What would happen, if AMD and Nvidia took turns being in the lead?

[unseenmorbidity]

This is purely hypothetical.

What would happen in this scenario? 9 months after pascal's release, AMD's vega releases, and they take the performance crown from Nvidia. Then 9 months after that, Nvidia's volta releases, and retakes the crown. And then this cycle repeats.

What would that mean for AMD?

I ask this, because I am currently considering the potential of vega. Nvidia is currently ahead, because VEGA is very late. But does that mean it's not worth considering? Is the fact they are ahead now biasing my opinion?

Currently the way I look at it is something like,

Nvidia is ahead now, so who cares about Vega, because nvidia will launch their new GPU in a few months, and then they will be ahead again.

But is that right? In the above scenario, it doesn't matter who is ahead first, because each card would have it's turn as dominant. But this is of course assuming they each have an equal time ahead. Is this at all realistic? Vega will likely be in Q2, but when can we expect Volta?

 

[tential]

This is purely hypothetical.

What would happen in this scenario? 9 months after pascal's release, AMD's vega releases, and they take the performance crown from Nvidia. Then 9 months after that, Nvidia's volta releases, and retakes the crown. And then this cycle repeats.

What would that mean for AMD?

I ask this, because I am currently considering the potential of vega. Nvidia is currently ahead, because VEGA is very late. But does that mean it's not worth considering? Is the fact they are ahead now biasing my opinion?

Currently the way I look at it is something like,

Nvidia is ahead now, so who cares about Vega, because nvidia will launch their new GPU in a few months, and then they will be ahead again.

But is that right? In the above scenario, it doesn't matter who is ahead first, because each card would have it's turn as dominant. But this is of course assuming they each have an equal time ahead. Is this at all realistic? Vega will likely be in Q2, but when can we expect Volta?

Because in your scenario presented, Nvidia has 9 months, then AMD has 9 months.
That's not reality.
Reality has been Nvidia has the fastest card with AMD maybe having a month or two or having the fastest card. That's the recent reality.

I don't even know what you're trying to question. The 1070 and 1080 are on the market uncontested for months.....
This isn't about AMD being ahead, they don't even have products on the market.
This is about the amount of time an AMD GPU can be on the market before a new Nvidia GPU comes out.

 

[MajinCry]

We've seen it happen repeatedly, IIRC. I'll look at Anandtech's gpu benches for the release dates o' the cards. If we look at today's games 'n' drivers and such, AMD pretty much decimates, but that ain't what we're looking at.

580 vs 6970 - 580 has a Pyrrhic victory; guzzles way more power and only trumps the 6970 in one or two games.
7970 vs 680 - 7970 wins by quite a bit
290x vs 780 ti - 290x is neck and neck in most games, with vastly superior frametimes across the board
Fury X vs 980 ti - 980 ti wins, similar power consumption and has better minimum framerates

Going back a bit's hard, since the benches don't really cover it. Supposedly, 5870 vs 480, the 5870 wins in Direct3D 9, but the 480 wins in Direct3D 11 games. And by the time the latter came around, the 780 ti was on the horizon. 5870 was the leader of that generation.

4850 vs 285, the 285 eeks out a couple victories, but guzzles way more power.

The result of the performance crown switching between red and green? Everybody bought green and disparaged red.

 

[Dribble]

It would obviously be much better for consumers if they traded being in the lead, it would lower prices and improve performance. That's just not happened for a very long time however, and is growing less and less likely as AMD's lack of R&D budget bites. Hence by "in the lead" I mean actual sales, and sales with a good profit margin, not one fanboys viewpoint on what people should have bought if they all wore the same colour of glasses as them, or even if AMD sold everything cheap. Profitable sales mean money, money means R&D budget, R&D budget means competition.

 

[vissarix]

580 vs 6970 - 580 has a Pyrrhic victory; guzzles way more power and only trumps the 6970 in one or two games.
7970 vs 680 - 7970 wins by quite a bit
290x vs 780 ti - 290x is neck and neck in most games, with vastly superior frametimes across the board
Fury X vs 980 ti - 980 ti wins, similar power consumption

You kinda messed those facts up...it was the contrary of what you say...every nvidia card on your comparison was faster then amd counterpart..

 

[bystander36]

You kinda messed those facts up...it was the contrary of what you say...every nvidia card on your comparison was faster then amd counterpart..

The 580 was faster. I had an unlocked 6950, and always wish I had 580 performance. I also don't recall the 580 being a guzzler, that was the 480.
The 680 was faster for 6 months, then the 7970 Ghz edition came out and took the lead.
The 5870 was AMD's most recent clear lead for several months, until the guzzling 480 came out.

