Lackluster RX 9070 series path tracing demo suggests large gap with RTX 50-series GPUs

After last week's RDNA 4 announcement, the $599 price of the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT met expectations. The GPU seems to be a bargain with comparable specs to Nvidia's RTX 5070 Ti. However, a recent AMD path-tracing tech demo has concerned some gamers with blurry textures and artifacts.

The ToyShop demo depicts a charming robot who, after working on a companion, escapes to a futuristic city street bustling with traffic. This video showcases AMD's advancements in path tracing, a more complex variation of ray tracing. While the lighting effects initially impress, some problems arise during faster-moving scenes.

Neural super sampling denoising upscales images without introducing noise. Unfortunately, when the ToyShop tech demo shows cars zipping along a street, artifacts on the vehicles become visible. Also, static buildings in the background begin to look unfocused. Perhaps worst of all, foliage outside a park entrance becomes a blurry mishmash of textures.

Before the RX 9070 series, Nvidia had a significant advantage with ray tracing effects in games. While the demo focuses on the not commonly used path tracing, there are still concerns that the green team is ahead of AMD when rendering advanced lighting effects. As a result, Redditors are debating whether the RX 9070 series is such a strong value. The RX 9070 XT may have enough raw power to justify its price, but the weaker RX 9070 is only $50 less.

Some AMD defenders argue that ray tracing quality shouldn't be a primary buying factor. While the feature isn't used in every game, it's a major reason to upgrade from previous-generation GPUs.

The demo also reignites the FSR 4 vs. DLSS 4 debate and how much of an advantage Nvidia's upscaling technology still has. With the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT release date on March 6, buyers should see more detailed comparisons soon.