Question Why does the overall gaming GPU market treat AMD like they have AIDS?

[VirtualLarry]

I guess I get the (sub-liminal) "The way it's meant to be played" ads from NVidia, along with the recurring FUD tropes about "AMD drivers", but I honestly don't get the sales disparity, especially for the price.

I've owned both NVidia-powered as well as AMD powered GPUs, and IMHO, AMD is (generally) just as good. Maybe 99% as good.

Edit: And I think that there's something to be said about the viability of AMD technologies, when they're in both major console brands.

 

[Tup3x]

only on non-HDR monitors.

Firefox does not do HDR (except on Mac), so it is always inferior if you have a nice monitor.

Not just a little inferior either. Side by side on the same monitor and Firefox is just noticeably trash quality. Once I saw it I now open chrome specifically for videos. I was switching over to FireFox and now I am reconsidering. It is a pain to flip back to chrome for video content.

Well, Firefox has been dragging behind in hardware decoding. Not surprised if it doesn't handle HDR. Anyway, the point is that all browsers have somewhat buggy hardware video decoding implementations. Bottleneck isn't necessarily the hardware decoder on GPUs but really poorly optimised video playback pipeline (or GPU acceleration in general in Chromium especially). I guess driver bugs might be part of the problem and workarounds really hurt the performance...

 

[In2Photos]

When was the last time that AMD released a card before Nvidia? Or ahead of Nvidia performance wise? Do they always follow the Nvidia launch? On the CPU side there's this leap frog pattern of AMD and Intel leading the way in performance each time the next product is released. But does AMD ever leap frog Nvidia?

 

[dlerious]

When was the last time that AMD released a card before Nvidia? Or ahead of Nvidia performance wise? Do they always follow the Nvidia launch? On the CPU side there's this leap frog pattern of AMD and Intel leading the way in performance each time the next product is released. But does AMD ever leap frog Nvidia?

Are you talking about the halo products or any product? Looking at current pricing, I'd say AMD has the price/performance advantage on just about everything below a 3090.

 

[The red spirit]

This is a rank speculation, but is it possible that AIB's are cheaping on AMD cards because NVIDIA cards provide higher margins? Lower quality components and lesser build quality, etc. If so they may not age as well as NVIDIA counterparts.

If anything, there are some signs of AMD not giving a proper reference specs and unlike nV, AMD doesn't kick out OEMs, so some shadier OEMs like PowerColor still exist (btw I own PowerColor card and it's poo, undersized heatsink, fans ramp up according to voltage used, therefore they scream at 3500 rpm, while GPU stays at low 60s in lower loads and they just reused already weak heatsink, shroud from RX 480 model, so you thought that MSI Armor was garbage, this is in all aspects even worse). RX 5000 series cards had too low starting voltage, which lead to many black screen issues, especially on RX 5700 XT models. Reference RX 480s sometimes drew too much power from PCIe slot and burned them. So I think that AMD hasn't been doing decent reference design job and then QA testing and that's not even mentioning how many of their own cards have been ridiculously loud, like this bad boy:

BTW I have FirePro V8800 myself (basically upgraded HD 5870) and I can confirm that it's made by Advanced Aircraft Technologies. It's literally louder than vacuum cleaner and I'm not really joking about that. Thankfully, at full load, it only needs 37% fan speed, but AMD's other cards like R9 290X or air cooled Fury cards certainly needed more. I have to mention tha tthey neglected coolers up until Radeon VII, after that AMD cards finally had more proper reference spec. But voltage spec seems to be not so great or consistent. I think Asus had to do a recall, due to bad start up voltage spec given by AMD, so yeah. And it seems that AMD doesn't do as strict inventory control, because there are still brand new RX 550s and RX 580s sold.

 

[The red spirit]

When was the last time that AMD released a card before Nvidia? Or ahead of Nvidia performance wise? Do they always follow the Nvidia launch? On the CPU side there's this leap frog pattern of AMD and Intel leading the way in performance each time the next product is released. But does AMD ever leap frog Nvidia?

If I recall correctly, Radeon VII and RX 5700 XT were launched before nV cards.

 

[Heartbreaker]

If I recall correctly, Radeon VII and RX 5700 XT were launched before nV cards.

You don't. RTX 2000 launched before those.

