- AMD released a new path tracing demo running on RX 9000 hardware
- Some PC gamers have cited muddy textures, blurriness, and artifacting
- It’s created a wider discussion on RDNA 4’s price-to-performance
An official path tracing demo published on AMD Gaming’s YouTube channel has revealed that the RDNA 4 graphics cards fall behind what’s possible with rival Nvidia’s RTX 50 series regarding price-to-performance.
AMD published the Toyshop real-time path tracing neural rendering tech demo, which has highlighted the impressive capabilities of the RX 9070 XT, considering its sub-$600 MSRP. However, this is when taking the 75-second video in isolation, while some tech enthusiasts and concerned gamers have made comparisons with Nvidia‘s latest.
As spotted by Notebookcheck, some dissenting voices have claimed that this RX 9000 series path tracing benchmark is marred with blurry textures and visual artifacts, with the impressive lighting effects becoming problematic during faster moments.
A particular concern has arisen regarding how the RTX 9070 XT handles AI-powered supersampling and how the noise reduction is implemented when cleaning the overall image up. Specifically, attention has been placed on the cars driving along the street, as visual artifacts are reportedly present, as the static buildings get fuzzy and the foliage becomes blurred when you look a little closer. This is (seemingly) without factoring in the built-in compression that comes with YouTube as a video hosting platform.
Meanwhile, numerous comments on the r/pcgaming sub-Reddit are blunter with their criticisms. The top-voted comment simply reads: “The ghosting on the robot arms is pretty agregious”, with another stating: “That’s a lot of noise”, and a longer response from another user arguing: “What’s the point of releasing a demo with crazy noise, ghosting, and every RT-releated artifacts possible. It’s not going to awe anybody, it just just shows how far behind Nvidia they are”.
It opens a wider dialog about just how good at path tracing a $600 graphics card really has to be, with the RX 9070 XT retailing for the same price as the newly arriving Nvidia RTX 5070, itself not without controversy. Our review of the weakest Blackwell GPU noted near-identical performance with the previous mainstream leader, the RTX 4070 Super from January 2024, with the obvious exception of DLSS 4’s Multi Frame Generation; the feature is less-than-stellar here than on the company’s flagship models.
Similarly, we (seemingly) get to see the limitations of FSR 4 against DLSS 4 with noise reduction and AI-assisted path tracing in lower-end hardware. The results are certainly impressive on the surface, but looking closer, some PC gamers fear that if this is AMD’s best foot forward, then it still has a lot of catching up to do. For direct comparison, you can see Nvidia’s official Zorah rendering tech demo, which had not received anywhere the same level of backlash when it debuted in January 2025.
An early sign of things to come for AMD’s RDNA 4 GPU generation
It’s there’s one thing that’s apparent with the two announced (and soon to be released) AMD RX 9000 series graphics cards, and it’s that they’re marketed on their value proposition rather than the raw performance power. While native 4K is targeted according to the marketing material, and the company is showcasing a renewed focus on path and ray tracing in gaming, the manufacturer clearly isn’t trying to compete with what its major rival can do at the higher-end.
The RX 9070 XT will retail from $599, whereas the RX 9070 will sell for $549, which roughly equates their respective pricing with the RTX 5070. That means Team Red isn’t swinging for the fences with a $1,000+ or $2,000+ graphics card option, such as Nvidia’s RTX 5080 and RTX 5090, respectively, which can outpace everything RDNA can but (consequently) cost double or more.
As a result, how bad is it to see real-time path tracing not quite living up to GPUs costing double (or even triple) the MSRP here? That’s something suggested by gamers; a little noise and fuzziness in the inception of AMD’s RDNA 4 GPU generation compared to its best-in-class rivals doesn’t seem like too big a deal, given the sticker price. Whether the trade-off is worth it for you will ultimately depend on what you want a $600 graphics card to do in 2025. Is it something that’s nice to have or an essential feature for the future of PC gaming? Depending on your answer, you’ll know which card is for you.
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alekshamcloughlin@outlook.com (Aleksha McLoughlin)
