Skip to main content

AMD plans ray tracing cards, looks to compete with Nvidia’s premium GPUs in 2019

AMD Ryzen 5 2400G & Ryzen 3 2200G Review fan
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Nvidia’s premium lineup of graphics card will be getting some serious competition from AMD once 2019 arrives. AMD will be relying on its 7nm GPU architecture to deliver the performance needed to take on Nvidia’s GeForce cards, and the company is also working on bringing ray tracing to its cards. For 2019, AMD is working on its Navi architecture, which is believed to be based on the 7nm FinFet manufacturing process and support GDDR6 and HBM2 memory.

“We see significant opportunities to build on this momentum as we transition to our next generations of high performance products and launch the industry’s first 7-nanometer x86 CPUs and discrete GPUs over the coming quarters,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said earlier this year in an earnings call, according to a transcript from Wccftech. For comparison, rival Nvidia’s GeForce RTX series is based on a 12nm architecture.

In the past, AMD executives explained that they wanted to hold off on ray tracing, which debuted on consumer graphics cards with Nvidia’s flagship GeForce RTX series, until all of its cards can support the feature from low-end to premium. At the Credit Suisse conference, Su added that AMD decided to initially hold back on ray tracing support until the ecosystem is ready for it. The decision makes sense, given that when rival Nvidia’s RTX series launched, there were only a limited number of titles that were announced with support for ray tracing. Nvidia also had to wait for Microsoft to launch the Windows 10 October 2018 Update to bring ray tracing support to DirectX.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

“As it relates to ray tracing in particular I think it’s an important technology, but as with all important technologies it takes time to really have the ecosystem adopt [it],” Su explained more recently at the 22nd Annual Credit Suisse Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in a transcript provided by Wccftech. “And we’re working very closely with the ecosystem on both hardware and software solutions and expect that ray tracing will be an important element especially as it gets more into the mainstream, frankly, of the market.”

While AMD has historically been strong in the midrange graphics segment, Su reiterated that the company will also be competitive in the high-end space, noting that AMD “will have our set of new products as well and we will be right there in the mix” to address newer products on the market from the competition, a likely reference to Nvidia’s RTX series.

Chuong Nguyen
Silicon Valley-based technology reporter and Giants baseball fan who splits his time between Northern California and Southern…
Nvidia is bringing ray tracing and DLSS 3 to your car
Cyberpunk 2077 running in a Tesla.

I know it sounds crazy, but a new MediaTek chip powered by Nvidia graphics promises to bring AAA gaming, ray tracing, and the coveted DLSS 3 to your car. The chips I'm talking about are MediaTek's new Dimensity Auto Cockpit, which integrated an Nvidia GPU, along with a host of AI and gaming capabilities.

It's not clear what Nvidia graphics are packed on MediaTek's chips, but clearly, they're using some variation of the Ada Lovelace architecture we see on RTX 40-series GPUs. Those are the only GPUs that support DLSS 3's frame generation capabilities, and they're extremely efficient -- important for a chip packed into a car.

Read more
My most anticipated game of 2024 is getting the full Nvidia treatment
A character gearing up for battle in Black Myth: Wukong.

As if I wasn't already looking forward to Black Myth: Wukong enough, Nvidia just announced that the game is getting the full RTX treatment when it launches on August 20. We see new games with ray tracing and Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) all the time, but Black Myth: Wukong is joining a very small list of titles that currently leverage the full suite of features Nvidia has available.

The game comes with, as Nvidia describes it, "full ray tracing." That undersells the tech a bit. As we've seen with games like Alan Wake 2, "full ray tracing" means path tracing. This is a more demanding version of ray tracing where everything uses the costly lighting technique. It's taxing, but in the new games that we've seen with path tracing, such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Portal with RTX, it looks stunning.

Read more
AMD needs to fix this one problem with its next-gen GPUs
The RX 7800 XT graphics card with the ReSpec logo.

AMD's current-gen graphics cards have been a revelation. Last generation, AMD was able to hit performance parity with Nvidia while sacrificing ray tracing performance. This generation, AMD is maintaining parity while getting closer in ray tracing, as showcased by GPUs like the RX 7900 GRE. But the next frontier of gaming is rapidly approaching, and AMD's current options aren't up to the task right now.

I'm talking about path tracing. Nvidia calls it "full ray tracing," and it's a lighting technique that can take gaming visuals to the next level. Path tracing is only available in a small list of titles right now, but with frame generation and upscaling tools better than they've ever been, it won't be long before we see these destination gaming experiences everywhere.
Player two in path tracing

Read more