AMD Navi 23 ‘NVIDIA Killer’ GPU Rumored to Support Hardware Ray Tracing, Coming Next Year

[LoadsaMoney]

GT7 the RT reflections looked 1/4th resolution to me. Might hint at how they're doing it. Game looked good overall, don't get me wrong, but as nice as the RT bells & whistles are, they were still showing severe limitations like short shadow casting & visible pop-in, not to mention the weak textures & geometry.

eg re reflections:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49995822378_5b19915beb_o.jpg

The reflection of the Blue car on the right, definitely looks to be in a lower res, the tyres are more angular, and it looks more jaggy, especially around the wheel arches.

Can really see it when you zoom in.

The bloke with the headphones on kneeling down at the front wheel, has gone Grey

 

[danlightbulb]

who polished that floor?

Yeah that degree of reflection in a concrete screed floor is not realistic, looks a bit stupid really.

 

[JediFragger]

Another thing also all Ray tracing games released so far should just work on RDNA2 on release off the GPU.

Only if DirectX RT compatible iirc?

 

[humbug]

GT7 the RT reflections looked 1/4th resolution to me. Might hint at how they're doing it. Game looked good overall, don't get me wrong, but as nice as the RT bells & whistles are, they were still showing severe limitations like short shadow casting & visible pop-in, not to mention the weak textures & geometry.

eg re reflections:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49995822378_5b19915beb_o.jpg

all screenshots here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/playstationblog/albums/with/72157714665725511

This looks utterly ridiculous, its reflection for reflections sake....

The reflection of the Blue car on the right, definitely looks to be in a lower res, the tyres are more angular, and it looks more jaggy, especially around the wheel arches.

Can really see it when you zoom in.

The bloke with the headphones on kneeling down at the front wheel, has gone Grey

I don't think its supposed to be a mirror image, it would look even more ridiculous if it was... there needs to be some distinction between the environment and the reflection of it.

 

[varkanoid]

This looks utterly ridiculous, its reflection for reflections sake....

At first I thought the outside was non RT and inside was RT to show a comparison but that floor looks like a mirror. Or the T1000 is here.

 

[humbug]

At first I thought the outside was non RT and inside was RT to show a comparison but that floor looks like a mirror. Or the T1000 is here.

Not quite, i edited my post, its still over the top....

 

[melmac]

RDNA 2 will have hardware acceleration Ray Tracing how AMD uses this is still up in the air.

They might off load a set amount to Ray tracing and have them accelerated and when not Ray tracing the game will just use all the CU available.

I am sure they will have hardware accelerated Ray Tracing, but from all the info leaked so far is that they don't use dedicated Ray Tracing hardware.

The second line of your post is why I am concerned about the performance in Ray Tracing. Ray Tracing and Rasterization will be using the same GPU resources. Currently Ray Tracing is a hybrid solution and Ray Tracing performance depends heavily on rasterized performance. If you have to lower your raster performance to enable Ray Tracing then you also reduce your Ray Tracing performance.

Another thing also all Ray tracing games released so far should just work on RDNA2 on release off the GPU.
Games will most likely need a patch though but it should work.
They are not RTX titles they are DirectX Ray-Tracing

Yes, you really need to explain that to some of the AMD faithful on this forum.

 

[danlightbulb]

The second line of your post is why I am concerned about the performance in Ray Tracing. Ray Tracing and Rasterization will be using the same GPU resources. Currently Ray Tracing is a hybrid solution and Ray Tracing performance depends heavily on rasterized performance. If you have to lower your raster performance to enable Ray Tracing then you also reduce your Ray Tracing performance.

Which would you prefer:
1. A GPU with dedicated RT hardware that does 100fps in games with RT on and 100fps in games with RT off.
2. A GPU with non dedicated RT hardware that does 100fps in games with RT on and 120fps in games with RT off.

Because the way I see it, for two identical GPUs, if one can utilise its 'RT' section to increase performance when RT is not being used, surely that is better?

 

[melmac]

Since you are going to suffer a performance drop anyway that approach might not be that bad(or maybe it will)

just an example you max out a game and turn Ray tracing on you get say 10%(estimate) frame rate drop with the dedicated ray tracing cores.

what if instead you just removed (reallocated) some of the normal cores(equal to a 10% performance drop as above) and use them for ray tracing when needed?
you get the same performance drop but you don't have expensive additional hardware not used for anything else?

Obviously the dedicated approach will be much better in the end but only when there is enough grunt to keep up.

Disclaimer: the above may not make any sense at all.

What?? You aren't understanding anything. AMD's solution, going by the info so far, doesn't have any dedicated RT cores. It's all Normal cores. So if you have 100% of your CU cores for normal gaming. When you turn on Ray Tracing and that used 20% of the cores, you will only have 80% of your CU cores for the normal rendering.

