[The Exiled]

AMD confirms RDNA 3 has "rearchitected compute units" that "enhance ray tracing"

When AMD's David Wang discussed the company's RDNA 3 graphics architecture at their 2022 Financial Analysts Day, Wang stated that RDNA 3 would feature "rearchitected compute units" that would "enhance ray tracing capabilities". These enhanced ray tracing capabilities were not listed on AMD's RDNA 3 slides, so this comment was unnoticed by much of the gaming press. Alongside these rearchitected compute units, RDNA 3 also boasts a "optimised graphics pipeline" that delivers "even faster clock speeds and improved power efficiency". This should enable higher levels of compute performance per compute units, as each unit will be able to complete more clock cycles in any given time. More clock cycles means more work, and more work means more performance. While we can expect a significant boost to AMD's ray tracing performance with RDNA 3, it remains to be seen if AMD will be able to catch up with nVidia.

nVidia aren't exactly sitting on their hands when it comes to ray tracing performance, and you can be sure that nVidia's RTX 40 series will feature its own set of architectural enhancements. Based on AMD's comments, we can expect more ray tracing performance per compute unit and per clock cycle with AMD's RDNA 3 graphics architecture. Beyond that, higher clock speeds should also enhanced Radeon's ray tracing performance (just like its rasterisation performance). Even so, the size of these benefits are unknown, and AMD does not expect AMD to push the gaming industry towards path tracing. With RDNA 3, AMD's still pushing a "hybrid rendering" approach.

Full on patch tracing, where an entire scene and all aspects of a game is ray traced, is not something that AMD is pushing for with RDNA 3. AMD's pushing hybrid rendering, where ray tracing is used alongside traditional rasterised graphics to deliver high performance levels while accessing the visual benefits of ray tracing. AMD is currently investing in techniques that can enable ray tracing in a more performance friendly manner, allowing gamers to get the most performance out of their graphics cards and games. This makes clear that while AMD plans to deliver a ray tracing boost with RDNA 3, they are not promising earth shattering benefits. Hybrid rendering is the future, as we would have to wait for another console generation before the entire gaming industry pushing things to another level. AMD's techniques will benefit current-generation and next-generation GPU hardware, and all of the AMD-powered gaming systems that feature RDNA 2 graphics. There's a reason why few games are fully path traced, and why most path traced games are modded versions of early 3D titles with simple geometry and environments. Simply put, path tracing is too demanding for most modern games at high resolutions and framerates. The future us hybrid, at least for now.

Izvor: OC3D

EDIT:

AMD's answer to GeForce's Tensor Cores may be coming with next-gen RDNA3 architecture

Izvor: TechSpot