AMD finally unveiled its two new graphics cards during E3, the Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700, but both GPUs suffer a major flaw that hinder them in their fight against Nvidia.
While the two AMD cards look to offer similar performances to Nvidia’s RTX 2070 and RTX 2060 cards, it looks like the Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 won’t feature accelerated real-time ray tracing technology, which could well be a deal-breaker of an omission.
Related: AMD Navi
AMD didn’t specifically say these two graphics card won’t be capable of real-time ray tracing, but since the company didn’t mention the feature during its E3 2019 presentation we think it’s a safe assumption to make.
That said, the AMD Navi architecture both cards are based on does seem to have the potential of running ray tracing since both the Navi-powered PS5 and Xbox 2 consoles are confirmed to feature the technology when they launch in 2020.
If you’re not familiar with the term ‘real-time ray tracing’, this is a new rendering technology that can simulate more authentic light effects, which looks and behaves more realistically. This allows for characters to see their reflections in the likes of puddles and glass cabinets instead of developers having to fake it with complex designs.
While ray tracing undoubtedly improves the visual quality of games, it could be argued that its absence isn’t a disaster for the AMD cards as the technology is still very much in its infancy and is suffering a lot of teething issues. For starters, ray tracing puts such an intensive workload on the GPU that it sees the frame rate drop significantly when activated DXR features.
Related: What is ray tracing?
Nvidia did introduce the DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) feature to counteract this issue, and while it did a great job of drastically reducing the drop in frame rates, reports suggest it consequently made images looks less sharp and more blurry.
The second issue with ray tracing is there isn’t a huge number of games that actually support it right now, although the list is growing with Watch Dogs Legion recently announced as the latest title to utilise the light rendering technology.
All signs point towards AMD eventually adding support for ray tracing for future AMD Navi cards, but for now, its seems company thinks it’s too premature to release cards flaunting the feature.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
