AMD Confirm Next GPU Range Will Have Hardware Ray Tracing

Mike Sanders / 5 years ago

AMD RX 5700 XT

With the upcoming release of AMD’s RX 5700 XT graphics card, there is more than a little curiosity over exactly how powerful it is going to be and, perhaps more accurately, how it will stack against Nvidia’s 20XX range.

While early indications are suggesting that it’s going to be a solid performer, there is no notable difference between the two brands. Namely, that while the 20XX series has hardware dedicated ray tracing, AMD’s card will not.

In a report via DSOGaming, however, AMD has committed that while the 5700 (and any other cards released in the probable range) will 100% not have hardware ray tracing capabilities, the ‘2nd-gen’ Navi range will.

Ray Tracing

In an image released by AMD, it would appear that the next-gen RDNA GPUs will feature hardware-based lighting effects. This basically means that ray tracing will be offered, but just not in the upcoming RX 5700 XT release (or range).

It is bizarrely unclear whether this application could be used in gaming. One would, however, suspect that it would be more than likely. It’d certainly be weird if it didn’t!

What Do We Think?

Given how much criticism AMD has made of the Nvidia RTX system, if they do introduce it in their next-gen Navi graphics cards, it needs to be good. Put simply, AMD has written a pretty big cheque that their detractors would be more than happy to cash-in. When AMD does bring hardware ray tracing, it practically needs to be good!

That being said, we shouldn’t expect the next-gen Navi graphics cards until at least mid-end 2020. We haven’t even had the 1st-gen yet! It will, however, be interesting to see how AMD approach it.

What do you think? Are you planning on getting the new AMD graphics card? – Let us know in the comments!