 

[danlightbulb]

What?? You aren't understanding anything. AMD's solution, going by the info so far, doesn't have any dedicated RT cores. It's all Normal cores. So if you have 100% of your CU cores for normal gaming. When you turn on Ray Tracing and that used 20% of the cores, you will only have 80% of your CU cores for the normal rendering.

But the Nvidia GPU will only have 80% of its cores for normal rendering full stop, because 20% are dedicated to RT?

So isn't it the same?

 

[humbug]

Ray Tracing works best with dedicated hardware, like RT cores.

However far from what Nvidia would have you believe Ray Tracing works without dedicated hardware and if properly implemented and optimized can work very well.

Nvidia do not have a monopoly on Ray Tracing, Crytek to name just one who have had Ray Tracing in their game engines for some years before Nvidia turned it in to a marketing slogan, SOVGI for example.... this is Ray Tracing that ran perfectly well on Maxwell and GCN GPU's.

 

[humbug]

Ray Tracing works best with dedicated hardware, like RT cores.

However far from what Nvidia would have you believe Ray Tracing works without dedicated hardware and if properly implemented and optimized can work very well.

Nvidia do not have a monopoly on Ray Tracing, Crytek to name just one who have had Ray Tracing in their game engines for some years before Nvidia turned it in to a marketing slogan, SOVGI for example.... this is Ray Tracing that ran perfectly well on Maxwell and GCN GPU's.

SOVGI is Ray Traced Global Illumination.

 

[melmac]

Which would you prefer:
1. A GPU with dedicated RT hardware that does 100fps in games with RT on and 100fps in games with RT off.
2. A GPU with non dedicated RT hardware that does 100fps in games with RT on and 120fps in games with RT off.

Because the way I see it, for two identical GPUs, if one can utilise its 'RT' section to increase performance when RT is not being used, surely that is better?

You are looking at this entirely the wrong way or completely misunderstanding things.

For a start, question 1. Currently it's about a 50% drop in performance when you turn on Ray Tracing. So Question 1 should be

1. A GPU with Dedicated hardware that does 100FPS in games with RT on and 200FPS in games with RT off.

For AMD's solution, there is no RT section. It's just using the same GPU resources as normal gaming does. There is no free increase in performance.

Do you understand?

 

[danlightbulb]

If you had two identical GPUs both with 100 cores:

GPU 1 is configured for 80 cores for rasterisation, and 20 cores for raytracing. They cannot cross over.

GPU2 is configured so that when RT is on, 20 of those cores are used, leaving 80 for rasterisation. But when RT is off, you have the full 100 available for rasterisation.

For otherwise identical GPUs, performance when RT is on should be the same. But when RT is off, GPU2 has more cores available and should be faster.

Hypothetically, this is correct. But we're comparing different hardware so it won't be. All that matters is what the performance is like with RT on and off, and the price. How they do it doesn't really matter.

 

[melmac]

But the Nvidia GPU will only have 80% of its cores for normal rendering full stop, because 20% are dedicated to RT?

So isn't it the same?

Nvidia has dedicated RT cores to do the Ray Tracing that are entirely separate from the cores used in normal gaming.

 

[melmac]

If you had two identical GPUs both with 100 cores:

GPU 1 is configured for 80 cores for rasterisation, and 20 cores for raytracing. They cannot cross over.

GPU2 is configured so that when RT is on, 20 of those cores are used, leaving 80 for rasterisation. But when RT is off, you have the full 100 available for rasterisation.

For otherwise identical GPUs, performance when RT is on should be the same. But when RT is off, GPU2 has more cores available and should be faster.

Hypothetically, this is correct. But we're comparing different hardware so it won't be. All that matters is what the performance is like with RT on and off, and the price. How they do it doesn't really matter.

No, you don't understand at all.

 

[danlightbulb]

No, you don't understand at all.

Yes I do. You're just coming at it from the other side as it were.

For otherwise identical GPUs - one that is able to switch cores from RT over to raster should be faster than one that can't, in raster.

In real life they are not identical so it does matter of course. Why should we care how they do it, all we care about is performance and price don't we?

 

[humbug]

For as long as Nvidia have dedicated Ray Tracing Hardware in their GPU's they will be better at it, no getting away from that... however that comes at a die space cost, a cost that is passed on to you.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

For as long as Nvidia have dedicated Ray Tracing Hardware in their GPU's they will be better at it, no getting away from that... however that comes at a die space cost, a cost that is passed on to you.

No it doesn't, when the 57s were released, they were the same price as the 2070s, so based on that, id say you were getting the extra HW for RT, for free.

 

[KillBoY_UK]

SOVGI is Ray Traced Global Illumination.

voxel-based so quite different in application