AMD is Taking Time with Radeon RX 9000 to Optimize Software and FSR 4

[Jtuck9]

Control? It was THE poster game for RT (and DLSS) with Turing.

Ah. I've got a mod bookmarked but It looks like that just improves upon what is already there. It's on the backlog!

 

[Chrispy_]

I don't think the 5090 and 5080 are that important in this regard. They're both priced way out of reach of people looking for a 5070-level card. We've also learned in the last 2-3 generations that the performance of the halo card has little to no effect on the rest of the product stack. Personally, I won't even read their reviews in entirety, just the architectural differences, because how much faster, hungrier and more expensive we can go above the 4090, I honestly don't care.

The 5090 is going to be vaporware; Outside of the very wealthy willing to pay more than businesses who will be queueing for stock and able to justify spending 3000, 4000, 5000+ on a 5090.

The 5080 will be the GPU to try and get, and if you want one get in the limited-stock queue for the $999 founders edition directly from Nvidia because all of the AIB models are being listed at $1200+

 

[Onasi]

Because if NVIDIA doesn't increase its generation-on-generation performance in every aspect, the reviewers and buying public are going to trash them, and their investors will be mad. So NVIDIA, which literally doesn't care about rasterisation anymore, has to keep delivering linear rasterisation improvements anyway with more of the same old fixed-function rasterisation hardware, at the same time they deliver far greater RT improvements with new fixed-function hardware. At some stage I expect that they will either merge the rasterisation and RT hardware somewhat to prevent so much duplication, or be able to reuse the RT hardware to emulate rasterisation workloads, or possibly some combination of the two. Knowing NVIDIA they're already working hard on this problem.

There’s another reason that’s not exactly gaming related or at least not fully - a lot of professional software, be it 3D rendering, video editing or compute still are based around using shader cores for doing what they are doing. NV can’t really just come out with an architecture lacking those capabilities since they’d very much like to sell to that market as well. Tensor Cores and RT cores are a solution for THAT particular problem as much (well, more so) as for gaming - separating pure compute and RT hardware to make sure they are still present for most common professional uses down the line when unified shaders will start to get wound down.

 

[AusWolf]

they deliver far greater RT improvements with new fixed-function hardware.

Do they really?

At some stage I expect that they will either merge the rasterisation and RT hardware somewhat to prevent so much duplication, or be able to reuse the RT hardware to emulate rasterisation workloads, or possibly some combination of the two. Knowing NVIDIA they're already working hard on this problem.

It doesn't look like it for now. This is Turing vs Blackwell. I assume that if Nvidia really was working on this problem, then we would see at least some indication by the 4th generation of their RT hardware.

Close your eyes and tell me how much you see. Now reconsider your statement that light is "just a portion" of the world.

I worded it badly. I'm tired after work.

What I meant is, there's geometry, textures and physics as well. How do you do all of it without raster?

There are multiple reasons for this.

• Rasterisation has become incredibly good at simulating the real world, so good that the basic RT we currently have isn't able to outperform it visually. That's a consequence of literally decades of work on rasterisation, and far less on RT.

Possibly.

• You've become used to how rasterisation simulates the real world, so games using rasterisation don't look "off" to you, even when their rendering is actually incorrect compared to the real world.

Why would you think that RT is always correct? I've seen it make errors. There was someone posting a screenshot in another thread not long ago of RT casting shadows that it logically shouldn't.

It was a desert scene. I can't remember which thread it was in.

Also, how is correct = good? I mean, photorealism isn't the only way for a game's graphics to be visually pleasing.

• Conversely your brain gets used to RT quickly, because the latter does such a good job at simulating the real world.

Then why does my brain get used to no RT equally quickly? My conclusion is that both raster and RT do a pretty good job these days, just differently.

The 5080 will be the GPU to try and get, and if you want one get in the limited-stock queue for the $999 founders edition directly from Nvidia because all of the AIB models are being listed at $1200+

So much markup for AIB cards! You could buy a whole GPU for such price. Total ripoff on AIBs, total ripoff on cunsumers.

 

[Vayra86]

Completely and utterly wrong. Real-time ray tracing is the future of graphics rendering, despite how many times you and others like you attempt to poo-poo it. Its uptake has simply been delayed by a number of factors:

• It's a complete paradigm shift compared to rasterisation - you don't just need appropriate tools, but the appropriate mindset. Game developers who were born and raised on rasterisation are going to take time to get to grips with RT, and especially will have to unlearn a vast quantity of the stupid bulls**t hackery required to coerce rasterisation to render things somewhat realistically.
• Game development is no longer about pushing the boundaries of technology, but making money. Even if developers want to implement RT, their managers aren't necessarily going to let them because of the extra training and development time, and thus cost. This creates inertia.
• Hardware isn't quite powerful enough to handle it yet. You might say "then it shouldn't have been introduced", but you need to make game developers aware of and comfortable with a technology sooner rather than later.
• Hardware isn't getting powerful enough at a fast enough rate to handle it. Unfortunately RT was introduced just before we hit the Moore's Law wall, which is particularly important given how hardware-intensive RT is.

