Nvidia RTX GPUs are rocking the real-time ray tracing tech. However, everyone is wondering if AMD has anything under its sleeves to counter Real-Time Ray Tracing. While we wait, AMD has noted that it won’t bring real-time ray tracing Radeon GPUs until all of its cards are able to do it.
This is probably in response to Nvidia having RTX 2070 as the minimum requirement for Real-Time Ray Tracing. Meaning GPUs like GTX 2060 and lower won’t feature ray tracing capabilities.
Speaking with 4Gamer, AMD’s David Wang noted that the company intends to use DXR (DirectX Ray Tracing) but, won’t do it until all of AMD Radeon GPUs are capable of Real-Time Ray Tracing tech. These include low-end and high-end GPUs.
For the time being, AMD will definitely respond to Direct Raytracing, for the moment we will focus on promoting the speed-up of offline CG production environments centered on AMD’s Radeon ProRender, which is offered free of charge ….. utilization of ray tracing games will not proceed unless we can offer ray tracing in all product ranges from low-end to high-end.
What this basically means is that next-gen AMD GPUs won’t feature ray tracing. That is if we get to see next-gen AMD GPUs to launch. AMD has been very silent about its GPUs and Nvidia has rolled out RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti.
This is despite AMD CEO, Lisa Su, noting that AMD’s high-performing GPUs will directly compete with Nvidia’s RTX GPUs. Now the problem is that 2018 is close to ending and AMD has not even teased any of its next-gen gaming GPUs.
On the other hand, AMD has revealed its first 7nm GPUs, the Radeon Instinct MI50 and MI60. However, these 7nm AMD GPUs are not for gaming as cloud computing and deep learning are the main tasks for these GPUs.
Both of these 7nm AMD GPUs feature HBM2 memory. The Radeon Instinct MI50 comes with 16GB of HBM2 memory while the MI60 features 32GB of HBM2 memory.
Furthermore, these are also the first GPUs to actually use the PCIe 4.0 interconnect. For those who don’t know the PCIe 4.0 interconnect is 2x faster compared to the x86.
As for the gaming GPUs, AMD Vega 20 has popped up online. The GPU popped up in latest Final Fantasy 15 benchmarks. Furthermore, this GPU is also based on the 7nm process. If this is any indication then it might launch in early 2019.
Next-gen AMD GPUs is not only a need but, has become a necessity for the company. During the recent earnings call, AMD noted that it failed to meet its target revenue by $50 million.
According to CEO, Lisa Su, the reason for the missed target revenue is the downfall of cryptocurrency mining. My understanding of this situation is that AMD was expecting mining farms to pick up more of its GPUs despite the current downfall of cryptocurrency mining.
Source: TweakTown
