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.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

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).

This is a tech forum. Homie don't play that daily horoscope nonsense. I can't even with that.

 

[Leeea]

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

Carmack himself was no saint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_4

This fully realtime approach used in Doom 3, combined with the use of shadow volumes permitted more realistic lighting and shadows[14] than in the previous generation of id's engines. The method used to create the shadow volumes is the subject of a patent by Creative, which Creative granted id permission to use in the Doom 3 engine, in exchange for supporting Creative's EAX advanced sound technologies.[15]

In short, Creative Labs patent trolled him into it.

Id software did not have a choice in the matter.

 

[soresu]

In short, Creative Labs patent trolled him into it.

I can think of worse things to be saddled with.

Windows is working its way up there more with every passing year 😂🤣

Better that than them charging an obscene amount for the licensing/royalties.

 

[soresu]

It sucks that John Carmack got out of the 3D engine race

I got the impression that his voxel based iD Tech 6 was not progressing as well as he hoped, and as you remarked by the time he rededicated himself to more mainstream methods the alternatives in the marked had progressed too far to compete with.

 

[Hotrod2go]

Is raytracing that good? like all aesthetics, its subjective to a degree.

 

[BoomerD]

Is raytracing that good? like all aesthetics, its subjective to a degree.

I've been running an RTX 2070 for the past 3 years. Does RT improve lighting effects? Sure. Is it a game-changing thing? IMO, no. It's a bit of nice eye candy, but (at least with my particular card) it's not "all that and a bag of chips."

That being said, if I can't replace the fan on my 2070, I'll PROBABLY replace the card with a 3070...for the RT and DLSS effects. When the game supports them, they seem like a nice boost. (plus, nearly all the various reviewers have the 3070 ahead of the RX 6700XT and 6750 XT card from AMD.)

 

[Hotrod2go]

I've been running an RTX 2070 for the past 3 years. Does RT improve lighting effects? Sure. Is it a game-changing thing? IMO, no. It's a bit of nice eye candy, but (at least with my particular card) it's not "all that and a bag of chips."

That being said, if I can't replace the fan on my 2070, I'll PROBABLY replace the card with a 3070...for the RT and DLSS effects. When the game supports them, they seem like a nice boost. (plus, nearly all the various reviewers have the 3070 ahead of the RX 6700XT and 6750 XT card from AMD.)

Guess it depends on how its implemented. I've committed to the RX 6800 XT for a good while yet - with a factory OC but haven't done any benching or playing RT supported stuff yet. If the player is into fast moving action games like shooters for example, RT may seem a minor thing.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Guess it depends on how its implemented. I've committed to the RX 6800 XT for a good while yet - with a factory OC but haven't done any benching or playing RT supported stuff yet. If the player is into fast moving action games like shooters for example, RT may seem a minor thing.

Some titles look utterly flat once I turn off ray tracing. Spider man on PS5 (soon PC) and cyberpunk are the best examples so far. I cannot unsee the difference.

 

[Hotrod2go]

Some titles look utterly flat once I turn off ray tracing. Spider man on PS5 (soon PC) and cyberpunk are the best examples so far. I cannot unsee the difference.

Like anything in life, if you haven't experienced it then you don't know what your missing.

 

[BoomerD]

Like anything in life, if you haven't experienced it then you don't know what your missing.

Yeah, but..."How ya gonna keep them down on the farm, after they've seen Paree?" seems appropriate.
(yeah, I know...I'm old.)

 

[psolord]

Some titles look utterly flat once I turn off ray tracing. Spider man on PS5 (soon PC) and cyberpunk are the best examples so far. I cannot unsee the difference.

...and let me add Guardians of the Galaxy too. I play it on a 3060ti and a GTX 1070, in different locations and there is a stark difference.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I remember being awed by Splinter Cell's shadows and lighting effects when it came out. Hopefully, the remake will be a true RT showcase.

 

[Topweasel]

I've been running an RTX 2070 for the past 3 years. Does RT improve lighting effects? Sure. Is it a game-changing thing? IMO, no. It's a bit of nice eye candy, but (at least with my particular card) it's not "all that and a bag of chips."

