AMD ray tracing performance is not looking good. (Official Benchmarks)

For comparison...

6800 XT is performing at RTX 3070/2080 Ti levels when RT is involved. Well below the direct competitor, the RTX 3080. RTX 3080 (92fps) has 31.4% better performance than RX 6800 XT (70fps) when DXR is enabled in BFV.

Keep in mind that this is not even bringing DLSS into the comparison, which will widen the gap significantly more.

It's funny how they compare results to Nvidia when it is similar or favourable for AMD. However, when it makes them look bad, no mention of Nvidia. LOL

@BassMan: Because the cards are cheaper and the performance in RT is not enough to make nvidia worth it.

The 6900XT is $500 cheaper and performs just as good as the BFGPU. That’s a joke.

Nvidia: Release the RTX 3060Ti!!!

You know it's coming and Big Red doesn't stand a chance😁

This is a 3080 vs 6800xt... they're basically the same price point.

Still think the 6900 is the best buy, couldn't care less for RT. If you have it with good performance, cool, if not, meh.

The pricing on the 6800 is ridiculous, why would anyone buy that GPU?

Wasn't it obvious by now? The RT performance is worse than Turing as it puts a 3080-class card down to 2080 Ti levels. If it was better, it'd be in-between a 2080 Ti and a RTX 3080.

We also got the RT performance on consoles which saw their performance profiles tank from 2080 level to 2060S level with DLSS.

I’m one to not care too much about RT, still much worse than what I thought though, wonder if better drivers can improve the performance.

Well it's AMD, so if better drivers are required Big Navi is basically DOA.

Another thing worth mentioning... these may be cherry picked benchmarks and some of the better performing titles for AMD. Third party benchmarks may actually show games with even worse RT performance. I look forward to seeing third party reviews and benchmarks.

I pretty much picked up a 3070 because of RT and DLSS, until AMD can catch up my current system will do me well. Rasterized performance is seemingly much better with AMD though.

ouch. will need to see more numbers of course but....ouch. i suppose if it was looking better they would have shown it at the presentation.

Disappointing that they didn't look for a better balance after seeing results from the RTX 2000 series. Maybe it was a conscious decision to sacrifice RT performance for greater rasterisation performance.

Maybe drivers can improve it a bit though. its AMDs first crack at it so maybe there are some gains to be made at the software level.

It's not enough to put me off getting a 6800XT mind but it's not ideal.

AMD is releasing cards with almost identical price to performance with worse drivers and worse ray tracing.... Yeah no thanks.

Also everyone was angry at Intel for having 4 cores and 8 threads every generation... Yet since Zen came out its been now 4 CPU generations from 1600 to 5600 its 6 cores and 12 threads and since 1700 it's 5800X been 8 cores 16 threads AND AMD just increased the prices!

AMD Fanboys: "AMD is cheaper"... "Intel has been giving you same cores every generations"... "I only care about $250 GPUs"...

What do AMD fans say about Zen 3 and Big Navi now?... Nothing, all of the sudden its okay to have the same core count in 4 CPU generations and $1000 GPU's are amazing.

I'll be getting a 5900X and a 3080 Ti when it comes out, you fanboys are funny people.

3080ti sounds good. I want just a bit more power than the regular 3080 in both regular performance and RT/DLSS.

And maybe they'll have them in stock, who knows.

Oh look, ray tracing matters all of sudden. When the RTX was released it dogged and now its important. Fanboys are always entertaining.

We already saw the consoles peaking around RTX 2060 Super performance, (LOL) so we knew the raytracing performance of these AMD GPUs wasn’t gonna be great. AMD strikes again...

I look forward to the “Pro” consoles in 2024 to bring us 2018 PC gaming performance...

The performance matters because that is what determines whether it is worth turning RT on or not. So, Nvidia with better core performance and DLSS makes it viable with more games. We want the performance to be as beastly as possible from both Nvidia and AMD. That is how things move forward.

I'm sorry but WHAT?

According to your "logic"... RTX was dogged for its bad performance BUT now that AMD is out with a GPU with worse performance in ray tracing we are the fanboys for not ignoring it?...

Obvious from the reveal presentation, where ray-tracing benchmarks were conspicuously absent.

I do wonder what kind of ray-tracing solution AMD went with here? NVIDIA have specialised ray-tracing cores in their chips, which obviously have less performance penalties. What scant documentation I can find on RDNA 2 seems to hint that AMD might have gone with using existing shader cores repurposed for ray-tracing acceleration, a step up from software emulation. That might be the reason for the greater performance hit.

They claim there is one "Ray Accelerator" per compute unit. What that actually means, I don't know. It doesn't sound like dedicated cores to me. It just seems like they have repurposed all the CUs for dual functionality, but I haven't really looked into it.

That's interesting, because Ampere is actually set up the same way; 1 ray-tracing core per CU. In fact, going by that claim, the RX 6800 XT should actually have slightly more ray-tracing cores than the RTX 3080 (72 vs. 68).

So yeah, still a question mark on this one.

I somehow did not realize DLSS was Nvidia only. Works great in Control and MHW... really improves performance and the fidelity is still there.

I don't know why more people aren't talking about this. Costs more than 3070 with worse RT performance, no DLSS and AMD's legendary driver issues which you have to cheerfully brush aside. The VRAM is a big plus though. Not enough for me to be sold on the 'new' AMD but you know how people are...

