I’m upgrading to an AMD graphics card for the first time | digital trends

Good AMD. You win. I jump overboard.

With the launch of the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT, this Nvidia fan was finally convinced to reach for an AMD graphics card as his next upgrade. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but for the first time ever, I couldn’t be more excited to become Team Red.

I’ve never been a fan of AMD

Yes, I’ll admit – I’ve never been a huge AMD fan. Since PC hardware has always been my thing, I’ve kept myself abreast of AMD and its competitors alike, but a bad experience with an AMD processor years ago put me off so I never really went back. About 15 years have passed – ancient history as far as computing goes – and aside from testing and building for others, I’ve never owned an AMD CPU or GPU in my own personal build.

Over time, this reluctance towards AMD became a habit, and it was often justified – I chose Intel and Nvidia because I trusted them more and their hardware was just better. This was years before the GPU shortage, when components were still affordable enough that I could spend a little more if it meant putting good stuff into my new builds.

Of course, AMD improved over time. With the introduction of Ryzen CPUs and RDNA 2 GPUs, I was ready to acknowledge that AMD is solid again, but still not quite ready to cut the cable and say goodbye to Nvidia.

So there I was, an Nvidia fan planning my next build until the last few weeks finally wrecked me. AMD’s launch of the RX 7900 XTX was the final nail in the coffin of my “No AMD” phase.

I tried to stick with Nvidia

Despite the rising prices during the GPU shortage and the fact that AMD’s range was more affordable (although it wasn’t really that back then), my upgrade plan has included an Nvidia card for months. I prepared various builds, from an RTX 3070 Ti to an RTX 3090, and kept an eye on the prices – which are still high in my area – until I could find a deal that I felt was worthwhile.

But my resolve slowly melted. There I was, with AMD graphics cards within reach; Maybe not quite as good as Nvidia when it comes to ray tracing, but still more than adequate. However, knowing that both manufacturers would be releasing new lineups this year, I made the usual mistake of waiting to find out what we’re getting rather than building my PC right away.

Keyword RTX 4090. It’s a real beast of a graphics card, with a pretty high performance requirement and a much, much higher price. In our testing, the card turned out to be pretty incredible in terms of performance, but in my opinion, that still wasn’t enough to make me want to spend $1,600 on a graphics card. Not that I have the chance, anyway – despite the price, the GPU sold out in minutes, and I’m not going to give a scalper an extra few hundred bucks just to play Cyberpunk 2077 in seamless 4K.

Of course, I could wait for the RTX 4080 – the 16GB version, that is, because Nvidia promptly “hijacked” the overpriced bug of a card that was the RTX 4080 12GB. Unfortunately, the version with more memory didn’t convince me either. Maybe I’m cheap, or maybe I just want to pay reasonable prices for my hardware; anyway, I didn’t feel like it.

A steady decline

The past few weeks have been tough for Nvidia, despite the initial success of its new GPU generation Ada Lovelace. First, the EVGA controversy – no matter how you flip it, it just doesn’t look good. Then the RTX 40-series GPU controversy began, and I quickly ran out of ways to defend my own choices.

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, said it himself: “The idea that the chip will go down in price is a thing of the past.” The timing of this statement could not have been worse given that many Nvidia enthusiasts, myself included, were quite dissatisfied with the way Nvidia was pricing their next generation of graphics cards. Huang basically made it clear that things won’t get any better in this regard.

Now it turns out that the RTX 4090 and by extension the RTX 4080 could have some melting issues due to the power supply. A quick PPE: Don’t bend your cords if you want to avoid a fire hazard. Don’t get me wrong – despite these issues, the RTX 4090 seems to be pretty outstanding in many ways, and in all likelihood the RTX 4080 will also be a significant upgrade over the previous generation.

Somehow I don’t care anymore. After 15 years, it’s time to give AMD another chance.

AMD couldn’t have picked a better time

After the disappointment with Nvidia left a bitter taste in my mouth, I grew increasingly excited at the announcement of RDNA 3 GPUs. I’ve already toyed with the idea of ​​getting an AMD CPU for my next PC and was ready to make the same graphics card choice.

When I saw AMD’s announcement, I knew I was on board. It’s sad that we’re at a time when a $1,000 GPU is an exciting prospect, but it is – especially when we’re talking about a flagship that’s likely to become one of the best graphics cards of this generation.

The two new AMD flagships, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and the RX 7900 XT, sound pretty good. We won’t know their true performance until they’re in the hands of eager reviewers, but AMD promises a 54% performance increase over RDNA 2 per watt while still being up to 1.7x faster than the RX 6950 XT at 4K; Access to DisplayPort 2.1 (and later 8K monitors, rumored to be coming soon); and second-gen ray tracing, which could help catch up with Nvidia in that regard. AMD also claims that AI performance will be up to 2.7 times better than the previous GPU generation.

AMD is keeping performance requirements more conservative, maxing out the TDP at 355W for the 7900 XTX, and it won’t be using Nvidia’s ill-fated 12VHPWR adapter, which so far seems to be the cause of those melted RTX 4090s.

All of that is nice, but the best part is that unlike Nvidia, AMD hasn’t increased the prices. The flagship is $999 for the reference model, followed by $899 for the 7900 XT.

We don’t all need an RTX 4090

Some readers might chime in here and tell me that there’s no way the RX 7900 XTX will match the RTX 4090, and in all likelihood they’re right. However, the truth is that not all of us need an RTX 4090 – in fact, most of us don’t. There still aren’t many games that really require that kind of performance, and even if they do, you can still run them on a cheaper GPU if you sacrifice a bit of frame-rate or turn the settings down a bit.

Not many people really to need an RTX 4090. Some do, but I’m certainly not one of them; at least not at this price.

I believe the market needs more of what AMD is offering, which is reasonably affordable hardware that’s more accessible to more users, and less ultra-high-end components that most gamers just can’t justify in their build budget.

AMD’s flagships sound like the perfect middle ground between the expensive enthusiast segment and the mid-range segment, where certain games require sacrificing some settings. They’ll probably run most AAA titles at max settings, but they’re still at a level I can get behind.

I’m ready AMD. It will be nice to see you again.

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