Question Why does the overall gaming GPU market treat AMD like they have AIDS?

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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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I guess I get the (sub-liminal) "The way it's meant to be played" ads from NVidia, along with the recurring FUD tropes about "AMD drivers", but I honestly don't get the sales disparity, especially for the price.

I've owned both NVidia-powered as well as AMD powered GPUs, and IMHO, AMD is (generally) just as good. Maybe 99% as good.

Edit: And I think that there's something to be said about the viability of AMD technologies, when they're in both major console brands.
 

Stuka87

Diamond Member
Dec 10, 2010
6,240
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What was XFX doing that's got everyone in such a tizzy? Mislabeling cards to bypass import fees in China?

Why exactly should AMD drop one of their exclusive partners for administrative shenanigans when the parts are still solid and basically no one knows about AMD... Wait I mean XFX... Wait I mean XFX's shens?

There is a few things they have been involved with, not a one off case. XFX public statements claim they did nothing wrong.

They were (allegedly) mislabeling GPUs to get around customs (marking them as cheaper cards than they were).
They were (allegedly) bypassing store fronts and selling directly to miners. Its the reason XFX RX 5x0 and RX 5x00 cards were almost non-existent in store fronts.
They were (allegedly) reselling cards that had been mined on, without stating that they were previously mined on. They basically repackaged them. The story here is China banned GPU mining. So all the GPUs were sent out to countries with cheap power. Once mining crashed, the cards were then repackaged and they tried to reimport them to China in order to sell them. This is when they got caught the most recent time. Its not clear if XFX owned all the cards, and were basically building cards to mine for their own profit.

Its worth noting that XFX is owned by the Pine Group. And is not a standalone company.
 
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GodisanAtheist

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2006
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There is a few things they have been involved with, not a one off case. XFX public statements claim they did nothing wrong.

They were (allegedly) mislabeling GPUs to get around customs (marking them as cheaper cards than they were).
They were (allegedly) bypassing store fronts and selling directly to miners. Its the reason XFX RX 5x0 and RX 5x00 cards were almost non-existent in store fronts.
They were (allegedly) reselling cards that had been mined on, without stating that they were previously mined on. They basically repackaged them. The story here is China banned GPU mining. So all the GPUs were sent out to countries with cheap power. Once mining crashed, the cards were then repackaged and they tried to reimport them to China in order to sell them. This is when they got caught the most recent time. Its not clear if XFX owned all the cards, and were basically building cards to mine for their own profit.

Its worth noting that XFX is owned by the Pine Group. And is not a standalone company.

-AIBs selling to miners has been more or less an open secret for the last two years. Not just XFX but EVERYONE. AIBs saw $$$ and went for it. Hardly a reason to cut anyone off.

I'm more curious about the attempt to resell mined XFX cards as brand new *By XFX* cause when I look for XFX controversy I see a lot of stories about the first issue (mislabeled cards) and nothing about the second (XFX trying to pass mined GPUs as new).
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
8,104
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I'm not really sure what AMD could actually do about it. First sale doctrine type laws limit a manufacturer from telling a retailer (or more generally a purchaser) what they're allowed to do with what they've just purchased. Believe me that we don't want to get into any kind of situation where we're "licensing" our GPUs instead of purchasing them.

Skirting import laws is also outside of AMD's purview and it would be up to the government of some jurisdiction to go after a company for that.

Let the market decide if they don't like a company and to shun them and their products. Let AMD and NVidia focus on making cards instead of wasting time trying to police the downstream use of them.
 

amenx

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
4,106
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Because Nvidia offers "incentives" to keep the media in line and they all stay in line like good little minions.

Even outlets like gamersnexus, which has a reputation of not holding back and tell it how it is will hardly ever blame nvidia for anything and instead pick fights with board partners instead.

You can easily tell how much reviewers are just regurgitating Nvidia marketing in their reviews.

Things like the Geforce Partner Program should be a talking points on every video about Nvidia but is never mentioned again.
Disagree. Ppl buy cards according to performance benchmarks. That is the main criteria in my view and Nv usually ruled the roost in that area. Although AMD would knock prices down in the mid-range to lower tiers to offer better bang for the buck.
 

Heartbreaker

Diamond Member
Apr 3, 2006
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If AMD had done that the nvidia cheer squad would never let is forget it!

You seem more interested in defending the AMD faith, than actually understanding why AMD sales lag, which was the point of the thread.

Attacking and disagree with the answers, is not going to improve AMD sales. Especially when you have no answer of your own.

New Worlds bricking some cards was a bizarre edge case.

Even if a driver is used to mitigate something, that doesn't mean a driver caused it. They might be using a driver to protect weaker than expected HW.

EVGA reported solder faults on it's New Worlds bricked cards:

An analysis of dead EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 cards that failed while playing Amazon’s New World game indicate a rare soldering issue limited to a small batch of cards is responsible, a company spokesman told PCWorld.
 
