Ray Tracing Is No Longer AMD's Achilles Heel
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Date: 2025-03-08
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Comments and reviews: 20
dalesplitstone6276
This is why AMD should have abandoned the 9070 (XT) when they decided to delay its launch.
What AMD should have done is switch over to 32GB 9070 AI32 and 32GB 9070 XT-AI32 production as soon as possible after making the decision to delay the launch. They could have easily launched the 32GB 9070 XT-AI32 at an MSRP of $899, with the 32GB 9070 AI32 having an MSRP of $829.
At the time of the launch of the 9070 AI32 and 9070 XT-AI32 since there would be no MSRP on these models, AIBs and vendors would have been free to charge whatever they want for the existing inventory of 16GB cards. But as soon as AMD made the switch to the 32GB 9070 AI32 and 9070 XT-AI32 they would have only shipped 32GB kits to their AIBs.
Once supply caught up with demand, AMD could have introduced the 24GB 9070 AI24 and 23GB 9070 XT-AI24 cards at $729 and $799 MSRPs respectively.
They could have also introduced the 24GB 9060 AI24 at an MSRP of $439 and the 24GB 9060 XT AI24 at an MSRP of $399 next month. Once again with models having lower amounts of VRAM following when supply catches up with demand. Once supply caught up with demand for these models, AMD could have introduced the 12GB 9060 for an MSRP of $299 and the 12GB 9060 XT at the MSRP of $339.
Eventually, AMD could have introduce the 16GB 9070 XT for the MSRP of $599 and the 16GB 9070 for the MSRP of $529.
AMD could even temporarily discontinue the AI models of the 9070 (XT) to rachet down the MSRP. Discontinue the 32GB 9070 AI32 and 32GB 9070 XT32 until the supply of these cards dries up, then reintroduce them at $50 lower prices while temporarily discontinuing the 24GB models. Then reintroduce the 24GB models at lower MSRPs of $629 and $699. AMD could withhold the introduction of the Founders editions of these cards until they reach their final MSRPs of $629 for the 24GB 9070 AI24, $699 for the 24GB 9070 XT-AI24, $699 for the 32GB 9070 AI32, and $749 for the 32GB 9070 XT AI32. AMD might even have slightly changed the GPU clocks and/or the speed of the VRAM to distinguish these final MSRP cards.
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This is why AMD should have abandoned the 9070 (XT) when they decided to delay its launch.
What AMD should have done is switch over to 32GB 9070 AI32 and 32GB 9070 XT-AI32 production as soon as possible after making the decision to delay the launch. They could have easily launched the 32GB 9070 XT-AI32 at an MSRP of $899, with the 32GB 9070 AI32 having an MSRP of $829.
At the time of the launch of the 9070 AI32 and 9070 XT-AI32 since there would be no MSRP on these models, AIBs and vendors would have been free to charge whatever they want for the existing inventory of 16GB cards. But as soon as AMD made the switch to the 32GB 9070 AI32 and 9070 XT-AI32 they would have only shipped 32GB kits to their AIBs.
Once supply caught up with demand, AMD could have introduced the 24GB 9070 AI24 and 23GB 9070 XT-AI24 cards at $729 and $799 MSRPs respectively.
They could have also introduced the 24GB 9060 AI24 at an MSRP of $439 and the 24GB 9060 XT AI24 at an MSRP of $399 next month. Once again with models having lower amounts of VRAM following when supply catches up with demand. Once supply caught up with demand for these models, AMD could have introduced the 12GB 9060 for an MSRP of $299 and the 12GB 9060 XT at the MSRP of $339.
Eventually, AMD could have introduce the 16GB 9070 XT for the MSRP of $599 and the 16GB 9070 for the MSRP of $529.
AMD could even temporarily discontinue the AI models of the 9070 (XT) to rachet down the MSRP. Discontinue the 32GB 9070 AI32 and 32GB 9070 XT32 until the supply of these cards dries up, then reintroduce them at $50 lower prices while temporarily discontinuing the 24GB models. Then reintroduce the 24GB models at lower MSRPs of $629 and $699. AMD could withhold the introduction of the Founders editions of these cards until they reach their final MSRPs of $629 for the 24GB 9070 AI24, $699 for the 24GB 9070 XT-AI24, $699 for the 32GB 9070 AI32, and $749 for the 32GB 9070 XT AI32. AMD might even have slightly changed the GPU clocks and/or the speed of the VRAM to distinguish these final MSRP cards.
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justinebrink4056
Just why some people are trying to play at 4k with any GPU at this point with full details and RT at the most demanding settings is just ridiculous.. What is the point The ONLY card that can handle $K and only barely in some games is the 5090 and there are actually quite a few games where it cannot handle it at full details. This generation is not yet fully geared for 4K. If you want full details at 4K buy a 5090 and be reminded that it costs 3-4 times as much as a 9070xt and it could have missing ROPS and it could burn on it's connector and it does pull more electricity than any other card on the market and you might still have games that dip below 60 to 50fps with full details at 4K..
