AMD’s new tool compares its GPUs to Nvidia, with a catch
AMD has just launched its new GPU Comparison Tool, which is aimed at being a quick and easy way to determine which graphics card might be best for you based on your gaming needs.
The tool gives you insight into the performance of nearly all of the best GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia. However, a closer look at the tool raises questions as to how legit it is.
AMD
AMD’s new tool is simple to navigate and free to use, so you can check it out if you’d like to see the results for yourself. It’s easy — pick the game that interests you from a list of 11 titles, and then choose the settings that best apply to your ideal gaming scenario. You’ll be able to pick between one of the three most popular screen resolutions (1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1440, and 3840 x 2160), as well as the game settings and API used in the test. Then, based on AMD’s internal testing done in its own labs, the tool will tell you which GPU is the best for that given scenario.
The idea itself is pretty great. A lot of users don’t want to dig deep into benchmarks and just want to know whether a particular graphics card will excel in a particular game (or several). Seeing as the feature is easy to find your way around, it seems like a winner for AMD — except, there’s a catch. Or maybe even a couple.
The first catch should come as no surprise — the tool seems to be skewed to favor AMD over Nvidia. It’s not that the benchmark results lie, it’s that the games AMD picked were just the right titles to make its own GPUs look good. Resident Evil Village, Deathloop, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla are all AMD-promoted games, and as noted by Tom’s Hardware, Tiny Tina’s Wonderland and Forza Horizon 5 tend to shine when played on an AMD GPU. There are also some other, more “neutral” games on the list, such as Valorant and Fortnite.
Taking Assassin’s Creed Valhalla as an example, AMD wins in every single test. Only one setting option is available (ultra high), but there are three resolutions, and AMD wins in all of them. In Tiny Tina’s, AMD only surrenders to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Ti in the 4K gaming test, standing victorious in the other two. There are certainly other instances of Nvidia winning the test, such as in Valorant in 3840 x 2160, but AMD seems to be superior in the majority of the benchmarks.
It’s also interesting that AMD didn’t include its low-end GPUs in the tests. The (less-than-stellar) Radeon RX 6500 XT and the RX 6400 are both missing from the charts, even though in some of the esports comparisons, they could very well snag a mention alongside the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050. Instead, AMD moves right along to the Radeon RX 6600.
Was this an intentional omission or just an oversight in a still very fresh tool? Hard to say. It’s worth noting that the tool itself is still quite limited for what AMD seems to be trying to do. Most games only have one setting option, so realistically, you’re just changing the games and the screen resolution. The tool could also add more games to give a more comprehensive overview of the GPUs’ performance.
Given time, AMD will hopefully update the tool to include more benchmarks, as well as more titles and game settings. Right now, it’s more of a promotional tool than anything else, but it has so much potential that AMD could tap into if it’s not afraid of drawing realistic comparisons between its own GPUs and those made by Nvidia. For the time being, make sure you trust independent benchmarks and reviews if you’re looking into buying a new graphics card now that the prices are falling quickly.
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AMD’s New GPU Comparison Tool Pits Radeon Versus GeForce With Surprising Results
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AMD has released a new online GPU comparison tool and it less biased than you might think. Yes, that totally sounds like a backhanded compliment, but we don’t actually mean it that way. As any fellow geek can attest, we tend to be a jaded bunch when it comes to a manufacturer’s own benchmark data and claims. But in an effort for «full transparency,» AMD’s graphs comparing Radeon RX 6000 and GeForce RTX 30 series graphics tilt in both directions, depending on the game.
There are some nuances that we’ll discuss, but at a high level overview, the comparison tool presents four pull down menus to help users compare graphics cards from both companies. They include «Game Title,» «Screen Resolution,» «Setting,» and «API,» each of which is self-explanatory.
When you make your selections, a graph below is updated in real time with AMD’s own benchmark figures, and you can toggle between «FPS» and «FPS/$» comparisons.
«All performance numbers have been generated and verified by testing in AMD internal labs,» AMD explains.
There are 11 popular games to compare. Several of them are what we would consider to be ‘AMD friendly’ such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Resident Evil Village, and Forza Horizon 5. So you could argue that there is actually some bias in the game selections, but they don’t always favor AMD over NVIDIA in the provided benchmarks.
For example, Resident Evil Village graph with benchmarks obtained at 3840×2160, Max settings, and DX12 show show the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti beating the Radeon RX 6900 XT. Likewise, it also shows the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti beating the Radeon RX 6800 XT and the GeForce RTX 3080 edging out the Radeon RX 6800.
There are some oddities, though. In several benchmarks, AMD’s data has the GeForce RTX 3090 losing to the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. We didn’t observe that in our testing. It’s worth noting that in the fine print, AMD says its data «may contain technical inaccuracies, omissions and typographical errors, and AMD is under no obligation to update or otherwise correct the information. » That said, the numbers for the most part don’t see out of whack to us, but definitely keep that in mind.
As to those nuances, the roundup of cards is not consistent across all the pull-down options. If you drop down to 1920×1080, it’s a smaller selection of GPUs in the mid-range and lower end segments. To be fair, gamers considering a Radeon RX 6950 XT-tier GPU probably have higher resolution gameplay in mind, like 4K or 1440p. Still, it’d be nice if AMD fleshed those graphs out.
There’s also no evaluation of ray tracing performance, which generally favors NVIDIA’s GPUs, or upscaling technologies (DLSS and FSR). That means users are not getting a complete picture of performance or performance per dollar.
That’s all to say, this tool is not a substitute for independent reviews with broader analysis. However, AMD deserves kudos for the level of transparency on display here, as it could have aggressively cherry picked the data to only or mostly favor its own GPUs. It didn’t go in that direction.
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