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Heartbreaker

Diamond Member
Apr 3, 2006
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We are just pushing back on the claim that AMDs driver experience is worse.

It isn't, it is just it is perceived as worse by Nvidia faithful.

So you are just labeling the majority of the market, as the "NVidia Faithful".

IMO, this just like calling Apple buyers iSheep.

It's not productive, and just reveals more about your own biases.

As for New World being an edge case, New World is not the only game with uncapped framerates in the menus:
https://www.eurogamer.net/starcraft-ii-is-melting-graphics-cards
These are big mainstream games, they hardly seem like edge cases.

I imagined it also happened with a lot of smaller games to. Those likely just slipped under the radar.

It's an edge case because it's EXTREMELY rare for a game to kill cards, and it looks like it was only killing poorly manufactured cards. It's not a case of Drivers bricking cards.
 
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Dribble

Platinum Member
Aug 9, 2005
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People care so little about AMD that they've decided it's not even worth the effort to keep arguing about why no one gives a **** about AMD and have decided to argue GTG times on monitors instead.

QED @VirtualLarry
Oh they care, they just don't have a solution.

I suspect as long as Nvidia doesn't mess up, and Nvidia haven't messed up for a very long time, they don't have much chance. The 4xxx series is looking strong again - it ticks all the boxes that have made Nvidia money in the past - so I don't think AMD will have much success in the next gen.

If AMD want to succeed in the end they need to invest a lot more into software - you will note most of AMD's successes come in areas where someone else writes the software (cpu's, consoles, even super computers don't require AMD to do much), they don't do well where they have to write it (PC gpu's, gpu compute, etc). So that's what AMD should focus on to fix this - it was something JHH worked out a long time ago, and turned his hardware only company around into one that's at least 50:50 hardware and software. Until they do that they will never catch Nvidia.

However will AMD really want to invest that much in software when instead they can sell cpu's that require AMD to write very little software, and they are up against a company that unlike Nvidia has messed up and let them catch up?
 
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Stuka87

Diamond Member
Dec 10, 2010
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Oh they care, they just don't have a solution.

I suspect as long as Nvidia doesn't mess up, and Nvidia haven't messed up for a very long time, they don't have much chance. The 4xxx series is looking strong again - it ticks all the boxes that have made Nvidia money in the past - so I don't think AMD will have much success in the next gen.

If AMD want to succeed in the end they need to invest a lot more into software - you will note most of AMD's successes come in areas where someone else writes the software (cpu's, consoles, even super computers don't require AMD to do much), they don't do well where they have to write it (PC gpu's, gpu compute, etc). So that's what AMD should focus on to fix this - it was something JHH worked out a long time ago, and turned his hardware only company around into one that's at least 50:50 hardware and software. Until they do that they will never catch Nvidia.

However will AMD really want to invest that much in software when instead they can sell cpu's that require AMD to write very little software, and they are up against a company that unlike Nvidia has messed up and let them catch up?

But they HAVE messed up. People just don't care that they mess up. And then they forget that they messed up at all.
 
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Ranulf

Platinum Member
Jul 18, 2001
2,523
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People care so little about AMD that they've decided it's not even worth the effort to keep arguing about why no one gives a **** about AMD and have decided to argue GTG times on monitors instead.

QED @VirtualLarry

Or, its been argued to death and I'm tired of the debate? AMD is often its own worst enemy but it seems since Navi1 they don't care as much. Probably because there is more money in server chips, consoles etc..
 

Thunder 57

Platinum Member
Aug 19, 2007
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Linus has no shame in promoting DLSS 3. Based on the comments section though it looks like anyone who understands it a little realizes it has problems. I wouldn't be surprised if NVIDIA designed it partly to make FPS look great on charts because if it doesn't DLSS 3 it's sooo much slower.
 

Heartbreaker

Diamond Member
Apr 3, 2006
4,334
5,452
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Linus has no shame in promoting DLSS 3. Based on the comments section though it looks like anyone who understands it a little realizes it has problems. I wouldn't be surprised if NVIDIA designed it partly to make FPS look great on charts because if it doesn't DLSS 3 it's sooo much slower.

I refuse to watch Linus Videos, this one included. I'm tired of his schtick. Everything is exaggerated, negative or positive, for clicks. Along with his click bait thumbnail of him always pulling a dumb over-reaction face.

But all this nonsense is exactly what pulls in his large audience, and that is kind of sad commentary on the audience.

DLSS 3 is mostly marketing smoke and mirrors, letting them advertise a higher frame rate, that is essentially fake.
 

DeathReborn

Platinum Member
Oct 11, 2005
2,770
775
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Unless when you say you are buying a GPU, you aren't buying a connector with it, then the connector is part of the GPU you buy. Apparently using GPU in common vernacular goes out the window when defending Nvidia.

