One of many largest gamers within the graphics card struggle between Nvidia and AMD has left the constructing. Properly, they are going to be leaving the constructing on the finish of the yr. That’s proper, Scott Herkelman, the pinnacle of the AMD Radeon GPU enterprise, is leaving the corporate on the finish of 2023 after main the graphics enterprise unit since 2016.
Herkelman introduced his plan to go away AMD in a tweet thanking his colleagues and reminiscing over their time “preventing shoulder to shoulder within the trenches collectively,” calling the graphics card world a “great, vibrant trade.”
Herkelman’s seven years on the helm has seen a variety of change at AMD. When he took over as senior vice chairman and common supervisor of AMD’s Graphics Enterprise Unit, it had simply launched the AMD Radeon RX 460, which had a lift clock velocity of 1,200MHz. Seven years on, the newest crew purple playing cards are the wonderful AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT and fewer wonderful Radeon RX 7700 XT, with the previous hitting a lift clock velocity of two,430MHz, greater than double that of the RX 460, albeit for the next tier card inside their respective generations.
The tweet saying his departure additionally shared hopes that AMD may “in the future… beat the ultimate boss”, referring, in fact, to Nvidia. However as GPUs get more and more speedy and highly effective, how a lot nearer has AMD obtained to wresting management over the market from crew inexperienced?
The reply is: no nearer in any respect. In actual fact, it’s gone backward. A minimum of, that’s in accordance with the Steam {Hardware} & Software program Survey. When Herkelman took cost in September 2016, AMD presided over a 24.06% market share. The newest survey, for August 2023, suggests AMD is sitting on only a 15.94% slice of the pie. In the meantime, Nvidia went from 57.8% to 74.93% market share in that very same timeframe. In fact, the Steam {Hardware} & Software program Survey solely displays Steam customers, and thus doesn’t signify the entire market, nevertheless it offers some indication of the total image.
In recent times, AMD’s GPUs have grow to be fairly darn aggressive with Nvidia, with the RX 7600 and RX 7800 XT specifically representing excessive factors within the present technology. And Herkelman should take some credit score for that. So, why has Nvidia elevated its stranglehold available on the market?
Properly, there’s a key issue that’s doubtless confirmed decisive. One phrase, 4 letters: DLSS. Regardless of AMD scrambling to place collectively its rival bundle, FSR, it’s by no means actually offered a solution to Nvidia’s proprietary upscaling software program. With ray tracing actually taking off within the years since Herkelman took the helm at AMD, that could possibly be the difference-maker for a lot of customers.
The query stays: what can Herkelman’s successor do to take the combat to Nvidia within the GPU wars to return? Clearly, producing respectable graphics playing cards at aggressive costs isn’t fairly sufficient. Beefing up FSR to actually rival DLSS can be a great place to start out.
Seeking to improve your GPU? Regardless of a altering of the guard at AMD, the struggle is barely hotting up. Try our information to the best graphics card to see how Herkelman and his crew’s efforts arise in opposition to Nvidia proper now.
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