thelab » graphics card wars
I
f you’ve been reading our
recent issues, you would
surely have seen that AMD
stole most of the headlines
from Computex onwards. Ryzen
CPUs! Navi graphics cards! Hold
up though. Nvidia has
something to say about the
latter. Nvidia’s mid-life refresh
of its RTX 2000 series has
arrived in a timely fashion. The
RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070
Super are ready to take the fight
to AMD’s long talked about R X
5700 and R X 5700 XT. Let the
latest battle in the GPU wars
commence.MARKET POSITIONING
Nvidia’s Turing GPUs are a well
known quantity having been on
shelf for some time. The Super
cards don’t introduce anything as
far as new technology is
concerned. You still get the key
Nvidia features. Ray-tracing
support, DLSS and things like
Nvidia’s outstanding power
efficiency all carry over. If we’re
to sum up the Super cards quickly
you can think of the 2060 Super
as essentially replacing the 2070,
while the 2070 Super is a 2080
that’s just a little slower. The
Super series is all about adjusting
the price/performance ratio of
the mid-tier RTX cards, and
combatting the new threat from
AMD’s R X 5700 series.
Additionally, the RTX 2080 also
gets the Super treatment, though
we’ll be covering that separately
in our next issue.
In contrast, AMD’s R X 5700 and
R X 5700 XT Navi GPUs are very
much new and undoubtedly
AMD’s most anticipated 2019
GPUs. It brings key new
technologies including a new
architecture called RDNA, 7nm
process technology and PCIe 4.0
support. The 5700 series are the
products AMD will use to bring it
to competitiveness in the
all-important mid-range market.Graphics
card wars
AMD’s 5700/XT vs Nvidia’s new
Super series mid-range cards do battle.
VALUE AND PRICING
We got a wealth of information
about Navi at AMD’s press
conference at Computex,
including pricing. Did AMD
play its hand too early and give
Nvidia time to respond? Is the
Super series a reactionary
release? Of course you can’t
just whip up new GPUs in a few
weeks, so obviously Nvidia has
been planning for this for
many months. The Super
launch did create an unusual
situation where AMD adjusted
its pricing publicly before the
5700 even launched. Even then
though, we’re concerned that
mid-range pricing continues to
creep higher. The cheapest of
these cards is $549. It’s just too
high for too many gamers.
Looking at the GPUs
themselves, in some ways
these cards shouldn’t even be
competing with each other on
price. At 251mm2 the 5700 die
size should theoretically give
AMD a competitive yield
advantage over the 2060 at
445mm2 not to mention the
2070 at 545mm2. It will be
interesting to see how the
market and pricing matures.
With those die sizes, along
with AMD’s process advantage,
you would think the 5700
would have a lead in power
efficiency, but sadly this isn’t
the case as AMD has clearly
used its power budget to push
clock speeds in order to
extract maximum
performance. It’s going to be
interesting to see how AMD
develops RDNA given one of its
design goals is power
efficiency.
To quote Gandalf: ‘The board
is set, the pieces are moving.
We come to it at last.” It’s time
to see just how these cards
stack up against one another
in the battle to wins the hearts,
minds and dollars of gamers.