AMD vs Nvidia
In 1998 my first GPU was an ATI 3D Rage Pro PCI card with a whopping 8MB of memory which I later paired with 2 x 3DFX Voodoo II (SLI) with a pass-through cable. Since then, I’ve bought numerous ATI/AMD and Nvidia video cards and if I’m honest, I’ve never had a particular preference for either brand.
Having said that, AMD has recently become my GPU of choice purely for reasons of price. Not only that, but what are known as custom cards — as opposed to reference cards from AMD or Nvidia — made by Asus, Sapphire, and others, have always been absolutely top quality.
Are You A Fanboy?
In the tech world, there is a very real war of the fanboys, whether that be Intel vs AMD, Android vs iOS, Windows vs Mac, etc, and the battles still rage on, with AMD fighting on two fronts. First to gain the upper hand against their arch-rival, Intel– a job which recently they appear to be winning with their impressive line of Ryzen processors and second, to catch up with Nvidia in the GPU market. It’s been a frustrating time for AMD fanboys, especially since the 5000 series didn’t really bridge the gap against Nvidia’s RTX 20 series with AMD still not producing a killer GPU to match. Not only that, but the 5000 series was plagued by driver issues leading many to rush back to GeForce.
Nvidia Announces GeForce RTX 3000 (Ampere) Series
This has been in the rumour mill for months, with leaked pictures, many whispers and now Nvidia has really stolen a march on AMD who are currently working on their own Nvidia killer, at the moment only known colloquially as ‘Big Navi’. AMD CEO, Lisa Su has said several times that their new GPUs based on RDNA 2 will appear towards the end of 2020. For many fans, that meant September, however, the more realistic and commercially minded would point to this November when the market will have had time to see exactly how RTX 3000 from Nvidia has performed. And perform it will, judging from the specifications and the benchmarks now available on YouTube. It’s explosive stuff, believe me, and Nvidia has just hit the ball out of the park.
I never thought I’d see a GPU with 24GB of VRAM or one with a colossal 10496 shader cores. I thought my RX 580 with 8GB and 2304 shaders was pretty respectable, but tech never stands still and what’s good today will soon be superseded. Clearly Nvidia has thrown down the gauntlet for AMD and it seems that Big Red will be targeting the RTX 3070/3080 markets with what’s rumoured to be Radeon 6000 series cards with 12 and 16GB of VRAM and this is where the real battle lines are drawn.
What Next For AMD?
Nvidia RTX 3080 is said to be 50% faster than its predecessor, the RTX 2080Ti, and twice as fast as the RTX 2080, but the big issue for AMD is that they don’t yet have a GPU which can compete with even the 2080 Ti, with their nearest offering being the RX5700 XT which is similar in performance to the RTX 2070 Super. This leaves a significant gap for AMD to fill, now that Nvidia has put the icing on the cake. And let’s not even think about the RTX 3090 which is going to require a monster AMD GPU to make any dent in that mega card.
It’s an exciting time for GPU development and although I’m not an AMD fanboy per se, I do run two all-AMD systems and am delighted with my Ryzen gaming PC which wipes the floor with my previous FX8350 CPU. AMD has made massive strides in the CPU market in the last few years and has certainly taken the game to Intel. If AMD could be considered an underdog in the race with Nvidia — as they have often been referred to against Intel — I’ll be betting on them. Not simply because I always bet on the underdog, but because either way, the benefits will be shared by all. It’s called competition.
AMD Update!
AMD has just announced that Ryzen 4000 CPUs will be launched on October 8th and the new line of Radeon RX 6000 GPUs on the 28th of October in what promises to be a Red October. The plot thickens!
A new era of leadership performance across computing and graphics is coming. The journey begins on October 8.
FURTHER READING: AMD Ryzen 2600X – An Essential Gaming Upgrade 2
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I don’t think there is any Plot thickening going on.
AMD has always played catch-up with their bits and pieces. Still doing it.
Their GPU’s have been problematic with their drivers and for “serious” simulations this has been a deterrent to purchasing.