Though launching second can be an advantage, provided you aren't too far behind. You can tailor product and pricing to beat your competitor.

 

[Thunder 57]

If anything, there are some signs of AMD not giving a proper reference specs and unlike nV, AMD doesn't kick out OEMs, so some shadier OEMs like PowerColor still exist (btw I own PowerColor card and it's poo, undersized heatsink, fans ramp up according to voltage used, therefore they scream at 3500 rpm, while GPU stays at low 60s in lower loads and they just reused already weak heatsink, shroud from RX 480 model, so you thought that MSI Armor was garbage, this is in all aspects even worse). RX 5000 series cards had too low starting voltage, which lead to many black screen issues, especially on RX 5700 XT models. Reference RX 480s sometimes drew too much power from PCIe slot and burned them. So I think that AMD hasn't been doing decent reference design job and then QA testing and that's not even mentioning how many of their own cards have been ridiculously loud, like this bad boy:

BTW I have FirePro V8800 myself (basically upgraded HD 5870) and I can confirm that it's made by Advanced Aircraft Technologies. It's literally louder than vacuum cleaner and I'm not really joking about that. Thankfully, at full load, it only needs 37% fan speed, but AMD's other cards like R9 290X or air cooled Fury cards certainly needed more. I have to mention tha tthey neglected coolers up until Radeon VII, after that AMD cards finally had more proper reference spec. But voltage spec seems to be not so great or consistent. I think Asus had to do a recall, due to bad start up voltage spec given by AMD, so yeah. And it seems that AMD doesn't do as strict inventory control, because there are still brand new RX 550s and RX 580s sold.

And what has EVGA done recently ? Seriously, if every AMD product you buy is garbage, go with NVIDIA!

 

[The red spirit]

And what has EVGA done recently ? Seriously, if every AMD product you buy is garbage, go with NVIDIA!

Oh, certainly not every product is garbage. I like my ATi X800 XT PE AGP and RX 560, V8800 is pretty cool too, but I just have a hard time to find use for it. eVGA did nothing, but went bust, that's it. No way they could have predicted current shitstorm. nVidia for the most part is more careful about reference designs and their own reference cards are usually working fine. Most cards that burn are MSI and Asus cards. Before this snafu, nVidia had very few of such problems with incorrect specs. However I see a severe problem with Anandtech forum, which lacks capability to accept criticism and defends their beloved brands. Discovery of century, but both brands have their own problems and you literally tell that to me in thread about why AMD cards have bad perception. Bruh.

 

[Ranulf]

If I recall correctly, Radeon VII and RX 5700 XT were launched before nV cards.

You're probably thinking of the SUper variants and even then I think those were released a few weeks before the 5700 cards in the summer '19.

 

[The red spirit]

You're probably thinking of the SUper variants and even then I think those were released a few weeks before the 5700 cards in the summer '19.

That might be correct, I remember AMD had some mid gen launches. I think 7 was that and everyone thought of it as too early and basically stopgap card.

 

[Stuka87]

Can we go back to when this thread was actually useful, before it was derailed by one person that seemingly has a bone to pick?

 

[Leeea]

Can we go back to when this thread was actually useful, before it was derailed by one person that seemingly has a bone to pick?

On a more meta level, I guess that is why AMD has a problem, their are loud vocal people with a bone to pick.


I have a new conspiracy theory:

"Poor" people are poor customers.
The purchase just means more to them. More of their income, more of their total wealth, etc.
They also are more likely to pair the Graphics Card with a cheap mainboard, cheap RAM, cheap monitor, and cheap powersupply.
If anything is not perfect, they are more likely to feel jipped, and have a bone to pick for all time.

The odds of something unrelated to the GPU causing an issue with their system is much higher. The odds they are going to blame it on the GPU because it only happens while gaming (under load) is also higher.



AMDs problem is that it has targeted the value portion of the market. Its customers have AIDs, so AMD is perceived to have AIDs by association.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have a new conspiracy theory:

"Poor" people are poor customers.

The odds of something unrelated to the GPU causing an issue with their system is much higher. The odds they are going to blame it on the GPU because it only happens while gaming (under load) is also higher.



AMDs problem is that it has targeted the value portion of the market. Its customers have AIDs, so AMD is perceived to have AIDs by association.

