AMD VS Nivida

AMD and Nvidia Gpus, which one is better?





Terms to know:

GPU: graphics cards

Founders edition: base model released by parent company

Core: center of the GPU that does most of the logical operations





AMD and Nvidia are the 2 largest companies that produce graphics cards for the PC market. With these two companies as the lead in the market of graphics cards, this opens up the market for buyers to choose what graphics cards they want. Choosing a graphics card is broken up into 3 categories, price, performance and usage. While people can just look at the on paper performance numbers and come up with a decision, this isn't the best court of action since it doesn't account hidden factors such as thermals or driver stability.



It is because of these factors that recently people have many issues with newly released graphics cards. Such was an issue back in mid 2019 when AMD released their new GPU the 5700xt. On paper, it was one of the best budget to performance graphics cards compared to the more expensive 20 series GPUs from Nvidia which was more expensive. The 5700xt was considered to be one of the best graphics cards to date, however soon people including myself found out that the graphics card was an absolute mess with drivers. People reported it bricking and crashing their PC’s at the drivers fault. On top of that, the base founders edition 5700xt had many issues with excessive high temperature not under load reporting around being 70-80C, compared to Nvidia's 20 series which idled around 30-40C. These issues continued to persist until almost a half year later when they released numerous amounts of updates that resolved most but not all of the issues.

Another topic is price to performance. AMD over the past couple years has been much better in this topic compared to Nvidia who over the past 3 years has focused purely on top bar performance whereas AMD has focused on the mid end market and low high tier focusing on price. To compare prices, the last generation GPU’s(2018-2019) had the release of the Nvidia 2080Ti and the AMD Radeon-VII as their top bar graphics cards. The 2080ti marketed around $1200 compared to the Radeon-VII around $850. Nvidia focused purely on performance rather than AMD doing its best with Performance while keeping in mind the budget. On paper the AMD should have performed something close to the 2080Ti under perfect conditions, however the 2080TI had the upper hand with better stabilization at its time of release (most of the driver issues of the Radeon-VII have been fixed as of jan 2021). This type of common occurrence with AMD lagging behind would soon change in September 2020 with the release of the new generations of GPUs from both companies, the 30 series and the Big Navi series. The 3090 from Nvidia if you can get your hands on one is one of the most ground breaking GPUs by performance standards. Double its core numbers from the 20 series, its jump in performance also meant a jump in price which is around $1500. However AMD with the 6900XT managed to match its performance outside of Ray Tracing and managed to do so with the cost of $1000 without any reported driver stability issues.

Over time AMD has managed to catch up to Nvidia’s performance while also beating them in the race to create something more affordable for the common people. While Nvidia purely focused on GPUS, AMD on top of Graphics Cards also creates CPUs which again in the past years have started to outpace and out perform their CPU competitor Intel. Ever since their management team under Lisa Su (president of AMD) switched, they have taken the pedestal of being one of the best tech companies in both aspects of pricing and performance; something that they haven't done since the early 2000’s.

On the argument of what GPU company is better for your PC, it all comes down to your budget and what your purpose is. The Low end market is dominated by AMD GPU’S due to the Price to performance curve alongside more recent low end GPUS released by AMD compared to Nvidia not doing so as their target is the high end market. The Mid range depends on your purpose. For gaming and streaming, Nvidia kings it with the 20 series GPUS while if you want just for gaming, either or company would be found if you know what you are doing with your drivers. The High end market was controlled by Nvidia up until September of last year when the 6900xt was released taking the spot of best performing GPU while 500 dollars less than the 3090 from AMD.

Because of the vast market of graphics cards, there is no definitive answer to the question of what companies graphics cards are better. Each company has come with their own solutions to best one another in the race to become the definitive better company. Between the high end market and the low end, each has their own graphics cards that do its best to take over the seat of which one's better. So to answer the question of “Is AMD or Nvidia the best graphics cards company?”, it all accounts to budget. Low tier is kinged by AMD, the mid range is Nvidia and the high tier graphics is a still going battle to whoever can make the best. (that is if you can ever get your hands on a graphics card right now. Damn scalpers.)