{"id":115539,"date":"2017-02-21T12:37:02","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T10:37:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=115539"},"modified":"2017-02-21T12:38:00","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T10:38:00","slug":"how-graphics-cards-have-improved-over-the-years-amd-vs-nvidia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/hardware\/115539-how-graphics-cards-have-improved-over-the-years-amd-vs-nvidia","title":{"rendered":"How graphics cards have improved over the years &#8211; AMD vs Nvidia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Graphics processors have come a long way since the advent of 3D gaming, and are now able to rapidly solve complex physics calculations, process large amounts of polygons, and render high-resolution textures.<\/p>\n<p>The industry has been dominated by two GPU manufacturers, Nvidia and AMD (previously ATI).<\/p>\n<p>The companies are competing at the cutting-edge of graphics technology and are constantly refining and improving their products.<\/p>\n<p>After the launch of graphics cards based on the new Polaris and Pascal architectures, GPUs from both brands experienced a leap in performance relative to previous architecture improvements.<\/p>\n<p>This is largely due to die shrinkage and usage of the 14nm and 16nm FinFet manufacturing processes.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Benchmark Tests<\/h3>\n<p>To see how far the cards have come, we\u00a0compared benchmark scores for single graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia over the last four generations to see how their GPUs have improved.<\/p>\n<p>Benchmark scores from <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.anandtech.com\/Bench\/\" target=\"_blank\">Anandtech\u2019s benchmark repository<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>were used to provide an average benchmark score across a number of games for a single graphics card.<\/p>\n<p>The benchmark tests used to find the average score for each graphics card were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Rise of the Tomb Raider 1080p<\/strong> \u2013 Very High Quality (DX11)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ashes of the Singularity 1080p<\/strong> \u2013 Extreme Quality (DX12)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Battlefield 4 1080p<\/strong> \u2013 Ultra Quality<\/li>\n<li><strong>Crysis 3 1080p<\/strong> \u2013 Very High Quality + FXAA<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Witcher 3 1080p<\/strong> \u2013 Ultra Quality (No Hairworks)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We compared a single graphics card from each architecture, focusing on GPUs of the same performance class.<\/p>\n<p>The benchmark scores for Nvidia and AMD graphics cards\u00a0are detailed below.<\/p>\n<div class=\"myg_table\">\n<div class=\"table-responsive\"><table class=\"table\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"7\">\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"left\">Year<\/div>\n<\/th>\n<th style=\"text-align: left;\">Architecture<\/th>\n<th style=\"text-align: left;\">Graphics Card<\/th>\n<th style=\"text-align: left;\">Average Score<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td colspan=\"4\">\n<div align=\"center\"><strong>Nvidia<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>2012<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>Kepler (28nm)<\/td>\n<td>GeForce GTX 660<\/td>\n<td><strong>25.7<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"15%\"><strong>2013<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"25%\">Kepler (28nm)<\/td>\n<td width=\"30%\">GeForce GTX 760<\/td>\n<td width=\"20%\"><strong>33.2<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>2015<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>Maxwell (28nm)<\/td>\n<td>GeForce GTX 960<\/td>\n<td><strong>37.2<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>2016<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>Pascal (16nm)<\/td>\n<td>GeForce GTX 1060<\/td>\n<td><strong>69.0<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td colspan=\"4\">\n<div align=\"center\"><strong>AMD<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>2012<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>Pitcairn (28nm)<\/td>\n<td>Radeon HD 7850<\/td>\n<td><strong>25.6<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>2014<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>Tahiti (28nm)<\/td>\n<td>Radeon R9 280<\/td>\n<td><strong>35.9<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>2015<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>Tonga (28nm)<\/td>\n<td>Radeon R9 380<\/td>\n<td><strong>40.2<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>2016<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>Polaris (14nm)<\/td>\n<td>Radeon RX 480<\/td>\n<td><strong>59.0<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>This article first appeared on <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/196858-graphics-card-performance-over-the-years-amd-vs-nvidia.html\" target=\"_blank\">MyBroadband <\/a><\/strong>and is republished with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n<h4><strong>Now read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/195442-asus-tinker-board-vs-raspberry-pi-3-specifications-and-pricing.html\" rel=\"bookmark\">Asus Tinker Board vs Raspberry Pi 3 \u2013 Specifications and Pricing<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We compared a single graphics card from each architecture, focusing on GPUs of the same performance class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":105311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1051,1771,45],"class_list":["post-115539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-amd","tag-graphics-cards","tag-nvidia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115543,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115539\/revisions\/115543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}