News Ray Tracing Galore: Intel's Xe Graphics Reported to Join the Bandwagon

[Admin]

It's a ray-tracing party, and everyone's invited.

Ray Tracing Galore: Intel's Xe Graphics Reported to Join the Bandwagon : Read more

 

[jimmysmitty]

It isn't really a surprise that Intel is going to push RT in their discrete GPUs. Larrabees major demo was Half Life 2: Lost Coast using Ray Tracing, at the time HL2 was one of the best looking games and RT made it even better. They also did a Wolfenstein demo using RT.

This only will help to push it into a more mainstream product. However what will help the most is a unified API so that it is not a feature only enabled on certain GPUs like with nVidias Gameworks. While there is no problem having some specialized features something as core as ray tracing should be much like Tesselation or rasterization, a basic standard that all GPUs can use if they are capable of doing it.

I just wonder if they plan to go the same route as nVidia, hardware based, or if they plan to do what AMD currently has, software based. I think hardware based is the best route although more expensive until it becomes more common place.

 

[JayNor]

From the reports I've seen, Intel use of "ray tracing support" could mean some cpu/gpu integration software support. The articles on World of Tanks ray tracing is the type of support I'm expecting in the first chips, although I wouldn't be surprised if some aspects of that have been enhanced.

World of Tanks Devs Working With Intel to Bring Ray Tracing Tech to All DirectX 11 GPUs

Lots of new stuff is coming to World of Tanks, including ray tracing, a Halloween event with some Silent Hill flair (no, really), and more!

wccftech.com

 

[kinggremlin]

This only will help to push it into a more mainstream product. However what will help the most is a unified API so that it is not a feature only enabled on certain GPUs like with nVidias Gameworks. While there is no problem having some specialized features something as core as ray tracing should be much like Tesselation or rasterization, a basic standard that all GPUs can use if they are capable of doing it.

I just wonder if they plan to go the same route as nVidia, hardware based, or if they plan to do what AMD currently has, software based. I think hardware based is the best route although more expensive until it becomes more common place.

DXR is free to implement by any company just like any other DirectX library. Nvidia's RTX is not a proprietary ray tracing API. It's just the marketing name Nvidia uses for its hardware acceleration of Microsoft's DXR.

 

[bit_user]

From the reports I've seen, Intel use of "ray tracing support" could mean some cpu/gpu integration software support. The articles on World of Tanks ray tracing is the type of support I'm expecting in the first chips, although I wouldn't be surprised if some aspects of that have been enhanced.

World of Tanks Devs Working With Intel to Bring Ray Tracing Tech to All DirectX 11 GPUs

Lots of new stuff is coming to World of Tanks, including ray tracing, a Halloween event with some Silent Hill flair (no, really), and more!

wccftech.com

That's not remotely comparable to Nvidia's solution. This is just a stop-gap and a way to give developers some early experience with their new rendering APIs.

 

[bit_user]

However what will help the most is a unified API so that it is not a feature only enabled on certain GPUs like with nVidias Gameworks.

As @kinggremlin said, Microsoft's DXR is all about that.

I just wonder if they plan to go the same route as nVidia, hardware based, or if they plan to do what AMD currently has, software based. I think hardware based is the best route although more expensive until it becomes more common place.

Nvidia currently has a software-based option, as well, for Pascal and newer GPUs. Also, it's only remotely usable for games using modest ray tracing features.

Tom's even did an in-depth comparison, but I'm not readily finding it. Anyway, here's a taste:

NVIDIA shows how much ray-tracing sucks on older GPUs

NVIDIA demonstrates exactly how much ray-tracing will suck on older GPUs.

www.engadget.com

The performance of a true hardware engine is an order of magnitude greater. Anyone serious about ray tracing support will need to go that route.

 

[JayNor]

This has a correction by Intel ... no hardware ray tracing confirmed for the first Xe chips.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/344...iscrete-xe-gpus-will-support-ray-tracing.html

 

[jimmysmitty]

As @kinggremlin said, Microsoft's DXR is all about that.


Nvidia currently has a software-based option, as well, for Pascal and newer GPUs. Also, it's only remotely usable for games using modest ray tracing features.

Tom's even did an in-depth comparison, but I'm not readily finding it. Anyway, here's a taste:

NVIDIA shows how much ray-tracing sucks on older GPUs

NVIDIA demonstrates exactly how much ray-tracing will suck on older GPUs.

www.engadget.com

The performance of a true hardware engine is an order of magnitude greater. Anyone serious about ray tracing support will need to go that route.

Well yea. Ray Tracing is very hard on hardware. Its like insane AA only more insane.

This has a correction by Intel ... no hardware ray tracing confirmed for the first Xe chips.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/344...iscrete-xe-gpus-will-support-ray-tracing.html

Thats too bad but understandable. I am sure they want to get their foot in the door first before trying to throw everything in.