EXTRAS
The RX 6000 yields +40% in 3DMark Raytracing, but “0” in games
In recent years, the most relevant technologies that we have seen in the video game industry are the implementation of Ray Tracing and the use of image scaling technologies. We are not going to deceive you, since neither of them is something really new, but it is true that with the power of current graphics, we can finally use Ray Tracing in real time. Although NVIDIA has the clear advantage, AMD has shown that it is also capable of giving the size and the new drivers allow a improvement of a 40% FPS using Ray Tracing in 3DMark DXR.
NVIDIA and its GeForce RTX graphics were the ones that popularized the use of Ray Tracing in video games. This rendering technique is very expensive, but with raw power and Tensor cores, they made it workable, more or less. Well, even if we have a high-end GPU like a RTX 4080 or an RTX 3090, there are games that 4K and Ray Tracing activated do not even offer us 60 FPS. For example, the famous cyberpunk 2077that if it occurs to you to try it no DLSS or FSR and graphics settings in “Psycho” mode, you can say goodbye to fluidity. If the NVIDIA RTX graphics that were designed and promoted as the best option for Ray Tracing are already suffering, we can already get an idea of what is happening with AMD.
AMD RX 6000 achieves 40% more FPS with new drivers in 3DMark
AMD graphics cards have great raster power, being very competent in this regard. However, if we talk about Ray Tracing, the opposite occurs here, since perform much less than NVIDIA. This is no surprise and we see it reflected both in games, benchmarks and applications that use this technology. But something curious has happened and that is that with the expected launch of AMD drivers for the RX 6000 there are improvements in Ray Tracing that no one expected.
And it is that, the user Florin Musetoiu decided to test the different AMD drivers with a RX 6800XT in the benchmark 3DMark DirectX Raytracing. As we can see in the results, with the old AMD drivers version 22.5.1 and 22.11.2 we have even results, about 26.2FPS. However, the new drivers AMD Adrenalin Edition 23.2.1 who arrived recently, manages to get 36.2FPSthat is, 10 additional FPS that translates into a improvement of practically 40%. In fact, if we go to see reviews, we can verify that with the new drivers a 15% above an RTX 3070 in Ray Tracingnothing bad.
Drivers Ray Tracing enhancement is not reflected in games
This is my FPS with RT ON (reflections and Flashlight off as @CapFrameX suggested in his initial test with the ARC GPU)
59 FPS at 1440p RT ON FSR 2 Balanced on Oct 15, 2022
Tested the same location and same settings today with the 23.2.1 driver
72FPS22% perf increase? pic.twitter.com/DU4ECMPveZ
— Florin Musetoiu (@FlorinMusetoiu) February 16, 2023
Given the surprise of such an unexpected improvement in Ray Tracing with the new AMD drivers, the same user decided try your luck with your RX 6800 XT GPU in games. Here he again observed a notable performance improvement using Ray Tracing as we can read on his Twitter. The results of Dying Light 2 at 1440P with FSR 2 Balanced and Ray tracing on they gave 59FPS in October and with the new drivers managed to get 72FPSa 22% improvement. But before you claim victory and start playing games like a madman thinking that now they will be much better, join us in this sad story.
And it is that, as we go down in the history and the updates that it publishes, it turns out that this 22% improvement had already been achieved with previous drivers released on December 22. To finish and check whether or not there really was an improvement in Ray Tracing in games with the RX 6000 and the new drivers, he decided to try it.r Cyberpunk 2077.
Here, unfortunately, we hit the harsh reality and that is that, by resolution 1080P with RT Ultra and FSR 2 in Quality mode, achieves the same FPS. So, and unless more people are motivated to try their luck in other games, we can confirm that the only (and notable) perceived improvement has been that of 3DMark DirectX Raytracing.