A new rumor is that AMD RDNA 4 GPUs will introduce a different ray tracing solution than what was used in RDNA 2 and 3. Multiple media outlets have interpreted a couple of tweets from well-known hardware information leaker Kepler_L2 as meaning that AMD has reworked its approach to ray tracing with its upcoming RDNA 4-based GPUs. Now while this is a rumour it does seem plausible given AMD’s continued weaker performance with ray tracing when compared to its competitors.
Per Kepler_L2 (via X)
AMD’s RDNA 3 GPUs have performed exceptionally well in terms of rasterization and often beat out other graphics cards in their respective tiers. Additional value can often be found with competitive pricing and additional memory. However the tables can turn quickly when ray tracing comes into play and with more games implementing it, along with path tracing, AMD stands to lose more market share as NVIDIA and Intel advance with their solutions.
From RDNA 2 to RDNA 4
AMD first introduced its RT solution with RNDA 2 by adding Ray Accelerators to perform a very specific set of compute-intensive tasks involving ray intersection and testing pipeline. Although this does alleviate some of the workload off of the shader engine it still leaves a lot of other RT-related tasks to be performed. RDNA 3 further improved upon this but still did not manage to overtake competitors and if this rumor is true it could mean that AMD is working on another approach altogether with RDNA 4. Recently there have been rumors about the PlayStation 5 Pro’s AMD APU (codenamed Viola) stating that it could incorporate part of RDNA 4 for ray tracing. It’s been said that the PS5 Pro could offer up to twice the performance of the current model due to its being able to handle BVH8.
Meanwhile another rumor, and if true, could be sad news for AMD fans wanting to upgrade to a top-tier card with RDNA 4, is that Team Red will not be offering any products to compete with NVIDIA’s next flagship graphics cards. If this pans out then it would mean that AMD is going all-in with its custom APUs for consoles and then the low-to-mid GPU market segments with RDNA 4.
Yes
— Kepler (@Kepler_L2) May 2, 2024