I know Intel is dipping its toe into the GPU market, but let’s be real, AMD and nVidia are the only options and have been for the last 20+ years. The manufacturers/assemblers of the complete graphics cards are varied and widespread, but the core tech comes from two companies only.
Why is this the case? Or am I mistaken and am just brainwashed by marketing, and there are in fact other viable options for GPUs?
Cheers!
Not being able to play games? Not serious? What the hell are you talking about? Did you compare a 3090 to a bottom tier ATI Radeon card or something? My RX 6800 was a fucking champ that was able to run everything I threw at it without a single problem and with quite satisfactory performance at 1440p. It was most definitely a very competent GPU for gaming.
ML and nvenc are extra features that not everyone needs or even wants.
Maybe I’m misinformed, but can the RX 6800 do Path Tracing in CP2077 at 1440p native/~30fps or at least on DLSS Quality or even FSR Quality (in both upscalers cases with Ray Reconstruction and no frame generator ofc).
Can any AMD GPU do that at all, at a better price to performance point?
Because I was under the impression that basically no AMD cards can do practically any substantial RT of any kind, and that’s why it’s either missing on consoles or borderline unnoticeable and often confined to reflections where it’s pretty useless.
I just briefly looked it up, and all I could find was someone on steam discussions with an 79xx XTX card talking about the old timey simple Ray Tracing being “possible” at 1080p in cyberpunk on steam discussions. Granted there were some videos that looked promising but I steer clear of YT and reddit.
And as for features you don’t need, idk, to me if I have to buy a GPU, might as well get one that should be able to do more things rather than less for the money. I didn’t even play video games much when I got my 3090 years ago during summer 2021 for like $400 used from CeX, but I’m glad I got something that can, and something that can encode video well, whether it’s recording, editing and rendering gaming footage to share with friends, or transcoding media on a server, or do ML (eg for self hosting Immich).
If I were to buy a GPU now, i’d look at all features, even if I don’t want those things now, I’d ofc want them later, and for that - why would you choose an inferior option?
A RX 6800? Yes, in fact I was playing CP2077 with FSR and ray tracing on at 4K on a 6800. It was the first real card AMD had that could. Though it did struggle at times.
Sadly replaced after 4 years with a RX9060 of similar capability but better Ray tracing.
AMD cards are only about 2-3 years behind NVIDIA in a lot of specialised tasks, but trying to pace the behemoth that is NVIDIA’s RnD with a much smaller budget. ROCm works but is held up by compatibility issues with the newer CUDA features.
Ray tracing? No no, I said Path Tracing.
Hmm. I’ve decided I don’t like you.
It feels like you’re setting an artificially high goal purely to make challenging your assirtion impossible. I’m not even sure a 3090 can do path tracing. 40/5090, maybe they can.
Could an AMD card do it? Yes. RX 7900 possibly, a theoretical RX 9090 could if they bothered to release one.
But none of that matters really. Never has.
Yes, a 3090 can do Path Tracing, that’s why I’m asking for one. It’s not a artificially high goal - it’s how I play one of my favourite games of all time - CP2077.
Obviously both the 4090 and 5090 can do that too and better, but that’s essentially out of reach for mere mortals, and even if it weren’t it’s not enough of an upgrade to really justify the massive price tag.
Still, If I were to get a new GPU, I wouldn’t want a graphical downgrade, ideally an upgrade since y’know, that’s what matters in price to value of computer components, and AMD can’t provide so they’re not a serious option. CPUs on the other hand? Hell yeah I’m 100% AMD, but that’s because they have a serious competitive offering in the 9800X3D.
Maybe to you gaming performance doesn’t matter when buying a gaming computer, in which case that’s your opinion and it’s ok, but it’s safe to say it matters to the rest of us.