That said, there was some clear trading positions, but it always seems Nvidia find a way on top longer, even if it is a costly card.

 

[MajinCry]

You kinda messed those facts up...it was the contrary of what you say...every nvidia card on your comparison was faster then amd counterpart..

I just looked at the benches on Anandtech. Feel free to check for yourself.

 

[Mercennarius]

This scenario has happened pretty often over the years...

 

[kawi6rr]

And it benefits the consumer.

 

[SolMiester]

I just looked at the benches on Anandtech. Feel free to check for yourself.

Very seldom has AMD managed to take the lead in that generation GPU, if they do, its usually several months after release and NV has released a newer card faster again.

 

[happy medium]

I think it would suck that way.

Example:
Nvidia has the lead starting today .
We pay more for the next 10 months because AMD is not competing.

Next October AMD takes the lead.
We pay more for the next 10 months because Nvidia is not competing.

That's like giving each company a monopoly every other year.

Best case for those of us that can't afford a good video card?

Nvidia releases fast cards today, AMD leaks to the press they have a card that 90% as fast , uses the same amount of power and cost $20 less and they will launch it in 2 to 3 weeks, AND THEY ACTUALLY DO IT.

Cause: AMD leaked they were going to compete
Effect: Nvidia adjusts the price of there cards.


Here is reality.
Nvidia has had the fastest card(s) 99% of the time for 6 years straight. Mabe more.

 

[Shmee]

Over the years it has been like this, just not now. This is nothing new, and I would suspect there will be a time where AMD takes the lead again, and then back and forth.

 

[Elfear]

Here is reality.
Nvidia has had the fastest card(s) 99% of the time for 6 years straight. Mabe more.

Nvidia has been the top dog pretty often over the last 6 years but not nearly as much as you think. Starting from Nov 2010, when the GTX 580 launched, the following are a couple charts based off of TPU's summary performance charts (resolution was 1600p thru 2014 and 1440p after that). Anything over 0% means AMD was in the lead and anything under was Nvidia.

As far as fastest overall card goes, Nvidia has only been on top 35% of the time for the last 6yrs. For single GPU cards, Nvidia has been on top 84% of the time.

Over that 6yr span, on average Nvidia has been 5% faster counting the top cards and 15% faster for single GPU cards. Before the 1080 launched, it was -1% and 10% respectively.

As you can see from the steep drop off in May when the 1080 launched and again in August when the Titan XP dropped, AMD has been struggling this year. Nvidia has been the market leader for a long time and AMD needs to step up their game to grab some of that market share back.

My data file is here if you want to see where my calculations came from. % performance is relative performance based on TPU's charts each month. Each company's top GPU is listed until it was superceded. All the performance charts for the top GPU launches in the last 6 years are summarized in this Word doc.

 

[Thinker_145]

What are you talking about? First of all nobody cares about dual GPU cards hence nobody makes them anymore. Let me repeat literally nobody cares about a performance crown achieved via a dual GPU card!

After the release of the 8800GTX what AMD card has ever held the performance crown apart from the 5870?

Unless I have missed something Nvidia has held the crown ever since the GTX 480.

 

[Elfear]

What are you talking about? First of all nobody cares about dual GPU cards hence nobody makes them anymore. Let me repeat literally nobody cares about a performance crown achieved via a dual GPU card!

Take a deep breath and think about that for a sec. If LITERALLY no one cared about dual-GPU performance, Nvidia and AMD never would have sold any dual-GPU cards. Go argue with them if you want to make wild statements like the above.

After the release of the 8800GTX what AMD card has ever held the performance crown apart from the 5870?

Unless I have missed something Nvidia has held the crown ever since the GTX 480.

Talking single card GPUs - take a look at the linked data and/or go look through TPU's performance charts. As you can see from the graph, AMD held the crown with the 7970 for 3+ months, with the 7970Ghz for 6+ months, and was tied very briefly with the 290X until the 780Ti launched.

Besides that, when Nvidia has been the performance king, the gap has been fairly small (10-15%). The Titan's lead for 6+ months and the 1080 for 6+ months being the exceptions. 2016 has been a very bad year for high-end competition.

 

[realibrad]

I just looked at the benches on Anandtech. Feel free to check for yourself.

At launch, Nvidia won in every category. The only one I am unsure about is the 6970. What allowed AMD to "win" was constant driver improvements. The 7970 was beaten by the 680. We then got the ghz version which gave it more perf, then Nvida released new cards. AMD used drivers, while Nvidia released new cards.

