AMD decided to place its bet on HBM in consumer products early, Nvidia didn't. Nvidia turned out to be the one who made the right choice. Now Nvidia is betting on HW raytracing, early, and AMD decides to wait. AMD will win this bet, I reckon. When even the ultra expensive 2080 Ti has lacking raytracing performance, you can only imagine how lacking the cheapest RTX 2070 will have. And it's still not an affordable product but expensive. Nvidia isn't going to win this round. Although unlike AMD, Nvidia is so rich it can afford to lose.

fantaskarsef:

Keeps raytracing out of consoles. Another DOA feature 😀

Some day not too far away all game rendering will depend on this "feature", as the current rendering tech cannot simulate well enough the reality and has reached the limits of its capabilities long time ago.

Kaarme:

AMD decided to place its bet on HBM in consumer products early, Nvidia didn't. Nvidia turned out to be the one who made the right choice. Now Nvidia is betting on HW raytracing, early, and AMD decides to wait. AMD will win this bet, I reckon. When even the ultra expensive 2080 Ti has lacking raytracing performance, you can only imagine how lacking the cheapest RTX 2070 will have. And it's still not an affordable product but expensive. Nvidia isn't going to win this round. Although unlike AMD, Nvidia is so rich it can afford to lose.

Good point. That's why I wondered, why even put RTX hardware support on a card that can't even run 25fps on 1080p as of now... only makes the chip more expensive. I think they will have to tweak RTX in games so that even a 2070, which "only" does 6 "gigarays" per second, gets at least 30fps out of it.

Asgardi:

Some day not too far away all game rendering will depend on this "feature", as the current rendering tech cannot simulate well enough the reality and has reached the limits of its capabilities long time ago.

Well, the definition of "not too far away" is very lose. If at some point all game rendering will depend on this, I hope by that time they will have gotten dx12 to work as of now it's crap and not really adopted well at all. I'd more easily say, at some point "not too far away" dx12 will work as well as dx11 does now. Doesn't mean DXR will be able to run on every card "soon", down to the entry levels, so that AMD's statement holds true.

I don't think NVidia is actually pushing nor betting on RT tech like AMD did with HBM. Amd was involved in the development of HBM but a lot of external factors were present and did ultimately lead to the high costs. Otoh, Nvidia has full control over their own RT hardware, they know how much silicon they need to reach aceptable fps, how much does that cost, etc. They way nvidia managed the release is a clear sign that they just wanted to grab some bucks from the fans (the inclusion of tensor cores just to run an AA algorithm seems to reinforce that thought). If they truly wanted to push the tech, they would have sampled rt hardware to all mayor engine developers (probably less than 20) a year ago so game developers could just flip a switch and tweak some settings to have it implemented on their games. Then wait until h2 2019 to release consumer cards with rt hardware at all levels at reasonable prices and have 10 popular tittles with rt to enjoy from day 1.... Releasing a crippled rt experience in super expensive cards without investing time to bring devs on board since long before is only detrimental to the tech as the public will be skeptical to buy it once it truly hits main stream. It reminds me of the VR "failure", big companies released mediocre headsets at stupid high prices and they blamed the concept of vr itself for the lack of adoption.... if an oculus/vive would have cost the 120 bucks they are actually worth, vr would be popular even with all the negative/unpolished aspects.

fantaskarsef:

Keeps raytracing out of consoles. Another DOA feature 😀

Not necessarily, but, you're probably right. Next-gen consoles are probably going to prioritize either 60FPS or 4K, so RT just isn't a viable technology to achieve that in an affordable manner. There's a pretty good chance PS5 isn't going to do RT, but we don't know what the next Xbox is going to have and considering how involved MS is with RTX, I would find it realistic that they might try looking into a dedicated RT processor, even if it isn't made by AMD.

Maddness:

That's really disappointing to hear that from an AMD person. I guess if it does take off, that will put AMD even more on the back foot. Just what they need.

I would much rather AMD offer a competitive 4K gaming experience than RTX support. I'm guessing the main reason they aren't investing much into it is because their current production timeline has no room to fit it in. So basically once GCN becomes superseded, that's when I suspect we'll see RTX support. For those who still really care about raytracing, I would hope Nvidia releases a low-end card that only has tensor cores, and can be used in conjunction with any GPU. I'm actually a little surprised Nvidia hasn't released something like that already (if they did, I haven't heard about it).

schmidtbag:

For those who still really care about raytracing, I would hope Nvidia releases a low-end card that only has tensor cores, and can be used in conjunction with any GPU. I'm actually a little surprised Nvidia hasn't released something like that already (if they did, I haven't heard about it).

I'd like to see that too. But remember tensor cores are not RT cores (refer back to the release thread for the details :P).

schmidtbag:

Not necessarily, but, you're probably right. Next-gen consoles are probably going to prioritize either 60FPS or 4K, so RT just isn't a viable technology to achieve that in an affordable manner. There's a pretty good chance PS5 isn't going to do RT, but we don't know what the next Xbox is going to have and considering how involved MS is with RTX, I would find it realistic that they might try looking into a dedicated RT processor, even if it isn't made by AMD.

