I confused one of the RT results for the PT result,but I still argue this is an Nvidia thing,not saying AMDs sponsorship would've produced outstanding performance.
These have been micro-benched by knowledgeable peoples and there's nothing in the function calls (DXR agnostic..) or the behavior that just pops up as being fuckery from Nvidia.
Hardware raytracing acceleration has come a long way since Nvidia’s Turing first introduced the technology.
chipsandcheese.com
They actually comment that RDNA 3 did good progress from RDNA 2 and that hardware utilization is comparable between Nvidia and AMD. So it comes down to "dedicated" RT cores, which in the hybrid AMD pipeline is fighting the scheduler for graphic workload (and we can't even add ML computer load here since AMD is absent for AI upscalers/frame gen, thankfully for them i guess, it would choke further).
Nvidia's "ASIC" like RT cores just don't choke (as much), at the disadvantage that at lower RT effects they don't scale too well. AMD needs dedicated hardware to manage BVH structure.
Fair enough. I have a 4090 because I wanted the best. I certainly want AMD to be relevant. However, if ray tracing doesn't really matter...and I still argue that it doesn't alter the image all that much as I'd bet that very few people could tell the difference between a ray traced image and a rasteurized image in a blind test...the 7900XTX is an outstanding card and worth a consideration. It outperforms the 4080 in many benchmarks despite being $200 cheaper. That does matter. In like for like non-ray tracing scenarios.
However, it cannot be ignored that DLSS is reaching a point that it makes resolution differences virtually non-noticeable and that doing like for like performances don't tell the real story. A 4070 with DLSS and FG will pseudo-outperform a 7900XTX in many cases. Does it make sense to go with nvidia in that case? Difficult to say?
Speaking of underdogs, in Intel continues to improve RT and XESS they could end up being the real underdog to support.
I don't think anyone is saying to buy Nvidia because of a single game feature (path tracing). But we can note that they are late to the tech race for the absolute bonker high end graphical features. I recommended the 6700 / 6700XT in almost all the budget friendly PC builds i made in the past 6 months, because it just doesn't make any goddamn sense to recommend a 4090 to enjoy a single game. I'm on an already overpaid (covid time) 3080 Ti and i'm just peeking at Overdrive, not starting a play of Cyberpunk yet because of that feature.
I do believe that DLSS & Frame gen & RT performances does add value ultimately. It does offer better resell value, you can score a buyer that DOES care. But even without those features, it still performs quite well natively so it's not all smokes and mirrors.
If Intel does step up the game on 2nd iteration, i wouldn't even hesitate to buy one mid-range. On first iteration their silicon area is kind of underutilized so hopefully they improve.
AMD drops a bombshell of a GPU and catch up in features to Nvidia? I would buy one. I buy what i feel adds the most value. Sadly for AMD, i do care for RT. Some might not. I do.
