Skip to main content PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES Search PC Gamer View Profile Movies & TV Gaming Industry PC Gaming Show Newsletter Signup Community Guidelines Affiliate Links Meet the team About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine Subscription Why subscribe? Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£35.99View Monster Hunter Wilds Nvidia RTX 5090 Marvel Rivals Graphics Cards Nvidia's expanded Zorah demo tells us how AI is the future of graphics: 'There's no rasterization going on at all. This is all ray traced and the amazing part is that it's actually faster than rasterizing' Nick Evanson 18 March 2025 And it's faster because of AI, natch. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Future) At this year's GDC event, Nvidia showed off an updated version of its Zorah demo from the GeForce RTX 50-series launch, with changes including controls that allowed one to view the scenes to see features such as RTX Mega Geometry in full action. In a panel discussion about the demo and everything neural rendering, Nvidia confirmed one thing that we all suspected but also one thing that might surprise you—Zorah is 100% ray tracing and it's faster this way than if it used rasterization. For as long as I've been messing around with 3D graphics (almost 30 years), I've loved seeing GPU vendors release a cool standalone demo to showcase new rendering tricks or some fancy hardware feature. Over the years, they've somewhat fallen by the wayside, replaced by games as the best choice for showing off your new graphics card. This isn't to say that Nvidia's Zorah demo isn't visually impressive—it's absolutely stunning when seen in real-time on a big OLED monitor—but the days of demos massively shifting the goalposts of what rendering can achieve are long gone. Zorah's problem isn't that it's bad, it's just that the nearest reference points to it (e.g. games that use path tracing) are equally as impressive. You may like Nvidia RTX 50-series and dev kit show that rasterization is old news and we're now firmly in the era of AI rendering It's time for me to admit that AI-accelerated frame generation might actually be the way of the future and that's a good thing Nvidia held a panel discussion at GDC 2025 to discuss its recent advances in GPU technology and graphics rendering, and one of the panellists dropped a little snippet that made me pay a lot more attention to what was being said (hey, I was jet lagged to heck). John Spitzer, Nvidia's VP of developer and performance technology, was enthusing about the Zorah demo: "There's no rasterization going on at all. This is all ray traced, including the primary rays. The amazing part is that it's actually faster than rasterizing them, so it's not done because it's kind of cool to say that in the demo. It's actually, in this case, the right thing to do." Given that Zorah is a showcase of Nvidia's full suite of RTX neural rendering technologies, as well as RTX Mega Geometry, the fact that it's a fully ray-traced demo makes total sense. However, the fact that it's faster than making the same scene via traditional techniques perhaps marks the point that we now have the hardware to be able to fully abandon traditional rasterization. Well, not yet, as Zorah isn't the speediest of demos, even on an RTX 5090, and it needs every performance trick that RTX neural rendering, RTX Mega Geometry, and DLSS 4 can bring to the table. That said, it does show the benefits that AI offers for rendering and while we've been familiar with it just being used for upscaling and frame generation, over the coming years we'll see it being leveraged increasingly more to do fancier graphics at playable frame rates. The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. And it does all of this through the power of approximation. RTX Neural Materials, for example, takes the long, complex shaders for hugely detailed materials, and uses a small neural network that represents how light interacts with the material to produce a result that's a good approximation of the original thing, except it does it all much faster. Much like how AI can be used to interpolate an entire frame, it can now be used to interpolate a specific shader. Screen queens (Image credit: Future) Best gaming monitor: Pixel-perfect panels for your PC. Best high refresh rate monitor: Screaming quick. Best 4K monitor for gaming: When only high-res will do. Best 4K TV for gaming: Big-screen 4K gaming. RTX Neural Radiance Cache does a similar thing by applying a neural network to the result of a few rays bouncing once or twice in a scene and then inferring what the end result of hundreds or thousands of bounces would be like. Of course, as with all approximations, all of this AI rendering stuff isn't perfect and arguably may never be, but neither are the rasterization techniques that we're all familiar with. It just needs to be good enough that you can't tell while gaming. Having a fully path-traced scene running at a playable frame rate is only possible because of AI's strength at approximating stuff that follows set algorithms and physical laws. And it's not just Nvidia that's going down this road: AMD and Intel didn't add matrix cores to their GPUs just for upscaling or frame gen. Rendering has always been a game of approximation, of course, so all of this is just an evolution of how we turn glowing dots on a screen into worlds that make us believe it's real. Like it or not, AI really is the future of graphics. Nick Evanson Social Links Navigation Hardware Writer Nick, gaming, and computers all first met in 1981, with the love affair starting on a Sinclair ZX81 in kit form and a book on ZX Basic. He ended up becoming a physics and IT teacher, but by the late 1990s decided it was time to cut his teeth writing for a long defunct UK tech site. He went on to do the same at Madonion, helping to write the help files for 3DMark and