• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

AMD to Redesign Ray Tracing Hardware on RDNA 4

Literally no one ever asked for things like path tracing to be added to games.
That's your opinion. Industry moves towards things that result in what consumers want (better graphics and performance), along with techniques that allow for simpler and easier workloads in production. The fact you offer resistance doesn't help your preferred GPU vendor, who also seemed to think that these technologies weren't important, and look at where they are now. Adding proper RT hardware, going the way of AI (finally) for FSR, etc.

If they manage to greatly improve RT performance (at least 50%) and FSR image quality (by using "ai" upscaling), AMD will get way more gamers buying their cards, as most are going to nvidia just for DLSS/RT advantage.
I'd agree, except AMD does not exist in a vacuum. NVIDIA is also releasing new cards which will be improved too, and they're starting ahead.
 
It's cooler to play the game *and* have cool lights reflecting off street water! And in 5 years we might be even able to do that without ugly upscalers.
Nope. No interest in how 10% of the pixels are selectively drawn on the screen *and* losing massive frames per second.
 
That's your opinion. Industry moves towards things that result in what consumers want
Fanboys being gaslit into believing that they've actually always wanted features which they never even heard about before is perhaps Nvidia's greatest achievement. That is truly commendable.
 
Fanboys being gaslit into believing that they've actually always wanted features which they never even heard about before is perhaps Nvidia's greatest achievement. That is truly commendable.
Lmao.

Ok. 85% of the GPU market is wrong, AMD is right, and the rest of us are just fanboys.

Interesting take.

Even Intel got priorities right with Arc, perhaps AMD, who should have known better even with RDNA 2, is finally getting their heads around the concept of RT and upscaling being core features, not lazy "we have this feature too" checkboxes to tick.
 
If that was the case Nvidia would have still been faster in RT and nothing would have changed, be sure that when AMD will get close to Nvidia in RT they'll move the goal post to something else.
They already start moving those. Stable Diffusion, AI, "smart" NPCs, will be the all new rage in future marketing material from Nvidia. And don't ask me why gamers need AI. Nvidia, tech press and the hordes of (payed and not payed) trolls will try to convince that AI in gaming is the most important thing in the world.
 
Interesting take.
If you can find even one instance of consumers asking for stuff like path tracing or upscaling before 2018, I'll concede that everyone was in fact begging for these things to be added and I am just being delusional.

Should be easy, they must have been in the millions.

They already start moving those. Stable Diffusion, AI, "smart" NPCs, will be the all new rage in future marketing material from Nvidia.
Even if you convince everyone that this is what they want a huge issue will remain which is that most of these things will be unusable running locally, Nvidia is seriously gimping the VRAM on their consumer cards to prevent the industry from circumventing the need for overpriced Teslas and Quadros. It's a conundrum that I don't know how they can solve.
 
Last edited:
Johannes Kepler's Fourth Law of Planetary Behaviour: The green planet and the red planet revolve around me.
 
Yeah, I’m totally psyched to stare at light reflecting off street water for hours on end rather than actually playing the game.
CB2077 is not a great game anyway.

"further relieving the shader engines." It's not accurate information, as shaders are generally not used efficiently in games, and have limited occupancy.
 
If you can find even one instance of consumers asking for stuff like path tracing or upscaling before 2018, I'll concede that everyone was in fact begging for these things to be added and I am just being delusional.

Should be easy, they must have been in the millions.
Best fanboy takedown I've read in a while. Nice work!

Nobody was asking for ray tracing and upscaling. AI is another tech that nobody was asking for. Everyone was asking for decent GPU supply volume at better prices. Maybe increased energy efficiency but those shaders ain't gonna draw themselves. :)
 
Will they upgrade it all the way to 2 gens behind Nvidia? Cause in the last PT demo XTX was behind 14 Nvidia SKUs
Between a 2080 Ti and a 3060.

To be fair, it was one of the first implementations of a new tech. But it does emphasise that the "competitive, but a little slower in RT" is more like "fast raster, lots of VRAM and nothing else".

Best fanboy takedown I've read in a while. Nice work!

Nobody was asking for ray tracing and upscaling. Everyone was asking for decent GPU supply volume at better prices. Maybe increased energy efficiency but those shaders ain't gonna draw themselves. :)

Seems like some appreciation of the good performance even pre ai upscaling offered.

Of course, for those of us not living in 2018 there is great demand for good upscaling/DLAA and ray tracing performance, but it's easy to just write off that majority when you can simply call them fanboys and therefore excuse AMD not delivering.

Always impressive how the "definitely not fanboys" manage to make excuses for the massive multinational corporation not delivering competitive products, when they have shown they can if they actually try, with Zen.

You're welcome to do your own quick phone Google search. But it's not my perogative to drag you kicking and screaming into the 2024 graphics arena.

