Discussion AMD raytracing - will it ever improve or even beat RTX?

[igor_kavinski]

AMD Announces Radeon Raytracing Analyzer - Phoronix

The optimist in me says that AMD has released this to increase the value of their 6000 series cards so developers can make them perform better in raytracing scenes by utilizing hybrid raytracing instead of full-on raytracing.

My inner pessimist, however, tells me that AMD's 7000 series won't be able to improve raytracing power that much and since hybrid raytracing is the thing consoles are using anyway, AMD isn't too worried and just expects that developers porting console games with hybrid raytracing over to the PC will appreciate that they don't have to do too much work for supporting Radeons.

 

[CakeMonster]

I have no idea, but I noted that RT performance did not seem to increase more than regular raster from Turing to Ampere, and we'll soon know if NV are willing to put more into it with Lovelace. Maybe NV aren't in a hurry either.

 

[DiogoDX]

I think the AMD RT performance evolution will mirror their tesselation evolution. Only by the 3rd gen (7970) they had good tesselation perf and I am expectiong to be the same with RT, so RDNA4 will have good RT perf. Of course that RDNA3 will be better but I am no expecting any huge gains.

 

[biostud]

Ever is a long time. But just as we have seen with their recent openGL drivers, software can improve over time. But I guess it will take a couple of generations.

 

[Frenetic Pony]

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: RTX is a Redacted marketing term of the sort Nvidia is great at creating. Raytracing is just an engineering standard and there's no special term for it. It's like if Porsche started saying they had an exclusive safety feature called "ISX" and boasting about how much safer every car with ISX was and how great an innovation it was and it was just seatbelts.

Anyway RDNA3 has much better dedicated raytracing acceleration and may well just be faster than Nvidia across the board, and Intel's one engineering win might be raytracing acceleration as well, if they can ever get everything else to work well which is a key point. "Just focusing on raytracing performance-" isn't a thing. It's like saying safety should only be focused on seatbelt performance, meanwhile the car doesn't have brakes or a windshield.

What part of no profanity in the tech forums is so difficult to understand?
admin allisolm

 

[Leeea]

Yes

The directx standard moved to dxr 1.1, standardized raytracing is now based off of AMDs implementation rather then nvidias. While nvidia will continue to lead in the older dxr1.0 standard, with most console developers targeting dxr1.1 that will increasingly matter less.

AMD will never win with the rx6000 series, but the rx7000 series will likely break even with nvidia for titles not specifically optimized for nvidia. Consoles will likely see a mid-generation refresh based around this.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The directx standard moved to dxr 1.1, standardized raytracing is now based off of AMDs implementation rather then nvidias. While nvidia will continue to lead in the older dxr1.0 standard, with most console developers targeting dxr1.1 that will increasingly matter less.

Wow. I didn't know that. That's why in some games (RE Village), RX 6000 is almost as good as Geforce RTX. That's very heartening to know.

 

[HurleyBird]

AMD Announces Radeon Raytracing Analyzer - Phoronix

The optimist in me says that AMD has released this to increase the value of their 6000 series cards so developers can make them perform better in raytracing scenes by utilizing hybrid raytracing instead of full-on raytracing.

My inner pessimist, however, tells me that AMD's 7000 series won't be able to improve raytracing power that much and since hybrid raytracing is the thing consoles are using anyway, AMD isn't too worried and just expects that developers porting console games with hybrid raytracing over to the PC will appreciate that they don't have to do too much work for supporting Radeons.

Whether you have strong ray tracing or weak ray tracing, you still want developers to optimize for your architecture. I wouldn't read too much into it.

 

[Hotrod2go]

Ray tracing? Imo purely depends on the game being played & if the player wants to turn it on.
It seems like its a bit of a hype game with this tech.
When I come across a game I actually like that has that tech, cross that bridge when I get there. But for now, I have 0 interest in it.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Ray tracing? Imo purely depends on the game being played & if the player wants to turn it on.
It seems like its a bit of a hype game with this tech.
When I come across a game I actually like that has that tech, cross that bridge when I get there. But for now, I have 0 interest in it.

RT reflections in Cyberpunk are pretty cool, but other than that I am very MEH about it too. When Digital Foundry compares the various quality settings for it ad nauseum, I usually chuckle at some point. I am ambivalent about whether or not the shadows under the cars look correct. E.G. When I game on one of my old school or really low end systems, shadow quality is the first thing to go if I need the performance.

Hopefully RT reflections in Spiderman will be a nice showcase for the tech.

