No, ray-tracing isn’t just candy. Fully implemented, it massively transforms the look of games and influences the gameplay as well. Just look at Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition vs. the standard game. Proper light bounce through RT global illumination alone makes it worth it. I’ve been dreaming of RT in games for over 20 years, ever since I first saw real-time ray-tracing with the amazing heaven seven demo from 2000, which still works on modern systems, by the way. Here’s a link, use the “high res” download.

DLSS on the other hand is just useful, providing free enhanced image quality and a massive performance boost, while AMD’s competing FSR can only do the latter at the cost at the former, absolutely butchering image quality, especially in regards to edges and transparent textures (foliage, fences, hair). With DLSS taken into account, Nvidia comes ahead practically all the time in both performance and image quality, allowing cheaper and older cards from the 2000 series onward to punch far above their weight. Since it’s enjoying widespread support, even to the point that modders are adding it to games that ship without it (often because of AMD sponsorship deals prohibiting it), it needs to be taken into account. There’s a DLSS mod for Skyrim VR, for example, which stabilizes performance and results in much more clarity.

AMD does often ship their cards with more VRAM, which is an advantage, and their raw performance figures are highly competitive in several price brackets, but while I do like the generous amount of VRAM, raw performance is pretty worthless in the age of machine learning image enhancement. There is no reason not to take advantage of it.

Now, if AMD’s FSR, which has already been massively improved over the years, does at some point catch up to DLSS or at least Intel’s XeSS, then AMD cards might become a solid choice again, but until then, I can’t really recommend them, especially given that driver quality still isn’t on par after decades of failing to catch up. I’m saying this as someone who has had several ATI and then AMD cards over the years. Drivers have always been an annoying Achilles’ Heel.

I get that AMD is in the underdog position compared to Nvidia, but it’s really only by comparison. They are just as much of a massive cold, faceless multinational corporation and are engaging just as much in dubious business practices. It’s only due to their comparatively smaller market share that they can’t bully the competition around as much.