About me - my first PC had an ATI Rage Pro. I would continue to buy every single release from ATI/AMD starting with the 7000 VE ending with the R9 290X CFX and due to noise level would not last beyond the return window where I would just get a used 780 Ti to hold me over. Then supply issues made it so I couldn’t get a Fury XT during my window to buy would lead me to buy a 980 Ti Starting with Vega 64 vs 1080 Ti would make it that I wouldn’t return to AMD as they’d always under deliver in my performance bracket.
The issue with AMD is something that has followed them for years. It isn’t something that is easy to discuss because it’s subjective in severity and exposure.
AMD tried the low ball attempt, sure it worked for a bit but it didn’t sway things in their favor. NV would just price match them +10% and continue to deliver. (HD4K/HD5K series, HD6K to a degree, but AMD adjusted prices that that hurt them more than helped, HD 6870 being a HD 5770 replacement with a price bump meant both HD 5770/5870 user’s didn’t see improvements and then HD 6970 being slower than HD 5970 made people ask why shift the names at all).
AMD tried to produce beefy hardware with the whole GCN era. And it didn’t help them that the continued issue that goes continuously ignored by a major populace of the posters here held back their performance at launch. Tied to the not reading the room AMD had another “Bulldozer” moment where the hardware was too advanced and barely anyone took advantage of it. By the time the industry caught up those advancements were standard features and NV out optimized AMD in them. Throw in the first crypto bubble, poor marketing (Overclocker’s dream anyone), bad yields on highly desired products and QA issues (HBM surface levels too low/high to the GPU core, pump whine) and don’t forget Vega/Frontier FE (copying NV, really AMD be original) leading to a product most consumers weren’t even sure who it was aimed at. GCN being probably the last most forward thinking uarch didn’t win AMD anything it’s constant blunder with that which is not to be mentioned continued to hold it back.
Now we’re in RDNA era and the 800lb guerilla in the corner is still sitting there, but everyone was too blinded by AMD finally putting out a mid-range product worth it’s they ignored AMD almost doubling the asking price for the Polaris10 replacement. Slap all the Vega20 buyers in the face, and still struggled with the guerilla leading to a lot of lost mind share with solutions akin to ship of theseus. It brought a lot of new eyes to the AMD GPU ecosystem and a lot of those users got burned.
RDNA2 being perhaps the best launch since HD4K/5K in my eyes, but Crypto returned and ruined what could have been AMD’s return to form. The guerilla for once while not dead was tamed, products competed almost 1:1 to NV minus a few features we can just make comparatives to tessellation during the HD5K-era (ie not deal breakers). With the crypto issue, combined with AMD spreading themselves thin and the boom in CPU/Servers for them they allocated far more resources to capitalize in that sector leading to the other markets starving.
RDNA3 saw the guerilla break free, AMD still high on their own farts ignoring the feature set parity where tessellation comparatives can no longer be made as ray tracing on NV side just destroys AMD in scenarios that make ray tracing worth using. The absence of an inflated market put a spot light on the guerilla running rampant, the feature inequality, and the overall mind share of AMD-GPU.
And now to stop hiding the guerilla - drivers support continue to be an issue. You’ll have hundreds of post saying “drivers are fine” in threads about Anti-Lag+ banning players. In threads of system lock up due to Factory Reset options (which is still disabled). In threads talking about regressive VR performance. In threads about high idle usage. In threads about MSFT updates bricking/breaking/resetting configurations.
You’ll have users deflect saying “it happens on NV side too” as if that some how absolve AMD’s responsibility to it’s users. And in the end all it does is erode confidence that AMD can compete where it matters most to any user - reliability. Because as good as AMD’s hardware is (as attested by consoles, Steam deck) if a normal every day user can’t get it to function to their level of satisfaction, why bother?
RDNA3 undid pretty much any good will that RDNA2 garnered. RDNA4 is already being rumored to be a hard era for AMD. Confidence is very low anyone who is objective on the topic of dGPUs.
I’d love for AMD to return to the hay days of ATI, shoot I’d settle for GCN redux. At least the “fine wine” meme meant something. But AMD’s attempts of “we got x-feature at home” isn’t cutting it anymore, and they have got to invest in their hardware feature set like NV does. I’m tired of counter arguments of “I don’t like/use ray tracing” or “use Linux” to users posting actual grievances. All this tell those users is “just got buy Nvidia” with or without the insult of being a mindless sheep.
AMD has a lot of work to do, but it’s supports seem to be more than happy with what AMD gives them. So why improve.
