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The open source AMD RADV Vulkan driver is set to get some nice looking performance improvements for Ray-Tracing, which should release along with Mesa 24.0.

As mentioned in a Merge Request titled "Convert 1D ray launches to 2D" that has been accepted into Mesa developer Friedrich Vock mentioned "Because we use unaligned dispatches, 1D launches only use 8 threads per
wave. Converting to 2D and fixing up launch IDs in the prolog significantly increases occupancy." that gave a "~30% uplift in Ghostwire Tokyo".

Impressive and then you look into the comments and others are noting more performance improvements in other games too with Adriano Martins mentioning these on an AMD RX 6700 XT:

Before After Game
58 FPS 67 FPS (+%15.51) Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
36 FPS 55 FPS (+%52.77) Ghostwire: Tokyo
21 FPS 35 FPS (+%66.66) Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
38 FPS 42 FPS (+%10.52) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
15 FPS 23 FPS (+%53.33) Bright Memory Infinite Ray Tracing Benchmark
8 FPS 14 FPS (+%75.00) Sackboy: A Big Adventure

Further to that in another comment Adam Niederer also showed off improvements on their AMD 7900 XT at 2560x1440:

Program Scene d4499c4c d4499c4c + !26105 (merged)
Ghostwire: Tokyo Fresh Game 5 FPS 12 FPS (+140%)
The Witcher 3 Outside Novigrad 27 FPS 37 FPS (+37%)
Control; High RT Executive Sector 56 FPS 56 FPS (flat)
Control; Ultra RT Mod Executive Sector 34 FPS 32 FPS (flat)
Chorus Outside Near Enclave 40 FPS 96 FPS (+140%)
Chorus Enclave Hangar 9 FPS 27 FPS (+200%)

The MR was open since November 2023, with it being accepted and merged January 5th, 2024.

So it should be available in Mesa 24.0 which is due to release January 31st, 2024. Although that depends how the Release Candidates go with the first RC for Mesa 24.0 due January 10th, 2024.

Source: Phoronix

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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9 comments

M@GOid Jan 6
Why the RX 7900 results were lower than the RX 6700 ones?
omer666 Jan 6
Why the RX 7900 results were lower than the RX 6700 ones?
Must be resolution the game is running at
alexleduc Jan 6
This is awesome, especially considering that AMD card are slower than Nvidia when it comes to ray tracing. I'd love to see a benchmark comparing the two, once this patch makes it to everyone's favourite distro. I'm sure a comparable Nvisia card still beats AMD, but maybe the difference is no longer as significant.

I'm really glad I got an RX 7800 XT.


Last edited by alexleduc on 6 January 2024 at 5:12 pm UTC
Good time to be gaming on Linux. May the mesa spread!
14 Jan 6
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Anyone enjoying ray tracing right now? It's not something I've tinkered with with the exception of Minecraft.
Anyone enjoying ray tracing right now? It's not something I've tinkered with with the exception of Minecraft.

Aside from Quake 2 RTX I haven't tried it on any other game yet. Even though ray tracing makes things nicer, I'm not too crazy about it.
Shmerl Jan 7
I don't see much of an improvement in CP2077, but on the other hand, it was pretty bad in the first place. So it might have improved, but not to the point of making it useful there either way. Still, any improvement is welcome.

It should become more useful and make more sense in the future generations of AMD GPUs.


Last edited by Shmerl on 7 January 2024 at 11:01 am UTC
jonorok Jan 9
As excited as I am to hear this, it's insane to me to think I played The Witcher 3 at 1440p at 55fps with an fx8350 and two R9 380s in Crossfire, ultra settings (Hairworks disabled, of course.) To think a 7900xt would hit 37 fps just for Ray tracing at the same resolution... I mean, I haven't experienced "RTX ON" or whatever, but surely the payoff just isn't there?
M@GOid Jan 9
As excited as I am to hear this, it's insane to me to think I played The Witcher 3 at 1440p at 55fps with an fx8350 and two R9 380s in Crossfire, ultra settings (Hairworks disabled, of course.) To think a 7900xt would hit 37 fps just for Ray tracing at the same resolution... I mean, I haven't experienced "RTX ON" or whatever, but surely the payoff just isn't there?

Like someone said elsewhere: ray-tracing is Nvidia's way to convince people that they need to expend over a thousand dollars on a graphics card, just to play a game on maximum settings.
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