AMD RDNA4 GPUs To Feature A Redesigned Ray Tracing Engine
AMD RDNA4 GPUs To Feature A Redesigned Ray Tracing Engine
While it looks like AMD has largely given up on the flagship GPU market, the chipmaker will turn its attention to the mainstream GPU market it has traditionally done reasonably well in the past. The upcoming Radeon RX 8000 series will feature two new silicon, and with it comes a redesigned ray tracing engine that is said to be “completely different,” according to leaker @Kepler_L2 on X (Twitter).
“RDNA3 RT was based on RDNA2 with some improvements. RDNA4 RT looks completely different,” the leaker said in the replies of the original post where it was alleged that the RT engine on RDNA4 is “brand new.”
Now, a redesigned RT engine for a new architecture doesn’t sound exactly groundbreaking, as silicon-level components get redesigned every few years to extract more performance down the line. However, one has to note that AMD’s GPU has traditionally lagged behind equivalent NVIDIA GPUs when it comes to ray tracing performance – and this is where a potential redesign may be crucial in allowing Team Red to leapfrog the RTX GPUs in RT performance, alleviating one of the shortcomings of the Radeon cards.
As for what exactly has changed, some potential clues can be found in the PS5 Pro leak – the upgraded GPU within the updated PlayStation console is said to feature BVH8 traversal for ray tracing, superseding the BVH4 used in current Radeon GPUs as well as the vanilla PS5 console. However, software implementation could be another part of the performance equation, as certain games can work better on Radeon GPUs – though this is a rarity amongst the sea of RT-supported titles these days.
Source: Wccftech
Pokdepinion: We shall see if AMD has the secret sauce ready by year’s end.
