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chakkra on 28 October 2020
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Hiku said:
chakkra said:

I think it means that there are some RDNA2 features that the other next-gen consoles don't have.

Might not have understood my question, since you just repeated the statement. =p

Xbox Series X, PS5 and AMD's GPUs all have different RDNA2 solutions that have unique features that the others don't have.
And both Sony and MS developed RDNA2 together with AMD. So who gets to decide what a list of 'full features' means?

I guess it's just based on what AMD are using, because they're the only ones that call it RDNA2. PS5 and XSX call theirs RDNA2 based, because they're custom.

But the thing is, AMD's version is missing several features that PS5 has.
A PS5 engineer described it like this:

"More features, and one less."
I take it that means there's one feature that AMD are using in their GPUs now that PS5 is not. But PS5 has several more features that AMD doesn't.

MS may just be referring to DirectX Raytracing here, because DirectX is MS technology, so Sony use a different type of Raytracing.

chakkra said:
We don't really know, but one thing is certain; MS is not legally allowed to make such a statement if it wasn't true, and I'm 100% sure that the other console manufacturers would not just stay quiet if what was said wasn't true, even if it is just a technicality.

Probably. (Although they still advertised Destiny when they weren't legally allowed to.) Just trying to figure out what it means.
But I'm guessing it's just based on what AMD use, because people will read it and think RDNA2 is a standard, rather than one of three different approaches that were co-developed alongside each other, for different systems.

You might be correct in saying that the PS5 might have features of their own not included in RDNA2, but it is not Microsoft's job (nor interest) to talk about that. They are only interested in letting people know that their console has the full RDNA2 set of features.

As to which are the features pertaining to X series? This Anandtech article about RDNA2 might give us some clues:

"AMD has previously disclosed that RDNA2 would be a DX12 Ultimate-level architecture..
Overall, DirectX 12 Ultimate focuses on 4 major features (and some minor spec changes): Ray tracing, tier 2 variable-rate shading, mesh shaders, and sampler feedback."

"Finally, AMD today is also confirming that they will offer support for Microsoft's DirecStorage API. Derived from tech going into the next-gen consoles, DirectStorage will allow game assets to be streamed directly from storage to GPUs, with the GPUs decompressing assets on their own. This bypasses the CPU, which under the current paradigm has to do the decompression and then send those decompressed assets to the GPU."

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16202/amd-reveals-the-radeon-rx-6000-series-rdna2-starts-at-the-highend-coming-november-18th/2