and privacy concerns paramount.
While gamers are anxiously anticipating the next generation NVIDIA Blackwell RTX 50 series GPUs, current products will also benefit from advancements in AI software.
Microsoft Build 2024 is heavily pushing the tight relationship between Microsoft and NVIDIA, two current leaders in the AI race. Microsoft has a vested interested in OpenAI leading the pack, and with NVIDIA’s hardware and software, it has the tools to accomplish this task.
Gamers will surely benefit from these technologies being incorporated even deeper within the gaming ecosystem. NVIDIA’s DLSS 3 with frame generation has been a tremendous AI asset for many titles, allowing high frame rates without losing as much visual fidelity. This has also helped push real-time ray tracing experiences.
NVIDIA showed a graph of LLM Inference Performance with ORT-DML, on a GeForce RTX 4090. With the latest R555 Game Ready Driver, performance improvements are impressive.
As technologies such as ray and path tracing continue to push forward, mitigating their performance penalties with AI assisted tools will be paramount for gamers. Creators and other developers will benefit as well, with streamlined workflows and typically higher quality execution possible with the help of AI assisted tools to reduce the footwork needed to accomplish some tasks.