AMD to Redesign Ray Tracing Hardware on RDNA 4

[wolf]

I'm not sure if you meant this in a sarcastic way, but actually, I never asked for more realistic lighting. I've been asking for characters that don't look like plastic dolls in the rain, but I don't seem to be getting them.

I remember being amazed by coloured lights in SW: Dark Forces 2 (Jedi Knight) and Half-Life. Then, there was Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. Then Crysis. Now we have Cyberpunk and Alan Wake 2. Every single game improved on lights for decades without anyone asking for anything, so no, I don't want to pretend that the whole idea came out of leather jacket man's arse on a Sunday afternoon while sipping tea just to make us all feel jolly good about... more lights?

It shouldn't come as a surprise that your wants don't represent everyone's, and I never said that they did, just that people do in fact want in game visuals, and specifically lighting to continue to get better and better, and other members insinuating the opposite are not only incorrect, but being purposely disengenuous and trite in an attempt to win an argument they constructed.

Again, both can be true, I know you don't like the recent push and have things higher on the list for you personally. Be that as it may, others do want RT performance to increase.

 

[Vayra86]

It shouldn't come as a surprise that your wants don't represent everyone's, and I never said that they did, just that people do in fact want in game visuals, and specifically lighting to continue to get better and better, and other members insinuating the opposite are not only incorrect, but being purposely disengenuous and trite in an attempt to win an argument they constructed.

Again, both can be true, I know you don't like the recent push and have things higher on the list for you personally. Be that as it may, others do want RT performance to increase.

I think you're right, but the vast majority will only accept these improvements if they are offered a deal they can't refuse. That's the power of marketing. Its a mistake to chalk marketing up as 'desire' in the customer base. If the two don't align, the technology will fail. In the end, money is the decisive factor, or for lack of a better word, affordability. I've not seen an economical situation yet, where there is a healthy marketplace for healthy competition on the RT development front. If we're not getting that, we're most definitely not getting to a point where RT gets cheaper over time. So far it hasn't: the GPUs in each tier have increased in price. With gaming being a moving bar too, that's not progress. Its in fact regression.

As I pointed out before, 'blaming' company A or B for this isn't going to work out for anyone. Its not AMD's lagging behind that makes RT fail, and its not Nvidia's aggressive push either that makes it succeed. The industry moves when the industry moves, and it will do so when there is a universal belief that everyone can get a nice piece of this new pie. Nvidia's proprietary approach, with both RT, and with its AI acceleration, is not offering those nice pieces of pie for everyone. And therefore, it will not become a thing that way. It will only become a thing when the industry decides upon universal ways to accelerate, or gets the opportunity to carve out their own little niche in the landscape, each for themselves. The latter is probably what will happen to AI because its use cases are so diverse.

But for RT? Unify and democratize it, or it will die. Democratization cannot happen under just a green colored umbrella though, nor just a DX12 ultimate sticker that effectively gets supported by only one player. Strategically, I think AMD has the better play and better position with its console deals and agonizingly slow RT development. This won't happen overnight. Maturity takes time.

 

[RGAFL]

RT is getting cheaper each generation, during RTX2000 only the 2080 Ti is somewhat capable of RT, now the 600usd 4070S is about good enough (PT is another beast).
Next gen we will definitely see some 450-500usd GPUs capable of handling RT GI, Reflections and AO at 1440p (or 4K with Upscaling + Frame Gen).

Pay for better visuals? gladly. After all I'm paying 70usd for a AAA game these day already.

And this is what you are not getting. You will gladly pay £1600, maybe £2000 for the next gen. Where the majority of sales are, the 3060/4060 or equivalent, they won't. That 4090/5090 performance won't reach them for another two to three gens after. Of course performance filters down gen to gen but the performance gap will grow and the cost will go up. You want RT/PT to get better and used more in games, so do I but that won't happen if you have to pay between £1600-£2000 to do it justice. You think the next Cyberpunk or whatever game that comes out that gets 100fps on a 5090 with upscaling is improving things. Maybe for the 5090 owners. For the 5060 owners it's another turn RT/PT off to get acceptable performance game.

