Nvidias Jensen Huang dissar AMD Radeon VII

When AMD and Lisa Su took the stage at CES 2019, many were hoping for news about the company’s graphics card. And there was news – Radeon VII with the graphics circuit Vega 20 made with 7-nanometer technology, where AMD believes that the performance is equivalent to the Geforce RTX 2080.

The headlights have barely gone out before Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang chooses to comment on the launch. In an interview with PC World, Huang saw the new Radeon VII along the ankles. He says the card is “overwhelming”, has questionable performance and lacks news.

The performance is lousy and there’s nothing new. There’s no ray tracing, no AI. It’s 7nm with HBM memory that barely keeps up with a 2080. And if we turn on DLSS we’ll crush it. And if we turn on ray tracing we’ll crush it.

Nvidia’s CEO also chooses to highlight Nvidia RTX-specific features in the comparison, more specifically AI-assisted calculations and hardware support for ray tracing – two areas where he thinks the Radeon VII is falling flat. Last but not least, DLSS is mentioned as the real ace up its sleeve, which will allow the Geforce RTX 2080 to completely crush the competitor’s alternatives.

FreeSync was never proven to work. As you know, we invented the area of adaptive sync. The truth is most of the FreeSync monitors do not work. They do not even work with AMD’s graphics cards.

Huang does not stop there, however, but delivers another load of sour picks. Above all, adaptive synchronization with Freesync gets a boot, where Huang believes that the technology simply does not work as it should in many cases – either with Radeon or Geforce. The statement is linked to Nvidia’s choice to open up for adaptive synchronization in software, where the company gives the thumbs up to only 12 of 400 examined screens.

What I would say is that we’re very excited about Radeon VII, and I would probably suggest that he hasn’t seen it yet.

However, AMD’s CEO Lisa Su takes the criticism calmly. In a short comment to PC World, she states that Huang has not seen the Radeon VII, and thus does not have enough evidence to actually comment on performance or anything else.

► Read everything from #these-2019

AMD Radeon VII will be launched on February 7, 2019 and has a recommended price tag of 699 USD, corresponding to SEK 7,800 including VAT.

AMD news from this year’s CES trade show