Let's Settle This: is Ray Tracing worth the premium?

[VintyMinty]

AMD tends to have more frames per dollar, but does Ray Tracing and DLSS warrant the extra cost on Nvidia cards?

 

[Vinnige Fanie]

Drivers that work warrant the extra costs.

 

[Areola Grande]

Overall no.

DLSS is better than FSR but FSR is still good.

Ray-Tracing is fantastic sometimes and unnoticeable at other times. Really depends on the implementation.

 

[adamr]

AMD tends to have more frames per dollar, but does Ray Tracing and DLSS warrant the extra cost on Nvidia cards?

DLSS and frame generation is amazing …. But makes devs lazy

The reflective water and shit … nah not really

 

[RaptorChris]

Reminds me of other NVidia technologies like hairworx that just faded away. Ray tracing is cool and all and a great way to market their products but don't think it's worth the premium, at least not currently.

 

[Obie]

Reminds me of other NVidia technologies like hairworx that just faded away. Ray tracing is cool and all and a great way to market their products but don't think it's worth the premium, at least not currently.

I have to agree with you here.

Ray tracing is cool but it's not in all games and not amazing in all the games that do have it so I don't see the value there really

Like for example the 7800xt vs the rtx 4070...

-The 7800xt is faster and cheaper.
It's not as good at ray tracing but it will win in most games without it.

I would not buy the 4070 even if it was the same price as the 7800xt.

This goes the same for the 4070ti vs 7900xt debate in my opinion.

 

[Nyt Ryda]

DLSS is great.
DLSS Frame Generation is amazing.
DLSS + Frame Generation + Ray reconstruction is just *chef's kiss*
And it's getting better every year. AMD's innovation gets you VAC banned lol.

But honestly, half baked Raytracing is not that great if it's focused on shadows and AO.
And full pathtracing is almost unfeasible on anything slower than a 4080 16Gb..

I think ray traced reflections are the most beneficial. You can see this on the console side too as they prioritize this. Makes games like Spider Man look a lot better.

 

[Dr. Kraken]

Drivers that work warrant the extra costs.

Few years ago, sure. Today? Not really

 

[Nyt Ryda]

Few years ago, sure. Today? Not really

I haven't used AMD drivers since the HD7970, but I have noticed how many times a year some guy on Carb with an AMD card comes to ask for help with an issue.

I have not seen the equivalent number of green users come here to ask advice, and it's not because they're smarter at solving issues.

 

[Dr. Kraken]

I haven't used AMD drivers since the HD7970, but I have noticed how many times a year some guy on Carb with an AMD card comes to ask for help with an issue.

I have not seen the equivalent number of green users come here to ask advice, and it's not because they're smarter at solving issues.

I would say they were pretty bad pre 2018. Got better slowly, but today the average gamer and PC user won't have any issues with AMD. They're definitely not as stable as Team Green, but they've come a long way to the point that the whole driver thing is essentially a dead horse or meme if you will. I've had zero issues with AMD before.

 

[Valheru]

I would say they were pretty bad pre 2018. Got better slowly, but today the average gamer and PC user won't have any issues with AMD. They're definitely not as stable as Team Green, but they've come a long way to the point that the whole driver thing is essentially a dead horse or meme if you will. I've had zero issues with AMD before.

I did, but highly likely not driver realted, more like hardware & software combination. While I did resolve the bulk of the issues in the end, I was not left with a good experience. Their Adrenaline software is utter fucking horseshit though, it is exceptionally intrusive and borline gimmick. Very heavy on resource usage too, clashes with a crapton of other software suites.

I sold the card and went back to team green.

 

[VintyMinty]

Drivers that work warrant the extra costs.

Haha, it's not that bad is it, Ik Nvidia drivers work more often than AMD's but they have less and less bugs as time goes on

 

[VintyMinty]

Reminds me of other NVidia technologies like hairworx that just faded away. Ray tracing is cool and all and a great way to market their products but don't think it's worth the premium, at least not currently.