 

[nguyen]

And this is what you are not getting. You will gladly pay £1600, maybe £2000 for the next gen. Where the majority of sales are, the 3060/4060 or equivalent, they won't. That 4090/5090 performance won't reach them for another two to three gens after. Of course performance filters down gen to gen but the performance gap will grow and the cost will go up. You want RT/PT to get better and used more in games, so do I but that won't happen if you have to pay between £1600-£2000 to do it justice. You think the next Cyberpunk or whatever game that comes out that gets 100fps on a 5090 with upscaling is improving things. Maybe for the 5090 owners. For the 5060 owners it's another turn RT/PT off to get acceptable performance game.

Tell me, do you think that new games should try to look better than before, or they should just stay the same because the majority of people can't buy high-end GPUs?

Secondly, a lot of 4090/4080 will go into the second hand market, so more and more people will have access to RT/PT as time goes on.

 

[AusWolf]

It shouldn't come as a surprise that your wants don't represent everyone's, and I never said that they did, just that people do in fact want in game visuals, and specifically lighting to continue to get better and better, and other members insinuating the opposite are not only incorrect, but being purposely disengenuous and trite in an attempt to win an argument they constructed.

Again, both can be true, I know you don't like the recent push and have things higher on the list for you personally. Be that as it may, others do want RT performance to increase.

Don't get me wrong, if RT performance increases, I'll welcome it. All I'm saying is that it's not the top item on my list of things I want from in-game graphics.

With that said, if it does in fact, increase, it should do so in a way to make it a feasible option with mid-range graphics cards. The kind of "5-10% better" that we've been getting in the last few generations won't do when you still can only use RT properly on a graphics card that costs more than some used cars.

 

[RGAFL]

Tell me, do you think that new games should try to look better than before, or they should just stay the same because the majority of people can't afford high-end GPU?

Of course I want games to get better looking. I said that in the comment. But the game only gets better looking and runs faster for the majority of graphics card owners two to three gens after the top card gets released. Do you think the 5060 will run Cyberpunk with RT/PT like a 4090. Probably not even the 6060 will do that. The bar gets raised with gaming all the time but the majority will never reach it at the time of it's release. But as long as the top 1% of graphics card owners are alright then that's okay in your opinion. Bit of a short sighted attitude.

 

[AusWolf]

Tell me, do you think that new games should try to look better than before, or they should just stay the same because the majority of people can't buy high-end GPUs?

How about advancing in-game graphics without alienating anyone who can't or won't buy a x90 series GPU? There's lots of thing we can improve besides RT.

Edit: I used to game just fine on a 1060. I still game fine on any current mid-range card, unless I turn on RT. If RT becomes feasible in my price segment, I'll welcome it. Otherwise, I don't care.

Secondly, a lot of 4090/4080 will go into the second hand market, so more and more people will have access to RT/PT as time goes on.

I don't think a (used) 450 Watt TDP card is a good idea for an el-cheapo system that probably contains an el-cheapo PSU.

 

[nguyen]

Of course I want games to get better looking. I said that in the comment. But the game only gets better looking and runs faster for the majority of graphics card owners two to three gens after the top card gets released. Do you think the 5060 will run Cyberpunk with RT/PT like a 4090. Probably not even the 6060 will do that. The bar gets raised with gaming all the time but the majority will never reach it at the time of it's release. But as long as the top 1% of graphics card owners are alright then that's okay in your opinion. Bit of a short sighted attitude.

You are the most short sighted person here.
Games always have the option for future proofing that even the fastest 1% of GPU owners cannot play at the highest settings, so they can continue to sell years after released. Just look at Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, they still have lots and lots of players.

 

[RGAFL]

You are the most short sighted person here.
Games should always have the option for future proofing, so they can continue to sell years after released. Just look at Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, they still have lots and lots of players.

Of course they should, where have I said they shouldn't. All I said was the majority of buyers (xx60 class graphics cards) won't be getting 4090 performance for a while (at least 4-5 years), in the meantime a new game comes out with even more RT/PT lighting that a 5090 runs with upscaling at 100fps and the wait goes on for the xx60 class to catch up. What is so hard to understand.

Of the two games you mentioned xx60 class owners won't be able to play it at the same settings and fps as 4090 owners for another 4-5 years at least. Nothing wrong with that, they have something to look forward to. Laughing emojis won't change that fact though.

 

[nguyen]

Of course they should, where have I said they shouldn't. All I said was the majority of buyers (xx60 class graphics cards) won't be getting 4090 performance for a while (at least 4-5 years), in the meantime a new game comes out with even more RT/PT lighting that a 5090 runs with upscaling at 100fps and the wait goes on for the xx60 class to catch up. What is so hard to understand.

