AMD vs Nvidia 2023: who is the graphics card champion?
In the fervent battle between Nvidia vs AMD, has 2023 truly found a winner?
The ongoing competition between AMD and Nvidia is heating up with the launch of several GPUs between the two of them. And while normally the competition would be great for consumers, the lack of mid-range and low-budget options certainly was not.
Until the official reveal of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition, which will release on April 13 with an MSRP of $599. With this reveal, AMD will hopefully step its game up and launch a mid-range or even low-budget card itself, which would give gamers even more options.
As it stands, the best Nvidia GeForce graphics cards and the best AMD graphics cards can only get more powerful and cheaper each year, thanks to said competition between the two manufacturers.
Currently, Nvidia is winning on power but only by a small margin, while AMD is ahead in terms of pricing. With the differences between the chips becoming smaller each generation, choosing your GPU is less about the manufacturer itself and more about your preferences and computing needs, and which of the best graphics cards can satisfy that.
Despite this, each brand has its own strengths and weaknesses. This is why we’ve pitted AMD and Nvidia against each other to see who reigns supreme in the GPU market in terms of pricing, performance, and features.
While in the last gen, the competition between Nvidia and AMD has produced some of the best and most affordable GPUs in years, this generation has been noticeably lacking in that regard. However, it seems that Nvidia has drawn first blood with its launch of the GeForce RTX 4070, the first true mid-range option of this generation.
However, there are plenty of options on the high-end side of the spectrum like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, and the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX. But unlike the past generation, these cards are quite expensive, making them inaccessible to gamers who are looking for budget or near-budget prices.
Though there won’t be a true winner in this battle of Nvidia versus AMD, the consumer wins in the end as these two manufacturers constantly one-up each other. And to make that decision even easier, we’ve also pitted the tech giants against each other in terms of price, performance, and features, which means you simply need to choose what’s best for you.
There are graphics card choices for days (Image credit: Future)
AMD vs Nvidia: price
Traditionally, AMD has always been known as the more affordable brand of graphics cards, and that’s true to this day… to a point. Right now, if you want a truly budget card with solid performance you’ll need to look to last-gen, like the AMD Radeon RX 6600 which you can get for a little over $200. Solid mid-range options for 1440p and 4K gaming would be the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT for $399 and the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT for $580, respectively. And now we have the introduction of the current-gen RTX 4070 priced at a much more affordable $599 (around £480 / AU$895).
Once you start going up the price stack, things change, however. At the top of the pile, AMD still comes out as the winner in terms of affordability. The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is $1,029.99 (around £825 / AU$1,538) compared with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 costing $1,649.99 (around £1,321 / AU$2,463) at the lowest and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 priced at 1,169.99 (around £937 / AU$1,746) at its lowest.
Once to get to the lower high-end, however, things are no longer so black and white, with both AMD and Nvidia producing some of the best 1440p graphics cards on the market right now, though the pricing isn’t always as strictly tied to performance as it used to be.
The Nvidia RTX 3090 still remains the card to beat. (Image credit: Future)
AMD vs Nvidia: performance
AMD may lag behind in ray tracing-heavy tests and creative performance, but a few of the cards in the line are certainly giving Nvidia some stiff competition in overall performance. If you want to play the best PC games at 4K and get a solid 60+ fps frame rate, you’re no longer stuck with Nvidia. Although with the Nvidia RTX 4090 now officially out in the world, AMD is going to need to roll out a serious contender soon.
In 2023, you’ll need to look to last-gen to get a graphics card that will power the best PC games at 1080p settings with something like the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT. If you want to play AAA games at 1440p while not breaking the bank, Team Green finally has a solid option in the GeForce RTX 4070.
The wider availability of graphics cards that can push pixels at these resolutions on a budget has made PC gaming much more accessible than ever before, and these upcoming generations have done the same for 4K gaming on PC, especially with the PS5 and Xbox Series X both costing much less than the price of a high-end gaming PC.
For 4K, both manufacturers have terrific offerings, with Nvidia rolling out the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080, RTX 4090, and even the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, and AMD releasing the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which has been developed to go toe-to-toe with Nvidia’s RTX 4080.
AMD vs Nvidia: exclusivity and features
(Image credit: AMD)
When it comes to features beyond just rendering games, Nvidia and AMD take much different approaches.
Typically, AMD’s approach is much more consumer-friendly, as it releases features and technologies that can be used even on Nvidia graphics cards – though they will usually work best on AMD’s own silicon. AMD doesn’t always have the best track record when it comes to driver support, but real problems are generally few and far between.
Nvidia, on the other hand, likes to keep things close to its chest, launching features like DLSS 3 that only work on its own platform. Team Green has been doing this for years, going back to PhysX. In fact, with that latter technology, you were even able to have a dedicated PhysX graphics card in your system to handle the computationally heavy workload.
Recently, however, Nvidia has launched a ton of features that are helpful outside of gaming, both as part of its ongoing Nvidia Studio suite program for creative and professional workloads, and just to aid people in their post-pandemic lives.
Most notably, with Lovelace, you get Nvidia Broadcast, which is incredibly useful technology for pretty much everyone. With this program, you can replace backgrounds in any video conferencing app using AI. What’s better is that you can also use it to filter out all background noise from your microphone while in a call, so you don’t have to worry about disrupting that 10am meeting by drinking coffee and hurriedly eating breakfast.
Conversely, AMD is still very much centered on gaming with its mainstream graphics cards, with its second-gen Ray Accelerators and FSR 2.0 coming into its own as an upscaling tech, which are centered on delivering a better 4K ray-tracing gaming experience. This includes things like contrast adaptive sharpening (CAS) that makes playing on a higher resolution display easier, and better ambient occlusion.
AMD vs Nvidia: which is better?
There’s so much to love about both Nvidia and AMD graphics. In the end, both of these companies rely on competition with each other to thrive. Suffice to say, the Nvidia vs AMD debate requires that you understand there’s a reason Radeon and GeForce GPUs are so similar in performance right now.
Each company is doing its best to keep up with the mindshare of the other, and that’s good for us. They’re basically fighting for our money, learning from each other’s mistakes and legislating marked improvements along the way.
It’s up to you who wins the fiery contest of Nvidia vs AMD, although we will say this: Nvidia is unmatched in the 4K market right now. If it helps any, the RTX 2080 Ti is probably your best bet if you want your PC to keep up with your Ultra HD display – as long as you can afford it. On the other hand, if you’re on a budget and looking into mid-range cards, Nvidia is currently your best bet right now.