AMD’s next-gen RDNA 4 GPUs poised for big ray tracing upgrade

AMD’s line of Radeon graphics cards has consistently lagged behind Nvidia in ray tracing performance. But, according to a new leak, that might be about to change.

Though many consumers are excited about the potential for AMD’s line of RDNA 4 graphics cards, the company has remained cagey about exactly what we can expect when the next generation of GPUs finally rolls out.

A new leak suggests that PC builders may have good reason to be excited, as AMD might finally be closing the gap with Nvidia when it comes to performance in ray tracing workloads.

Though AMD has produced capable Radeon graphics cards in the current generation, Nvidia has largely been dominant thanks to its suite of software tools like DLSS and Reflex, alongside its superior ray tracing performance. According to reliable AMD leaker Kepler_L2, that could be changing with the new RDNA 4 architecture.

Some users were somewhat disappointed when RDNA 3 proved to only be an iterative improvement on RDNA 2, but that appears not to be the case for RDNA 4. According to Kepler_L2, RDNA 4 will feature an entirely different block for Ray Tracing.

AMD

Posting on Twitter/X, Kepler teased followers by posting the enigmatic phrase “RT looks brand new”. When another user on the platform queried what they meant, Kepler replied by saying that RDNA 4 “Looked totally different.” to RDNA 3.

This has positive implications for the ray tracing performance of future Radeon GPUs, as well as AMD APUs for handheld devices and laptops. Rumour also has it that the PlayStation 5 Pro will use RDNA 4 ray tracing acceleration.

As usual, since this information is based solely on rumors and leaks, it should be taken with a grain of salt until an official announcement is made.