 

[Mopetar]

In general maybe, but Nvidia can easily afford to pay enough developers to use their proprietary API or some other NV optimized framework so that there are a few titles that make them the undisputed king.

Personally I don't care as for most games the added RT visuals aren't something I'll notice as much as the performance hit. Unless it's an atmospheric title where I'm meant to be moving slow and soaking in the visuals, I won't notice the better reflection of an explosion in a puddle off to the side when I'm trying not to get my character killed.

We're close to due for a new gimmick and it's hard to tell how much RT will be pushed when there's something new and exciting to talk about instead.

 

[Saylick]

In general maybe, but Nvidia can easily afford to pay enough developers to use their proprietary API or some other NV optimized framework so that there are a few titles that make them the undisputed king.

Personally I don't care as for most games the added RT visuals aren't something I'll notice as much as the performance hit. Unless it's an atmospheric title where I'm meant to be moving slow and soaking in the visuals, I won't notice the better reflection of an explosion in a puddle off to the side when I'm trying not to get my character killed.

We're close to due for a new gimmick and it's hard to tell how much RT will be pushed when there's something new and exciting to talk about instead.

I share the same sentiment. RT as eye candy doesn't really do it for me, but maybe that's because I grew up playing games that are very low resolution by today's standards, yet were highly enjoyable. At the end of the day, I think having great gameplay and storyline are far more important than eye candy. Just look at Cyperpunk 2077 as an example; it may be graphically pretty, but the game launched with a bunch of broken game mechanics and mediocre story that it's a forgettable game in my opinion.

Even if RT became widespread in games, if it results in a large performance hit while offering nothing to gameplay, I don't think it matters all that much. RT won't be important until some game developer builds a AAA title with RT as a fundamental game mechanic such that the game is literally unplayable unless you could render photo-realistic reflections, sort of like how in-game physics weren't really all that important until you had interactable and/or destructible environments that actually affected gameplay, e.g. Half Life 2.

 

[Leeea]

We're close to due for a new gimmick

N3D, the next revolution in 3d positional audio, provided for by your graphics card! Using propertiary Nvidia technology, uses the information to render your 3d game to also render a 3d sound stage! Feel your games come to life! Realistic sound like you have never heard before!

Available now starting at $4090! IT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND! A must have for VR setups!

 

[Leeea]

Introducing nVR, a revolutionary VR headset from Nvidia and the only headset the supports n3d natively!

Dual displays capable of 2400 nits each! Focused directly to you eyeballs with our patented nBeam crystals. A mind searing experience like no other!

The n3d surround system built into the headset is capable of an impactful 180 db per ear! Feel the incoming artillery rounds inside your skull!


Our experience is so real it requires military grade eye and ear protection, just like real life!

Pairs well with our sensomatic sensation system! Feel the bullets* hitting you body! So real it even features real blood loss using your own blood!

*Only compatible with genuine nvbullets**, using standard 9mm voids the warranty

**contains substances know to cause cancer to the state of California

 

[VirtualLarry]

N3D, the next revolution in 3d positional audio, provided for by your graphics card! Using propertiary Nvidia technology, uses the information to render your 3d game to also render a 3d sound stage! Feel your games come to life! Realistic sound like you have never heard before!

Available now starting at $4090! IT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND! A must have for VR setups!

You laugh now, but that was actually a thing, the Aureal Vortex with WaveTracing (tm). It was awesome, for hearing the footsteps echoing off of the geometry of the level in UT.

Also, did you know that NVidia's first video card chip the NV-1 (hadn't been coined "GPU" yet), rendered quadratic patches, had built-in audio synthesis, and came with Sega Saturn (tm) controller ports, along with ports of some of their Saturn games for PC.

 

[igor_kavinski]

So Nvidia started out as a sincere company devoted to satisfying gamers. It's sad that they had to become evil. Money makes everything worse.

 

[Leeea]

You laugh now, but that was actually a thing, the Aureal Vortex with WaveTracing (tm). It was awesome, for hearing the footsteps echoing off of the geometry of the level in UT.

Also, did you know that NVidia's first video card chip the NV-1 (hadn't been coined "GPU" yet), rendered quadratic patches, had built-in audio synthesis, and came with Sega Saturn (tm) controller ports, along with ports of some of their Saturn games for PC.

I own 2xA3D cards, the original half life and descent 2 games were amazing with A3D.

Creative had thier own tech, eax which was a muddy joke, so they sued aureal and lost. The suit cost aureal so much money they went into bankruptcy even though they won, was aquired by creative labs, and the tech was promptly killed.