Take a look.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-680-review-benchmark,3161.html

Every launch of a new Nvidia card gave them the crown.

 

[MajinCry]

Very seldom has AMD managed to take the lead in that generation GPU, if they do, its usually several months after release and NV has released a newer card faster again.

Having had some decent sleep, I'll go look over them again, and I'll link the benchmark data straight from Anandtech.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/513?vs=520
4870 (June 2008) vs 285 (January 2009).
NVidia ekes out a win half a year later, at the cost of quite a bit more power consumption.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/511?vs=519
5870 (September 2009) vs 470 (March 2010).
About neck and neck, with the 470 using more power and running hotter. This isn't the 480, but that's not on the bench. Guess I was wrong (admittedly, info was from TH); NVidia wins in terms of flagships, at the cost of insane power consumption.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/511?vs=519
6970 (December 2010) vs 580 (November 2010).
580 has a slight performance lead (Dirt 3 was an NVidia anti-AMD game IIRC, Total War's a draw call behemoth, and didn't Civ later get DCLs from AMD?), but the sample size is awfully small. Only 3-4 games. The 580 just completely guzzles power at some insane rate.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/768?vs=772
7970 Ghz (June 2012) vs 680 (March 2012).
AMD decisively wins in pretty much every game, at the cost of increased power usage when running a power virus, but even that isn't out of line with the performance it brings (unlike the 580). In games, the power consumption is neck and neck.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1059?vs=1072
290x Uber (October 2013) vs 780 ti (November 2013).
AMD wins no contest. AMD is on even ground in raw framerates, and trades blows when it isn't. But in frametimes, the 290x completely decimates the 780 ti; the 290x's frames are delivered damn near 2x more consistently. Power usage is about the same.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1513?vs=1496
Fury X (June 2015) vs 980 ti (June 2015).
Nvidia wins. Trades blows in some games, AMD wins a couple, NVidia wins a couple more. Power consumption for the 980 ti is a bit better than the Fury X, but runs 20 degrees hotter.


In terms of raw performance leadership, we have:

AMD, then NVidia (+6 months)
Nvidia - at the cost of crazy power consumption
AMD/NVidia - Arguable
AMD
AMD - No contest
NVidia

When AMD did win, had better alternatives, or was the performance crown, nobody bought AMD. It was always NVidia that got bought. Even with driver releases that killed GPUs, ol' Green Team made bank.

 

[bystander36]

The problem with those charts is they are at specific time points. The 5870 was out several months before the 470 and 480 came out. The 7970 was out a couple months before the 680, and then the 680 came out and had a decisive lead, then 6 months went by, and the 7970 had a refresh with the Ghz edition, and that took the lead back. Elfear's graph is far more accurate, because it shows a real time graph of how it goes up and down, as it happened.

 

[tential]

I see what he means by no one cares about dual cards.. We could always buy 2 single cards and put them together. Including a dual card can be quite disingenuous especially when the other side doesn't have one that generation and especially because it's heavily influenced by the suite

Dual cards do have a market, I'll buy dual big Vega wc if it comes out at launch along side of big Vega(it won't and we know it) but I don't consider it a fast card on its own just because it's all on one card.

 

[MajinCry]

The problem with those charts is they are at specific time points. The 5870 was out several months before the 470 and 480 came out. The 7970 was out a couple months before the 680, and then the 680 came out and had a decisive lead, then 6 months went by, and the 7970 had a refresh with the Ghz edition, and that took the lead back. Elfear's graph is far more accurate, because it shows a real time graph of how it goes up and down, as it happened.

With the 7970 and the 680, that's just not true. As you can see with the non-Ghz edition: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/770?vs=772

They're still trading blows. AMD wins some, NVidia wins some, and they tie in the rest.

 

[bystander36]

With the 7970 and the 680, that's just not true. As you can see with the non-Ghz edition: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/770?vs=772

They're still trading blows. AMD wins some, NVidia wins some, and they tie in the rest.

Even that chart gives Nvidia a fairly noteable lead when added up, but I'm talking about at release. At release, AMD's drivers were not doing very well, and they also left a lot of headroom on clocks. Near the end of the original 7970, it started to trade blows, then the Ghz edition came out and took the lead. The problem with these single benchmark comparisons, is they only tell you what is the truth when those benchmarks took place.

 

[Oyeve]

Doesn't bug me anymore as I have mainly been an ATI/AMD guy. Been burned in the past with nVidia drivers. What we really need is another GPU company.

