While the – presumed – cancellation of the top-of-the-range GPU based on is still being discussed RDNA architecture 4in these hours another interesting information emerges on the project that should shape the next generation of dedicated GPUs from AMD.
https://twitter.com/Kepler_L2/status/1785457881833173416AMD’s RDNA 4 architecture will be marked by a Ray Acceleratorthe name the company gave to its “RT core”, totally renovated. The alleged Radeon RX 8000 range (or 9000 if AMD decides to use the same numbering as future Ryzen processors) could therefore offer ray tracing performance significantly superior to the current proposals in the RX 7000 range.
AMD has not only arrived after NVIDIA with an architecture equipped with ray tracing acceleration, but has not yet managed to close the performance gap: mind you, this does not mean that the performance is not good or sufficient for gaming, but only that NVIDIA maintains a reasonable advantage.
If, as Keple_L2 says, the ray tracing unit of RDNA 3 is to be seen as an update of the one present in the RDNA 2 GPUs, that of RDNA 4 would seem completely different in its functioning. Good or bad? The leaker doesn’t say it, and it is desirable that there is a step forward and not one backwards. Of course, what we won’t know until the release is if this will be enough to bring RDNA 4 to the level of NVIDIA’s next architecture, Blackwell.
If we wanted to look for some clue, but also based on rumors, let’s remember that the rumor PS5 Pro is expected to offer 2 to 3/4 times the ray tracing performance seen on PS5. According to those in the know, PS5 Pro would count on technologies that AMD will introduce on the PC market with RDNA 4, in particular the hardware dedicated to BVH8 acceleration (against the BHV4 of RDNA 2/3) and thread reordering, a feature of the NVIDIA’s Ada Lovelace project better known as Shader Execution Reordering (SER).
