Crytek Showcases Real-Time Ray Traced Reflections in CryEngine on RX Vega 56

Obviously hardware accelerated it will run much faster.

 

Basically RT-cores can help raytracing performance while the main unit accelerates everything else, but if you just have enough memory bandwith, I assume you can do the same but with less hassle. I'm pretty sure that this time AMD's approach to raytracing, which we will see in practice in the near future, is easier to work with while RT-cores need specific tuning. This also means that Radeon cards cannot utilize the function then at all.

I'm sure Nvidia helps developers with the RT-cores for sure, but I would really lean on AMD's solution. It's true that wide memory bandwith requires power, but it's just simpler all the way and has other benefits as well, while Nvidia currently utilizes advanced techniques to save power. Indeed yes, RT-cores and other Nvidia specific features are there for one reason: to save power.

The only thing I don't like about the presentation of Tensor cores is that they were made to sound something that is absolutely required for raytracing, when this is far from the truth and it is just a different approach that requires more work from the developers. In the end, once again, everything comes down to what approach developers are eager to implement in. Nvidia often gives good support to it's partners, which can lead to more games utilizing Tensor cores, but who really knows.

PS. For the reason that AMD is often not keen on using workarounds in their GPUs, do not expect Navi to be more power efficient than current GeForces, but rather them having more performance with the same power consumption as RX 580 or something around that. I bet the most powerful Navi GPU will use something close to Vega 56 level of power. What everybody wants to see from Navi are better fan noise levels which should be tuned by the third party partners. Also ridiculous size of some Radeon cards could be avoided if cooling would be designed better.

 

Looks better than other dedicated RT used in games like BFV, Metro and...(is there another one?)...uh...a bit expensive to buy a card to play two games.

 

Honestly, hands down, here's the true feelings of somebody who owns a 2080TI (which will soon enter my main rig) because I got it at a great price via @RPGgamesplayer .

On one side, I greatly appreciate to see we are FINALLY getting new effects for everybody. Such an adoption has the huge advantage of running on non-dedicated hardware, which opens it up for all games, not just Nvidia partnered PC games, but for AMD, and consoles as well, thus making them way more quick to adopt and bring them to more games. A great plus.
Also, in some thread I don't bother to search for again, a long time back, I already speculated AMD might find a way of doing something similar to RTX, just only with "brute force", since I always had the impression that Nvidia's GPUs were fine tuned for gaming, whereas AMD's offerings were sort of filling the gap between gaming and computing. They've done it with computer power and seemingly nice badwidth RAM, the first time I get the impression HBM, if responisble for making this even possible, might be a good addition to gaming graphics cards. And they were quick to work something out that's affordable as well, which is another great plus on top of it.

On the other hand, I wouldn't count Nvidia as fully defeated. We already know they're still tinkering with their DXR adoption RTX, since in BF5 for instance tensor cores (IIR) aren't used, and they're basically there to compute as well, aren't they? Maybe the cash Nvidia still has in store will be spent wisely, in engineering hours to make use of the GPU space they put into that, as well as the power budget if you want to see it from a technical point of view. So with that in mind, AMD just kicked Nvidia's ass making them work harder, which can only be a plus for those like me with an RTX or Nvidia card, since they will be forced to handle this matter with lower end cards like the 1660TI as well.
They will have to answer to this reveal in some way, in chess it's their turn to move their figures now. They can't simply sit this out and watch AMD do what they do with a lot less hassle as it seems, only needing to improve their architecture (which they were doing anyway), when Nvidia has to do the same (to improve ofc), but to make use of what they already got and now looks underperforming on the other hand. A simple price reduction won't do it since they will have to battle AMD's next release with such a measure already (I suspect), they can't and don't want to drop prices below AMD's hardware. Such a position requires them to do something important, and that I think is competition, a plus, only able to improve the situation to everybody.

So there's light to both sides. I think it's a good move, and I'm happy to see PC gaming move forward.

Make PC gaming great again!TM

 

hunt showdown has taken the plunge after the HUGE graphics nerf for potato like laptop people or consoles...

yes boys its coming to consoles .. the graphics now is console level,, no where near pc graphics

 

It seems regarding RayTracing expectations from showcase RT demos, we still haven't learned from Nvidia's own Raytracing Demo a while back vs final RT implementation in games.

I really do hope that is not the case here of course since it does look great.

 

It probably won't be accelerated by RT because the technique doesn't use individual rays but cones. It doesn't require denoising either which allows for higher resolution maps. In the past the problem with this technique was mainly light leakage and ghosting.

It's a similar technique to what we saw in Nvidia's moon demo with VXGI (this used some kind of tessellated grid to help with performance), just applied to reflections. Will be interesting to see if Crytek can overcome some of the limitations.

 

It doesn't matter what is used to render.

 

The biggest (potential) blow to Nvidia in all this is that Cry's RT solution doesnt seem to cripple performance. A bit humiliating for Nv having to force RTX users to knock resolutions down to see benefits of RT while their competition can do it at higher res with better results with older hardware. I hope more game developers will explore other RT solutions than those required to run under specific HW only and avoid solutions that cripple performance or require expensive dedicated HW for it (like RTX).

 

I wonder would this version of RT work on DX12 or Vulkan mGPU?! The price performance ratio could be amazing...

 

this adds more value to the RTX line up /s

more like RT-Yikes!

 

While it looks great even though there a few artifacts, but there's still too many unknowns. They mention running on AMD hardware but is it using the DXR fallback layer? The fallback layer should run reasonable well on any card. Voxel ray tracing has been around for quite a while; why haven't studios adopted the technique the past few years? Once more comes out next week at GDC 2019 will shed some light on applicability and usability in the gaming industry.

 

Nope, this means nothing, not available for testing and analysis. just like Nvidia showed the Star wars demo running on a single RTX card.(bullsh!t)

as I said probably runs horribly and most of the lighting is still not ray-traced.
ray tracing is still a few good years away.

 

its not really ground breaking to only render specific parts of a scene and optimise around it.

 

navi better be good if thats what new consoles will have
I wish the other guy had chips in the consoles

 

On other hand, there is good chance, that in few months all this will be available in released build.

 

If people want to experiment with ray tracing sure, but if the trend picks up and developers have to spend resources for a useless feature it's bad news.

 

The video already mentioned [time: 01:50] using vega 56.... and it was flawless.
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Quote from Dr. Lisa Su (earlier in January):
"I think ray tracing is an important technology, and it’s something we’re working on as well, both from a hardware and software standpoint," Dr. Su said. "The most important thing, and that’s why we talk so much about the development community, is technology for technology’s sake is okay, but technology done together with partners who are fully engaged is really important."

 

Why do you believe ray tracing is a useless feature? And if so, why are you wasting so much energy complaining in a thread about a "useless feature"? Why not make noise in a thread over something you care about?

 

the funny bit is this will likely be the last thing crytek ever does before they go bankrupt, and nobody's bailing them out this time.