AMD has confirmed that its RDNA 2 graphics architecture, the same that will power its next-generation desktop graphics cards, will power both the new-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony and will include hardware accelerated ray tracing support. This, we're told, will come in the form of a simplified and efficient system, more so than Nvidia's existing RTX technology, and will be designed to maximize performance without inhibiting the rest of the rendering pipeline.
The lower-level API that AMD will utilize for this ray tracing will make it easier for developers to implement. It was co-developed with Microsoft as part of the DXR 1.1 API and will therefore be an open platform in the similar manner to AMD's Freesync technology.
This is the same ray tracing API we're going to see on PCs, so expect to see a far broader range of supporting games for this technology in the future than we've seen with Nvidia's RTX ray tracing solution over the past few years. To date, there are less than 15 ray traced games that can take advantage of Nvidia's technology. AMD's should prove far more ubiquitous in time.
AMD did release one screenshot of a ray traced scene, that isn't exactly pretty compared to modern games, but it does give us an idea of the scale of reflections that the new ray tracing technology can handle.
Would you upgrade your GPU for an AMD ray tracing experience?