What's stopping xx60 owners from buying 5-year-old games at 5usd and enjoy peak visuals from 5 years ago?
RTX7060 owners will certainly appreciate how games made in 2024 with PT/RT and that will be selling for 5usd at that time

 

[RGAFL]

What's stopping xx60 owners from buying 5-year-old games at 10usd and enjoy peak visuals from 5 years ago?
RTX7060 owners will certainly appreciate how games made in 2024 with PT/RT and that are selling for 5usd

You've just proved my point.

 

[nguyen]

You've just proved my point.

And you think that is a bad thing? weird logic but ok

 

[RGAFL]

And you think that is a bad thing? weird logic but ok

And again where did I say that's a bad thing. But what about the 2060/3060/4060 owners that bought it when it came out full price thinking they were going to get the full RT/PT experience and then had to turn it all off to get acceptable performance. Tough luck I suppose.

 

[64K]

imo some of the resistance to RT in this thread may be because AMD is behind Nvidia in RT but this very article is saying that AMD could be moving forward to improve considerably their GPU's performance in handling RT. If it does work out to be true then maybe moving the tech forward won't be so bad after all. For now RT is optional so it's not a threat to anyone with older GPUs or GPUs that don't handle RT as well. If RT isn't the future then Nvidia is wasting their time and if AMD is improving RT in their upcoming GPUs then they are wasting their time as well but what if they aren't and we will benefit in the future?

 

[nguyen]

And again where did I say that's a bad thing. But what about the 2060/3060/4060 owners that bought it when it came out full price thinking they were going to get the full RT/PT experience and then had to turn it all off to get acceptable performance. Tough luck I suppose.

2060/3060/4060 owners are happy with their GPUs, more than you think .

Anyways this discussion is going nowhere, you and I, along with everyone else will just continue voting with our wallets and see how RT/PT will turn out in the future

 

[RGAFL]

imo some of the resistance to RT in this thread may be because AMD is behind Nvidia in RT but this very article is saying that AMD could be moving forward to improve considerably their GPU's performance in handling RT. If it does work out to be true then maybe moving the tech forward won't be so bad after all. For now RT is optional so it's not a threat to anyone with older GPUs or GPUs that don't handle RT as well. If RT isn't the future then Nvidia is wasting their time and if AMD is improving RT in their upcoming GPUs then they are wasting their time as well but what if they aren't and we will benefit in the future?

I don't think anyone in here is against RT/PT in games. Quite the opposite in fact. AMD being behind in RT is what it is. Personally don't affect me. I have both Nvidia and AMD. Just have a personal belief that until you can run RT/PT on a roughly £500/xx60 class graphics card without turning settings down or off or a console comes out that has it as a mandatory requirement, it will polarise opinion . Of course it will filter down eventually to that level but it will take time.

2060/3060/4060 owners are happy with their GPUs, more than you think .

Anyways this discussion is going nowhere, you and I, along with everyone else will just continue voting with our wallets and see how RT/PT will turn out in the future

You can use your wallet, work pays for mine. Perks of the job and all that.

 

[Godrilla]

The outlier in gaming today the 4080 in the cloud. Jensen has a gateway to PC gaming for the ones that want to try ray tracing at a minimum out of pocket cost. The experience is probably too laggy for my tatse. I personally say with rt either you go big or you buy the best rasterization gpu for the price eg 7900xtx at $889 recently and falling.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

UE5.4 has lumen as the default, PS5 Pro coming soon which has slightly less useless RT hardware from a RNDA3.5 APU, so expect to see stronger and more detailed implementations.

Pretty sure the "less useless RT hardware" on the PS5 Pro comes from its GPU actually adopting RDNA4's raytracing pipeline.
The RDNA3.5 iGPUs in Strix Point and Strix Halo aren't getting that improved RT performance.

 

[dgianstefani]

Pretty sure the "less useless RT hardware" on the PS5 Pro comes from its GPU actually adopting RDNA4's raytracing pipeline.
The RDNA3.5 iGPUs in Strix Point and Strix Halo aren't getting that improved RT performance.

It's not a full RDNA4 implementation which is why I'm calling it RDNA3.5.

Just like the PS5 uses a RDNA2.5 implementation, RDNA2 with some features from RDNA3.

 

[GhostRyder]

When every console uses borderline unusably slow RT hardware (RDNA2 APU), the majority of games developers will build for the lowest common denominator (Xbox series S).

