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AMD RADV Ray Tracing to potentially get much faster on Linux

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With some work currently pending to be pulled into Mesa, the open source AMD RADV driver could be about to get much faster with Ray Tracing which is exciting to see.

As noticed by Phoronix with the "Batch acceleration structure builds" merge request:

This converts radv_CmdBuildAccelerationStructuresKHR to a simple shim that pushes the actual build commands to a queue, where they are accumulated and dispatched as late as possible.

This helps especially with games that don't do any build command batching of their own. For example, it triples the performance of Hitman 3.

Then in one of the comments from testing it:

the perf uplift from this PR is huge in a few games, out of the ones I own lego builders journey gets a 2x improvement in performance. Control gets an additional ~5 fps at 1080p, Minecraft RTX (education edition) gets ~10 fps more. When paired with the monolithic pipeline MR it completely blows amdvlk out of water.

Tested on my rx6800.

So if these two merge requests are pulled in, AMD GPU owners could expect to see a rather nice performance uplift in quite a number of games in later release of Mesa. So we could potentially see this in Mesa 23.3 due later on this year.

As a recent convert over to team AMD GPU with a Radeon 6800 XT, I'm going to be keeping a closer eye on stuff like this.

Update: turns out this might not get merged into Mesa, as there's also an already merged upgrade for VKD3D-Proton that does the Direct3D 12 to Vulkan translation that does some of the same as the MR noted:

Significantly improves Raytracing performance on RADV in a number of games, especially Hitman 3.

Handling WriteBufferImmediate is a bit janky as always, since we want to maintain correct command ordering with BOTTOM markers.

Either way, things are about to get speedy. Exciting! 

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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8 comments

Ehvis Aug 14, 2023
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It's kind of funny that the author of the MR suggests that it probably won't get merged because it only benefits D3D12 and vkd3d already has an MR that can do the same thing. Could be two separate projects solving the same problem at the same time.
Zlopez Aug 14, 2023
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I'm wondering if this would improve the Steam Deck APU performance as well.
Liam Dawe Aug 14, 2023
Updated with note about the VKD3D-Proton MR.
Blisto Aug 14, 2023
Quoting: EhvisIt's kind of funny that the author of the MR suggests that it probably won't get merged because it only benefits D3D12 and vkd3d already has an MR that can do the same thing. Could be two separate projects solving the same problem at the same time.

They have both communicated together while it was going on so both projects weren't working on it independently without knowledge of the other. The mesa work started first and a MR was opened but after some talk it was decided it made more sense for it to be implemented in vkd3d-proton for now.
Shmerl Aug 14, 2023
QuoteAs a recent convert over to team AMD GPU with a Radeon 6800 XT

Congrats! You decided not to get the latest RDNA 3 cards?


Last edited by Shmerl on 14 August 2023 at 4:27 pm UTC
StalePopcorn Aug 14, 2023
…merge whichever is faster and more reliable. Linux gamers might double after more people get tired of Microsoft's and Apple's shit.
iWeaker4You Aug 14, 2023
Congratulations on the change to the 6800 XT, I had an RTX 3070, but when updating the 6800 XT are simply many improvements compared to NVIDIA
jarhead_h Aug 17, 2023
Awesome. I just fired up Quake2RTX for the first time the other day and I'm getting a solid 25FPS on my RX6800XT at 4K.
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