Trying to simplify things for this video has shown me how COMPLICATED graphics cards have
become!
I swear it's deliberate.
In short, Nvidia and AMD are the two big rivals in the graphics card market.
If your computer can run games well, the chances you have one or the other in your computer.
I'll quickly explain AMD's naming scheme since it's needlessly complicated...
though Nvidia's isn't exactly any better.
In 2012, AMD released the '7000' series of graphics cards.
In 2013, they re-released faster versions but kept the '7000' name.
In late 2013, they scrapped that naming series completely and introduced the '200' series.
And finally, in 2015, they released the '300' series, which is their latest one and is aimed
at competing with Nvidia's 900 series of graphics cards.
All you can tell from the first number is roughly when the graphics card is released.
The more important number is the second one, which represents performance.
A Radeon 370 will be faster than a 360.
You might think that it will also be better than a 290... but in reality, it's less than
half the speed!
How generations tend to work is that they are about the same as the one before, only
a bit more powerful, so it's actually a bit more like this.
And this is where the fun begins.
Each generation's top model is faster than the one before it.
They do this by re-designing the entire graphics card, hopefully making it faster, more power-efficient
and with new technologies that the previous generation doesn't have.
This doesn't just benefit the top model, however, since if they use this new technology on the
other cards of the series they can be faster, cheaper, smaller and more efficient than the
ones that they're replacing from the previous generation.
But this costs them money.
Occasionally they simply rebrand an older one!
For instance, the Radeon 380 isn't a new card.
It's actually a rebranded Radeon 285!
It's an old card but with a new name!
This isn't a new trick.
Both Nvidia and AMD have done it in the past.
You may remember Nvidia's 8800 card, which they then re-released as a 9800 and later
a 250, effectively selling 2007 technology as new in 2010!
Upon closer inspection it wasn't that simple.
A lot of the specs did change, some improving, others not, but the result was a card that
was about 20% faster than the original!
And to add to that, they cut the price significantly, which was almost like apologising for having
released a card based on an older model.
You could get a near top-end card for $200!
I myself picked up a competing Radeon 4850, their second fastest graphics card, for under
£120 when it first came out.
That's now the price of the second SLOWEST card from the 300 series!
But the problem with the 300 series is that it isn't faster or cheaper than the 200 series.
The 360 struggles to outperform the 260.
In fact, they ALL do, from the bottom to the top!
The 300 series is, at best, a fraction of a generation ahead of the 200 series and it
comes almost 2 years later.
They don't even have the decency of lowering the second number of the name.
A Radeon 260 should become a 350 to make more room for newer, faster cards further up the
naming scheme!
But this hasn't happened.
The 360 is a 260.
But the others are even worse: the 380 is a 285, which itself is a rebrand of the EVEN
OLDER Radeon 7950.
The 370 is similar, being a mere Radeon 265 which is based on the ancient Radeon 7850,
which is what the consoles are based on!
In other words, some of the graphics cards from AMD's new 300 line-up are using the same
technology as in early 2012.
But as with Nvidia's 8800 graphics card, it isn't that simple.
People WILL find reasons to defend the 300 series.
For a start, the cards have more RAM.
Some, such as the Radeon 285, support newer technologies that on paper make it 4 times
better at tessellation, have higher memory bandwidth efficiency, better video encoding
and with a polyphase filter with up to 10 HORIZONTAL TAPS and 6 VERTICAL TAPS, low pass
kernel!
On paper it sounds amazing, doesn't it?
But gamers don't like paper.
They like games, graphics quality and framerates, and sadly, in these areas, the 300 series
doesn't deliver.
They JUST beat out the older cards, which is easily explainable by the increased clock
speeds.
They're effectively slightly overclocked versions of the older cards and no sane person would
see them as progress.
Doubling the RAM might make them more future-proof, but sadly it doesn't help in the benchmarks,
even as far up as 4K resolutions, of which these cards aren't capable of powering with
today's games, let alone tomorrow's.
These cards aren't good investments.
The final nail in the coffin is the prices.
In the past, when a new series is released, older cards suddenly look inferior and get
major drops in price to compensate.
It's an awesome time to buy.
But this time, since the 300 series is directly competing with the older cards, this hasn't
happened.
