AMD's RDNA 4 GPUs bring major encoding and ray tracing upgrades

The big picture: AMD finally revealed the specifications, pricing, and performance details of Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics cards, with full reviews expected in the coming days. While we await those, we've already discussed the potential performance implications, FSR 4 upscaling, and now we want to provide additional context on improvements in the new Radeon's encoding quality – an often overlooked aspect of new GPUs (including by us). AMD's GPU encoders have long been criticized for poor video encoding quality when using popular formats and bitrates for game streaming, leaving Nvidia as the clear choice for anyone who wants to use video encoding. With RDNA 4, AMD claims encoding quality is significantly improved, and the examples they showcased were certainly attention-grabbing. AMD is specifically highlighting 1080p H.264 and HEVC at 6 megabits per second – one of the most commonly used setups – demonstrating a substantial increase in visual quality. Whether this w ... Read full article.