RADV Vulkan Driver Making Progress On Portal RTX Support

[FireBurn]

Likewise, RX 6600 XT, got new Mesa compiled and it works from Steam for me. Strange glitches with Volumetrics as you say, but easy enough to turn off and everything else seems to work. Using "%command% -novid -windowed" to launch from Steam. I've got TAA-U set to performance and I'm at 1080p, everything on high (though volumetrics off) and I get about 12-15fps though no counter so I can't really see actually fps rate. Harder to judge at 720p but I'd call it playable. 30fps plus maybe?

Addendum: I can't set the portal render depth so it's not possible to see through portals for me. Not sure what that's about.

Try running with VK_INSTANCE_LAYERS=VK_LAYER_MESA_overlay VK_LAYER_MESA_OVERLAY_POSITION=bottom-left RADV_PERFTEST=rt %command%

Assuming you have the Vulkan Mesa Overlay installed

[gremble]

Try running with VK_INSTANCE_LAYERS=VK_LAYER_MESA_overlay VK_LAYER_MESA_OVERLAY_POSITION=bottom-left RADV_PERFTEST=rt %command%

Assuming you have the Vulkan Mesa Overlay installed

I've fixed seeing through portals now by appending "-dxlevel 90" to my launch string. The GUI still indicates only directx 7.0 support and options don't a appear to change, but it's all actually working now. OK so frame rates now I have the overlay (thanks for that): 720p between 40fps and 75fps, 1080p between 20fps to 30fps. RADV_PERFTEST=rt is not required for Mesa 23.0-devel.

[Brisse]

Sooo, when will Ray tracing be available to normal plebs?

Human civilization will have eradicated itself long before that point.

[V1tol]

I don't understand all the hype around RT. When someone says "reflections" I immediately remember water level of HL2 where you had realtime full resolution reflections of everything. In 2004. With Radeon 9600. What the hell have changed that nowadays game devs are not even capable of implementing a mirror without ray tracing?

[FireBurn]

I've fixed seeing through portals now by appending "-dxlevel 90" to my launch string. The GUI still indicates only directx 7.0 support and options don't a appear to change, but it's all actually working now. OK so frame rates now I have the overlay (thanks for that): 720p between 40fps and 75fps, 1080p between 20fps to 30fps. RADV_PERFTEST=rt is not required for Mesa 23.0-devel.

I have RADV_PERFTEST=rt set because the APU doesn't have RT capabilities and a few apps see the first GPU and error out, this forces it

[avis]

I don't understand all the hype around RT. When someone says "reflections" I immediately remember water level of HL2 where you had realtime full resolution reflections of everything. In 2004. With Radeon 9600. What the hell have changed that nowadays game devs are not even capable of implementing a mirror without ray tracing?

Ray tracing is not about [only] reflections it's about proper physically based lighting which looks a ton better than any faked lighting and then faked lighting is relatively difficult to implement properly, while for RTRT you just enable it and you're done. No prebaking, no hidden sources of light, no troubles with shadows, nothing. It just works though of course it requires a massive amount of compute power.

You may want to watch a couple of videos about it: https://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalFoundry/videos

[chocolate]

AMD's pricing for RDNA 3.0 is atrocious

I suppose it's universally agreeable that prices have reached exorbitant peaks for this kind of luxury hardware, so yes, the prices are high in absolute terms, but there's also this (I hope I'm not appearing pedantic, just sharing a thought):

In Italy the prices for these new cards have scaled linearly with performance compared to 2019 despite general inflation; meaning they are relatively cheaper than before in terms of perf/€.
Too bad they are already sold out, and 3rd-party cards will probably have an indecent markup for "space-grade radiation-hardened gold-plated-everything" PCBs and/or slightly better coolers with "fantasium military-grade sphere bearings and stealth pattern fans" that make absolutely no difference once inside a proper chassis.

You may want to watch a couple of videos about it: https://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalFoundry/videos

Not to detract from your other points, but their recent Fortnite UE5 video also shows some great lighting improvements on PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles, indicating sapient use of diverse lighting technologies can make more immersive worlds accessible to hardware that doesn't catch on fire; not trying to be snarky and not picking sides.
Yeah RTRT will be great in the future, but no current hardware can make it so easy for a development team as to just raytrace everything with a toggle and be done with it, so it should be used with care anyway.

[Linuxxx]

Thanks! That's worse than I expected

That's putting it mildly...

In due time, I expect RADV to overtake AMDVLK in RTRT performance aswell, because non-AMD software engineers are working on it.

[Linuxxx]

AMD has the one feature I'm looking for -- acceptable performance at a price that doesn't break the bank. For $359 you can get an 6700 XT that will play every game well enough at higher settings at 2K or scaled to 4K and satisfy everyone but a gear snob. To get the same performance from NVIDIA you have to step up to a $500 RTX 3070 with less VRAM or kid yourself with a $359 3060 with the same VRAM but worse performance across the board than a 6700 XT or 3070...12GB 3060 vs 12GB 6700 XT vs 8GB 3070...6700 XT is arguably the best one there.

So what if AMD GPUs or lower priced NVIDIA GPUs don't have kickass ray tracing? Neither do the $900-$1500 AMD or NVIDIA GPUs. With all current GPUs, ray tracing is like picking between a baked potato and a twice baked potato...bells and whistles or basic, it's still a baked potato. You can spend low and buy ass or spend a lot and buy halfass. Ray tracing doesn't really have a kickass GPU yet. I wouldn't classify the 4090 as kickass; perhaps three quarters ass at best. Maybe the RTX 5090 or 8900 XTX will be full on kickass for ray tracing...but for regular gaming for under $400 you can get kickass 2K from AMD or kickass 1080p from NVIDIA.



What's sad about RTX 4080 to 4090 performance for a bit more than an RTX 3080? To me, that makes the 7900 XT and XTX the better value GPUs to buy. Yeah, you can get a 3080 for $100 less than a 7900 XT or $200 less than an XTX, but the AMD cards perform better than the 3080 and just as well as everything better from NVIDIA except the 4090 at a much cheaper cost so they're priced appropriately.

How are the prices for pre-built OEM PCs in the USA?

Here in Europe one can find plenty of good deals with one caveat:

Almost all of them being Intel + nVidia combos;
as soon as an AMD part is inserted into the equation, the deal becomes worse price-wise.

For example, I bought my PC with a nVidia RTX 3060 Ti for a little bit over 1000 € (including VAT) in the spring of 2022, so pre crypto market crash, when identical GPUs were still selling for well over 500 € a piece.

Therefore, going pre-built OEM was a no-brainer, especially when also wanting a CPU upgrade, too.

Would it be possible to discern how the market situation is right now for you over the Atlantic Ocean?

[smitty3268]

There have been multiple NVIDIA sponsored titles which run better (faster) on AMD GPUs.

This isn't just sponsored by NVIDIA, it's fully written by them. I think it's fair assume it's being marketing driven, whether you agree that RT is important or not. The point of it is to make NVIDIA cards look good and make people want to buy them.