But is it really that big of a deal at the moment? Well, there are several factors that put the brakes on the ray tracing hype train, and those are the following:. It is demanding on the hardware.
When turned on, ray tracing can deliver a big performance hit, sometimes outright cutting the FPS in half. This performance hit is most noticeable with weaker GPUs, and it also varies from game to game. Sure, tech demos and segments designed to show off ray tracing will look amazing with this feature turned on, but when there are no reflective surfaces around, ray tracing will offer little to no discernible improvement in terms of visuals.
Not all games support it. As of , more games support ray tracing than before, but it is still far from being a universal feature, even when it comes to big AAA titles.
So, if you really care about ray tracing, Nvidia would probably be a better pick, although the new RX cards do fare admirably in terms of overall in-game performance and value. Ray tracing is definitely becoming increasingly popular, what with both the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X being compatible with it. However, it comes with its share of drawbacks, such as stuttering and input lag.
Needless to say, if you intend to get a monitor with a high refresh rate, it will inevitably come with one of two technologies: AMD FreeSync or Nvidia G-Sync. At their core, these technologies function in a similar way — they both use hardware to ensure that the refresh rate of the monitor is always the same as the framerate. This prevents the two from ever falling out of sync regardless of how wildly the framerate might fluctuate, thus removing screen tearing without any stuttering or input lag.
Nvidia G-Sync monitors tend to be more expensive for a number of reasons. However, one of the most important questions here is the price. This leads to our next question: which card has the better value? It is questionable whether or not these cards should even be compared but, at this point, they are the best mid-range cards from each manufacturer. With their latest generations, both companies released excellent enthusiast-class cards.
This technology is still relatively new, but it has still been around for long enough to expect better from AMD. Still, future driver updates and better AMD-oriented game optimization should lead to better peformance.
This feature can considerably increase your performance while only minimally reducing visual quality. So, this point goes to AMD. While features may seem less critical than actual specs, they are an important part of what makes a good GPU.
Technical explanations aside, ray tracing is a rendering technique that allows for lighting to be presented more accurately by accounting for variables such as object materials and how lighting is reflected off of them. NVIDIA has pursued ray tracing technology since the s, having introduced it to the world in It essentially calculates which frames in your field of view are going to be fully shaded or even rendered at all.
This significantly reduces the burden on the GPU, redirecting that extra energy to more useful things. There have also been talks of perfecting eye-tracking technology and using that to further improve upon VRS, which sounds like a sci-fi idea.
It can even be considered ahead of its time because of the process required to fully enjoy its benefits. The biggest issue here is that game developers are required to enable DLSS support when making the game. In order for the player to see the improvement, it needs to be sent to NVIDIA, who then let an AI run through the game, analyze the images, and automatically upscale it to a higher resolution. The communication between the GPU and the monitor basically works in this way: if the monitor refreshes at 60Hz, it requires 60 frames to be sent from the GPU same for Hz, Hz, and so on.
The issue usually occurs when the GPU is unable to produce the required frames, causing screen tearing. Adaptive sync technology allows for the GPU to effectively change the monitor refresh rate , depending on the number of frames being produced. In the not so distant past, the solution for this was software-based, most notably with VSync , but this is being phased out in favor of newer technologies.
Mainstream and budget GPUs, or at least GPUs that should qualify as mainstream and budget offerings, aren't any better. Winner: Nobody It's a terrible time to buy a graphics card , and that's been the case since about last August. With an overall score of four to two, Nvidia continues to hold the crown as the king of the GPU world.
Cue the band and light the fireworks. That said, all of this ends up mostly being meaningless when we look at what you can actually buy right now at reasonable prices. Your best bet if you want a new graphics card might be a pre-built gaming PC.
Normally, that's not what we'd recommend, and lead times are still a couple of months at most places. But given prices at places like eBay, you could almost buy a complete PC for the cost of just the graphics card. The biggest battle right now ends up being the supply of actual cards.
AMD mostly counters with promises of cards that are even more difficult to find in stock than Nvidia's offerings. Those will sell out just as quickly as everything else, but perhaps sometime in we'll finally see things settle down and a return to normalcy. From the first S3 Virge '3D decelerators' to today's GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance.
Image 1 of 6. Image 2 of 6. Image 3 of 6. Image 4 of 6. Image 5 of 6. Image 6 of 6. Image 1 of 2. Image 2 of 2. Jarred Walton. Topics Graphics. See all comments For me, it's AMD all the way: they are the only ones with a serious product with open source support.
Drivers and Software is a tie???!??? Were you a bit drunk when you wrote this article? Reddit, forums, youtube, the internet is basically full of people showing bluescreens, blackscreens, flickering and various other problems with the RX series and you say this is a tie? It is like you are comparing two cars, one with a flat tire and one not and say they are both ok Amd is pure crap on drivers.
So currently there is basically no discussion. Cheap people buy AMD but then start to cry on reddit. Smart people pay a bit more for an nvidia card and enjoy a quality experience. DZIrl said:. I've been very happy with my PowerColor XT.
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