Can AMD Kick NVIDIA’s @ss This Time?

AMD re-announced its Radeon RX 9000 GPU series, after the smoke with the new NVIDIA GPUs settled down. AMD was to announce them officially during CES 2025, but this never happened during its press conference, although it had already sent a PR including them. We all wondered back then why AMD backed down from releasing its new GPUs, meanwhile it went through and shipped them to the stores, which kept them in stock for more than a month now, without the option to do anything with them. This was a bizarre strategy, but it seems it might pay off. AMD wanted to see how the NVIDIA RT 50 launch will go and given the facts so far, it went to sh@t with minimal stock, especially of the high-end models and to add insult to injury, we also have (again) melted connectors in the RTX 5090 and missing ROPs in the RTX 5080 and 5070 Ti models. There are also some cases where the NV GPUs die unexpectedly. All these issues show a rushed launch, without the production line being ready. On top of that, because of the increased demand and the minimal stock, the prices of the NV RT 50 cards are sky-high, way higher than the official ones that Jensen announced during CES.

On the contrary, AMD already has enough stock of the 9070 and its XT variant models, and their performance seems to be equivalent to that of the RTX 5070 Ti and the upcoming RTX 5070 models, and their prices are way lower! The 9070 XT will go for 600 dollars, while the 9070 for 550 dollars. AMD promises for 40% increased performance compared to the 7900 GRE, which had a similar price, and double the RT performance per compute unit. Along with the new GPUs, AMD will also release FSR4, which will only be compatible with them, for the moment at least, supported by 30 games at launch, with many more on the pipeline. AMD’s new GPUs will also have increased AI capabilities thanks to the support of new data types and their power demands are relatively low, with 304W TDP for the 9070XT and 220W for the plain 9070.

So to wrap up, the moment NVIDIA has:

• Limited availability
• Crazy prices
• Problems with melted connectors because of inadequate protection features on its designs

AMD offers:

• High availability
• Normal prices
• Legacy PCIe 6+2 pin connectors, since its GPUs are not power-hungry, which have high safety margins

If AMD plays the game right, for the first time it can beat the arrogant NVIDIA, although the latter is a monster in size and wealth. Yes, NVIDIA’s DLSS is the best technology and NVIDIA also has an advantage in Ray Tracing. Still, in the end of the day if you cannot find a graphics card to buy, if you have to sell your house to do so, and if you have to put thermal probes on the cable, if you are rich enough to buy an RTX 5090, to monitor the temperatures because NV’s engineers were lazy and didn’t want to implement protection features, then it goes without saying that AMD is doomed to succeed and beat the hell out of NV in the mid-GPU market segment.

Although AMD didn’t send me any of its GPUs for testing, this is mostly the fault of the local PR, so I don’t hold a grudge. They are cheap enough, so I will buy them. Compared to the RTX 5090 I purchased, AMD’s RX 9070 XT is 1/5 of the price so that I won’t mind. I am thrilled to see the arrogant NVIDIA with its people who are so high on their high horses get a good beating by AMD. This might make them realize that they cannot continue screwing with all of us, users, since we are the ones who put NVIDIA in the field and now that it earns more money from AI, it believes that it can screw with us. There is a saying in my country, it is a wheel and it spins. You might be on top but suddenly you hit rock bottom.

Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t want another monopoly, because AMD is not a saint either. It will start misbehaving if it believes it is the leading player in this game. We need more players in the game, not only one or two. Hopefully Intel will get out of its problems and start competing in GPUs (and CPUs), or a new player will emerge. Nobody knows what the future will bring, but one thing is for sure, we need more CPU and GPU manufacturers. Else, every time we want to upgrade our GPUs, we will have to get a loan.