Nvidia and AMD are the two big names in the graphics hardware industry. Both have announced a similar release schedule for Quarter 3(Q3) of this year; however, with the groundbreaking release of the powerful RTX 3000 series graphics processing cards(GPU) the interest and demand surrounding these products was great. During social distancing especially, many people who normally would do work at an office had to invest in their own machines for home. Because of these reasons, the cards sold out immediately to scalpers and consumers. AMD released its GPU in mid-November finally may have upset Nvidia, the leading champion.

The release of the new hardware is notable. Not just due to the thrill of a new generation of tech, but also the introduction of the brand new architecture leading to an affordable capability in the current time of social distancing. However, many scalpers are using internet bots to buy the items online before any real human could do so; allowing them to sell them for a much higher price privately. Many people who need this new hardware for work or entertainment cannot afford or obtain their graphics card because of these people.

AMD is the second big producer of hardware. Late into the year AMD officially announced its new line of hardware that, according to their benchmarks and tests, outperform or match close to the spec of Nvidia’s stock for a cheaper price. AMD watched as Nvidia dealt with and mostly failed to meet even close to a supply for the demand for their new cards; therefore AMD prioritized overstocking their cards to beat the convenience and access that Nvidia lacked so greatly. However, as we draw nearer to the launch day for the AMD 6000 series, it is speculated that a supply shortage from Nvidia could be a move to overpower the 6000 series by flushing the market with stock when their competitors release their flagship cards for Q3 2020.

AMD and Nvidia competition has been a new and unexpected event for 2020, as a member of the  GN news team states, “AMD is currently claiming that its 6800xt GPU will roughly match an RTX 3080 at 320 watts.” This is big news, as Nvidia has never had a serious competition that comes close to or matches the performance of their cards. 

Because of this seemingly exponential increase in AMD’s performance, Nvidia should be concerned. A member of the GN news team continued to support the increasing competition of the brands, “AMD has been gaining a larger and larger foothold in the tech market with every launch. Nvidia should be concerned or at least motivated to increase (their lead).”

AMD and Nvidia have never had formal competition in recent years, however, as Jason Langevin Chief presenter for Jayztwocents tech news explains, “when they moved from GCN to RDNA 1 that was the 5000 series we saw a 50 performance uplift over RDNA 1 and RDNA 1 was a 50 uplift over Gcn so we’re seeing a 100 performance per watt uplift versus anything before the 5700 series graphics cards so that’s already worth mentioning right there they are just getting way more performance out of the same cost to bringing that performance if that makes sense.” AMD is strongly and steadily marching into the future with every new release, but will Nvidia step up to the plate? Or will AMD steamroll’ past them in the coming years?