AMD has traditionally lagged behind Nvidia on the subject of ray tracing in video games, however in response to the newest leak, AMD ray tracing is about to fully change with the launch of its RDNA 4 structure, which is predicted to launch later in 2024. These GPUs will nonetheless be up in opposition to some stiff competitors, although, as Nvidia is predicted to launch its next-gen Blackwell GPUs in the identical timeframe.
The newest AMD GPUs, can deal with ray tracing to a sure diploma, and a few of them have landed on our greatest graphics card information, due to some aggressive pricing. Nonetheless, there’s no query that Nvidia nonetheless has the higher hand on the subject of rendering ray traced results equivalent to reflections and shadows. May that every one be about to vary?
In a post on X (previously Twitter), tech leaker Kepler_L2 claimed that the ray tracing engine on AMD’s new RDNA 4 GPUs “seems to be model new.” In a follow-up put up, Kepler_L2 then clarified that “RDNA3 RT was primarily based on RDNA2 with some enhancements. RDNA4 RT seems to be fully totally different.”
AMD has been taking part in a recreation of catch-up with Nvidia on the subject of ray tracing. Not solely did Nvidia get its first GeForce RTX 20 sequence GPUs out the doorways whereas AMD was nonetheless caught on its growing old Graphics Core Subsequent structure, however AMD’s first-gen RDNA GPUs, such because the Radeon RX 5700 XT, didn’t have any ray tracing help both.
In our personal assessments, we’ve discovered that the ray tracing efficiency of present AMD RDNA 3 GPUs is roughly similar to that of Nvidia’s last-gen Ampere graphics playing cards. RDNA 3 undoubtedly improved on RDNA 2 on the subject of ray tracing, for instance by transferring a number of the {hardware} bounding quantity hierarchy (BVH) sorting and traversal work from the GPU shaders to the RT cores, however Nvidia’s Ada GPUs are nonetheless a lot faster at ray tracing.
In fact, ray tracing isn’t the one space the place AMD must meet up with Nvidia. AMD remains to be leaving the matrix AI cores in its GPUs unused in video games, and in our personal assessments, Nvidia DLSS Tremendous Decision tech seems to be considerably higher than AMD’s FSR. What’s extra, Nvidia’s DLSS Body Technology tech is way more extensively supported than FSR’s equal.
If AMD can nail ray tracing and AI, although, its GPUs are in any other case lots quick sufficient on the subject of uncooked shader energy, and it seems to be as if there are some very fascinating instances forward within the PC gaming GPU market. Within the meantime, in case you’re trying to get a brand new graphics card, take a look at our GeForce RTX 4070 Tremendous evaluation, the place we benchmark Nvidia’s newest mid-range GPU.