Really?

GPU has pretty much universally meant the entire unit for the last 20 years.

Since it seems to mean only the silicon to you, how do you reference the entire unit?

It's referred to as a Graphics Card, Video Card or in older parlance Graphics/Video Adapter. I've been working in the industry for nearly 2 decades now, building PC's for 30. Also it's not about defending anything but accuracy, perhaps you are injecting a dislike for a company to overegg the situation, kinda like AMD drivers still being called bad when they're not. When there is a issue in hardware you try to isolate it and find ways to mitigate/fix it you don't exaggerate or confuse the issue as that gets you nowhere.
 
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kinda like AMD drivers still being called bad when they're not
They are still quite poor. So bad that they ruined RX 5700 XT with black screen issues. RX 6000 series have various issues too like glitched out HW acceleration in browsers. My own RX 580 had some really rocky drivers, not to mention that like half of AMD's control panel features are only semi-functional if not permanently broken. I also had Terascale pro cards and their drivers have been a cruel joke. Wanna load a website with YT embedded video? BSOD! Wanna force AA to games? BSOD! Wanna get just consistent performance from driver to driver, nope, there is as much as 15% of performance delta between nearly every driver release. BTW AMD still haven't made RX card compatible with VP9 decoding, despite that being promised in like 2015. The only good AMD cards I had were ATi X800 series, but ever since then drivers have been utter shitshow. It's about time AMD finally treated their software AIDS.
 
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If @The red spirit says they experienced all those issues, I believe them. Do I think it is generally the case? Heck no. The 5700XT was a hot mess for me, but Polaris, Vega, just about every generation of APU going back to like 2013 and RDNA2 have been solid for me. Little issues, but same goes for my Nvidia cards.
I also have RX 560. Spent more time with RX 580. AMD drivers haven't been all that great. I never had problems with nVidia, FX 5200 always worked right (minus the fact that it was e-waste since launch), GTX 650 Ti was rock solid minus one driver version, where it had glitchy desktop issue, which was very promptly resolved week later. For AMD, it's way too common to have random small issues and some never fixed issues from driver to driver. Wattman randomly resetting hasn't been fixed in years. Chill is broken for years. RIS is semi broken for years. FRTC has been broken for years. I have zero idea how RIS isn't functional even nowadays, when any nV card can sharpen any game. RIS only works in Genshin Impact and Cyberpunk 2077, no other game I tested with I saw it functioning as intended. APUs have been even worse poo. Not only you have to deal with janky GPU drivers + software now they occasionaly conflict with chipset drivers which are also from AMD and also aren't great. But that was with FM2+ APUs, not the modern ones.
Funny, my RX580 has been rock solid for 4 years or so. You sure you don't have a different issue with your system?
Multiple AMD cards in multiple systems, same crap in all of them.
 

Tup3x

Golden Member
Dec 31, 2016
1,079
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I have very annoying issue on my work laptop (Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U) where cursor turns white in Chrome and Edge. Windows 11 UI feels laggy too and it obviously can't keep up with 144hz refresh rate at 2560x1440. Also for some reason drawing in Paint is absolute lag fest. Those two issues are probably connected...
 
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Massive performance differences between drivers? I never actually noticed. I just use the stable version and the world seems fine. No real issues, and never noticed wild performance swings. Granted, I only update when the thing nags me to.
There are Phoronix published benches, differences are interesting with FirePro V8800, which I have.

My computer plays back vp9 just fine, never had a problem.
That's not a point of HW acceleration, the point is to render it on GPU without CPU, making it more power efficient, as well as faster. Particularly obvious if you want to watch high res YT videos and your CPU isn't fast. Something like 4k60 is a bit too much for 10400F. 8k60 is complete no go, but YT then uses AV1, which is just becoming HW accelerated. 16k is probably beyond what CPUs can handle today.


Never had any of the problems your complaining about. -shrug-
So is RIS working for you in every game? Is Chill not having stutters? Does FRTC even work somewhere? Does memory undervoltign actually applies lower voltages? Can you actually undervolt GPU bellow certain voltage limit (my RX 580 has soft lock of 850 mV)?
 
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says the poster who is claiming AMD's Unified Video Decoder supports features found only in AMD's Video Core Next.
Nope, I just relay waht AMD themselves told. I only claim that it's broken stuff and AMD was dishonest and probably got away without some lawsuit.

Peoples mobile phones do not have rx500s in them.
Mobile also means laptops, hybrids and tablets


Intel's old Atoms, one of the most pathetic CPU line ever made, can decode 1080p VP9. I already linked that.

Most peoples mobile phones outperform Intel Atoms.
Because Intel didn't botch Quicksync's decoding capabilities. My own laptop with 7300u decodes VP9 4K60 videos on iGPU perfectly fine, while using a watt or two. BTW it also happens to be the first gen for Intel that they integrated VP9 decoding. Gotta say it actually works as they claimed.


