In January 2025, NVIDIA introduced some new Ray Tracing techniques using Neural Shaders. And, to the surprise of no one, AMD has filed similar patents for Ray Tracing. So, let’s see what the red team will be bringing to gamers.
The key features of these patents are Neural Network-based Ray Tracing, Traversal and Procedural Shader Bounds, Ray Tracing Structure Traversal Based on Work Items and Lossy Geometry Compression Using Interpolated Normals for Use in BVH Building and Rendering.
Going into more details, the Neural Network-based Ray Tracing seems similar to what NVIDIA is doing with the Neural Shaders. So, I guess now PC gamers will be fine with this tech? After all, some criticized NVIDIA for introducing it as a new “gimmick”.
The point is that AMD appears to be going all in with Ray Tracing for its future hardware. So, in theory, RDNA5 and the next-gen consoles (PS6 and the next Xbox) should be more capable of running ray-traced – or even path-traced – games.
This also proves how far ahead NVIDIA is. The exact same thing happened with DLSS. NVIDIA first introduced it, only for AMD to follow up (one or two years later). Now if only there were any RTX50 GPUs to buy.
Realistically, I don’t expect any games to support these new RT techniques anytime soon. We are most likely looking at things that may happen in two or three years from now. So, this is a nothing-burger for most of you. Still, it can give you an idea of where things are heading.
You can find links for all of AMD’s RT patents here. All of them have brief descriptions, so you can find out what AMD is trying to achieve with them.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email