That being said, if I can't replace the fan on my 2070, I'll PROBABLY replace the card with a 3070...for the RT and DLSS effects. When the game supports them, they seem like a nice boost. (plus, nearly all the various reviewers have the 3070 ahead of the RX 6700XT and 6750 XT card from AMD.)

Like any hardware when the technology is first launched nothing has the horsepower to really do anything with it. Eventually it will be worth it, proper light effects are going to be the next big thing in adding realism to games. But as it is now and probably for the next 10 years (assume 5 to get the hardware there and another 5 for software developers to feel there is enough power out there to really crank it in their engines) it will look better, it will look like it has proper lighting, but we will see that phallacy later.

We also have to remember that much like when Nvidia purchased Havok. RTX only exists as an offshoot of Nvidia finding a use for their Tensor cores that they needed for their HPC and DC implementations. If Nvidia shifts their die spending on Tensor or drops it for something that works better in the DC but isn't great for RT, thats the death of RTX. Same with AMD. They aren't dedicating nearly as much in terms of raw die space to their RT efforts. But if AMD decides that their next design performs much better at the cost of RT performance. Then all of a sudden Raytracing could die. I don't think so, like I said when there is enough horsepower in the GPU to truly perfect lighting, we will wonder how we lived without it. But this isn't GLQuake, a sudden OMG moment where game development has to have a seismic shift.

 

[soresu]

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...

Oh for certain, I rue the day I bought my PCIe X-Fi card.

Months of bad audio (pops/static) and crashing - just no, No, NOPE.

It was the last Creative product I ever bought.

It was so bad I moved to using a whole AV receiver through my gfx card HDMI output for 5 years 😂🤣

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Oh for certain, I rue the day I bought my PCIe X-Fi card.

Months of bad audio (pops/static) and crashing - just no, No, NOPE.

It was the last Creative product I ever bought.

It was so bad I moved to using a whole AV receiver through my gfx card HDMI output for 5 years 😂🤣

It's the only way to go in the living room for me.

The last Creative Sound Blaster I had was integrated on a MSI skt939 board. It was pretty good as I recall. That was the last time I used their audio.

 

[soresu]

It's the only way to go in the living room for me.

The last Creative Sound Blaster I had was integrated on a MSI skt939 board. It was pretty good as I recall. That was the last time I used their audio.

Don't get me wrong, AV receiver amps are great - much better insulated from mobile phone signals than my current much smaller external DAC/headphone amp setup.

But they are also huge, heavy and a real pain to transport in a house move (which I did twice during my 2nd university run in that time 😅).

Thankfully the 2nd time I had a fellow housemates parents to help by use of their car, but the 1st time I was desperately squeezing this whole metal boxy thing into a duffel bag to carry it all the way down the other end of the street to my next house........ I just about died after getting there, and the duffel bag had a big corner shaped hole in it thereafter 😂🤣

 

[DAPUNISHER]

@soresu

The timing of your bringing up A/Vs has aided my decision. I was kicking around replacing my aging Onkyo. I want new features like blue tooth, wi-fi, and Atmos. I have another pair of surround speakers still NIB waiting for the day.

 

[biostud]

It's the only way to go in the living room for me.

The last Creative Sound Blaster I had was integrated on a MSI skt939 board. It was pretty good as I recall. That was the last time I used their audio.

Running SB AE-7 here, it is a really good card IMHO.

 

[DeathReborn]

Like any hardware when the technology is first launched nothing has the horsepower to really do anything with it. Eventually it will be worth it, proper light effects are going to be the next big thing in adding realism to games. But as it is now and probably for the next 10 years (assume 5 to get the hardware there and another 5 for software developers to feel there is enough power out there to really crank it in their engines) it will look better, it will look like it has proper lighting, but we will see that phallacy later.