Next gen consoles pushing ray tracing as though it's the next best thing despite neither of them being very good at it kind of tells its own story.

I'm not actually sure how bothered I am or not about RT at the moment, still can't decide on the GPU for my build that's constantly on hold since no fucker can buy anything it seems, but it seems at this point at least that buying a GPU that's at least RT capable for a year or two is a good idea.

Not only is the 6800 priced more than 3070, but it is priced so close to the 6800 XT that you might as well go for the 6800 XT instead. 12 additional higher clocked CUs for $70 more... yes, please!

It seems like a straight fight between 3080 and 6800 XT at the moment for best buy 4K card. No benchmarks yet obviously for the 6800 XT but rumours of a 3080 Ti with 20gb VRAM in January could pretty much end the argument if Nvidia get the price right.

None of these cards, AMD or NVIDIA, are compelling price/performance-wise to be honest. Mid-range cards now costing $500+, as much or more than the entirety of brand new consoles? Gonna stick with my 1070 till performance is unacceptable and hopefully chip maturity and price wars will have driven these obscene costs down.

For now. The 3080 Ti should even that up and have way better RT performance.

No, Ampere is not designed the same way, The dual RT design does all the calculations. AMD approach is using Texture Mapping Units in dual purpose mode. The TMUs can do its normal tasks or it can do ray trace calculations. Because all the TMU's in a gpu may not be at full load, this route allows them to get RT without having to add extra dedicated RT hardware. Another big factor is memory bandwidth, TMUs love memory bandwidth and more will make an impact on raytracing too. This is why AMD went with 128mb of "infinity cache" to speed things up and bypass the cost savings of using 256bit GDDR6.

But at the same time there is a downside, the higher the resolution and or the more raytracing that is enabled in a game the worse of a performance hit you will have vs if you had a dedicated RT hardware not sucking up resources from the TMU's.

@04dcarraher: Those monstrous AMD TMU’s paid dividends after all.

You're doing it wrong if you're getting a new video card for the ray tracing, acceptable performance from either company is still minimally a gen or two off.

they are. oh dlss... ie cards run games like crap and need to cheat o make it look good...

It depends on the game. I was able to play Wolfenstein: Young Blood with my old 2080 Ti at 3440x1440/120 with RT and DLSS...

This is a re-post image, so it is not full resolution. If you look at the image at full resolution, you will see it looks really good. DLSS 2 is quite amazing. No complaints. :)

Ah, that makes sense. AMD did repurpose existing hardware for ray-tracing after all.

And yeah, if they did repurpose TMUs, I can see why it would squeeze the pipes and cause performance penalties at higher resolutions. AMD cards do have slightly more TMUs than NVIDIA ones head-to-head, but they're obviously not enough to match NVIDIA's dedicated RT hardware.

@Random_Matt: $50-$100 is not basically the same.

Firstly, what is the benchmark for the other 3 games listed in comparison? Secondly, RT was trivialized before but all of sudden its important when all it offers is more accurate reflections and that is it

EDIT:

Please point me to where I stated it was dogged for its bad performance in my quote. I will wait. 😎

@Pedro: RT was never trivialized. People thought it was good but the massive performance hit just wasn’t worth it, and still isn’t.

You are getting over 60FPS minimum? What is the issue? I believe its mostly just hype but the performance is still solid.

I assume this was meant for me. It's a $50 price difference for cards in the same class meant to be direct competitors. That's a 7-8% price difference for a 30% advantage in RT performance, DLSS, and drivers that aren't actual shit. I'll take the 3080 over the 6800XT all day long.

Yes, RT is good as long as the performance is good. If the performance is not good, I just turn it off. Performance always comes first. I use my 3080 at 3440x1440 and 4K. RT has to perform well at those resolutions.

@Pedro: Make sure you are comparing the same thing. AMD Crysis benchmark is on High, not Very High.

I just picked benchmarks that I can find. I wasn't trying to prove anything.

I am just trying to keep things honest.

Because it wont be a joke when it comes to VRAM 1-2 years down the line unlike the RTX 3070

Btw I gotta be honest, until every game has Ray Tracing, and it actually makes a massive difference in the graphics, then I don't really care. A lot of RT in most games that have it seems fairly tacked on. Sometimes RT even hurts it, like they have textures that are WAY too reflective to the point where everything looks made of mirrors. Let's put it this way... in most games RN RT is far from a necessity. A few games pull it off very well though.

The way this is shaping up is that for standard rasterization the 6800 XT is probably the better buy over the RTX3080, however if you intend on using any kind of RT tech, the 3080 will probably be the way to go.

While the RAM sounded nice, I knew these cards were just gonna be behind. I don't look to these people for GPUs. 3080, which I'll never get at this rate, still remains to be my sought out item.

@BenjaminBanklin: I hear you, I still haven't got mine either. 😒 At this rate ill probably end up wanting a TI/Super variant instead when they are announced and have the same problem all over again trying to get one of those.

It will be worth waiting for though. You'd expect the next Nvidia cards to have more VRAM, possibly better priced as well after AMD showed their hand. I think there's a good chance the 3080 Ti will be the card of choice this gen just like the 2080 Ti was last gen. It will all come down to pricing.

That is fair.