News – AMD Won’t Use DirectX Raytracing Until Even Low-End Radeon GPUs Can Support It

If you’re a tooled-up member of Team Red staring at Nvidia’s RTX ray-tracing capabilities like a green-eyed monster, there’s a spot of bad news for you. AMD senior VP of engineering for Radeon Technologies Group, David Wang, has said AMD will not be implementing DirectX ray tracing into its Radeon graphics cards until all of its GPUs from top to bottom are capable of supporting it.

“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,” said Wang during an interview with 4Gamer. “Utilisation of ray tracing games will not proceed unless we can offer ray tracing in all product ranges from low end to high end.”

It’s a markedly different approach to Nvidia, which has got the tech into the hands of the enthusiast market before there’s even the software there to support it. Along with this, the RTX 20 Series with raytracing DXR capabilities begins at the $600 level with the GeForce RTX 2070. It’s certainly not a cheap, or arguably even worthwhile proposition at this stage, but there’s an attraction there for those who want a taste of the future of GPU technology.

For AMD fans, it means there could be quite a wait until DirectX Raytracing (DXR) is even possible on its GPUs. Raytracing is an incredibly demanding process that’s currently only even feasible on Nvidia’s top-end graphics cards. AMD intends to wait until even its entry-level parts can achieve the feat before it officially supports DXR.

On the one hand, we have Nvidia pushing the tech, while on the other we have AMD waiting for the tech to mature before adopting it. Which of the two GPU giants is making the best move here? Do you think Intel could even come in hot and heavy with DXR support in 2019? Let us know!

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