9700 Pro was my first AMD/ATI GPU. It was paired with an Athlon XP 2500+ at the time.

How long did it take for AMD to catch up to Nvidia with tessellation? My google search pulls up threads from 8 years ago (2015) discussing if AMD had caught up. The first game to use it was Messiah from 2000. Tessellation personally caught my attention in 2011 with Batman Arkham City.

With pressure from Sony/MS, I could possibly see AMD trying to ramp up RT performance or risk losing two lucrative partners.