It's encouraging to see that for once, AMD is actually ahead of NVIDIA with its seven-nanometer chip technology, at least in terms of transistor density. Given how NVIDIA significantly ramped its RTX pricing over the previous-generation GTX tech (the RTX 2060 starts at $345 while the GTX 1060 first hit the market at $100 less), anything that forces it to compete is a good thing.

The Radeon VII appears to stack up well to the RTX 2080 in terms of raw horsepower. Many gamers might prefer to pay $100 extra for the latter card, however, to get the ray tracing and anti-aliasing performance. If AMD's card does eat into its sales, NVIDIA has room to discount, and a price war between the companies would be great for buyers. AMD likely won't have a long time to stay ahead in the nanometer race, as NVIDIA is expected to switch soon to a seven-nanometer process (both companies' chips are built by TSMC).

The problem, though, is that the market is starting to get fragmented. In an effort to tighten its grip, NVIDIA is placing more emphasis on exclusive features like ray tracing, DLSS and G-SYNC. At the same time, it's de-emphasizing benefits where AMD can compete directly, like higher TFLOPs and memory bandwidth. AMD's own ray-tracing features, when they arrive, will likely be limited to its own cards too. That means that both consumers and game designers need to choose between one ecosystem or the other.

Both companies are competing for a smaller chunk of the graphics pie now that the bottom has fallen out of the cryptocurrency market. PC gamers are likely still feeling burned by the whole Bitcoin era, which saw graphics-card prices skyrocket. Both companies, particularly market leader NVIDIA, should be laying out the red carpet to try to drum up consumer enthusiasm. Instead, the new era of ray tracing and AI-powered graphics might leave everyone more confused (and abused) than ever.