As far as I can find, AMD did not claim that for the cards that were sold to consumers.
Pro cards use identical GPUs, so whatever.

A whitepaper of AMD's goals for the architecture != specification sheet. Raja's powerpoint presentation of his goals != specification sheet. From what I can find, it was not listed as a supported feature on the cards that were sold. Yea, you can hack it back in, but all that does is show us why they dropped it.
Whitepapers aren't for goals, they are for documenting what already has been made, also Raja's slides were for launching cards, so no goals either.

Anyway, found that damn slide:
keVDAMNuEhzINHb_pGVXMSOT7NW-AeWXPwycXMNGm78.png


Also AMD themselves (1:13):

Looks like AMD "unlaunched" VP9 from Polaris in consumer screwing way.


is there a tool your using to measure this?

( my new 4k monitor just showed up today, and I was thinking about playing around with it later )
Open YT video, enable geek menu and turn on task manager, that's all. Watch GPU decoder load and CPU load. CPU shouldn't be loaded much if GPU HW decoding is in use.

Then why the freak did you even bother posting at all?

Just like hearing yourself talk? (erm... type?) :p ;)
Literally read the title of this thread. AMD has software AIDS and doesn't care to ever fix it. And if they can't they are also prone to clearly "unlaunch" features of cards. AMD's SW team is an utter joke.


Your system is slow as molasses in January, it bogs down on a task it should be able to run easily and you've been told this repeatedly by more than one person. Something is obviously wrong even if you're too defensive to accept it.

But I'm sure it's all AMD's drivers not something you did right? (rotfl)
How about a driver and software release that fixes all that?
 
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Lol, this thread escalated quickly. Here's my two cents:

I'm going to undervolt my GPU and when it doesn't work right I'm going to say AMD has software AIDS and their drivers are broken!

About right?
It does work correctly undervolted or not. Even without undervolt Radeon Chill stutters badly and is unusable. RIS doesn't apply to all games or majority of games. I already tested that and retested today, still nonfunctional. VP9 bullshit never worked and obviously doesn't work now either. It's also perfectly repeatable on several Polaris refresh cards in different computers. Do you people even read anything?
 
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You should work on your manners. Joining a forum and being argumentative with everyone isn't going to win you friends. Maybe you don't want friends and that's fine, but at least try to be a bit more civil.
Basically what happened here:
I tell shortcomings of AMD software in detail
Get tons of unsolicited advice that I never asked for nor particularly wanted to hear
Get trolled
Get lectured about whatever

I seriously wonder why this thread exists, if one can't even post anything negative about AMD without whole forum's backlash.

Radeon Chill works as advertised for me. What fps min and max are you using with it? Do you have a freesync monitor?
No Freesync, tried 60 60. There are massive stutters every time it switches from 60 to unlimited. Tried in UT 2004, becasue it's easy to get tons of fps there. Some years ago I tried it in CoD MW and basically had exactly the same stuttering problem.
 
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tajoh111

Senior member
Mar 28, 2005
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AMD's biggest problem is they overestimate their brand and they launch their prices at just competitive pricing. Their typically inferior feature set alone typically cause the public to not care about 5 to 6% savings AMD gives them which is initially present in reviews. And recently aside from their flagships, AMD has launched their cards at basically equal price to performance as Nvidia and at times worse.

6800 xt vs rtx 3080 similar price to performance
6800 vs rtx 3070 similar price to performance

RTX 3060 and 3060 ti on the other hand launched with better price to performance than AMD's RX 6600 and 6700 xt. Same with the RTX 3050 vs 6500xt.

Of course mining screwed pricing up for all these products. But the high initial pricing of the 6500xt, 6600, 6600xt and 6700 xt kind of destroyed AMD's goodwill with gamers because the high initial asking price was blamed on AMD and not miners as the high initial price was set by AMD. Nvidia high street pricing can be blamed on demand, but AMD high initial pricing which they are officially setting is being blamed on them.

The only card to launch with significantly better price to performance was AMD halo cards. 6900xt vs RTX 3090 or RTX 6950xt vs RTX 3090 ti. But with Halo cards, customers typically want the best and care little about price to performance.

If AMD wants marketshare they need significantly lower prices which they can actually afford. AMD's R and D burn rate for graphics card is vastly lower than Nvidia.

If people are questioning right now why cards like the RX 6600, 6600xt and 6700xt are not selling(shown by below MSRP street pricing) and cards like the rtx 3050, rtx 3060 and rtx 3060 ti still have high MSRP's. It's is likely due to Nvidia unwilling to give sellers rebates to move those cards while AMD on the other hand is. While Nvidia can afford to do this, but the multi billions dollars in inventory for RTX 3xxx means a very expensive loss.