It appears that this is still an occurring problem with AMD, and for me it isn’t confidence inspiring.
But yes, sure they are cheaper but I guess one gets what one pays for?
I’ll stick to the leaders in this field and probably shy away from AMD until they prove themselves reliable. I think this is a universal point of view.
I think AMD may have some tricks up its sleeve for 28th October. They know what they’re up against – the Nvidia 30 series is groundbreaking – so they will really have to pull out the big guns.
I started back in the PC world this time in 2004 & I had a 7600GS I think. I didn’t like the drivers so I went to the red side and stayed there for awhile. I even bought a Vega 64 LC because my twin 7970’s needed help in the FPS I play at 27″. Man that Vega 64 LC was a hand warmer, and when my cats decided to jump off a chair that was to the left of me and over the back & onto the monitor which went crashing down on my K95 keyboard. The damage – one broken K95 leg, one chip out of my 27″ AOC monitor & one ghosting of a key on that monitor!
I ended swapping the Vega 64 LC for a 27″ IPS g-sync 165Hz monitor, at least I still have my 1080ti KINGPiN for my FPS. I miss the Vega 64 LC, it was a beautiful card, but it was power hungry but it was buttery smooth at a lower FPS, but I play FPS, so I need, FPS. But I still think of the 64 LC every now & then, expecially when I look to the left at the monitor with the chunk taken out of the screen!
I’ve often been tempted by a Vega 64 (Asus Rog) but the prices are still at silly levels, even used.
More importantly, what have you got now running what?
Hello, Bear
An Asus ROG RX580 8GB which is now beginning to show its age in newer games.
Frankly, it’s a toss up between upgrading the CPU or GPU, but avoiding a bottleneck in either case.
And you?
I thought about selling my 1080ti (I know), but changed my mind quickly, I couldn’t bear the thought of being without it. I was going to sell it and buy an ASUS 3080 FTW (Maybe ULTRA), but no sell 1080 no buy 3080; anyway, I game on a 27″ 165Hz monitor playing FPS & the 1080ti still goes a good job & I haven’t overclocked it yet.
I was running a 5930 @ 4.4 on an ASUS Rampage V Edition 10 mobo until one BIOS chip died then the other BIOS chip died, I thought, but it didn’t and the mobo did not come back to life anymore even after new BIOS chips. I used my spare mobo, an ASUS X99 Deluxe series one, but it was not the same. Then I got $1200, you beauty.
I ordered a 3800X & a MSI X570 ACE mobo plus 32GB of corsair Dominator Platinum C16’s RAM. My Be Quiet AIO CPU cooler got sent back for an RMA as it sometimes didn’t do its job & the CPU hit over 90 – ouch. I may go back to the Noctua, but this time I will get the D15 all in black, man it looks so cool. I just have to wait for the parts to arrive, but the longest wait will be for the CPU cooler, that went back 2 days ago; I hope they don’t take too long to do the warranty shit. It is a know fault with those coolers & you can’t get those coolers anymore so I will get a store credit & get the all black D15; that is the plan anyway.
I picked the 3800X as I read it uses binned 3700X chips, so I can OC the stuff out of it a bit more. The XT chips are new but you pay too much for not enough performance gain. And I shall slip my ol’ trusty 1080ti in there and load up all my games. I dual boot. My main drive I use an NVMe and my games drive I use an SSD, then I load all the games on the secondary drive (4TB); it only slows a bit during cut scenes, but I can hold a hell of a lot more games on it. The only downside to the MSI X570 ACE is it has only 4 SATA ports, so only 4 HDDs/SSD’s, but it can take up to 3 NVMe’s though. It will be my first AMD CPU build, and my first MSI mobo build; but it should be fine, I have been doing this for too long :p It will be fun and exciting to get away from ASUS and to get into another kind of BIOS, cool; the mobo should come buy mail on Wednesday, and the CPU and RAM before the weekend. I don’t know when the CPU cooler will be coming, but Christmas is less than 2 months away