AMD Explains Why It Doesn’t Have a Radeon GPU That Can Compete with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4090: Cost and Power Increases “Beyond Common Sense”

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Image: AMD

Critics of AMD have said that the reason why red team hasn’t released a Radeon GPU that can compete with the GeForce RTX 4090 yet is that its engineering simply isn’t on the same level as NVIDIA’s, but that doesn’t appear to be true at all. Speaking to Japanese tech publication IT Media, AMD Executive Vice President Rick Bergman (Computing/Graphics Division) and AMD Senior Vice President David Wang (Engineering, Radeon Technology Division) discussed the development of their new Radeon RX 7900 Series and mentioned that the reason why they haven’t made an even more powerful GPU yet is because they think it would use too much power and cost too much. AMD suggested that what NVIDIA has done with its GeForce RTX 4090, which starts at $1,599, is “beyond common sense.”

From an IT Media feature (machine translation):

AMD is a semiconductor manufacturer that produces advanced CPUs and GPUs. I don’t think it’s necessary to explain that to PC USER readers. Everyone, as well as game fans around the world, should understand that the Radeon RX 7900 series (development code name: Navi31) released by the company in December 2022 is a GPU with an excellent balance between price and performance.

The company’s competitor, NVIDIA, has announced a new GPU “GeForce RTX 40 series” slightly ahead of the Radeon RX 7900 series. Its flagship model “GeForce RTX 4090” (development code name: AD102) is extremely high performance, but on the other hand, it is priced severely for general users to purchase, and the graphics card itself has become even larger and consumes more power. It has become a height beyond common sense.

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Discussion (12 replies)

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U

Choosing not to compete, suuuuure. Even if they break even, they should aim to defeat the top level. Its marketing.

Grimlakin

It's feeling more and more like AMD want's Radeon to be the Genisys of he video card world. Sure it's no BMW or Audi, but it's nice and it competes.

Brian_B
Brian_B 👍 1

I kinda get where they are coming from.

450W and $1600 are both really steep numbers for a consumer card.

But I also think AMD is undersupplying their GPUs. They make more GPUs for Sony than they do for their discrete GPU market, at least by revenue.

I guess nVidia is selling 4090's though, but I think that's more because the alternatives are ... not very good. I suppose when you control the market you can position your lineup however you want.

Marees
Marees 👍 3

AMD making a virtue out of necessity.

If 7900 XTX had been more power efficient then AMD would have upped the frequencies & sold it for $1200

Elf_Boy
Elf_Boy 👍 3

My 7900xtx performs well at 4k. Perhaps a 4090 would do better, I am just as happy to have not spent an additional $600 and with working from home my energy bill has gone up enough already.

Brian_B
Brian_B 👍 2

"Marees, post: 68801, member: 1536" wrote:

AMD making a virtue out of necessity.



If 7900 XTX had been more power efficient then AMD would have upped the frequencies & sold it for $1200


This is not false. I agree 100%

Riccochet
Riccochet 👍 1

"Marees, post: 68801, member: 1536" wrote:

AMD making a virtue out of necessity.



If 7900 XTX had been more power efficient then AMD would have upped the frequencies & sold it for $1200

Even with all the cooling you can throw at it and 480W of power it barely clocks higher than a reference card. At least that's what we're seeing with the Liquid Devil.

I don't think this generation of chiplet GPU can go any higher regardless of the power.

Denpepe
Denpepe 👍 2

"Brian_B, post: 68798, member: 96" wrote:

450W and $1600 are both really steep numbers for a consumer card.


1135€ for a reference 7900XTX vs 1869€ for reference 4090 over here and neither are in stock atm (up to 2.699€ for a suprim liquid x) .il pass for now, if I skip a gen maybe the performance increase may make up for the price increase unless the double it again.

m

Who ever said computer enthusiasts had common sense?
Back in the SLi days folks spent 1600 for 2 cards that ran hot and blew up PSUs at random.
Now we have one card to rule them all.
AMD has always used this line when they were a lap behind.

U

The 4090 is absurd, yes, but also absurd performance.
Add to that, is not like AMD has a family of cards that top out at 500$. If they did, these comments would be more sensible.
AMD is just plain happy nvidia cards go up in price all the time.
Truth is while their products are great in many ways, they are still marginal. Marginal in price, marginal in performance, and actually while decent, worse in features.
They should stop this, and for once compensate their marginal crap. Either truly and for real cut prices, or truly and for real defeat the highest nvidia at the year it was launched... Or what should be the fastest thing to do, add all manner of codec acceleration, balls to the wall, all manner of production software acceleration, including video, sound, cad, whatever, and yes, I mean killing the professional version of these cards ( offer personal year round support at cost for professionals).
They are choosing not to any of this.
And yes, when I was buying a video card long ago, i looked at amd first. But again, it was all marginal, it was real bad at the low end I was looking at. Even worse amd locks out certain software acceleration for like photo editing, and nvidia does not ( that is how i understood it then anyway)

Riccochet
Riccochet 👍 1

"Uvilla, post: 68887, member: 397" wrote:

The 4090 is absurd, yes, but also absurd performance.

Add to that, is not like AMD has a family of cards that top out at 500$. If they did, these comments would be more sensible.

AMD is just plain happy nvidia cards go up in price all the time.

Truth is while their products are great in many ways, they are still marginal. Marginal in price, marginal in performance, and actually while decent, worse in features.

They should stop this, and for once compensate their marginal crap. Either truly and for real cut prices, or truly and for real defeat the highest nvidia at the year it was launched... Or what should be the fastest thing to do, add all manner of codec acceleration, balls to the wall, all manner of production software acceleration, including video, sound, cad, whatever, and yes, I mean killing the professional version of these cards ( offer personal year round support at cost for professionals).

They are choosing not to any of this.

And yes, when I was buying a video card long ago, i looked at amd first. But again, it was all marginal, it was real bad at the low end I was looking at. Even worse amd locks out certain software acceleration for like photo editing, and nvidia does not ( that is how i understood it then anyway)

One of the biggest thing hurting AMD is the lack of a hardware encoder that competes with Nvidia's NVENC.

Brian_B
Brian_B 👍 1

"Uvilla, post: 68887, member: 397" wrote:

AMD is just plain happy nvidia cards go up in price all the time.

Truth is while their products are great in many ways, they are still marginal. Marginal in price, marginal in performance, and actually while decent, worse in features.

They should stop this, and for once compensate their marginal crap. Either truly and for real cut prices


This is definitely true - the more nVidia charges, the higher AMD can go. However, AMD is pricing their products accordingly - I don't see many AMD MSRPs that are higher than nVIdia. They may be less capable, but they also cost less (at least at MSRP) -- you can say they don't discount them enough, but I don't think you can say they are not cutting their price.

Tsing Mui
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