 

[4K_shmoorK]

 

[Thinker_145]

Take a deep breath and think about that for a sec. If LITERALLY no one cared about dual-GPU performance, Nvidia and AMD never would have sold any dual-GPU cards. Go argue with them if you want to make wild statements like the above.



Talking single card GPUs - take a look at the linked data and/or go look through TPU's performance charts. As you can see from the graph, AMD held the crown with the 7970 for 3+ months, with the 7970Ghz for 6+ months, and was tied very briefly with the 290X until the 780Ti launched.

Besides that, when Nvidia has been the performance king, the gap has been fairly small (10-15%). The Titan's lead for 6+ months and the 1080 for 6+ months being the exceptions. 2016 has been a very bad year for high-end competition.

It was a rather desperate move from ATI to launch a dual GPU card to have some sort of representation in the high end charts. Nvidia only responded because they didn't want ATI to take advantage from a marketing deception. As it turns out nobody really buys these cards so they stopped making them.

For all practical purposes the company making the best single GPU is the performance king.

Fair enough about the 7970 but it's a 2.5 month lead to be exact, not nearly as impact full as the 7 month lead of the 5870. The 7970Ghz was pretty much equal to the 680 I don't think we should be declaring a performance king on 2-3% differences but I'll give it for more VRAM.

 

[Thinker_145]

Having had some decent sleep, I'll go look over them again, and I'll link the benchmark data straight from Anandtech.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/513?vs=520
4870 (June 2008) vs 285 (January 2009).
NVidia ekes out a win half a year later, at the cost of quite a bit more power consumption.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/511?vs=519
5870 (September 2009) vs 470 (March 2010).
About neck and neck, with the 470 using more power and running hotter. This isn't the 480, but that's not on the bench. Guess I was wrong (admittedly, info was from TH); NVidia wins in terms of flagships, at the cost of insane power consumption.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/511?vs=519
6970 (December 2010) vs 580 (November 2010).
580 has a slight performance lead (Dirt 3 was an NVidia anti-AMD game IIRC, Total War's a draw call behemoth, and didn't Civ later get DCLs from AMD?), but the sample size is awfully small. Only 3-4 games. The 580 just completely guzzles power at some insane rate.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/768?vs=772
7970 Ghz (June 2012) vs 680 (March 2012).
AMD decisively wins in pretty much every game, at the cost of increased power usage when running a power virus, but even that isn't out of line with the performance it brings (unlike the 580). In games, the power consumption is neck and neck.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1059?vs=1072
290x Uber (October 2013) vs 780 ti (November 2013).
AMD wins no contest. AMD is on even ground in raw framerates, and trades blows when it isn't. But in frametimes, the 290x completely decimates the 780 ti; the 290x's frames are delivered damn near 2x more consistently. Power usage is about the same.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1513?vs=1496
Fury X (June 2015) vs 980 ti (June 2015).
Nvidia wins. Trades blows in some games, AMD wins a couple, NVidia wins a couple more. Power consumption for the 980 ti is a bit better than the Fury X, but runs 20 degrees hotter.


In terms of raw performance leadership, we have:

AMD, then NVidia (+6 months)
Nvidia - at the cost of crazy power consumption
AMD/NVidia - Arguable
AMD
AMD - No contest
NVidia

When AMD did win, had better alternatives, or was the performance crown, nobody bought AMD. It was always NVidia that got bought. Even with driver releases that killed GPUs, ol' Green Team made bank.

Dude the GTX 280 was also launched in June 2008 and was faster than 4870 so you got that quite horribly wrong. Since the launch of the 8800 GTX AMD never for a single day held the crown before the 5870 came.

6970 was decisively slower than 580.

7970Ghz is not a decisive win at all.

Again no idea what you are talking about with the 780Ti.

And the 290X only had a decisive frametime win in 2 games.

A max OC 980Ti curb stomps a max OC Fury X it's not even a contest. Heck you don't even have to overclock when we are talking about the cards that people actually buy you know the third party ones.

What makes this even more hilarious is that the third party card will still overclock more than the Fury X.

The 5870 was AMD's biggest win in recent memory but Nvidia had built such a strong mind share with the 8800 that enthusiasts were willing to wait for the 480.

The 7970 was an awesome card but it still wasn't nearly enough of a jump from the GTX 580 for enthusiasts to suddenly jump on it. I believe the 7000 series was the best time for AMD in terms of mind share where they had solid offerings throughout. However AMD has seldom given the top end gamer enough reason to switch from Nvidia. The 7970Ghz was the last such time.

And careful there with your criticisms of power consumption since the tables have turned dramatically.