I really do hope AMD delivers with RDNA 4, or it will be another duopoly with NVIDIA and Intel.
 
Seems like some appreciation of the good performance even pre ai upscaling offered.

"Appreciation" :roll:

My man the game ran like ass without upsclaing, it was necessary to get it playable, if you had the choice you'd never want to touch it because it also looked like ass when it was enabled. Not much has changed since then but it was even more inexcusable since there was no RT back then.
 
"Appreciation" :roll:

My man the game ran like ass without upsclaing, it was necessary to get it playable, if you had the choice you'd never want to touch it because it also looked like ass when it was enabled. Not much has changed since then but it was even more inexcusable since there was no RT back then.
Mould your opinion to match your hardware as much as you want, regardless, the trajectory of where tech is headed and where it's currently at is clear.

Pretending otherwise is your choice. Insulting the majority of consumers is also your choice.

Just so long as you can assume intellectual superiority, because all those features your card can't run are just ass anyway, right? I wonder if this attitude will magically change when your preferred vendor offers a competitive experience in these things. Hmmmm.

As long as you're happy, that's great. So am I with my hardware and experience.
 
Pretending otherwise is your choice. Insulting the majority of consumers is also your choice.
You still haven't given even one example of people asking for this stuff, I am waiting. You're the one claiming everyone was just dying to see these things added, I am giving you the opportunity to prove it.
 
To be perfectly honest and on topic, Nvidia is leading the way in a lot of new GPU features lately. Some are welcome and some are not. AMD is the follower here and trying to keep up with the new features using whatever available resources. Both companies are doing very well in this regard (Nvidia leader, AMD follower). At some point, I hope that AMD will start to lead in the GPU space like they are leading in the CPU space. We don't need any company abandoning any parts of these markets as prices are already too high for what we are getting.
 
To be perfectly honest and on topic, Nvidia is leading the way in a lot of new GPU features lately. Some are welcome and some are not. AMD is the follower here and trying to keep up with the new features using whatever available resources. Both companies are doing very well in this regard (Nvidia leader, AMD follower). At some point, I hope that AMD will start to lead in the GPU space like they are leading in the CPU space. We don't need any company abandoning any parts of these markets as prices are already too high for what we are getting.
I'm not sure the recent financial reports released support this "both companies are doing very well" assertion. At least if you're referring to GPUs which it seems like you are.

If I was AMD I'd be less concerned with settling for following NVIDIA, and more concerned with being supplanted by Intel.

As a consumer, I'd like to see an attitude that isn't "copy NVIDIA badly two years later" or as mentioned, the follower mentality. It would be healthier for the market.

As you said, hoping to see some leadership from AMD in the GPU space would be a good thing.

It shouldn't be a matter of no question that NVIDIA offers the superior featureset if you're willing to pay for it. That's not competition. AMD needs mindshare and to do that they need to lead. Or at least copy/follow well.
 
If I was AMD I'd be less concerned with settling for following NVIDIA, and more concerned with being supplanted by Intel.
1714734794007.png


Yeah it'd be very concerned about Intel, their GPUs are almost as fast as a 5700XT. Let's hope they don't get to the point where their GPUs no longer need drivers updates for the games to even boot, then they're gonna be in real trouble.

It's crazy how anti-AMD some of you are, it's like you live in a parallel universe where AMD is dogshit and everyone is just light years ahead.
 
Between a 2080 Ti and a 3060.

To be fair, it was one of the first implementations of a new tech. But it does emphasise that the "competitive, but a little slower in RT" is more like "fast raster, lots of VRAM and nothing else".



Seems like some appreciation of the good performance even pre ai upscaling offered.

Of course, for those of us not living in 2018 there is great demand for good upscaling/DLAA and ray tracing performance, but it's easy to just write off that majority when you can simply call them fanboys and therefore excuse AMD not delivering.

Always impressive how the "definitely not fanboys" manage to make excuses for the massive multinational corporation not delivering competitive products, when they have shown they can if they actually try, with Zen.

You're welcome to do your own quick phone Google search. But it's not my perogative to drag you kicking and screaming into the 2024 graphics arena.

I really do hope AMD delivers with RDNA 4, or it will be another duopoly with NVIDIA and Intel.
Technically, AMD shouldn't deliver or spend a single penny on RT. It was the leader, master, king of the leather jacket who promised his caste of little sheep RT in games. And yet, in 2024, a U$ 2000 GPU can't maintain 60fps @ 4k in the only two games where RT makes any difference, and CP2077 dates from half a decade ago, has terrible geometry and is even worse as a game. That's 3 generations of promises. I feel sorry for anyone who bought Turing believing in this stupidity.

