(Credit: Microsoft/Nvidia)
Microsoft's recent update to its Agility SDK could hold the key to big performance leaps in ray tracing for Intel and Nvidia graphics cards, though it may take another generation for AMD to benefit to the same extent.
With Shader Execution Reordering, some Intel and Nvidia GPUs deliver up to 90% greater FPS in a specific path-tracing benchmark, Microsoft says. That's not the same as real-world gaming performance, but it suggests game developers could have a new trick up their sleeves for bolstering frames per second in heavily ray-traced settings in the future, TechPowerUp reports.
Of all the visual features you can turn on in modern games, ray tracing is still the most demanding; path-tracing implementations are even more so. Although upscaling and frame generation can make games like Cyberpunk 2077 very playable even at 4K with ultra ray-traced settings, some games leverage specialized shader ordering on RTX graphics cards to achieve strong path-tracing performance. Microsoft's new system should democratize that, making it easier for developers to implement and for non-RTX GPUs to benefit.
With Shader Execution Reordering (SER), the API allows applications to sort the rays to optimize their execution in parallel, something GPUs excel at. In Microsoft's internal testing, it improved Intel Arc B-Series GPU performance by up to 90%. That includes Panther Lake-based Xe3 onboard GPUs, too. It also reportedly tested an Nvidia RTX 4090 and saw a 40% increase in FPS in the same test compared with the standard ray sorting mechanism.
X user Osvaldo Pinali also conducted their own test using an RTX 5080 and noted an 80% improvement in performance over the standard implementation.
This raises the question of AMD GPUs. Nvidia and Intel show an immediate benefit, but what about Team Red? Although AMD will implement the API, RDNA GPUs lack the hardware features needed to fully leverage it. The official driver notes for AMD GPUs read: "AMD Radeon RX 9000 series supports API but doesn’t reorder."
This suggests the benefits will be limited on AMD GPUs, but future GPU releases could take advantage of it if AMD designs around it, potentially netting big performance improvements in ray-tracing games if we see widespread adoption.
The performance results Microsoft achieved in its internal testing were with a very specific Microsoft demo, which VideoCardz says you can try out yourself in the DirectX-Graphics-Samples repository. It's called "D3D12RaytracingHelloShaderExecutionReordering," and is a demanding path-traced environment. It's not necessarily representative of real-world gaming, however, so we'll need to see some developers implement this in their games to see what effect it has on overall performance.