and if the games one plays, doesnt support RT, or any of the features ampre offers, then rasterized graphics performance, does matter. right know, i could care less about TR, or DLSS, as i more then likely wont use them, a few friends i work with, also dont care about RT. they are waiting to see what rdna2 is like, and if it is on par, or faster then ampre in the games they play, they will get that.
Of course you don't care about RT and DLSS, since if you're not running an Nvidia card, you can't possibly use either one right now. AMD fans will only start caring about RT once RX 6000 series arrives and not before. They've been saying, repeatedly, that ray tracing doesn't matter because AMD GPUs can't do it. However, there are now multiple games where ray tracing actually does matter.
Control absolutely looks better with ray tracing.
Fortnite looks better with ray tracing, so if you're playing in creative mode, or just not ultra concerned with being competitive, turn it on. Some of the other games with RT effects aren't getting as much benefit from it (
BFV,
CoD:MW,
SotTR,
Metro Exodus). Others I just personally don't care about too much (
Minecraft RTX,
Quake II RTX,
Justice,
WoW,
Ring of Elysium,
Wolfenstein Youngblood). But many more games are in the works, and quite a few look like they'll benefit quite a bit from RT. And with the next generation consoles supporting the feature, the number is only going to grow.
RT is important, and AMD will have that with Big Navi. DLSS, though, may be just as important and it's a serious problem for AMD. It's proprietary Nvidia tech, and it's becoming
much easier for games to implement. Unreal Engine supports it, and I think Unity does as well -- you basically just have to flip a switch in the code and add a UI to enable/disable DLSS. Even worse (for AMD) is that
DLSS 2.x actually works. There were plenty of issues with DLSS 1.0, but DLSS 2.x is pretty dang awesome.
So, we can run benchmarks comparing AMD vs. Nvidia running the same settings without DLSS, but as soon as you enable DLSS, Nvidia is going to win in probably every game that supports it. Unless AMD can come up with a compelling alternative that works just as well (hint: FidelityFX isn't it, at least not in the current implementation), DLSS is potentially more of a game changer than RT.
Think about it: Nvidia can run 1080p with DLSS upscaling to 4K, end up looking better in many games than native 4K (because TAA sucks, but that's another matter), and with performance that's probably better than 1440p native. And 4K native normally runs 40-45% slower than 1440p. So, if your choice is:
- AMD, at 1440p native, getting 75 fps
- Nvidia, at 4K DLSS, getting 85 fps -- or 1440p DLSS getting 120+ fps
That's clearly an Nvidia win for anyone that cares about the gaming experience rather than pure apples-to-apples benchmarks.
I'm not really looking forward to the flame wars that are going to come up when we have to talk about image quality in relative performance for equivalent quality in future games that support DLSS. Because already, the writing on the wall says Nvidia will win those comparisons. Even if image quality ends up being equivalent for whatever AMD does vs. DLSS, unless AMD can do it while rendering a lower resolution, performance will likely favor Nvidia. I remember saying back at the original RTX launch, "You know, as cool as ray tracing sounds, DLSS and the Tensor cores could end up being more important." That's proving to be the case. Just like so many other things related to deep learning, the potential gains are incredible.
Cyberpunk 2077 is going to be an important test vehicle for both companies. If the ray tracing effects really help the overall look and feel of the game, and then DLSS means some of the modest Nvidia GPUs can keep up with Big Navi, the better GPUs for
Cyberpunk will end up being from Nvidia. We'll find out in about a month exactly how the various GPUs from both companies stack up in various ray tracing games and non-ray tracing games, though.
Watch Dogs Legion,
Cyberpunk,
Call of Duty, and several more are coming this year -- and there will probably be 20 or more RT + DLSS games released in 2021.
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