It's very easy to prove that RT in games is a joke, when you build up so many layers of artifice, each one inserting more artifacts and complications, taking away the idea of realism.
Realistic RT should be multiple times heavier than what is being used in these ugly TAA games. The hardware isn't here and probably never will be, so this is just a market manipulation tactic by the company with the biggest marketshare exerting influence and moving the little sheep to where it can get the better margins.
 
Last edited:
View attachment 346069

Yeah it'd be very concerned about Intel, their GPUs are almost as fast as a 5700XT. Let's hope they don't get to the point where their GPUs no longer need drivers updates for the games to even boot, then they're be in real trouble.

It's crazy how anti-AMD some of you are, it's like you live in a parallel universe where AMD is dogshit and everyone is just light years ahead.
Nice scene of a console port with no RT, or use of tech other than simple raster.

Really proves your point well.

Technically, AMD shouldn't deliver or spend a single penny on RT. It was the leader, master, king of the leather jacket who promised his caste of little sheep RT in games. And yet, in 2024, a U$ 2000 GPU can't maintain 60fps @ 4k in the only two games where RT makes any difference, and CB2077 dates from half a decade ago, has terrible geometry and is even worse as a game. That's 3 generations of promises. I feel sorry for anyone who bought Turing believing in this stupidity.

It's very easy to prove that RT in games is a joke, when you build up so many layers of artifice, each one inserting more artifacts and complications and taking away the idea of realism.
Realistic RT should be multiple times heavier than what is being used in these ugly TAA games. The hardware isn't here and probably never will be, so this is just a market manipulation tactic by the company with the biggest marketshare exerting influence and moving the little sheep to where it can get the better margins.
Another person insulting 85% of the consumer market. Sheep this time. Bravo.
 
Nice scene of a console port with no RT, or use of tech other than simple raster.

Really proves your point well.
Yeah it's nice isn't it, here's how Intel fares in RT :

1714735333359.png


A 6800XT is faster, strange how Intel has all of this ultra performant hardware RT implementation that many Intel and Nvidia fanboys assure me it's a must have yet their GPUs can't even beat AMD's top RDNA2 first gen non hardware RT GPU and is twice as slow as AMD's second gen, still non hardware, RT implementation.

But yes AMD is in serious danger, yikes.
 
Last edited:
You still haven't given even one example of people asking for this stuff, I am waiting. You're the one claiming everyone was just dying to see these things added, I am giving you the opportunity to prove it.
You'll be waiting a while. The saying 'arse from your elbow comes to mind.'
 
Yeah it's nice isn't it, here's how Intel fares in RT :

View attachment 346070

A 6800XT is faster, strange how Intel has all of this ultra performant hardware RT implementation that many Intel and Nvidia fanboys assure me it's a must have yet their GPUs can't even beat AMD's top RDNA2 first gen non hardware RT GPUs.
So let me check prices on PCPartPicker.

£300 for an Arc A770
£380 for a RX 7700XT
£475 for a RX 6800XT

A770 is 2% faster than the RX 7700XT, and beats a 3070 Ti by 5%. Impressive.

relative-performance-rt-3840-2160.png
 
A770 is 2% faster than the RX 7700XT, and beats a 3070 Ti by 5%. Impressive.
So because the 7700XT is almost 50% faster in raster but the A770 is an astounding 2% faster in RT it should be priced the same or something ? Or perhaps even cheaper ?

Your average Nvidia fanboy mental gymnastics are truly shocking. The A770 is a complete rip off as is, RT or not.
 
So let me check prices on PCPartPicker.

£300 for an Arc A770
£380 for a RX 7700XT
£475 for a RX 6800XT

A770 is 2% faster than the RX 7700XT.

View attachment 346071
I actually hope Intel and AMD play into Huang megalomania. Convince him that he doesn't need to compete in the lower midrange to budget GPU markets. That way AMD can sell a lot of GPUs, APUs and parts for consoles and Intel can throw a lot of money making the same. Both becoming household brands. Nvidia would only sell $500+ parts thinking they are too good for lower margin budget SKUs. If AMD/Intel can win over the lionshare of the market from the bottom, developers will optimizing games more and more for that hardware and Nvidia will shrink into a 'luxury' brand. I for one like fun games that are optimized to run on the most hardware rather than proprietary frame wasting features that take 100's of watts and cost over $1000.
 
So because the 7700XT is almost 50% faster in raster but the A770 is an astounding 2% faster in RT it should be priced the same or something ? Or perhaps even cheaper ?

Your average Nvidia fanboy mental gymnastics are truly shocking. The A770 is a complete rip off as is, RT or not.
Ah so now we're back to raster. Sorry, you move the goalposts so frequently it's hard to keep up. We were talking about "how Intel fares in RT" to use your words.

Considering RT is employed as the default lighting in new game engines, it's not quite as shocking as you might think to expect expensive cards to be performant.
 
Back
Top