Everything since has been inferior.

Boycott creative labs for all time.

 

[igor_kavinski]

What the hell, Creative!? Those bastards also "compelled" John Carmack to use EAX in Doom 3.

Maybe the Aureal tech lives on in X-Fi?

 

[Leeea]

Maybe the Aureal tech lives on in X-Fi?

I do not believe so, but Microsoft quietly murdered x-fi.

Creative won their war on A3D, killed the technology, and prevented anyone from downloading drivers for aureal sound cards.

This made Microsoft very unhappy. Microsoft then released their own drivers for Aureal sound cards:
https://treexy.com/products/driver-...ntrollers/microsoft/aureal-vortex-8830-audio/

Around this time a video emerged of a Microsoft engineer complaining about the subject.

X-Fi first shows up in 2005. Microsoft had not forgotten, and X-Fi pointedly did not receive d3d support. It was also a bit of an ugly hack that did not play nice.

Microsoft then turned and forced direct sound to be used starting with Vista. Direct Sound also continued to not support creatives special sauce.

By 2009 creative gave up, and open sourced x-fi into Open AL. This also revealed why the X-Fi tech failed, the developers of games have to take the time to render an Open AL scene, using a OpenGL like engine. Open AL also still requires creatives propertiary hardware, as nobody else ever implemented it.


Anyway, the patents for head-related transfer function (HRTF) audio were owned by creative labs. But those only last 20 years.

3rd parties are now starting to move into the scene:

Steam Audio

valvesoftware.github.io

Steam Audio was last updated 18 days ago, so perhaps we will see better days soon enough.

Steam audio also plays nice with Microsoft direct sound. Curious how that all suddenly works now.

 

[eek2121]

Ray Tracing can make some beautiful games. The issue is that it would take a large increase in performance combined with a stunning game designed around Ray Tracing to get more buy in. Until there is buy in, GPU manufacturers have little incentive to invest heavily. Honestly, I think we need a 3rd party to jump in and create a dedicated RT accelerator card and partner with a few companies to add support to major games. 3DFX did this and look where we are now? Doing something like this takes a ton of time and money, of course, so I would not hold my breath.

Hopefully NVIDIA/AMD will keep iterating.

Oh, and if you want to see decent RT, check out the NVIDIA marbles demo if you have a 3080 or 3090.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Oh, and if you want to see decent RT, check out the NVIDIA marbles demo if you have a 3080 or 3090.

I don't know if anything has changed but by default it needs 11GB VRAM. Forcing 3080 10GB owners to manually edit a file. Also, does it run on RX 6x00?

 

[soresu]

What the hell, Creative!? Those bastards also "compelled" John Carmack to use EAX in Doom 3.

Carmack himself was no saint.

He allowed game devs (including a former iD employee) to license the Wolfenstein IP for a named sequel to Wolfenstein 3D - this would turn out to be Rise of the Triad.

He then waited until the game was almost finished to withdraw the license so that it would not take attention away from Doom II's own release.

This effectively forced them to remake much of the game from scratch - both delaying the game and eating into what would have been their profits.

As a business strategy it's sound, but on a basic human level that was just some cold blooded maneuvering - no saint and then some.

I can only assume that Raven Software had a cast iron agreement after this to ensure he didn't pull anything like it again.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I was not expecting this thread to go this direction, but I like it. Some of you cats can really hold a grudge. You have been grinding those axes so long they are just the haft now.

While we are all kicking the printer in the field, I will add that Sound Blaster was the scourge of PC system stability BITD. There were so many troubleshooting threads that came down to - So, you bought a Sound Blaster...

 

[igor_kavinski]

Heh. I never graduated beyond basic Sound Blaster 16 compatibility in that era. Creative branded cards were just too expensive for me back then. I guess it was a blessing in disguise for me.

 

[igor_kavinski]

He then waited until the game was almost finished to withdraw the license so that it would not take attention away from Doom II's own release.

Wikipedia states that it was John Romero who announced the decision to Scott Miller. I can understand John Carmack being difficult. He's a Leo, after all. I wouldn't want to be in any sort of direct relationship with him (been burned by Leos almost always).

It sucks that John Carmack got out of the 3D engine race. I guess when he saw how far everyone else had progressed, he just decided to focus on something else. It would have been cool to have a fully raytraced tech demo of Doom 3 from him. He usually gives it his best and it would have been something worthy of experiencing at least once in life.