RT has been the holy grail of graphics rendering forever. We may not yet be able to hold that grail, but we can at least touch it. If you'd suggested the latter would be a possibility to any computer graphics researcher a decade ago, they'd have laughed you out of the room - and yet here we are.

You don't like RT, we get it, but stop allowing that irrational dislike to blind you to the fact that RT is, in every aspect, the future of realistic graphics rendering that is superior to rasterisation in every conceivable way. In another decade, the only conversation about the latter will be in relation to graphics from before the RT era.

Its the future, but not the way it is pushed today. You've pointed out the issues, but the introduction of RT 'just before we hit Moore's Law wall' is a business strategy Nvidia deployed knowing there is an insurmountable challenge to be met. Its a fantastic business model: you can never solve this issue in real time, GPUs will never be fast enough to brute force everything. Remarkably similar to AI.

I have no issues with RT. As pointed out, its already actively being used for lots of games. I hate doing it in real time, on an entire scene, introducing an ungodly amount of latency, and I also hate paying excessive money for it like we see today. The 5090 is a 750mm2 GPU - it hits 29 FPS in PT Cyberpunk. And the cost of that 750mm2 GPU isn't going down either. The gap's just too large, and as long upscaling isn't perfect (and its not), will remain so. We can be all happy about DLSS4 now, but the latency is here to stay regardless.

So far, the overall situation and deal I'm offered just still looks unconvincing and more like an Nvidia clusterfuck than anything else. Not convinced. Not buying into it.

Its a similar thing to me as VR. Sure, there are some niche situations where it really makes a dent (especially if you run into your TV)... but its not viable economically yet. You require an expensive headset (that's not perfect either), higher FPS thus more GPU, and a special suite of games. It hasn't taken off, and it won't, with that set of conditions. Now, for RT, you need an expensive GPU (that's not going to last either, and effectively already struggles from day one), you need an upscale to get playable FPS, and you need a special suite of games. See the similarities?

Now, some reflection on the beginning of this circus:

Back when SIGGRAPH happened and Huang told us this was the future, and Turing launched shortly after... a lot of people shared the idea this could take 2-3 generations before it actually took off and 10 years for the real change. Where are we now? 3 generations, six years ahead... 95%+ of all games are still built entirely on a non-RT framework. So we have four years left for that paradigm shift. I think its safe to add another six on top.

 

[AusWolf]

Its the future, but not the way it is pushed today. You've pointed out the issues, but the introduction of RT 'just before we hit Moore's Law wall' is a business strategy Nvidia deployed knowing there is an insurmountable challenge to be met. Its a fantastic business model: you can never solve this issue in real time, GPUs will never be fast enough to brute force everything.

Yet, here we are, brute forcing our way into everything for 4 Nvidia generations straight. The architecture doesn't change much, we just get more parts crammed into a tighter space.

If RT really was the future, then I'd like to see some indication that we're moving towards more RT-oriented architectures. But for now, RT cores are still just an add-on, and not really improved, either.

 

[Vayra86]

Yet, here we are, brute forcing our way into everything for 4 Nvidia generations straight. The architecture doesn't change much, we just get more parts crammed into a tighter space.

If RT really was the future, then I'd like to see some indication that we're moving towards more RT-oriented architectures. But for now, RT cores are still just an add-on, and not really improved, either.

Yeah we are... with abysmal performance and artifacting everywhere. Wooptiedoo

 

[remekra]

That paradigm shift will happen once new consoles are out. No dev studio will make heavy use of RT or PT if the consoles can't run it.
So yeah we are still couple of years away from it.

 

[Vayra86]

It does look awesome in places. I just think you need a directors touch. Reminds me of procedural generation in that aspect.

It does, and hey... isn't that director's touch exactly the same touch you wanted on that archaic lighting on all those awesome games we already have?

That's the point. Shitty devs aren't going to be any less shitty because they can optimize a workflow now. They're just going to have a lower budget to work with. It is the same thing @BSim500 just pointed out and I did too in another post elsewhere; those hours saved on doing lighting aren't going to be spent elsewhere. They're going to be cut. I have yet to see the numbers of both approaches, too. Is it really faster, really cheaper? Or will you never really master your own engine and game that way and develop the same efficiency yourself? We're already seeing that happen in front of us with the stream of UE engine based games that run like absolute horse manure and don't even look good doing so. The gameplay is often nothing to write home about either. But yeah, they managed to release a game. yay. They also managed to foot part of their bill to our GPUs.