What is the point of trying to push a 600$ card into a 4K max RT setting and belittling it for it's perfomance Put a 5070 in the same test situation and sit back and have fun.
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Just why some people are trying to play at 4k with any GPU at this point with full details and RT at the most demanding settings is just ridiculous.. What is the point The ONLY card that can handle $K and only barely in some games is the 5090 and there are actually quite a few games where it cannot handle it at full details. This generation is not yet fully geared for 4K. If you want full details at 4K buy a 5090 and be reminded that it costs 3-4 times as much as a 9070xt and it could have missing ROPS and it could burn on it's connector and it does pull more electricity than any other card on the market and you might still have games that dip below 60 to 50fps with full details at 4K..
What is the point of trying to push a 600$ card into a 4K max RT setting and belittling it for it's perfomance Put a 5070 in the same test situation and sit back and have fun.
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HappyDrunkGamer
Every path tracing game is an Nvidia sponsored title and will be very much designed for Nvidia hardware, and lets not forget what Nvidia did with hairworks and tessellation back in the day.
I think the fact that the 9070XT is beating the 7900XTX by around 20% with RT enabled despite having 2/3 of the RT hardware (64CUs/RT cores vs 96CUs/RT cores) is rather impressive, its more or less a 90% performance increase per CU and now that AMD have both decent RT hardware and more importantly a good ML based upscaler, means devs can optimise RT for AMD cards. Plus as we have seen with many true RT games (Indy, Metro Exodus EE) because they have console versions the RT IS optermised for AMD hardware and those games run great even on RDNA3 GPUs
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Every path tracing game is an Nvidia sponsored title and will be very much designed for Nvidia hardware, and lets not forget what Nvidia did with hairworks and tessellation back in the day.
I think the fact that the 9070XT is beating the 7900XTX by around 20% with RT enabled despite having 2/3 of the RT hardware (64CUs/RT cores vs 96CUs/RT cores) is rather impressive, its more or less a 90% performance increase per CU and now that AMD have both decent RT hardware and more importantly a good ML based upscaler, means devs can optimise RT for AMD cards. Plus as we have seen with many true RT games (Indy, Metro Exodus EE) because they have console versions the RT IS optermised for AMD hardware and those games run great even on RDNA3 GPUs
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RN1441
I was an ATi/AMD user from 95 to 2017 when I went over to the 1080 as it was just too good to ignore. Since then, I have been looking for a good reason to go back and while I was willing to put up with their weak RT for the 6800xt, those weren't on the shelf so I went Nvidia again. The 7000 series was just clownish with them pretending they had a 90 series competitor and those launch prices were an embarassment. Yesterday I bought a 9070XT as I agree with the thrust of this discussion: their RT is greatly improved, and the 10GB of RAM on my 3080 is already not enough for even 1440p these days.
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I was an ATi/AMD user from 95 to 2017 when I went over to the 1080 as it was just too good to ignore. Since then, I have been looking for a good reason to go back and while I was willing to put up with their weak RT for the 6800xt, those weren't on the shelf so I went Nvidia again. The 7000 series was just clownish with them pretending they had a 90 series competitor and those launch prices were an embarassment. Yesterday I bought a 9070XT as I agree with the thrust of this discussion: their RT is greatly improved, and the 10GB of RAM on my 3080 is already not enough for even 1440p these days.
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matthewungar2138
This sounds like an industry problem you all let be created letting Nvidia control new games and development features, and having game companies optimize themselves specifically for Nvidia, so now Nvidia has a seeming monopoly on best performance for these features and is now fully taking advantage of consumers with terrible retail pricing, false marketing, awful launches, and anti-consumer practices. Having to spend $1000 on a graphics card just to get good RT performance is a gaming and PC industry problem you all created. Maybe focus on that instead.
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This sounds like an industry problem you all let be created letting Nvidia control new games and development features, and having game companies optimize themselves specifically for Nvidia, so now Nvidia has a seeming monopoly on best performance for these features and is now fully taking advantage of consumers with terrible retail pricing, false marketing, awful launches, and anti-consumer practices. Having to spend $1000 on a graphics card just to get good RT performance is a gaming and PC industry problem you all created. Maybe focus on that instead.
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pcworld
Wow man wow man... We just getting started to have good fps on ultra high setting and having now ray tracing and now we have the path tracing of course its not going to blow... I mean UE5 is getting huge updates every 6months man, I highly doubt gpu could ever keep up without either a quantum boom or a nuclear micro powerplant boom... Im okay 4k, 60fps and just ray tracing for 3 more years. In 3 years will have path tracing on same level while UE5 will have god tracing wirt nanobots internal structuring or some shyt...