We also have to remember that much like when Nvidia purchased Havok. RTX only exists as an offshoot of Nvidia finding a use for their Tensor cores that they needed for their HPC and DC implementations. If Nvidia shifts their die spending on Tensor or drops it for something that works better in the DC but isn't great for RT, thats the death of RTX. Same with AMD. They aren't dedicating nearly as much in terms of raw die space to their RT efforts. But if AMD decides that their next design performs much better at the cost of RT performance. Then all of a sudden Raytracing could die. I don't think so, like I said when there is enough horsepower in the GPU to truly perfect lighting, we will wonder how we lived without it. But this isn't GLQuake, a sudden OMG moment where game development has to have a seismic shift.

You mean Nvidia bought PhysX right? Havok was bought by Intel then sold to Microsoft and is virtually unheard of since, a bit like PhysX & Bullet.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Played Red Faction Guerilla right now and lord almighty how the industry seems to have completely forgotten destructible structures and terrain. I still remember when physics was supposed to be the "next big thing". It's sad to see the industry regress so far on such a promising feature.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Red Faction Guerilla

Haven't played that but I can see how having realistic destruction in a game could be problematic. Gamers could collapse the structures they are inside, killing themselves. Or they could destroy stuff that is needed for story progression.

 

[Topweasel]

You mean Nvidia bought PhysX right? Havok was bought by Intel then sold to Microsoft and is virtually unheard of since, a bit like PhysX & Bullet.

Yeah for some reason I remembered Havok being company that created PhysX. But you were right it was Ageia (least that is what wikipedia is telling me). But yeah PhysX was purchased to take advantage of low level compute, they got Cuda adopted, decide they didn't need a killer app for the spare compute capability and it just becomes barely existent in their Nvidia gameworks toolbox never to be mentioned again.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Haven't played that but I can see how having realistic destruction in a game could be problematic. Gamers could collapse the structures they are inside, killing themselves. Or they could destroy stuff that is needed for story progression.

- That's literally this game (dev does a pretty decent job of preventing soft locks thanks to destruction tho). Every single structure is completely destructible right down to the ground. You can absolutely die by having low health and having a building come down on you. Its a product of its time an AA as hell so there is definitely some rough corners and jank, but holy crap is the core gameplay loop FUN.

 

[Tup3x]

Yeah for some reason I remembered Havok being company that created PhysX. But you were right it was Ageia (least that is what wikipedia is telling me). But yeah PhysX was purchased to take advantage of low level compute, they got Cuda adopted, decide they didn't need a killer app for the spare compute capability and it just becomes barely existent in their Nvidia gameworks toolbox never to be mentioned again.

As a physics engine, PhysX was very successful. Only recently Epic switched to their in house physics engine (Chaos).

Not many games used the GPU accelerated effects but they still used PhysX as physics engine. It is still probably the best option.

 

[Hotrod2go]

Like any hardware when the technology is first launched nothing has the horsepower to really do anything with it. Eventually it will be worth it, proper light effects are going to be the next big thing in adding realism to games. But as it is now and probably for the next 10 years (assume 5 to get the hardware there and another 5 for software developers to feel there is enough power out there to really crank it in their engines) it will look better, it will look like it has proper lighting, but we will see that phallacy later.

We also have to remember that much like when Nvidia purchased Havok. RTX only exists as an offshoot of Nvidia finding a use for their Tensor cores that they needed for their HPC and DC implementations. If Nvidia shifts their die spending on Tensor or drops it for something that works better in the DC but isn't great for RT, thats the death of RTX. Same with AMD. They aren't dedicating nearly as much in terms of raw die space to their RT efforts. But if AMD decides that their next design performs much better at the cost of RT performance. Then all of a sudden Raytracing could die. I don't think so, like I said when there is enough horsepower in the GPU to truly perfect lighting, we will wonder how we lived without it. But this isn't GLQuake, a sudden OMG moment where game development has to have a seismic shift.

This is the best summary of where RT is right now in the PC game world. Give it several more yrs or even more & AMD will be just as good as Nvidia or even better. And even then, the game which features RT has to be attractive to the player. It's a niche tech in early infancy.