Friday, May 3rd 2024
AMD to Redesign Ray Tracing Hardware on RDNA 4
AMD's next generation RDNA 4 graphics architecture is expected to feature a completely new ray tracing engine, Kepler L2, a reliable source with GPU leaks, claims. Currently, AMD uses a component called Ray Accelerator, which performs the most compute-intensive portion of the ray intersection and testing pipeline, while AMD's approach to ray tracing on a hardware level still relies greatly on the shader engines. The company had debuted the ray accelerator with RDNA 2, its first architecture to meet DirectX 12 Ultimate specs, and improved the component with RDNA 3, by optimizing certain aspects of its ray testing, to bring about a 50% improvement in ray intersection performance over RDNA 2.
The way Kepler L2 puts it, RDNA 4 will feature a fundamentally transformed ray tracing hardware solution from the ones on RDNA 2 and RDNA 3. This could probably delegate more of the ray tracing workflow onto fixed-function hardware, unburdening the shader engines further. AMD is expected to debut RDNA 4 with its next line of discrete Radeon RX GPUs in the second half of 2024. Given the chatter about a power-packed event by AMD at Computex, with the company expected to unveil "Zen 5" CPU microarchitecture on both server and client processors; we might expect some talk on RDNA 4, too.
Sources:
HotHardware, Kepler_L2 (Twitter)
The way Kepler L2 puts it, RDNA 4 will feature a fundamentally transformed ray tracing hardware solution from the ones on RDNA 2 and RDNA 3. This could probably delegate more of the ray tracing workflow onto fixed-function hardware, unburdening the shader engines further. AMD is expected to debut RDNA 4 with its next line of discrete Radeon RX GPUs in the second half of 2024. Given the chatter about a power-packed event by AMD at Computex, with the company expected to unveil "Zen 5" CPU microarchitecture on both server and client processors; we might expect some talk on RDNA 4, too.
227 Comments on AMD to Redesign Ray Tracing Hardware on RDNA 4
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.
Should be easy, they must have been in the millions.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.
"further relieving the shader engines." It's not accurate information, as shaders are generally not used efficiently in games, and have limited occupancy.
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. :)
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".steamcommunity.com/app/474960/discussions/0/144512526680938372/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Really proves your point well.Another person insulting 85% of the consumer market. Sheep this time. Bravo.
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.
£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.
Your average Nvidia fanboy mental gymnastics are truly shocking. The A770 is a complete rip off as is, RT or not.
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.
Progress doesn't necessarily have to happen on a need to ask basis, if that was the case then we would be still using some basic tech playing old ass games cause most of the stuff we have nowadays is something that nobody directly asked for I think. 'we could play this who asked for it game forever, its pointless and kinda stupid imo'
Personally I have no issues with RT/Upscaling or any of that stuff and actually I like using DLSS or DLAA if I have the headroom for it.
RT depends on the game but the tech on its own is pretty cool imo. 'Cyber/Control/Ghostwire Tokyo I did finish with RT+DLSS on'
At this point and going forward I consider those things a selling point whenever I will upgrade my GPU cause if the price diff is not too big then I will pick up the card with the better feature set and currently that is Nvidia so I'm glad to see that AMD is working on those. 'I have no probs with AMD itself, I've had my share of AMD hardware in the past with no issues'