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Wow man wow man... We just getting started to have good fps on ultra high setting and having now ray tracing and now we have the path tracing of course its not going to blow... I mean UE5 is getting huge updates every 6months man, I highly doubt gpu could ever keep up without either a quantum boom or a nuclear micro powerplant boom... Im okay 4k, 60fps and just ray tracing for 3 more years. In 3 years will have path tracing on same level while UE5 will have god tracing wirt nanobots internal structuring or some shyt...
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pcworld
It def still needs work. Some massive msssive losses on some modern titles. It gets worse when you actually want to use ray tracing a bit higher.
Also gl amd put a time limit on sellers. 17 hours only at 600 dollars. After that sellers have to raise prices and that was only on some brands! You wont find one for less then 730 after it and most will be 800. Yay amd did an nvidia and yall wont talk about it. Sad blind hate purepy for nvidia instead of being unbias. Both did it bad this generation. Period!
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It def still needs work. Some massive msssive losses on some modern titles. It gets worse when you actually want to use ray tracing a bit higher.
Also gl amd put a time limit on sellers. 17 hours only at 600 dollars. After that sellers have to raise prices and that was only on some brands! You wont find one for less then 730 after it and most will be 800. Yay amd did an nvidia and yall wont talk about it. Sad blind hate purepy for nvidia instead of being unbias. Both did it bad this generation. Period!
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robertmyers6488
What an idiotic statement about textured light maps. I run at 6K on a 7900 XTX. It has the raster to push that and the VRAM to allow it. Do you really think the difference between canned rays and canned light maps will out do the raw beauty of ultra high resolution HDR Absurd. Not caring about canned rays allows me to do that. What good are allegedly better lighting when you have textures like that tesselation free, felt covered, mess Wukong. Enjoy your 16 year old 1440p resolution.
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What an idiotic statement about textured light maps. I run at 6K on a 7900 XTX. It has the raster to push that and the VRAM to allow it. Do you really think the difference between canned rays and canned light maps will out do the raw beauty of ultra high resolution HDR Absurd. Not caring about canned rays allows me to do that. What good are allegedly better lighting when you have textures like that tesselation free, felt covered, mess Wukong. Enjoy your 16 year old 1440p resolution.
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pcworld
THe 3 Micro Centers in the Baltimore-Washington DC Area sold base models at $599.99; the Models with beefier power sections & cooling solutions sold for a premium (As is the case in all GPU Lines!). The XFX models were $130 & up for their models, I would have had no issues paying $729.99 for an AsRock RX7090XT Taichi 3x slot card with 3100MHz Boost Clock; the Sapphire RX7090XT Nitro 4x Slot Beast is Amazing engineering ($789.99) but that price and 4x slot is questionable for me.
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THe 3 Micro Centers in the Baltimore-Washington DC Area sold base models at $599.99; the Models with beefier power sections & cooling solutions sold for a premium (As is the case in all GPU Lines!). The XFX models were $130 & up for their models, I would have had no issues paying $729.99 for an AsRock RX7090XT Taichi 3x slot card with 3100MHz Boost Clock; the Sapphire RX7090XT Nitro 4x Slot Beast is Amazing engineering ($789.99) but that price and 4x slot is questionable for me.
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Toutvids
RT is a scam. They have fooled you all into believing some better lighting and shiny objects are worth killing your 120 frame rates down to sub 60. They did this to sell you more GPUs.
No focus on better games, with innovations or making NPCs more dynamic or intelligent, nothing. Rehash the same games over and over in remakes and remasters just like Hollywood does with movies. Gaming is mostly dead.
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RT is a scam. They have fooled you all into believing some better lighting and shiny objects are worth killing your 120 frame rates down to sub 60. They did this to sell you more GPUs.
No focus on better games, with innovations or making NPCs more dynamic or intelligent, nothing. Rehash the same games over and over in remakes and remasters just like Hollywood does with movies. Gaming is mostly dead.
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DbugII
Interesting that you got drivers issues. I've been using a RX 6900 XT for the last 3 years as my main, and I had pretty much zero driver issues on the games I played (Cyberpunk, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Baldur's Gate 3, ...) but granted, I did not enable RT because on t his card that simply did not work, so possibly it's only the RT part of the driver that's not completely mature
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Interesting that you got drivers issues. I've been using a RX 6900 XT for the last 3 years as my main, and I had pretty much zero driver issues on the games I played (Cyberpunk, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Baldur's Gate 3, ...) but granted, I did not enable RT because on t his card that simply did not work, so possibly it's only the RT part of the driver that's not completely mature
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madmike5421
Well if you play Games that need ray tracing that is fine, but I don't buy a video card based on ray tracing. I buy them on rasterization, which the games I play use. I also play a lot of old games so NVIDIA is off my buying list for the foreseeable future. Just bought a RX 7900xtx, this is my first all AMD build since the early 2000's.
