AMD patent spotted for variable rate shading, as featured in Nvidia Turing-based GPUs

Variable rate shading could be implemented in Navi GPUs. (Source: PCFiend)

A United States Patent Application made by AMD for variable rate shading (VRS) has been discovered. At present, the little-used technology only features in Turing-based cards from Nvidia; VRS can offer an fps increase in games that utilize it. It has been speculated that AMD plans to incorporate variable rate shading in its upcoming 7 nm Navi GPUs.

by Daniel R Deakin, 2019/03/01

A link showing an application for a patent has been shared online that connects AMD with variable rate shading (VRS). The technology currently features in graphics cards like the GeForce RTX 20-series and the Quadro RTX cards. Nvidia sums up the VRS rendering technique succinctly:

It increases rendering performance by applying full GPU shading horsepower to detailed areas of the scene, and less GPU horsepower to less detailed areas.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many games using variable rate shading yet, although Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus received a patch that allowed for VRS. A performance boost of around 5% was recorded in tests carried out by Guru3D, but the game already ran extremely well on the RTX 2080 card that was used in the benchmarks anyway. No gamer would complain about squeezing a few more fps out of their GPU, which VRS can manage by efficiently rendering fast motion or dark areas.

AMD’s patent application for variable rate shading was filed on August 25, 2017 so it seems the red team has been preparing well in advance for Navi GPUs, which are expected to be launched on July 7 this year. It’s believed AMD’s forthcoming Navi-based cards will offer specifications and general performance levels that will put them in direct competition with Nvidia’s new mid-range products such as the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti.