but AMD on the other hand is so nice, secretly they are a non-profit NGO spending all the profits to help the elderly and clean the oceans.
Well, no, they've got less power to abuse, so it's quite logical that there are fewer abuses of power from that side. That doesn't take away Nvidia's responsibility for their actions though. Far from it. They're still entirely to blame for being the anti-consumer, proprietary tech-promoting, wannabe monopolists that they are. AMD on the other hand supports open standards across the board, and while this is (obviously) done for both marketing reasons and out of necessity (can't establish a proprietary standard if you're 1/3rd of your competitor's size), it's still a better and more consumer-friendly stance.
As for the VII, it looks decent. Interesting to see where final (in-game) clocks end up.
Last gen:
Vega 64, mid-to-large die, 8gb expensive HBM2, pushed to the limit, 275W TDP.
trailed or matched
GTX 1080 mid-to-small die, 8GB relatively cheap GDDR5X, OC potential, 180W TDP.
A clear win for Nvidia in both cost and performance.
This gen:
Radeon VII, mid-to-small die, 16GB (slightly less) expensive HBM2, unknown OC potential (likely not much), 300W TDP
reportedly roughly matches the
RTX 2080, with a
huge die, 8GB (roughly equally) expensive GDDR6, less OC potential than last gen, 225W TDP.
Even counting the process jump, AMD is gaining on Nvidia. Nvidia does have RT and Tensor cores, but they're not really useful, and might never really be (for this level of hardware). Traditional rendering is still king, and AMD is hopefully progressing with a new arch, but as a stop-gap, this looks surprisingly good. Didn't think we'd see 7nm Vega for consumers, but given that the die likely costs half of an RTX 2080 die and HBM2 and GDDR6 cost roughly the same per GB, this sure is a role reversal from last year when Nvidia made more money selling faster parts for similar prices.
Have to wonder what Navi will bring to the table. My Fury X lives on, but who knows what next year will bring?