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Well if you play Games that need ray tracing that is fine, but I don't buy a video card based on ray tracing. I buy them on rasterization, which the games I play use. I also play a lot of old games so NVIDIA is off my buying list for the foreseeable future. Just bought a RX 7900xtx, this is my first all AMD build since the early 2000's.
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ozanozkirmizi47
Overpricing is the Achilles Heel of the Graphics Card Market
I am not going to buy, any gpu, until I see good value options on the market.
Note: I got R9 380 from 2015 and I can not be more happy that I have spent total of 0 (zero) penny since 2015.
Price fixing crime and absence of competition killed the whole deal.
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Overpricing is the Achilles Heel of the Graphics Card Market
I am not going to buy, any gpu, until I see good value options on the market.
Note: I got R9 380 from 2015 and I can not be more happy that I have spent total of 0 (zero) penny since 2015.
Price fixing crime and absence of competition killed the whole deal.
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anonrando1
I really hope AMD improves ray tracing this gen on the driver level, but the honest truth is, they have been a lap behind every generation regardless of pricing and this time around is no exception. I commend the the notable progress but it still isn't even parity with nvidia for the work load and style of games I do.
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I really hope AMD improves ray tracing this gen on the driver level, but the honest truth is, they have been a lap behind every generation regardless of pricing and this time around is no exception. I commend the the notable progress but it still isn't even parity with nvidia for the work load and style of games I do.
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Boarfriend
There's a problem here for my money (literally my money since its arriving in 2 hrs) if you can get 60fps at 4k rt ultra, but only 30 fps at overdrive 720P! then somethings wrong with the way path tracing is being parsed by the radeon's RT engine, that scaling is so far beyond non-linear its bonkers
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There's a problem here for my money (literally my money since its arriving in 2 hrs) if you can get 60fps at 4k rt ultra, but only 30 fps at overdrive 720P! then somethings wrong with the way path tracing is being parsed by the radeon's RT engine, that scaling is so far beyond non-linear its bonkers
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frhernandezc
In some game, even when the 9070 XT have an fps less than the RTX 5000 TI, the minimum 1% fps was higher, so it would be more fluid, not faster. It would be interesting to test again after NVidia and AMD could fix the problem in driver this news cards has... maybe in two months...
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In some game, even when the 9070 XT have an fps less than the RTX 5000 TI, the minimum 1% fps was higher, so it would be more fluid, not faster. It would be interesting to test again after NVidia and AMD could fix the problem in driver this news cards has... maybe in two months...
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JMartinni
Imagine calling the XTX a real little stinker in raytracing when it performs like a 4070 Ti in most RT games outside of Nvidia-sponsored pathtracing. Radeon GPUs lose more performance relative to Nvidia, each gen a bit less, but the higher-end GPUs are far from unusable.
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Imagine calling the XTX a real little stinker in raytracing when it performs like a 4070 Ti in most RT games outside of Nvidia-sponsored pathtracing. Radeon GPUs lose more performance relative to Nvidia, each gen a bit less, but the higher-end GPUs are far from unusable.
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pcworld
AMD has officially changed the MSRP from $599 to $669!!! It was only ever a bonus first shipment special offer price!!!
Please make a massive update piece about how this is not on. All reviewers have made their content based on $599!!!
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AMD has officially changed the MSRP from $599 to $669!!! It was only ever a bonus first shipment special offer price!!!
Please make a massive update piece about how this is not on. All reviewers have made their content based on $599!!!
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raresmacovei8382
TL;DR: Y'all want to play at 4K, RT or not Use Performance Upscaling, FSR4 or XeSS (at XeSS v1.3 ratios) FSR 3.1 FG. Alternately ALSO add AFMF 2.1 or LSFG x2 on top.
7900 XTX can do RT just fine up to a point, same with PT.
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TL;DR: Y'all want to play at 4K, RT or not Use Performance Upscaling, FSR4 or XeSS (at XeSS v1.3 ratios) FSR 3.1 FG. Alternately ALSO add AFMF 2.1 or LSFG x2 on top.
7900 XTX can do RT just fine up to a point, same with PT.
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60DollarCodger
Liked this format of trying to discuss ok, what RT experience can you get instead of just looking at graphs showing the delta from non-RT fps and beating that dead pony -- err horse.
Thanks, APM & Will(is)
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Liked this format of trying to discuss ok, what RT experience can you get instead of just looking at graphs showing the delta from non-RT fps and beating that dead pony -- err horse.
Thanks, APM & Will(is)
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