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It's fair to extrapolate because their strategic decisions will be based on extrapolations. NVIDIA had to overclock and hustle the current generation of cards

It's fair to extrapolate because their strategic decisions will be based on extrapolations. NVIDIA had to overclock and hustle the current generation of cards and it's looking even worse for the next generation. Software was a moat when AMD was heavily resource constrained, but now they can afford the headcount to give chase. Between the chip shortage and crypto, there was plenty of noise on top of fundamentals, but one doesn't make strategic plans based on noise. This is all speculative, of course. I'm sure if asked they would say it was a total coincidence. Just like AMD and Intel switching places on their stance towards overclocking. Complete coincidence that it matches the optimal strategy for their market position -- "milk it" vs "give chase." Somehow it always seems to match, though, and speculation is fun :)

urthor 4y ago
NVIDIA is well, well ahead of AMD. NVIDIA's cards were faster than AMD's with the huge gap in transistor density that was the Samsung fab. Don't get excited for the AMD graphics division up in Canada.
- dralley 4y ago
  >NVIDIA's cards were faster than AMD's with the huge gap in transistor density that was the Samsung fab. They are roughly at par. AMD does better at lower resolutions because of their cache setup. With the refreshed cards, AMD is slightly ahead.
  - urthor 4y ago
    Keep in mind that is at a particular price point. NVIDIA's top of the range chip is ahead of AMD's, and the 3080's SKU is at a lower binning point on the bell curve than the 6950's. Hence NVIDIA would be able to maintain a performance per watt crown at the 6950's price point if it sold its highest bins cheaper. Given the gap in transistor density, that is an exorbitant architectural delta.
TomVDB 4y ago
I wish my company were in the same desperate situation as Nvidia. One where we’d be faster than the competition with similar perf/W while using a much inferior silicon process…

urthor 4y ago

NVIDIA is well, well ahead of AMD. NVIDIA's cards were faster than AMD's with the huge gap in transistor density that was the Samsung fab. Don't get excited for the AMD graphics division up in Canada.

dralley 4y ago
>NVIDIA's cards were faster than AMD's with the huge gap in transistor density that was the Samsung fab. They are roughly at par. AMD does better at lower resolutions because of their cache setup. With the refreshed cards, AMD is slightly ahead.
- urthor 4y ago
  Keep in mind that is at a particular price point. NVIDIA's top of the range chip is ahead of AMD's, and the 3080's SKU is at a lower binning point on the bell curve than the 6950's. Hence NVIDIA would be able to maintain a performance per watt crown at the 6950's price point if it sold its highest bins cheaper. Given the gap in transistor density, that is an exorbitant architectural delta.

TomVDB 4y ago

I wish my company were in the same desperate situation as Nvidia. One where we’d be faster than the competition with similar perf/W while using a much inferior silicon process…