PCMark. After a short stint working at Beyond3D.com, Nick joined Futuremark (MadOnion rebranded) full-time, as editor-in-chief for its gaming and hardware section, YouGamers. After the site shutdown, he became an engineering and computing lecturer for many years, but missed the writing bug. Cue four years at TechSpot.com and over 100 long articles on anything and everything. He freely admits to being far too obsessed with GPUs and open world grindy RPGs, but who isn't these days? You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. Nvidia RTX 50-series and dev kit show that rasterization is old news and we're now firmly in the era of AI rendering It's time for me to admit that AI-accelerated frame generation might actually be the way of the future and that's a good thing AI will be crammed in more of the graphics pipeline as Nvidia and Microsoft are bringing AI shading to a DirectX preview next month I'll say it: The best thing I saw from Nvidia at CES wasn't its sweet new GPUs, but some tasty AI every RTX gamer can enjoy Ray tracing is quickly becoming inescapable and I think it's time we bit the bullet and embraced it Will there ever become a point with AI where there are no traditionally rendered frames in games? Perhaps surprisingly, Jen-Hsun says 'no' Latest in Graphics Cards Nvidia's expanded Zorah demo tells us how AI is the future of graphics: 'There's no rasterization going on at all. This is all ray traced and the amazing part is that it's actually faster than rasterizing' AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and Nvidia are all excited about cooperative vectors and what they mean for the future of 3D graphics, but it's going to be a good while before we really see their impact AMD claims it has 45% gaming GPU market share in Japan but jokingly admits it 'isn't used to selling graphics cards' Chinese graphics card maker claims RX 9070 supply will be 'stable' from April while AMD commits to more MSRP graphics cards though admits it's something 'we don't directly control' XFX Swift Radeon RX 9070 OC review This MSI Afterburner file unlocks 36 Gbps RTX 50-series memory overclocks for, y'know, the few people that actually own a card Latest in News Nvidia's expanded Zorah demo tells us how AI is the future of graphics: 'There's no rasterization going on at all. This is all ray traced and the amazing part is that it's actually faster than rasterizing' After years of playing as stupid, boring humans in Fallout, you can finally channel your inner Walton Goggins and become a ghoul in Fallout 76 Hasbro will be ready to share news about the future of Baldur's Gate 'in pretty short order' World of Warcraft Classic’s Season of Discovery may be teasing a legendary weapon that players have speculated is in the game for two decades Get in here, stalker: Stalker 2’s Patch 1.3 is here with a whopping 1,200 fixes I'm creeped out by this trailer for a generative AI game about people using an AI-powered app to solve violent crimes in the year 2028 that somehow isn't a cautionary tale More about graphics cards AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and Nvidia are all excited about cooperative vectors and what they mean for the future of 3D graphics, but it's going to be a good while before we really see their impact AMD claims it has 45% gaming GPU market share in Japan but jokingly admits it 'isn't used to selling graphics cards' Sennheiser says it 'will not become a gaming brand' but its new HD 550 are a good excuse to use audiophile headphones for gaming See more latest Most Popular Sennheiser says it 'will not become a gaming brand' but its new HD 550 are a good excuse to use audiophile headphones for gaming After years of playing as stupid, boring humans in Fallout, you can finally channel your inner Walton Goggins and become a ghoul in Fallout 76 Hasbro will be ready to share news about the future of Baldur's Gate 'in pretty short order' World of Warcraft Classic’s Season of Discovery may be teasing a legendary weapon that players have speculated is in the game for two decades Get in here, stalker: Stalker 2’s Patch 1.3 is here with a whopping 1,200 fixes I'm creeped out by this trailer for a generative AI game about people using an AI-powered app to solve violent crimes in the year 2028 that somehow isn't a cautionary tale After 12 days and 100s of wipes, World of Warcraft's latest world first raid ends in anticlimax: 'That's the boss?!?' AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and Nvidia are all excited about cooperative vectors and what they mean for the future of 3D graphics, but it's going to be a good while before we really see their impact New super-thin '2D' metal sheets could enable ultra-low power chips and can you guess how they're made? Yup, by squishing stuff really hard Larian’s Swen Vincke subtweets anyone still fixated on singleplayer games’ commercial viability: 'They just have to be good' HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES LATEST GAME REVIEWS Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads Best graphics card for laptops in 2025: the mobile GPUs I'd want in my next gaming laptop Best mini PCs in 2025: The compact computers I love the most Best 14-inch gaming laptop in 2025: The top compact gaming laptops I've held in these hands Best Mini-ITX motherboards in 2025: My pick from all the mini mobo marvels I've tested Assassin's Creed Shadows review Endorfy Fortis 5 Dual Fan review Cataclismo review: Exceptional city building mechanics support a game that sometimes feels like a chore XFX Swift Radeon RX 9070 OC graphics card review Cherry MX 8.2 Wireless Xaga gaming keyboard review PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site. Contact Future's experts Terms and conditions Privacy policy Cookies policy Advertise with us Accessibility Statement Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885. Please login or signup to comment Please wait...