Path Tracing from what I've seen is really stunning, It's close to real life in some scenarios, and in others broken (That's to be expected, its in development) I get what you mean though, RT offers pretty minor visual fidelity considering the massive price hike

 

[VintyMinty]

DLSS and frame generation is amazing …. But makes devs lazy

The reflective water and shit … nah not really

I agree 100%, devs can now get lazy with Optimisation cause with FSR and DLSS you can get playable frame rates

 

[HButton]

I did, but highly likely not driver realted, more like hardware & software combination. While I did resolve the bulk of the issues in the end, I was not left with a good experience. Their Adrenaline software is utter fucking horseshit though, it is exceptionally intrusive and borline gimmick. Very heavy on resource usage too, clashes with a crapton of other software suites.

I sold the card and went back to team green.

Buy better other components maybe?

Got a 5600x and I cant see that the software brings down my whole system's performance.

 

[VintyMinty]

DLSS is great.
DLSS Frame Generation is amazing.
DLSS + Frame Generation + Ray reconstruction is just *chef's kiss*
And it's getting better every year. AMD's innovation gets you VAC banned lol.

But honestly, half baked Raytracing is not that great if it's focused on shadows and AO.
And full pathtracing is almost unfeasible on anything slower than a 4080 16Gb..

I think ray traced reflections are the most beneficial. You can see this on the console side too as they prioritize this. Makes games like Spider Man look a lot better.

AMD did have SAM which was cool, and FSR is for everyone not just AMD GPU's. My 1060 can run titles that would otherwise be quite unplayable frame rates because of FSR. So i think AMD also does some cool stuff, sure, not on the level of RT but still cool.

 

[HButton]

In was in bed with both. 1080ti and now 6700xt

Think it is down to preference. Newer titles maybe where the difference is as I don't play all the latest things when they come out. Diablo 4 was the latest thing I got when it came out.

Other titles like Counter strike 2, Dota 2, Diablo 4. Running 3 screens, 1 x 32 2k screen, 1 x hd ultra wide and 1 x 2k ultrawide with low power consumption and can't recall having issues with the setup.

I was running 8.2 for months now upgrading and still stable.

This is just my experience and do not know all issues, but ai have this feeling with Asus vs Gigabyte. Not having stable experience with Gigabyte.

 

[Deviation]

If there is an issue on my computer, 10/10 times it my AMD driver.
Just had issues this week with computer freezing on my 6800xt. Drove me bonkers.

When it works, its fine and its quite best bang for bucks.
But when it doesn't, grass is greener on the Nvidia side.

 

[RaptorChris]

Haha, it's not that bad is it, Ik Nvidia drivers work more often than AMD's but they have less and less bugs as time goes on

I've had the 4080 and 7900xtx, I didn't have any issues thankfully with Adrenaline. I even played Alan Wake 2 and didn't have any game breaking bugs touch wood, AMD was even kind enough to add a DP 2.1 port

 

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

I would say no for RTX, but yes for DLSS, while AMD is making strides on frame generation (look at the new alternative on the beta drivers vs FSR3.0), massive improvements and it's not game dependent, but I still thing DLSS is better, at least on the games that support that.

 

[RaptorChris]

Path Tracing from what I've seen is really stunning, It's close to real life in some scenarios, and in others broken (That's to be expected, its in development) I get what you mean though, RT offers pretty minor visual fidelity considering the massive price hike

Mind me asking which path tracing games? I'm legitimately curious to check it out

 

[VintyMinty]

Mind me asking which path tracing games? I'm legitimately curious to check it out

Check out this video and skip to the Path Tracing comparisons (Cyberpunk):

 

[TheJudge]

Had Ati cards back in the day and have had the RX 470, 480, 570, 580, 5500 XT and now 6600 XT. I'm eyeing the 7800 XT next.

Yes there have been some driver issues over the years (Fallout 4 hated the AMD cards I owned) but haven't been complete deal breakers for me.

