At the start of 2019, AMD had a lot to answer for. Nvidia was still king of the graphics hill with its RTX 20-series, and Intel similarly covered many of the best processors in the space thanks to powerful single-core performance.
But, it was a year of change, and AMD was embracing. AMD has launched a host of new products this year, and has shaken up a market we haven't seen in a long time. It is now coming out on top in a row of equipment for matches against its rivals, and shows some serious momentum that could make 2020 an even more impressive year.
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AMD in early 2019:
AMD started 2019 with something of a bang. At CES 2019, not only did we learn a little more about the Ryzen 3000 processors to be considered, but AMD also introduced the first consumer 7nm GPUs in AMD's Radeon VII series graphics cards.
The new Radeon VII graphics card was Nvidia's answer that AMD fans have been waiting for, at least in part. It couldn't offer performance that could keep up with NVIDIA's best consumer graphics cards, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti series graphics cards, but instead rival the slower RTX 2080. And, the 7nm architecture of the card likely played a role in the ability The cards also run cooler than the Nvidia rituximab cards we've experienced, helping to dispel the long-running impression that AMD's products are a hot run - though some still are.
This Model VII may not have the card to rule all graphics cards, but it was an impressive entry from AMD at a fair point price of $679 (about $540, AU$970) at launch, which sits below NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 series price. That was good news. for gamers, and better yet new for creatives who could take advantage of the insane 16GB of HBM2 memory.
That price/performance win is just the first hint of what's to come from AMD later in 2019.
AMD also had something to show in the mobile space in early 2019 with the introduction of 2nd generation Ryzen mobile processors. It has launched several models, all with integrated graphics, for mobile devices that tend to be found in more affordable laptops than Intel's counterparts. A few months later, AMD also introduced a new Ryzen pro mobile processor. However, in light of AMD's upcoming 7nm architecture, all of these mobile processors were a little less exciting given their 14nm architecture.
All cores and all power
The events that AMD will have to make in 2019 began to unfold in July, when AMD released its first Ryzen 3000 processors. The new processors were built on the Zen 7nm 2 architecture, a move that proved to have allowed AMD to offer significantly better performance with the same thermal profiles to Ryzen 2000 processors before them.
The Ryzen 3000 batch got off to a rocky start, with affordable processors that were scoring big in performance. These new processors quickly rocked the consumer processor market, knocking Intel out of many gaps in our picks for the best CPUs.
In the mid-range, the Ryzen 5 3600 and 3600X have become true gourmets, especially where gaming is concerned, leaving behind even some of Intel's best processors in gaming benchmarks. The Ryzen 7 3700X impressed just as well, but the Ryzen 9 3900X and 3950X showed the mainstream processor in the market and the market's HEDTs starting to wear off. We saw the Ryzen 9 3950X challenge twice its price point.
These new processors have also introduced a PCIe 4.0 slot on compatible X570 motherboards, which doubles the card's transfer speeds, enabling faster SSDs and graphics. Of course, another benefit of AMD's new line of chips is that anyone with a Ryzen system for the right reason can upgrade to one of the new Ryzen 3000 series chips without the need for a new motherboard, since AMD stood by its promise to support the AM4 CPU socket.
This lure model is H-switch
Shortly after the introduction of the new Ryzen 3000 processors, AMD also introduced its mid-range Radeon graphics cards, the Radeon 5700 GH and GH 5700 XV. These new cards came in at prices that were below the competing NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 and 2070 series. The RX 5700 was originally $379 (around £300, AU$550) and the RX 5700 XT was $449 (around £350, AU$650).
But those initial prices turned out to be a sham, AMD admitted. They lured Nvidia into introducing rituximab 2060 2070 super and super. So why do AMD? He cut prices on his brand new cards to $349 (around £280, AU$500) for the RX 5700 and $399 (around £320, AU$570) for the RX 5700 XB, quickly undercutting the new super rituximab series model.
These new cards revamped the fierce competition between AMD and NVIDIA at almost every level of competition. AMD's older Vega-based GPU still has a lot to offer at the low end, while the newer 7nm chips struggled almost to the highest end for gaming. But, AMD still hasn't come up with an answer to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.
More recently, AMD has introduced a lower-end Radeon RX 5500 XB that can muster the specs needed for strong 1080p gaming with low power and a low price. It has proven to be a competent competitor from Nvidia's GTX in the 16-series of GPUs.
Taking the lead
The move to 7nm in both the CPU and GPU departments has helped AMD come out on top in a number of ways. It still might fall short of a contender for Nvidia's top mainstream GPU, but AMD offers impressive value against just about everything else Nvidia has to offer, from the GTX 1650 to the rituximab 2080 therapy.
AMD processor gains are even more impressive. Not only did it deliver incredible performance, we saw AMD jump ahead in sales and even break overclocking records. One German retailer sold five times as many AMD processors as Intel processors in November, and a similar high in September.
Helping to make it clear that Germany is no particular exception, the best selling CPU list from Amazon has seen AMD processors dominate recently. AMD had a strong impact on eight of the 10 slots, with the Ryzen 7 2700X landing in first place followed by the Ryzen 5 Ryzen 5 2600 and 3600. At the time of writing, the AMD processors on this list are even older, knocking Intel out of the top 10 completely, with the motherboard curious landing 10th slot.
AMD has seen a hit in hardware pair polling. AMD processors will appear in 20.5% of a couple of computer users, a jump from 8% two years earlier. The real percentage could be even higher, as the company claimed the Steam survey underestimated AMD systems because individual add-on logs in internet cafes would count on the same computer multiple times.
What's in store for 2020?
All signs point to 2020 being another big year for AMD as it shows no signs of losing momentum.
AMD has already done designing Zen 3, and chips based on this architecture are expected in late 2020. Once again, they should work on any motherboard with an AM4 socket, keeping the entry threshold low for users already running a Ryzen system. The new Ryzen 4000 series can even double thread concurrent execution, which would allow a single core to handle four threads (it doesn't matter if one is AMD's 16-core processors, the processors will handle 64 threads).
While it may seem like a Ryzen 9 3950X with 16 cores, it tips the scales on what the mainstream processor should be, perhaps AMD is planning even more cores for the mainstream market.
Graphics will hopefully get a lot of attention from AMD in 2020 as well. This Model VII may be the company's main competitor, but it has already reached the end of its life. It's about time for AMD to release something that can compete at the high end, and Kes 2020 will be the perfect time to do so.
The Radeon VII graphics card was launched at CES 2019 and the following makes a lot of sense. The new high-end cards, this time built around the Navi instead of the Vega architecture used for the Radeon VII, may be just what AMD needs to challenge Nvidia's best.
On the bottom tier, AMD's GPUs could get a boost, so to speak, from Radeon boost. It can make the bottom end of the map feel stronger by using adaptive resolution to smooth out the frame rate when there's a lot of movement on the screen, but hold full resolution when the scenery is static. But we can wait until 2020 to see if that's what the feature is.
Game physics can also get a boost in 2020 from AMD FEMFX. The technology is promising as materials shatter and tear apart, while others melt and deform in real ways using multi-core physics processing. While NVIDIA thundered about Rays in 2018, AMD could have something a lot more compelling ahead in FEMFX.
What a compelling experience could turn out to be for a much wider audience, 2020 will still be another year for AMD to secretly shine in the console space. Both the Xbox X series and the PlayStation 5 game console are expected to launch in 2020, and they will have AMD equipment to power the experience.
If 2019 looked like a good year for AMD, 2020 seems to hold just as much promise, if not more.
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