UE5.4 has lumen as the default, PS5 Pro coming soon which has slightly less useless RT hardware from a RNDA3.5 APU, so expect to see stronger and more detailed implementations.

Games devs are mandated to have every release run on the series S, so blame Microsoft for stupid segmentation and AMD for behind the times hardware.

View attachment 346448

I do see your point, I also did not know the GPU in the S was that much lower (I knew it was lower but jeez, never looked up how much). That being said, the other issue has been developers know the performance hit is massive even on high end GPU hardware and are not gonna waste time implementing something they know is not gonna be used by the majority of gamers who don't have GPU's that can even support it well. When GPU's in the XX60 ti series from Nvidia can do similar to what the current king can do (Only in RT is what I am referencing) do I think developers will take a look at it. We have had 3 generations of cards that support it and still don't have a reasonable solution for the majority of gamers even with the improvements that keep coming out (I know part of that has to do with the games having higher and higher requirements as well, but still a majority of gamers can't even drop 1,000 for just their GPU). Consoles can always have these settings turned down or off and normally do as they usually are way behind PC.

If technologies were being held back by what the majority have or use, you wouldn't have such nice thing like a PC today

Another example, is OLED screen pointless because the majority of users still have LCD screen?

I am sorry, I don't follow your example. OLED does not cause a huge performance issue over using an LCD, its only an improvement and you don't have to program for using an OLED over an LCD. Ray Tracing takes a ton of performance away for lighting to look a little more pretty. If it was a matter of a slight performance hit for improved lighting, I would be on that side. However, right now it is a massive performance hit to where even the 4090 can struggle to push games past 60 FPS in reasonable scenarios (My reasonable scenario is pretty much maxed settings at least where it matters because when your wanting to show the games beauty your going to want to show off all the games beauty, not just the lighting) when playing the game (Though it does do a decent job).

My point was if most people I talk to are turning it off or putting it on low, then using it as a club when discussing GPU's as the only thing that matters is where I generally have the problem. If someone is not going to turn it on much, why is it as important as just pure performance? The arguments for RT are similar (At least to me) to the arguments for PhysX back in the day, how it was revolutionary and people talked about having to have it until it just slowly died off. Now I don't think RT is going to die off, just that its still going to be at least 2 more generations of cards minimum (At least in my opinion) before its something we can call 'mainstream'. I do want AMD to improve their RT performance, I just don't think it should be priority one.

 

[nguyen]

I am sorry, I don't follow your example. OLED does not cause a huge performance issue over using an LCD, its only an improvement and you don't have to program for using an OLED over an LCD. Ray Tracing takes a ton of performance away for lighting to look a little more pretty. If it was a matter of a slight performance hit for improved lighting, I would be on that side. However, right now it is a massive performance hit to where even the 4090 can struggle to push games past 60 FPS in reasonable scenarios (My reasonable scenario is pretty much maxed settings at least where it matters because when your wanting to show the games beauty your going to want to show off all the games beauty, not just the lighting) when playing the game (Though it does do a decent job).

My point was if most people I talk to are turning it off or putting it on low, then using it as a club when discussing GPU's as the only thing that matters is where I generally have the problem. If someone is not going to turn it on much, why is it as important as just pure performance? The arguments for RT are similar (At least to me) to the arguments for PhysX back in the day, how it was revolutionary and people talked about having to have it until it just slowly died off. Now I don't think RT is going to die off, just that its still going to be at least 2 more generations of cards minimum (At least in my opinion) before its something we can call 'mainstream'. I do want AMD to improve their RT performance, I just don't think it should be priority one.

OLED are much more expensive than similar size LCD, yet it has a place to stay because of how much superior it is to LCD.

RT is similar, you need more expensive GPU in order to drive it.

Saying RT is pointless because the majority cannot experience it is pretty stupid. Every current tech you enjoy today has been prohibitively expensive in the past.

There is no such thing as miracle where AMD would just improve RT performance by tenfold when RT eventually take off in the near future, AMD needs to keep working on improving RT today if they want to catch up in the future.

BTW if AMD has been doing everything right, their gaming division Q1 earnings should not look that pathetic LOL, basically they gave people no incentive to upgrade to RX7000

 

[RGAFL]

OLED are much more expensive than similar size LCD, yet it has a place to stay because of how much superior it is to LCD.

RT is similar, you need more expensive GPU in order to drive it.

Saying RT is pointless because the majority cannot experience it is pretty stupid. Every current tech you enjoy today has been prohibitively expensive in the past.