Must admit the newest Nvidia card I've owned was a RTX 2060 so I haven't used team green for a while. First one I used was a TNT2 way back when I moved from 3DFX. 😂

 

[Obie]

Had Ati cards back in the day and have had the RX 470, 480, 570, 580, 5500 XT and now 6600 XT. I'm eyeing the 7800 XT next.

Yes there have been some driver issues over the years (Fallout 4 hated the AMD cards I owned) but haven't been complete deal breakers for me.

Must admit the newest Nvidia card I've owned was a RTX 2060 so I haven't used team green for a while. First one I used was a TNT2 way back when I moved from 3DFX. 😂

 

[TheJudge]

View attachment 62092

Just stay off my lawn!

 

[Obie]

In was in bed with both. 1080ti and now 6700xt

Think it is down to preference. Newer titles maybe where the difference is as I don't play all the latest things when they come out. Diablo 4 was the latest thing I got when it came out.

Other titles like Counter strike 2, Dota 2, Diablo 4. Running 3 screens, 1 x 32 2k screen, 1 x hd ultra wide and 1 x 2k ultrawide with low power consumption and can't recall having issues with the setup.

I was running 8.2 for months now upgrading and still stable.

This is just my experience and do not know all issues, but ai have this feeling with Asus vs Gigabyte. Not having stable experience with Gigabyte.

I can add to this.
I had a 6800xt, 7800xt, 4070ti, 4080, 7900xt and 7900xtx.

When I was running an older title (AC: Odyysey) the 7800xt flat out beat the 4070ti and matched the 4080 in that game at 2k.
The 7900xt/xtx went well above.

Maybe that was a weak title for nvidia I'm not sure, but in this sense I still think 'brute force' rasterization is tops.

P.S.
FSR3 could really change the game and also if you've seen the newer ray tracing implementations (Is it Unreal engine 5? Correct me if I'm wrong)
There is almost no gap between AMDs new gpus and nvidia.

 

[RaptorChris]

I did, but highly likely not driver realted, more like hardware & software combination. While I did resolve the bulk of the issues in the end, I was not left with a good experience. Their Adrenaline software is utter fucking horseshit though, it is exceptionally intrusive and borline gimmick. Very heavy on resource usage too, clashes with a crapton of other software suites.

I sold the card and went back to team green.

When you say intrusive do you mean how it tracks game play usage etc? I do think there are some things they could have turned off or given you the option to hide, it does feel very busy.

 

[Valheru]

Buy better other components maybe?

Got a 5600x and I cant see that the software brings down my whole system's performance.

I got a 5950X, Corsair Vengeance PRO RAM on an Asus Strix B550. Why should I change out these already good components?

Software conflicts are apparently a thing with AMD software, I took a chance and it did not pay off for me. Ironically, the NVidia GPU that replaced it, just works.

 

[Valheru]

When you say intrusive do you mean how it tracks game play usage etc? I do think there are some things they could have turned off or given you the option to hide, it does feel very busy.

Tracks usage, monitors everything.

After my BIOS update, I was check a game out to check how it runs. The software decided that my overclock was unstable (it wasn't), reset the whole thing to stock, locked my game/PC for a minute. OK, cool, rebooted, adjusted a few things lower, used the software to adjust MIN clock on GPU, which it ignored. I inded doing a DDU and installing driver-only, which was BY FAR the most stable. Had some brief stutters in Cyberpunk during which I assume was shader cache rebuild.

 

[HButton]

I got a 5950X, Corsair Vengeance PRO RAM on an Asus Strix B550. Why should I change out these already good components?

Software conflicts are apparently a thing with AMD software, I took a chance and it did not pay off for me. Ironically, the NVidia GPU that replaced it, just works.

Having a GPU driver impacting your performance and system like that will make it logical to assume you are not talking about that system. I am a running a pretty average system not having such restraints or ever before makes it a logical comment.

Windows 10, 11, steam, battle.net, video editing software video capture, hardware software( asus, gigabyte, corsair, logitech, etc), overclocking software and mining had no impact. So not sure what software you are running unless I should already know that too.