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> I am definitely rooting for AMD to wow us next generation like they did in the CPU market. Don't set your expectations too high. Their next generation of con

> I am definitely rooting for AMD to wow us next generation like they did in the CPU market. Don't set your expectations too high. Their next generation of consumer graphics cards, rumored to be announced at CES next week, are reportedly still going to be based on a new revision of their current GCN architecture (which originally debuted in 2011 and is very much showing its age these days). Rumored performance for the "high-end" model will be somewhere around the GTX 1080 or RTX 2070 (though reportedly at a much lower price compared to either of those cards). If you're waiting for them to produce an all-new GPU architecture the rumors are that they are working on one to be launched in the 2020-2021 timeframe. That's also when Intel is rumored to be preparing to launch their own dedicated GPUs so hopefully we will be going from 0 properly high-end GPUs with open-source drivers to 2 by 2021.

hedora 8y ago
I got an amd fury x a while back because the nvidia binary drivers regressed severely with my old card, and I wanted 4K anyway. It’s by far the best Linux GPU I’ve ever encountered, and that’s with open source drivers don’t set the kernel taint bit. Its performance in benchmarks was much better than the comparably priced NVIDIA. It is also the quietest gamer GPU I’ve encountered (I bought one with slightly nicer fans). Maybe things have changed (but the 1080 was certainly out back then), but this card wins on every metric other than CUDA support (nonexistent) and absolute performance (close enough to fastest, and certainly overkill for my Linux Steam collection at 4K).
- MrRadar 8y ago
  I'm not saying that AMD's current cards are slouches (I'm planning to buy one myself this year when I build my next computer) but they certainly do not meet the performance bar set by Nvidia's current high-end models (the RTX 2080 Ti and Titan RTX) which is what I mean by "properly high-end". Those are admittedly niche products due to their high pricing but it is important for AMD to have a competitive product in that segment since many people don't do a lot of research and if all they know about GPUs is "Nvidia has the fastest cards" (or an equally-uninformed salesperson tells them that) and buys a 1060 over a 580 based on that "knowledge" then AMD lost a sale.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    > they certainly do not meet the performance bar set by Nvidia's current high-end models Assuming you can't tell the difference between, say, 100fps and 150fps, isn't the 'performance bar' a bit arbitrary after a certain point if the hardware runs the vast majority of the software thrown at it?
    - MrRadar 8y ago
      Objectively you are correct. However, as the rest of my comment indicates there are important marketing and brand-value perception reasons to have a true high-end card: how many professional gamers (streamers, e-sports, extreme overclockers, etc.) who do buy this class of GPU are there playing with AMD cards vs Nvidia cards? How many (tens/hundreds of) millions of views do they collectively get playing games with Nvidia hardware? Nvidia has likely gotten millions of dollars in effectively free marketing just for having these cards. AMD's GPU market share has been shrinking with the general gaming audience despite the fact that their mid-range cards have been very price-competitive with Nvidia's offerings during the same time period they've lacked serious competition at the high-end. While focusing on the mid-range where the highest volume of GPUs are sold is the rational market strategy it may not be a winning market strategy in the real world.
craftyguy 8y ago
> will be somewhere around the GTX 1080 or RTX 2070 Aren't those still adequate to run like, 99.9% of all games on the market? I would (and do) gladly pay for hardware that isn't the absolute fastest if the manufacturer employs a Linux driver team to make that hardware work on Linux.
- MrRadar 8y ago
  I agree with you however as I explained in my reply to hedora there are important reasons why AMD should have a card in this performance class.

hedora 8y ago

I got an amd fury x a while back because the nvidia binary drivers regressed severely with my old card, and I wanted 4K anyway. It’s by far the best Linux GPU I’ve ever encountered, and that’s with open source drivers don’t set the kernel taint bit. Its performance in benchmarks was much better than the comparably priced NVIDIA. It is also the quietest gamer GPU I’ve encountered (I bought one with slightly nicer fans). Maybe things have changed (but the 1080 was certainly out back then), but this card wins on every metric other than CUDA support (nonexistent) and absolute performance (close enough to fastest, and certainly overkill for my Linux Steam collection at 4K).

MrRadar 8y ago
I'm not saying that AMD's current cards are slouches (I'm planning to buy one myself this year when I build my next computer) but they certainly do not meet the performance bar set by Nvidia's current high-end models (the RTX 2080 Ti and Titan RTX) which is what I mean by "properly high-end". Those are admittedly niche products due to their high pricing but it is important for AMD to have a competitive product in that segment since many people don't do a lot of research and if all they know about GPUs is "Nvidia has the fastest cards" (or an equally-uninformed salesperson tells them that) and buys a 1060 over a 580 based on that "knowledge" then AMD lost a sale.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  > they certainly do not meet the performance bar set by Nvidia's current high-end models Assuming you can't tell the difference between, say, 100fps and 150fps, isn't the 'performance bar' a bit arbitrary after a certain point if the hardware runs the vast majority of the software thrown at it?
  - MrRadar 8y ago
    Objectively you are correct. However, as the rest of my comment indicates there are important marketing and brand-value perception reasons to have a true high-end card: how many professional gamers (streamers, e-sports, extreme overclockers, etc.) who do buy this class of GPU are there playing with AMD cards vs Nvidia cards? How many (tens/hundreds of) millions of views do they collectively get playing games with Nvidia hardware? Nvidia has likely gotten millions of dollars in effectively free marketing just for having these cards. AMD's GPU market share has been shrinking with the general gaming audience despite the fact that their mid-range cards have been very price-competitive with Nvidia's offerings during the same time period they've lacked serious competition at the high-end. While focusing on the mid-range where the highest volume of GPUs are sold is the rational market strategy it may not be a winning market strategy in the real world.

craftyguy 8y ago

> will be somewhere around the GTX 1080 or RTX 2070 Aren't those still adequate to run like, 99.9% of all games on the market? I would (and do) gladly pay for hardware that isn't the absolute fastest if the manufacturer employs a Linux driver team to make that hardware work on Linux.

MrRadar 8y ago
I agree with you however as I explained in my reply to hedora there are important reasons why AMD should have a card in this performance class.