Since version 2021.2 Maverick features an RTX-based ray-tracing backend which inter-operates with our (otherwise 100%) CUDA-based rendering core.
This means that Maverick needs an RTX-compatible card to run. That is, a 20-30 Series card, or higher. In these cards (e.g., 2080Ti, 3080, 3090, …) you may expect a considerable performance boost compared to earlier versions of Maverick.
Nvidia provides fallback compatibility for RTX in 10 Series cards. Which means that Maverick is also compatible with 10xx (e.g., 1080Ti) and compatible cards. But these cards won’t benefit from RTX acceleration as they do not provide ray-tracing specific hardware themselves.
We curate our own free-to-use benchmarking tool to keep track of performance gains in Nvidia hardware.