In fact, older cards have gone UP in price!
Don't get me wrong, the new cards are cheaper than the old ones were when they were first
released 2 years ago.
But...
I don't see this as major cause for celebration.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say that we would have been better off if this series hadn't
been released.
Graphics card prices slowly come down as they approach the end of their lifespan.
Since the new cards are the SAME speed, the 200 series has suddenly gone from being middle-aged
to almost being new again!
Good news for 200 series owners, but it seems like those looking to upgrade will have to
wait a little longer.
And there is cause to upgrade.
When we jumped to full HD resolutions for the first time we were blessed with the Geforce
8800 series, which was a HUGE leap up and happily powered the latest games at these
new standards for years.
To even come close to 4K gaming you'll need several expensive cards and even then the
framerates on yesterday's games are all too often on the wrong side of 60, let alone the
higher standards that people are moving to.
And in the past with AMD, the flagship series has always gotten new technology.
This would be the Radeon 390 and 390X... but no, these are just rebrands of the 290 and
290X, with slightly higher clocks and double the amount of RAM.
I'm not saying that they're bad cards, but it's misleading.
AMD have pretty much rebranded the 200 series to the 300 name!
It's made the older ones look more desirable since they're priced below these new ones,
but the supply of these will quickly dry up and it will be a long time before any new
cards are introduced to lower prices.
So why has AMD done this?
Well, a couple of years ago, Nvidia made a graphics card that blew everything else out
of the water.
They called it the Titan and sold it for huge amounts of money.
They were free to abuse their position since AMD had no product that could compete with
it.
They have repeated this a couple of times, before releasing a similar card with a much
lower price that fitted into their normal naming scheme the moment that AMD released
a rival.
Think of all that money that AMD had been missing out on.
Just by being half a year or so behind Nvidia, their rival was free to charge whatever they
wanted for premium hardware and AMD wasn't getting any of it!
This is why AMD have released some new cards, called Fury.
I believe that these cards are what would normally take the place of the 390 series,
with the former 290 series becoming the new 380 series and so on, but AMD have cleverly
seen this as an opportunity to make some more money.
By keeping the prices the same for the same amount of performance, they can make more
money on their top cards, effectively inflating the price that people have to pay for the
top technology.
People EXPECT the Titan and Fury to be ludicrously expensive.
They're not bound by the same naming scheme as the rest of their cards.
They are effectively a free pass for the companies to charge extortionate amounts for the privilege
of having the undisputed king of cards.
It's almost the same as what Nvidia have done with their Titan series, only it's different
because AMD have come to the market later.
Their Fury isn't the King of cards- it's a direct rival to the Titan, which was only
allowed to exist at its price point because nothing could compete with it.
Now that both companies have released a similar card, they've been reduced to simply being
the top graphics card for each company.
And because there's now competition at that performance point, there should be a price
war going on, with both sides undercutting each other... but there isn't.
The prices have remained the same and we, the consumers, will have to spend more if
we want something faster.
I'm sure that this video will be disliked by AMD and Nvidia fanboys alike.
But I dislike the idea of siding with a company.
They're not cuddly things.
They will happily screw us over when they have the chance.
I like competition since it normally keeps things cheaper and faster.
A weak AMD or Nvidia is bad news for everyone since it means slower progress and higher
prices.
Yes, I know that there's no such thing as a bad graphics card, only a bad price.
Yet somehow they've found a way of freezing progress and using it to introduce a more
expensive tier of cards!
Win-win for them.
Lose-lose for us.
Don't think I'm only looking at AMD here.
Both companies are perfectly happy to sell us old tech at new prices, and NEW tech at
EVEN HIGHER prices!
And it's us, the consumers, who are getting the bum deal.
If there's a silver lining, it's that AMD will likely be in a better financial position
moving forward and I'm pleased that they've at least released new technology.
I'd be upset if a rebranded 290X was their flagship product.
But I fear that this 'premium price' for top graphics cards will become the norm and that
ultimately, we will be the ones paying the price.
And as long as we're willing to shell out silly money for a speed premium that used
to be offered at half the price, they're going to keep doing it.
Vote with your wallet.
Stick with your old PC for a bit longer.
Or switch to the consoles!
No, don't do that.
That would just be silly.