About me - my first PC had an ATI Rage Pro. I would continue to buy every single release from ATI/AMD starting with the 7000 VE ending with the R9 290X CFX and due to noise level would not last beyond the return window where I would just get a used 780 Ti to hold me over. Then supply issues made it so I couldn’t get a Fury XT during my window to buy would lead me to buy a 980 Ti Starting with Vega 64 vs 1080 Ti would make it that I wouldn’t return to AMD as they’d always under deliver in my performance bracket.
The issue with AMD is something that has followed them for years. It isn’t something that is easy to discuss because it’s subjective in severity and exposure.
AMD tried the low ball attempt, sure it worked for a bit but it didn’t sway things in their favor. NV would just price match them +10% and continue to deliver. (HD4K/HD5K series, HD6K to a degree, but AMD adjusted prices that that hurt them more than helped, HD 6870 being a HD 5770 replacement with a price bump meant both HD 5770/5870 user’s didn’t see improvements and then HD 6970 being slower than HD 5970 made people ask why shift the names at all).
AMD tried to produce beefy hardware with the whole GCN era. And it didn’t help them that the continued issue that goes continuously ignored by a major populace of the posters here held back their performance at launch. Tied to the not reading the room AMD had another “Bulldozer” moment where the hardware was too advanced and barely anyone took advantage of it. By the time the industry caught up those advancements were standard features and NV out optimized AMD in them. Throw in the first crypto bubble, poor marketing (Overclocker’s dream anyone), bad yields on highly desired products and QA issues (HBM surface levels too low/high to the GPU core, pump whine) and don’t forget Vega/Frontier FE (copying NV, really AMD be original) leading to a product most consumers weren’t even sure who it was aimed at. GCN being probably the last most forward thinking uarch didn’t win AMD anything it’s constant blunder with that which is not to be mentioned continued to hold it back.
Now we’re in RDNA era and the 800lb guerilla in the corner is still sitting there, but everyone was too blinded by AMD finally putting out a mid-range product worth it’s they ignored AMD almost doubling the asking price for the Polaris10 replacement. Slap all the Vega20 buyers in the face, and still struggled with the guerilla leading to a lot of lost mind share with solutions akin to ship of theseus. It brought a lot of new eyes to the AMD GPU ecosystem and a lot of those users got burned.
RDNA2 being perhaps the best launch since HD4K/5K in my eyes, but Crypto returned and ruined what could have been AMD’s return to form. The guerilla for once while not dead was tamed, products competed almost 1:1 to NV minus a few features we can just make comparatives to tessellation during the HD5K-era (ie not deal breakers). With the crypto issue, combined with AMD spreading themselves thin and the boom in CPU/Servers for them they allocated far more resources to capitalize in that sector leading to the other markets starving.
RDNA3 saw the guerilla break free, AMD still high on their own farts ignoring the feature set parity where tessellation comparatives can no longer be made as ray tracing on NV side just destroys AMD in scenarios that make ray tracing worth using. The absence of an inflated market put a spot light on the guerilla running rampant, the feature inequality, and the overall mind share of AMD-GPU.
And now to stop hiding the guerilla - drivers support continue to be an issue. You’ll have hundreds of post saying “drivers are fine” in threads about Anti-Lag+ banning players. In threads of system lock up due to Factory Reset options (which is still disabled). In threads talking about regressive VR performance. In threads about high idle usage. In threads about MSFT updates bricking/breaking/resetting configurations.
You’ll have users deflect saying “it happens on NV side too” as if that some how absolve AMD’s responsibility to it’s users. And in the end all it does is erode confidence that AMD can compete where it matters most to any user - reliability. Because as good as AMD’s hardware is (as attested by consoles, Steam deck) if a normal every day user can’t get it to function to their level of satisfaction, why bother?
RDNA3 undid pretty much any good will that RDNA2 garnered. RDNA4 is already being rumored to be a hard era for AMD. Confidence is very low anyone who is objective on the topic of dGPUs.
I’d love for AMD to return to the hay days of ATI, shoot I’d settle for GCN redux. At least the “fine wine” meme meant something. But AMD’s attempts of “we got x-feature at home” isn’t cutting it anymore, and they have got to invest in their hardware feature set like NV does. I’m tired of counter arguments of “I don’t like/use ray tracing” or “use Linux” to users posting actual grievances. All this tell those users is “just got buy Nvidia” with or without the insult of being a mindless sheep.
AMD has a lot of work to do, but it’s supports seem to be more than happy with what AMD gives them. So why improve.
Guerrilla or gorrila?
Haha. Gorilla. Thanks for that correction. Fixed it.
El commandante has been bulking up.