After years and years of talking and reading about computer hardware, I have decided to start writing this stuff down. Considering Nvidia and AMD are at one of the biggest market share gaps in history, it’s worth taking a look at the effect it’s had on our choice of GPU hardware. I am not one to usually take sides; my first love was the 8800GT when it paved the way towards the next generation of graphics on PC and at an affordable price. Then I was quickly distracted by the AMD HD5770 eating every game alive. I believe competition is always good and seeing it all fall apart before my eyes doesn’t make me feel good about this whole situation.

Image Ref. bit-tech.net

Just to catch everyone up in case they missed, reports have said that Nvidia now hold up to 80% of the market share for dedicated GPUs. That leaves very little left for AMD and this effects the consumer just as much as AMD, Nvidia and their partners. In a much more fragile consumer area we would see prices sky rocketing for certain components and the consumer would be cornered into buying the same brand over and over. Thankfully AMD are doing what they can to fight back and are still coming out with a couple of surprises (Fury Nano being one of them).

My main concern is that pricing and choice for the consumer is still an issue. Nvidia do not have to push their hardware as far as they could with Maxwell because they don’t need to, they are more than confident that the consumer will buy their particular ranges and that is purely because AMD couldn’t answer quick enough. Once the majority of Maxwell GPUs hit the shelves it was over half a year before AMD could bring out the contender, even then they were re-brands and presence is a key factor when making sales.

I want to first delve into the positive points/opinions about the current generation because, believe it or not there are a lot of them. The first would definitely be efficiency, architecture is progressing incredibly fast and this results in smaller TDP and form factors year upon year. I love that you can fit a GTX 970 or a R9 380 into a mini ITX build, 3 years ago that was unheard of and we draw closer to the practical and portable desktop PC capable of playing all the latest games. The improved power efficiency also has a highly positive impact on laptops and portable hardware. Ever since the Maxwell based 860m performed just like a 750ti and at such a low TDP; you know laptop gaming is on the rise. Seeing the recently leaked specifications of the Fury Nano makes you realise that the answer to memory bandwidth issues in mobile GPUs are going to be a thing of the past and that is never a bad thing (even if you are part of the desktop master race). My main point is, do not underestimate improved efficiency over performance and think about the possibilities that this can bring for the future.

Image Ref. fudzilla.com

Another positive is that because of the industries caring nature towards consumers, Nvidia are not monopolising (as seen from other companies) and have managed to keep their hardware in a nice affordable range especially for people like myself who have never had a “high end” system. A handful of hardware lovers seem to think that AMD is the go to for affordability but, pricing is incredibly fair in this industry as a whole (even on the CPU side). There is a reason the 970GTX is one of the best selling graphics cards in history and that is purely because it fits perfectly in its price range. I’m also glad to see AMD battling against them in certain categories such as the R9 380 and the GTX 960, they are so close in comparison you would probably need to choose one based entirely on what specific game you would be playing on it or the rednering resolution you prefer (memory bandwidth being one of the main deciding factors).

Last quick positive is the GTX 950, an entry level GPU with SLI support and highly capable at 1080p has left me baffled! If anyone wants a system put together with two of those deviants so I can benchmark, HIT ME UP!

Each company is still in a niche that will give them both credibility, AMD have the lead when it comes to Direct X12 and Nvidias architectural feats with Maxwell put them ahead with efficiency (overclocking is scary on Maxwell). It’s just a shame we didn’t get to see more Tonga, on paper it seemed like this was very much in the right direction and having a wider range of cards with all the benefits of the Tonga architecture would have been more than welcome.

I’m itching to get to this main bad point (for me) and this was the deciding factor when it came to buying a new GPU for this generation.

I have been needing to let this out from the start of posting this and this is about the rebrands along with some of the decisions made by Nvidia. As soon as I saw the GTX 960 having a 128bit memory bus I knew something was wrong, I have been on the x60 range since the 260 and have always liked the fact that bandwidth was the next step compared to everything else below it. It was the perfect fit, it competed well against AMDs equivalent and it played everything with no hiccups at 1080p. I read up on this thoroughly and saw the symptoms popping up in peoples reviews/benchmarks. Bandwidth hungry games were dropping behind the GTX 760 everywhere and this is never a good thing. I am using a GTX 760 as we speak, therefore I see no need in going for this card as a replacement even though it’s the next gen equivalent and I knew AMD would pull something out the bag in this category (at the time of release the R9 280 was hitting 130 pounds in the UK and outperforming on too many levels). Which brings me to the price, I could get a 760 for 130-150 pounds before the release of the 960 and as soon as it released the price sky rocketed. This is such a negative for the consumer, there was no card in the 130-150 price range for months and I just do not agree with it. It was a relief to see the R9 380 compete directly and that it put Tonga back on the map.



Image Ref. thinkcomputers.org

Another issue I have is when the competition lowers so does the logic behind the companies decisions. Nvidia knew they had less to worry about, so they pull things like not disclosing the memory issues of the 970 and apparently harassing game developers into modifying benchmarks (don’t get me talking about Gameworks, it’s a nightmare). AMD rebranding and pricing just blew my mind when it first hit the market. Here is how a conversation went with a friend –

Friend: What GPU do you think I should go for I was looking at the R9 290?

Me: Yeah, right now that’s in a really good spot, 200 – 220 pounds and plays anything.

Friend: I might get it then!

Me: But, the next generation is on the way and it’s a rebrand and I assume they may bring out something better at a similar price.

Friend: Oh, I’ll look into that. WOW, just found an R9 290X for 220 quid! So tempting!

Then it happened, they tried to compete and upped the price of the R9 390/390x by more than 50 pounds! That’s 25% increase in price for a 5-8% improvement in performance on virtually the same card. Safe to say, my friend has held back on upgrading this generation and has stuck with the awesome AMD HD6950 and that play’s Elite Dangerous for him rather nicely. It’s another case of losing that target audience and alienating your products from key categories in the market.

I think I’ll stop for now as I could chat about this all day and this is my first ever blog post, so feel free to criticise and disagree. Please leave a comment if you want some further discussion or if you have any future topics you would like me to cover.