As AMD and Nvidia begin rolling out their latest graphics cards, one thing is clear as today: AMD is moving to re-establish itself as a market leader when it comes to affordability, and I couldn’t be happier.
I had the privilege of playing many Best PC Games In the past few years using The best graphics card On the market in addition to many Best Cheap Graphics Cards At any given time, there are a number of things that have come into focus in ways that may not have been visible before the RTX era.
First, we’ve all learned that graphics cards are getting more expensive, especially high-end cards, and in the Ampere-and-Big-Navi era, there’s been a closing of the gap between the major card makers in terms of price (with the exception of RTX 3090 And the RTX 3090Ti(which didn’t have a pricing-competitive AMD Radeon RX card).
Also, we can realize that the simple fact of running these cards is getting more expensive, both in terms of the additional hardware required and the current electricity bill. In fact, I wrote to stinging opening About this not so long ago.
Now that AMD has released Ryzen 7000 series chips, especially after Announced Radeon RX 7000 Series Graphics CardsI realize that I may have been too hasty to group AMD with the worst offenders in this regard.
When it’s good enough good enough
One of the things that have struggled with high end graphics cards is that you really get to the point where you have a lot more power than you really need, and the RTX 4090 is a perfect example of that.
It’s undoubtedly the most powerful consumer graphics card on the planet, but unless you’re a creative pro and need that level of raw performance, everything else would be an absolute overkill.
Yes, you can play Cyberpunk 2077 movie 4K with each setting maxed out and past 40fps locally, but what’s the point? You can do a much better job with the RTX 3080 with DLSS tuned for performance. And honestly, it sounds pretty good, especially if you don’t compare the two side by side.
And that’s considering that Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most taxing games out there. Most PC games don’t pay nearly that far.
Meanwhile, the RX 7900 XTX is looking to land somewhere between the RTX 3090 and the RTX 4090 in terms of performance, which is all you really need for gaming.
After that point, you’re really paying an extra $600/£600 for bragging rights. Even the Nvidia RTX 4080, which is not yet on sale, has a much higher MSRP. So, even if you compare a file Radeon RX 7900 XTX to its advertised competitorcome out forward.
In the end, if the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX anywhere come close to the promised performance, it would be very difficult to recommend anything else to anyone but the very enthusiastic group.
About these power cables…
There’s also the matter of the 12VHPWR power cable that Nvidia adopted starting with the RTX 3000 series.
This cable, which takes four standard 8-pin connectors that come with all modern power supplies and turns them into a single 16-pin power connector, has been in the news lately. RTX 4090 customers allegedly saw their expensive graphics cards burn out due to failing power adapters and, in at least two cases, original 12VHPWR cables from ATX 3.0 power supplies.
We didn’t see anything wrong with the power cable on our RTX 4090 review unit and without the results of an official investigation by Nvidia and its partners or any independent tests that can verify the problem, it’s best to treat these incidents as potential isolated incidents that include these. Single cables rather than a more systematic problem (for now).
But do you know why s A methodological problem? Creating a special power adapter requires additional investment from consumers who have already invested a lot of money in the graphics card. Sure, it comes with an adapter, but there’s something to be said for a graphics card that only uses the same 8-pin connectors as everyone else, which is the path AMD chose with the RX 7900 XTX. Dot, AMD.
And those energy requirements…
There’s a new benchmark indicating that the RTX 4090 Ti is on its way, and while The RTX 4090 Ti looks impressive By the numbers, the RTX 4090 already has a power requirement of 450 watts, which can be overclocked north of the half-kilowatt level. What will the RTX 4090 Ti look like? Do we even want to know at this point?
there Ad campaigns are now running (Opens in a new tab) To get those in the UK to escape the rising energy costs expected this winter by making a 30-day trip to Europe because it’s cheaper than heating their homes. Is it overrated? I have no idea, but the resignation I see from some of my colleagues in the UK about the potential for increased energy bills tells me that at least the T-capital is correct if this is not realistically the case.
Regardless of climate change and the many issues inherent in this nightmare, it seems that Nvidia and Intel have decided that the way to stay on top is to force their way to dominance by pushing as much power as possible through their transistors, which is an increasingly expensive proposition.
Even in the US, energy bills are higher than they used to be, and an outrageously high-powered graphics card or processor runs or both For the 30-40fps fun on top of the 90+ fps you get with a low-power card, that’s just not a worthwhile trade-off for the vast majority of people.
It was probably the biggest complaint in my previous article, and it seems to be one that AMD is at least making progress. Keeping the board’s power for the RX 7900 XTX down to just 335 watts is incredibly impressive, and if AMD can squeeze the kind of performance it claims from relatively little power draw, it’s sold out.
Add to that, the AMD Ryzen 7000 series isn’t the most powerful of all, and it’s not exactly low wattage, but it’s a big leap ahead of Intel’s solo approach, which gives more power when the issue is. for better performance.
We’ll still have to see how well the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT perform, so only time will tell, but at this point I’m already sold out on AMD this generation, and I can’t imagine I’ll be the only one.