That's pretty insightful. I've seen that with "budget" gaming builds, too.

Something like a Biostar mobo, Zotac GPU, cheap no-name RAM, all stuffed inside a case with no airflow, with a PSU that came with the case.

I used to build systems like that for people on an extreme budget. Then I got some standards.

 

[Shmee]

If anything, there are some signs of AMD not giving a proper reference specs and unlike nV, AMD doesn't kick out OEMs, so some shadier OEMs like PowerColor still exist (btw I own PowerColor card and it's poo, undersized heatsink, fans ramp up according to voltage used, therefore they scream at 3500 rpm, while GPU stays at low 60s in lower loads and they just reused already weak heatsink, shroud from RX 480 model, so you thought that MSI Armor was garbage, this is in all aspects even worse). RX 5000 series cards had too low starting voltage, which lead to many black screen issues, especially on RX 5700 XT models. Reference RX 480s sometimes drew too much power from PCIe slot and burned them. So I think that AMD hasn't been doing decent reference design job and then QA testing and that's not even mentioning how many of their own cards have been ridiculously loud, like this bad boy:

BTW I have FirePro V8800 myself (basically upgraded HD 5870) and I can confirm that it's made by Advanced Aircraft Technologies. It's literally louder than vacuum cleaner and I'm not really joking about that. Thankfully, at full load, it only needs 37% fan speed, but AMD's other cards like R9 290X or air cooled Fury cards certainly needed more. I have to mention tha tthey neglected coolers up until Radeon VII, after that AMD cards finally had more proper reference spec. But voltage spec seems to be not so great or consistent. I think Asus had to do a recall, due to bad start up voltage spec given by AMD, so yeah. And it seems that AMD doesn't do as strict inventory control, because there are still brand new RX 550s and RX 580s sold.

How is Powercolor shady? As I have said before, their recent Red Devil cards are quite good, up there with the Sapphire Nitros. I would be curious to know what Powercolor card you had a problem with, (reference 290 perhaps? I had a powercolor reference 290, it was fine though, the stock cooler was not great but I had it under a waterblock for most of my time using it.) or if you know something about the company that actually makes it shadier than others.

 

[Leeea]

How is Powercolor shady? As I have said before, their recent Red Devil cards are quite good, up there with the Sapphire Nitros. I would be curious to know what Powercolor card you had a problem with, (reference 290 perhaps? I had a powercolor reference 290, it was fine though, the stock cooler was not great but I had it under a waterblock for most of my time using it.) or if you know something about the company that actually makes it shadier than others.

I had a Powercolor rx380 fail. It died young, a bit more then a year after purchase. It took Powercolor two weeks to replace it under warranty.

Last I heard the replacement Powercolor sent me is still chugging along, grandson's friend using it.


I would not consider Powercolor to be a shady company. A bit more budget then some, but they made it right for me.

 

[alexruiz]

If anything, there are some signs of AMD not giving a proper reference specs and unlike nV, AMD doesn't kick out OEMs, so some shadier OEMs like PowerColor still exist (btw I own PowerColor card and it's poo, undersized heatsink, fans ramp up according to voltage used, therefore they scream at 3500 rpm, while GPU stays at low 60s in lower loads and they just reused already weak heatsink, shroud from RX 480 model, so you thought that MSI Armor was garbage, this is in all aspects even worse). RX 5000 series cards had too low starting voltage, which lead to many black screen issues, especially on RX 5700 XT models. Reference RX 480s sometimes drew too much power from PCIe slot and burned them. So I think that AMD hasn't been doing decent reference design job and then QA testing and that's not even mentioning how many of their own cards have been ridiculously loud, like this bad boy:

BTW I have FirePro V8800 myself (basically upgraded HD 5870) and I can confirm that it's made by Advanced Aircraft Technologies. It's literally louder than vacuum cleaner and I'm not really joking about that. Thankfully, at full load, it only needs 37% fan speed, but AMD's other cards like R9 290X or air cooled Fury cards certainly needed more. I have to mention tha tthey neglected coolers up until Radeon VII, after that AMD cards finally had more proper reference spec. But voltage spec seems to be not so great or consistent. I think Asus had to do a recall, due to bad start up voltage spec given by AMD, so yeah. And it seems that AMD doesn't do as strict inventory control, because there are still brand new RX 550s and RX 580s sold.

