As AMD and Nvidia begin to release their latest graphics cards, one thing is clear as day: AMD is poised to reestablish itself as the market leader in affordability, and it couldn't be happier.
I've had the privilege of playing many of the best PC games of the past few years using the best graphics card on the market, as well as most of the best cheap graphics cards at some point, and several things come into play. focus in a way that was perhaps not seen before the RTX era.
First of all, we all know that graphics cards are getting more and more expensive, especially high-end cards, and in the era of Ampere and Big-Navi, the gap between the two major card manufacturers narrowed in price ( excluding the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti, which didn't have a competing AMD Radeon RX card to compare to).
Furthermore, we can recognize that simply running these cards becomes much more expensive, both in terms of additional hardware required and your actual electricity bill. In fact, not long ago I wrote a scathing op-ed on this topic.
Now that AMD has released its 7000-series Ryzen chips, and especially after announcing its 7000-series Radeon RX graphics cards, I realize that I may have been too hasty in grouping AMD with the worst offenders has respect.
When good enough is good enough
One of the things that has driven 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 arguably the most powerful consumer graphics card on the planet, but unless you're a creative professional who needs that level of raw performance, it's an absolute overkill for anything else.
Yes, you can play Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with all settings maxed out and exceed 40fps natively, but what's the point? You can do much better with an RTX 3080 using performance-tuned DLSS. And honestly, it looks just as good, especially if you don't compare them side by side.
And that takes into account that Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most demanding games out there. Most PC games don't go that far.
The RX 7900 XTX, on the other hand, seems to fall between the RTX 3090 and RTX 4090 in terms of performance, which is all you'll really need to play.
Beyond that point, you're really only paying an additional $600/$600 for bragging rights. Even the Nvidia RTX 4080, which hasn't gone on sale yet, has a significantly higher MSRP. So even if you compare the Radeon RX 7900 XTX with its declared competitor, it comes out ahead.
Ultimately, if the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX come close to the promised performance, it will be very hard to recommend anything other than the super enthusiast group.
About those power cables...
There is also the matter of the 12VHPWR power cable that Nvidia adopted from the RTX 3000 series.
This cable, which takes four standard 8-pin connectors that come with all recent power supplies and converts them to a single 16-pin power connector, has been in the news lately. RTX 4090 customers reportedly saw their expensive graphics cards burn out due to faulty power adapters and, in at least two cases, native 12 VHPWR cables from ATX 3.0 power supplies.
We didn't see anything wrong with the power cable in our RTX 4090 review unit and without the results of an official investigation by Nvidia and its partners or independent tests that can verify the issue, it's best to treat these as possibly isolated incidents involving those individual cables. rather than a more systemic problem (for now).
But do you know what a systemic problem is? Creating a proprietary power adapter that requires additional investment from consumers who have already spent a lot of money on a graphics card. Of course, it comes with an adapter, but there's something to be said for a graphics card that just uses the same 8-pin connectors that everyone else uses, which is the path that AMD has chosen with the RX 7900 XTX. Suggestion AMD.
And those energy needs...
There's a new benchmark that says the RTX 4090 Ti is on the way, and while the RTX 4090 Ti looks impressive by the numbers, the RTX 4090 already has a 450W power requirement, which can be overclocked well beyond that. half. crazy kW level. What will an RTX 4090 Ti be like? Do we want to know at this point?
Actualmente se están realizando campañas publicitarias (opens in a new tab) para alentar a los británicos a escapar de los altos costos de energía que se esperan este invierno haciendo un viaje de 30 días a Europa, porque cuesta menos que calentar su hogar. Are you exaggerated? I have no idea, but the resigned shrugs I see from some UK colleagues at the prospect of higher energy bills tell me this is at least capital-T True, if not of hecho.
Climate change and the many problems inherent in this nightmare aside, Nvidia and Intel seem to have decided that the way to stay on top is to brute force their way to dominance by putting as much power into their transistors as possible. , which is becoming more of a problem. expensive proposition.
Even in the US, power bills are higher than before, and running an extremely powerful graphics card or CPU or both for the sake of 30-40 fps more than the 90+ ips you'd get with a lesser card potency simply isn't a worthwhile trade-off for the vast majority of people.
That was probably the biggest complaint in my opinion piece mentioned above, and it looks like AMD is at least making progress. Keeping the power of the RX 7900 XTX card at just 335W is incredibly impressive, and if AMD was able to squeeze out the kind of performance it claims with relatively low power consumption, I'm convinced.
Add to that, the AMD Ryzen 7000 series isn't the most powerful on the market, and it's not exactly underpowered, but it's ahead of Intel's single-minded approach to giving more power to the problem. has a better desempeño.
We haven't seen the performance of the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT yet, so only time will tell, but at this point I'm already convinced by AMD of this generation and can't imagine I'll be the only one.