The question in my mind is: Will AMD increase ray-tracing performance? When the 2XXX series launched RT was a gimmick hardly any game used that tanked performance to a ridiculous degree. Now the consoles have it, it's part of DX, and games are playable with the effect enabled. With RT becoming less of a gimmick, I want to see some commitment to the technology from AMD.
Their raster performance is competitive, but RT is leagues behind, and that is starting to matter.
It's still a gimmick because in most games, while you're busy admiring your reflection in the water, some enemy NPC wants to put a bullet through your skull. I don't get how it makes a difference to people as to where certain shadows lie when 99.9999% couldn't tell you where the non-RT shadows were drawn in the first place.
Ray-tracing is an over-hyped gimmick that may or may not have a significant graphical impact years from now. I remember when a REAL game-changer in graphics came to be and it was back in 2008. Tessellation
completely and dramatically changed the look of games and it wasn't just where the shadows lie or a some fuzzy reflections, it was
all game assets.
So here's the difference between RT and non-RT from the game that, to date, has employed it the most,
Control:
Yeah, I can see the reflection of the pipes in the puddle on the floor but it's not something that would make or break a game for me (or anyone else for that matter). The difference is there, but it's insignificant and I doubt that I'd really notice it during gameplay because it's the last thing that I'd be looking for.
Tessellation isn't subtle and its effects on graphics are profound. To give you an idea of tessellation's effects, I'll use the dragon statue from Unigine Heaven.
Here's the dragon statue with tessellation disabled:
It's very nicely done and nicely rendered as you can see. However, when you turn tessellation on, the difference is immediate and staggering:
Tessellation, like ray-tracing, was absolutely
crippling to GPUs of the day. The difference was the fact that entire games looked different in pretty much every way. It wasn't just about a few shadows and reflections, it was about EVERYTHING. Don't just look at the dragon, the roof shingles, the bricks, the post, the stairs and the ground. Everything just pops into more of a 3D image. THIS is what a game-changer looks like and RT is a joke compared to tessellation.
If you want to be truly worried about RT performance, wait at least five more years because the devs have to figure out what else to do with it. As it is now, it's just not a big enough deal to suffer with the performance hit that it carries.
