Based on synthetic test results, version 23.2.1 of the AMD Radeon drivers for Windows has been enabled RX6000 improve its performance by up to 40% during execution ray tracing. It is already known that this may not translate into reality, but it could be a sign of improvement in an aspect in which AMD clearly lags behind NVIDIA.

Twitter user Florin Musetoiu posted the results of a test he performed with 3DMark DXR on RX 6800XT compare Radeon driver versions 22.11.2 and 23.2.1. With the oldest (first) version of the drivers it has a result 26.22 fps vs. 36.20 fps induced by the newer version which is a 38.2% performance improvement.

Florin Musetoiu put it into operation to test a real scenario Dying Light 2 at 1440p and with FSR 2 and ray tracing activated. The user saw that by comparing the data obtained on October 15, 2022 with the data generated by the latest version of the drivers, he achieved 22% performance improvement when moving frames per second from 59 to 72.

The sample is too small to draw clear and firm conclusions. Since then, actually Hardware Unboxed has already replied say they didn’t appreciate it no improvement compared to drivers 22.5.1 and 23.2.1 when running Watch Dogs Legion and Florin Musetoiu himself acknowledged that the performance did not improve even with Cyberpunk 2077, which reinforces the fact that synthetic tests are not a reflection of reality in many cases.

We’ll see if AMD has any room to improve the ray tracing performance on the RX 6000, especially if we see the brand on more than one occasion slowly exploit the room for improvement that its graphics have through its drivers. . In fact, we have the 8GB RX 580, which six years after its launch is still a graphics card that can pack a lot of punch under ideal circumstances.