Intel’s Arc GPUs launched to much fanfare in 2022.
All this came with the promise of cheaper price tags and good performance.
Another common question regarding Intel’s Arc GPUs was whether they’ll support features like ray tracing or not.
Image Credit: Intel/YouTube
What Is Ray Tracing?
This creates a more realistic image as compared to traditional shaders.
Of course, this requires additional computation power to calculate how these algorithms would work.
Image Credit: timrb/Wikimedia
Different manufacturers havedifferent ways of implementing ray tracing.
Nvidia, already on its fourth-generation ray tracing hardware, uses dedicated hardware RT cores in its GPUs.
Do Intel GPUs Support Ray Tracing?
Image Credit:Intel
Intel Arc GPUs do support ray tracing.
This is done using specialized fixed-function hardware called Ray Tracing Units (RTU) to implement the feature.
They also come equipped with a dedicated BVH cache.
However, theIntel Arc 700-Series does hold up to the Nvidia RTX 3060in terms of performance benchmarks.
One important thing to note, however, is software support.
Putting together powerful hardware won’t do you much good until you have good drivers.
What Role Does Software Play?
The hardware RTUs in Arc cards are only meant to enhance performance for ray tracing algorithms.
The good news is that these two APIs represent basically every game that has ray tracing.
Good drivers also help provide additional software features to GPUs.
These add performance benefits and even use cases beyond gaming.