There is no such thing as miracle where AMD would just improve RT performance by tenfold when RT eventually take off in the near future, AMD needs to keep working on improving RT today if they want to catch up in the future.

BTW if AMD has been doing everything right, their gaming division Q1 earnings should not look that pathetic LOL, basically they gave people no incentive to upgrade to RX7000

OLEDS are dropping big time at the moment. You can buy a Gigabyte 48" 4k 120hz OLED gaming monitor in the UK at the moment for £800. Some good Philips ones are going for £6/700 at the moment. So not much more expensive. They will drop a lot during the rest of this year. Me personally, i'd rather get a OLED than a top end graphics card if I needed it. Much better colour reproduction (near infinite colours), no drop in frame rate and works with every game. Bonus points if it's a game with HDR.

 

[GhostRyder]

OLED are much more expensive than similar size LCD, yet it has a place to stay because of how much superior it is to LCD.

RT is similar, you need more expensive GPU in order to drive it.

Saying RT is pointless because the majority cannot experience it is pretty stupid. Every current tech you enjoy today has been prohibitively expensive in the past.

There is no such thing as miracle where AMD would just improve RT performance by tenfold when RT eventually take off in the near future, AMD needs to keep working on improving RT today if they want to catch up in the future.

BTW if AMD has been doing everything right, their gaming division Q1 earnings should not look that pathetic LOL, basically they gave people no incentive to upgrade to RX7000

Ok I get your metaphor better. However, I still stand by you don't lose a ton of performance using it which is also a downside beyond just paying to get better. Because realistically its more than just needing a 4090 to get decent performance, you still sacrifice significant performance to use it even on that card.

I stand by my reasoning because the argument used in favor of it does not make sense because of the lack of performance on the cards most people use. When the games dont utilize it too heavily, most of the compared cards from both companies offer good performance (Nvidia still ahead, but not be near that much) and are beyond playable. When its heavily utilized like Cyberpunk, you see a humongous drop in performance to nearly unplayable levels except on the 4090 (4080 can do ok at 1440p ultra everything, but its average is around 60 which means its got alot of drops below that threshold).

Its true that they should work on it, but raw performance should be king because that's what the majority of games are going to care about. Plus it may take off or it may not, we don't know and all the similar techs that start or people say will revolutionize gaming that end up disappearing after a time for one reason or another. There is no telling if this will do the same (I definitely have less doubts about this one disappearing than others but still).

Their earnings in gaming are low, but they are fighting an uphill battle and have been for years. I mean Nvidia has made it very hard to compete and get big press, especially with Nvidia's attitude towards reviewers and such when they don't focus on things they want as we saw when a big reviewer didn't do enough talk about RT in a video. Not to say this generation was flawless from AMD (Far from it), but it should be performing better than it is in my opinion.

I hope they can improve performance with this redesign, will be interesting to see where it is with RDNA 4.

 

[AusWolf]

imo some of the resistance to RT in this thread may be because AMD is behind Nvidia in RT but this very article is saying that AMD could be moving forward to improve considerably their GPU's performance in handling RT. If it does work out to be true then maybe moving the tech forward won't be so bad after all. For now RT is optional so it's not a threat to anyone with older GPUs or GPUs that don't handle RT as well. If RT isn't the future then Nvidia is wasting their time and if AMD is improving RT in their upcoming GPUs then they are wasting their time as well but what if they aren't and we will benefit in the future?

My resistance is because both AMD and Nvidia are crap at RT. The only card that can do it properly is the 4090 which has a 450 W TDP and the price tag of a used car. The rest of their lineup being a touch better than AMD doesn't help because it's still well within unusable territory. A few extra percent won't help. If both AMD and Nvidia can improve to a level where RT is actually enjoyable on a mid-range card, then I'll welcome it.

 

[Godrilla]

My resistance is because both AMD and Nvidia are crap at RT. The only card that can do it properly is the 4090 which has a 450 W TDP and the price tag of a used car. The rest of their lineup being a touch better than AMD doesn't help because it's still well within unusable territory. A few extra percent won't help. If both AMD and Nvidia can improve to a level where RT is actually enjoyable on a mid-range card, then I'll welcome it.

I said this when the 4090 dropped until the lowest common denominator has the rt capability of of the 4090 specifically the console hardware rt will be a niche enthusiast level experience. We probably will not be there until PS6/pro.