PowerColor bad?
This shows you have not owned a Powercolor card in ages.

PowerColor might be the best AIB for Radeon.
Their top models (Red Devil) are second to none, while their cheapest cards are usually the most affordable of any given Radeon GPU.
Powercolor covers the broadest price range for Radeon. While their cheapest models are basic, they are reliable and perform as intended

 

[Hans Gruber]

I saw this a few days ago on my google feed. The 6 worst AMD graphics cards of all time.
With that being said the RX480 was when AMD started the turn for the better. The RX580 became the value card for a couple of years.

The 6 worst AMD GPUs of all time | Digital Trends

We're looking back at some of AMD's worst GPUs, ones that really should have been better but weren't or straight up shouldn't have existed at all.

www.digitaltrends.com

 

[The red spirit]

How is Powercolor shady? As I have said before, their recent Red Devil cards are quite good, up there with the Sapphire Nitros. I would be curious to know what Powercolor card you had a problem with, (reference 290 perhaps? I had a powercolor reference 290, it was fine though, the stock cooler was not great but I had it under a waterblock for most of my time using it.) or if you know something about the company that actually makes it shadier than others.

PowerColor bad?
This shows you have not owned a Powercolor card in ages.

PowerColor might be the best AIB for Radeon.
Their top models (Red Devil) are second to none, while their cheapest cards are usually the most affordable of any given Radeon GPU.
Powercolor covers the broadest price range for Radeon. While their cheapest models are basic, they are reliable and perform as intended

First of all I never said that Powercolor is exactly shady, but shadier than others, particularly with budget models. By others I mean some well established OEMs like Sapphire, Asus, MSI. I would put Powercolor closer to Palit, Zotac, Gainward or HIS. They simply make cheaper cards and it shows, they also don't disclose as much information about their own products as MSI, especially about fans and coolers, mostly because their low end cards use cheaper components. You can see it yourself:

Radeon RX 580 ARMOR X

Radeon RX 580 ARMOR X

www.msi.com

DUAL-RX580-8G｜Graphics Cards｜ASUS Global

Leveraging advanced cooling technologies derived from flagship graphics cards, the ASUS Dual series delivers the latest gaming experience in its purest form - the perfect choice for a well-balanced build.

www.asus.com

PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon™ RX 580 8GB GDDR5 - PowerColor

www.powercolor.com

And I also clearly said already that I have PowerColor RX 580, it is this model:

PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon™ RX 580 8GB GDDR5 - PowerColor

www.powercolor.com

So Alex, your "This shows you have not owned a Powercolor card in ages" is just cringe, because I literally use PowerColor card now. Used it for years and as it came stock it was loud garbage with broken (it's not broken, but made poorly) fan control. I spent way too much time modifying vBIOS to hopefully fix it, but it's just unfixable issue and you can't make this card work with LUT fan control, flashing it to work as their older RX 480 with same cooler only reduces performance, changing max TDP doesn't do much, extreme underclocking (to 700 MHz) does work, but makes it really slow, meanwhile at 1GHz it still ramps up fan to the moon, regardless of temperature. AMD's own software somehow has fan control overridden past 85C, meanwhile undervolting is limited and for some reason unstable. I now use MSI Afterburner and I can now undervolt card much further and override fan control in software mode, but flaw is that Afterburner has to start with Windows, which is a bit annoying. So I spent a lot of time investigating this card and I know what it is. I have read about it online and many other people comment about how loud it is, so it's not just my particular card that is borked. And yep it's probably the worst model of RX 580 that you can buy, even MSI Armor model doesn't ramp up fan to 3500 rpm, "only" to 2900 rpm. Armor model is known to be a meme and is definitely one of the bottom tier models as it is. It's spectacular that PowerColor managed to make something even worse than that.

