Ray Tracing Issues on RX 9070 Series GPUs in Unreal Engine 4: A Call for Awareness

As gaming enthusiasts have increasingly turned to advanced graphics settings, the implementation of Ray Tracing (RT) has become a standout feature in many titles. However, if you own a Radeon RX 9070 or 9070 XT GPU and have tried enabling Ray Tracing in Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) games, you may have noticed a troubling pattern: persistent frame freezes and significant system interruptions.

The Problem at Hand

In recent testing, I have encountered alarming and repeatable frame stuttering in several UE4 titles when Ray Tracing is activated. These glitches manifest as full-screen stalls lasting anywhere from a few seconds to even longer durations, during which GPU usage plummets to almost 0%. Fortunately, the games seem to recover without crashing, but the experience is utterly compromised.

Multiple reports suggest that this issue seems prevalent among RX 9000-series cards, regardless of the user’s specific hardware configuration, driver version, or BIOS settings. I’ve connected with various users across different platforms (both AM4 and AM5, running Windows 10 and 11) who experience the same behavior.

Lack of Acknowledgment

Despite multiple submissions to the official AMD Bug Report Tool several weeks ago, there has been little movement on AMD’s part in formally addressing these concerns. Strikingly, the issue has not even been acknowledged in the “Known Issues” list of driver updates, leaving many users like myself feeling frustrated and unheard.

It’s possible that I might be one of the first to publicly highlight this issue, primarily because many affected titles are either a few years old or niche releases. Consequently, users may have opted to disable Ray Tracing and moved on rather than investigating further.

Community Collaboration

To affirm the severity of this issue, I’ve gathered ample evidence across various platforms. Many players have reported identical experiences in Steam community hubs, linked comments on my YouTube channel, and forums where I’ve discussed these problems with fellow RX 9000 users.

The findings have prompted me to conduct extensive testing on this topic, aiming to raise awareness and assist others who might be experiencing similar problems.

The Affected Titles

I’ve managed to test six different UE4 games known for their Ray Tracing capabilities, and the stuttering issue has been consistently reproducible across all of them. Here’s a breakdown:

• **Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice