Within the next few months, the next era of graphics card technology will hit the market, all being well. While Nvidia is hoping to launch Ada Lovelace by September, AMD could be a little behind with RDNA 3, with a launch window of October at the earliest. That's according to leaks and rumors. What's on everyone's mind in the meantime is how will each of these tech giants' newest offerings compare to their respective competition, and there's been some discussion about what team red's upcoming GPUs will be like in terms of power.
In a recent interview with Tom's Hardware, Sam Naffziger, Senior Vice President, Corporate Fellow, and Product technology Architect for AMD, has spoken about some of the more intricate ideas behind RDNA 3, as well as the next generation overall. One of the things that cropped up was power consumption for upcoming graphics cards, with team red hoping to "push power levels." There's a slight hint that AMD's upcoming graphics cards could be more efficient than its competitors, even if it does have to up the ante in terms of performance.
That, according to Naffziger, is simply the way that the technology is moving forward. As hardware improves, and in-game visual demands increase, the power required to handle it is only going to heighten as well. With Nvidia's RTX 4090 rumored to be as hot as 800W, though this has obviously not been confirmed by team green, most PC gamers will assume that future GPUs are going to draw more power. However, it does seem that AMD is looking to do better in terms of efficiency and maximizing performance. Naffziger added that the company has a roadmap of "significant efficiency improvements."
There's a lot of flexing that needs to be done in the run-up to the next GPU era, it seems. A while back, AMD seemed confident its RDNA 3 could 'decimate' the competition, especially its biggest rival, in terms of efficiency. There is still time to left for each side to battle it out and to see just where it can take the industry as this gen comes to a close.
The same cannot really be said for the newcomers. With Intel still dragging its feet about its Arc desktop GPUs, having only just released it in China, team blue doesn't appear to be a major threat to Nvidia or AMD. Currently, it's the two old rivals that are still at loggerheads, and if what Naffziger is saying is true, then gamers may be getting some more efficient graphics cards when compared to team green's Ada Lovelace.
Source: Tom's Hardware