Given by what's the rumors and what I personally expect, both of the consoles will essentially be running AMD chips with AMD GPUs. Means, no ray tracing. I too think they'll prioritize the 4k60 experience (even if upscaled).

I much rather AMD get 7nm right by using less power (wattage) and don't waste their whole architecture with overpriced vertically stacked memory.

With Ray Tracing being added into DirectX and also being added into UE4, AMD will find they are on the losing side of this battle I think. Ray Tracing is coming whether you like it or not.

nhlkoho:

With Ray Tracing being added into DirectX and also being added into UE4, AMD will find they are on the losing side of this battle I think. Ray Tracing is coming whether you like it or not.

As far as UE4 goes, AMD found themselves on losing side of battle due to "owner" hating AMD. That's why engine was optimized heavily for intel/nVidia. As for reasons, hard to say. Some year back I've read that same guy been angered by nV, so I thought that AMD will see some love. No, nV promptly fixed it and has even deeper integration.

fantaskarsef:

Keeps raytracing out of consoles. Another DOA feature :D

Not on the PC its not, as they can do ray tracing 😀

So AMD are waiting with support of a technology that isnt really relevant for the next few years anyway. Good choice.

Maddness:

There may not be any games with it yet, but make no mistake it is the future.

This idea that the industry leads the consumers along by the nose is nonsense. Consumers pick and choose what they want to support, and the industry adapts to it. They can try to push a product, feature, or technology, and they can also fail. Just look at 3D, Kinect, VR, etc. All were labeled "the future" at one point, but consumers didn't show up to support them in large enough numbers to sustain the respective markets. Despite the intentions of the industry that was pushing them, they all failed to gain enough market traction to be self-sustaining. I don't doubt we'll see Ray Tracing work it's way into main stream gaming at some point. But if the hardware isn't in the next batch of consoles, it's still in the pipe dream stage. PC sales on their own don't provide enough profit for the big publishers to invest in specialized Ray Tracing features for the PC versions of their games. And the hardware companies aren't going to subsidize the additional dev work if they don't have an expectation of building momentum for the technology. The market has been pretty clear on it's desires: 4K/60fps at a reasonable price ($400) and options for 4k/high refresh for those with lots of money to blow. That's what most gamers want to see before they buy into the idea of a new technology that causes games to run worse.

Makes sense. RT is still in an very early stage with very little supported software and with hardware that still lacks the performance required for a proper experience. By the time RT becomes common AMD can release cards that support it. As for no RT in the next gen consoles i think that´s still to be seen. I wouldn´t be surprised if devs create some sort of "hack" that enables some sort of RT. Of course it´s not going to something mind blowing or powerful like in PCs but it´s going to be some sort of RT. For example Poliphony Digital is already working on RT for GT although is baked instead of being done in real time. I could be totally wrong of course.

I'm sure AMD is working on RT hardware for the future, probably after Navi. Microsoft hasn't released the update yet, meanwhile zero games support it. My guess is that AMD wants to take a different approach to tensor cores and have a GPU that does all the work unedified. Wile we wait for microsoft to release the update and games to come out with RT, AMD is focusing on what matters: catching up to raw performance, wile keeping it affordable.

Silva:

I'm sure AMD is working on RT hardware for the future, probably after Navi. Microsoft hasn't released the update yet, meanwhile zero games support it. My guess is that AMD wants to take a different approach to tensor cores and have a GPU that does all the work unedified. Wile we wait for microsoft to release the update and games to come out with RT, AMD is focusing on what matters: catching up to raw performance, wile keeping it affordable.

I'm thinking pretty much exactly the same thing verbatim.

Untill RT will be mainstream (ie +60fps @ 1080p on a 200 bucks GPU), I do not see the issue at all.

"Ray Tracing will be a real thing after PlayStation 6 and 8K TV/Monitors become mainstream." All other discussions are about e-peen, fanboy-ism, shareholders and those who pay to exist. Reality always tends to differ.

Correct me if I am wrong but don't Amd already have their own ray tracing software? Pro Render? https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-introduces-radeon-pro-wx-8200-for-under-1000.html I'd say they're making the smart move of leaving the technology to the market where it is a legitimate tool, not a gimmick. Nvidia can take the risk on this one, Amd took the risk on the last hardware development HBM, it only worked out so-so at best

I am guessing here, but i think the biggest problem with ray tracing is, that no GPU is powerfull enough to render in real time, so developers have to run 80% of the renderring in rasterization and then add ray tracing elements on top op it. Non real time ray tracing, sometimes takes several minuttes to render 1 frame, so movie like realtime ray tracing would demand something like 20-30 2080TI´es to run. I thing AMD is taking the smart road, by letting Ray tracing in games fall to the ground and then jump on the wagon again in 1-3 years.