 

[Thunder 57]

First of all I never said that Powercolor is exactly shady, but shadier than others, particularly with budget models. By others I mean some well established OEMs like Sapphire, Asus, MSI. I would put Powercolor closer to Palit, Zotac, Gainward or HIS. They simply make cheaper cards and it shows, they also don't disclose as much information about their own products as MSI, especially about fans and coolers, mostly because their low end cards use cheaper components. You can see it yourself:

Radeon RX 580 ARMOR X

Radeon RX 580 ARMOR X

www.msi.com

DUAL-RX580-8G｜Graphics Cards｜ASUS Global

Leveraging advanced cooling technologies derived from flagship graphics cards, the ASUS Dual series delivers the latest gaming experience in its purest form - the perfect choice for a well-balanced build.

www.asus.com

PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon™ RX 580 8GB GDDR5 - PowerColor

www.powercolor.com

And I also clearly said already that I have PowerColor RX 580, it is this model:

PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon™ RX 580 8GB GDDR5 - PowerColor

www.powercolor.com

So Alex, your "This shows you have not owned a Powercolor card in ages" is just cringe, because I literally use PowerColor card now. Used it for years and as it came stock it was loud garbage with broken (it's not broken, but made poorly) fan control. I spent way too much time modifying vBIOS to hopefully fix it, but it's just unfixable issue and you can't make this card work with LUT fan control, flashing it to work as their older RX 480 with same cooler only reduces performance, changing max TDP doesn't do much, extreme underclocking (to 700 MHz) does work, but makes it really slow, meanwhile at 1GHz it still ramps up fan to the moon, regardless of temperature. AMD's own software somehow has fan control overridden past 85C, meanwhile undervolting is limited and for some reason unstable. I now use MSI Afterburner and I can now undervolt card much further and override fan control in software mode, but flaw is that Afterburner has to start with Windows, which is a bit annoying. So I spent a lot of time investigating this card and I know what it is. I have read about it online and many other people comment about how loud it is, so it's not just my particular card that is borked. And yep it's probably the worst model of RX 580 that you can buy, even MSI Armor model doesn't ramp up fan to 3500 rpm, "only" to 2900 rpm. Armor model is known to be a meme and is definitely one of the bottom tier models as it is. It's spectacular that PowerColor managed to make something even worse than that.

Paragraphs. Use them. This isn't the first post that you failed to do so. Nobody will read your crap if you fail to make it readable.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Paragraphs. Use them. This isn't the first post that you failed to do so. Nobody will read your crap if you fail to make it readable.

I still wouldn't read it at this stage. It was enough to express a personal opinion and anecdotes as to why they hate/avoid AMD. The content having devolved into diatribes, and being overly argumentative, has lost my interest completely.

Which is the only reason the thread hasn't burned itself out; nerd rage.

 

[The red spirit]

Paragraphs. Use them. This isn't the first post that you failed to do so. Nobody will read your crap if you fail to make it readable.

lol what a wonderful way to discredit everything I wrote.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Which is the only reason the thread hasn't burned itself out; nerd rage.

-insert Fallout joke here-

Now, what kind of buffs are we talking about? Should we be running away screaming?

 

[MrPickins]

I saw this a few days ago on my google feed. The 6 worst AMD graphics cards of all time.
With that being said the RX480 was when AMD started the turn for the better. The RX580 became the value card for a couple of years.

The 6 worst AMD GPUs of all time | Digital Trends

We're looking back at some of AMD's worst GPUs, ones that really should have been better but weren't or straight up shouldn't have existed at all.

www.digitaltrends.com

I'd like to see the same list, but focused on Nvidia.

 

[Thunder 57]

lol what a wonderful way to discredit everything I wrote.

You must be joking. I gave up on reading what you wrote after two or three sentences. I have no idea what you wrote.

I don't care who it is, if they do not use paragraphs, I do not read it.

 

[The red spirit]

You must be joking. I gave up on reading what you wrote after two or three sentences. I have no idea what you wrote.

I don't care who it is, if they do not use paragraphs, I do not read it.

I use paragraphs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragraph

"a self-contained unit of discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or idea. Though not required by the orthographic conventions of any language with a writing system, paragraphs are a conventional means of organizing extended segments of prose"

Well, that whole paragraph was exactly one idea, just extensive. Like I said, you just found an excuse to dismiss my point that PowerColor makes some POS. I merely explained why, becasue other guy got very defensive and started saying nonsense that PowerColor doesn't make bad cards or to paraphrase it "PowerColor might be the best AIB for Radeon. Their top models (Red Devil) are second to none, while their cheapest cards are usually the most affordable of any given Radeon GPU. Powercolor covers the broadest price range for Radeon. While their cheapest models are basic, they are reliable and perform as intended"