I'm not an AMD fan per se (neither the CPU nor the GPU in my PC are from AMD), but I am a great admirer of that company, and really grateful that it exists, as their strong and fair market competition benefits consumers quite a lot. I think that without AMD the current consumer personal computer electronics market would be much worse (and expensive) today than it is.
AMD is a company that's fighting a market war on two different fronts, against two absolute giants, namely Intel and Nvidia. They have been the major competitor on both the CPU and GPU markets since the late 90's.
While they have had their ups and downs, sometimes getting ahead, sometimes falling far behind, for the most part AMD has been kind of an underdog, always trying to catch up, and sometimes even arguably surpassing (at least in terms of hardware prowess) the two giants. But the market share of both Intel and Nvidia have always felt rock-solid and unshakeable.
But I have to really commend and admire AMD for not giving up. While at times having been a real underdog, falling far behind, they have always fought hard and come back. And now, after all these years, they are actually such a serious threat to both Intel and Nvidia, that they are actually in some aspects put themselves ahead of both.
On the CPU side, for quite many years it has felt that Intel has been very stagnant, while AMD has come time and again with cheaper and more innovative CPUs that have caught the attention of the wider public, especially the tech connoisseurs. Nowadays almost every single tech influencer (eg. on YouTube and elsewhere) is almost invariably recommending AMD CPUs instead of Intel ones, no matter what budget the user may have, both on high-end and low-end systems. Very few are recommending Intel CPUs over the AMD ones. At this moment (and for a few years now) AMD has been unmistakably on the top of the market, with Intel, who became very complacent and stagnant during the last decade or so, now starting to try to catch up, in terms of price and performance.
As for GPUs, Nvidia is still the king of the very high-end systems. However, when it comes to even slightly more mid-tier systems, AMD has caught up and become an audience favorite. The battle in all the budget ranges excepting the absolute top one is very fierce, with AMD offering very affordable and very efficient GPUs, and Nvidia trying to respond likewise. Tech commentators and influences are very much split between recommending either one, but for like a year now it seems that, once again, AMD has a lead at least when it comes to mid-budget PCs: They simply offer the best efficiency per price ratio, and Nvidia is struggling to reach that same ratio. (It doesn't exactly help Nvidia that the gaming industry has been astonishingly slow at adopting RTX technology in video games. There's just a small handful of them, even after all this time.)
This is very good from the perspective of the end consumer. That's because healthy competition benefits the consumer. It incentivizes the competing corporations into developing better products for cheaper.
If AMD didn't exist, if they eg. had gone bankrupt 20 years ago and just merged into either one of the two giants (like so many other tech companies have), and if there wasn't any big competitor to Intel and Nvidia, I think nowadays the technological landscape would be much different, with less efficient and more expensive CPUs and GPUs than they are. When companies don't have much incentive to improve because they have a monopoly status and no competitors, they get lazy and complacent, and stop innovating. (They also tend to get greedy, raising praises in a manner that doesn't correspond to the benefits of their products.)
For this reason I have great respect and admiration for AMD, as a company. They benefit us all by the mere act of keeping the other two giants in check, and giving them a really hard time in the fight for the market leadership. I hope AMD still keeps doing this for decades to come.
AMD is a company that's fighting a market war on two different fronts, against two absolute giants, namely Intel and Nvidia. They have been the major competitor on both the CPU and GPU markets since the late 90's.
While they have had their ups and downs, sometimes getting ahead, sometimes falling far behind, for the most part AMD has been kind of an underdog, always trying to catch up, and sometimes even arguably surpassing (at least in terms of hardware prowess) the two giants. But the market share of both Intel and Nvidia have always felt rock-solid and unshakeable.
But I have to really commend and admire AMD for not giving up. While at times having been a real underdog, falling far behind, they have always fought hard and come back. And now, after all these years, they are actually such a serious threat to both Intel and Nvidia, that they are actually in some aspects put themselves ahead of both.
On the CPU side, for quite many years it has felt that Intel has been very stagnant, while AMD has come time and again with cheaper and more innovative CPUs that have caught the attention of the wider public, especially the tech connoisseurs. Nowadays almost every single tech influencer (eg. on YouTube and elsewhere) is almost invariably recommending AMD CPUs instead of Intel ones, no matter what budget the user may have, both on high-end and low-end systems. Very few are recommending Intel CPUs over the AMD ones. At this moment (and for a few years now) AMD has been unmistakably on the top of the market, with Intel, who became very complacent and stagnant during the last decade or so, now starting to try to catch up, in terms of price and performance.
As for GPUs, Nvidia is still the king of the very high-end systems. However, when it comes to even slightly more mid-tier systems, AMD has caught up and become an audience favorite. The battle in all the budget ranges excepting the absolute top one is very fierce, with AMD offering very affordable and very efficient GPUs, and Nvidia trying to respond likewise. Tech commentators and influences are very much split between recommending either one, but for like a year now it seems that, once again, AMD has a lead at least when it comes to mid-budget PCs: They simply offer the best efficiency per price ratio, and Nvidia is struggling to reach that same ratio. (It doesn't exactly help Nvidia that the gaming industry has been astonishingly slow at adopting RTX technology in video games. There's just a small handful of them, even after all this time.)
This is very good from the perspective of the end consumer. That's because healthy competition benefits the consumer. It incentivizes the competing corporations into developing better products for cheaper.
If AMD didn't exist, if they eg. had gone bankrupt 20 years ago and just merged into either one of the two giants (like so many other tech companies have), and if there wasn't any big competitor to Intel and Nvidia, I think nowadays the technological landscape would be much different, with less efficient and more expensive CPUs and GPUs than they are. When companies don't have much incentive to improve because they have a monopoly status and no competitors, they get lazy and complacent, and stop innovating. (They also tend to get greedy, raising praises in a manner that doesn't correspond to the benefits of their products.)
For this reason I have great respect and admiration for AMD, as a company. They benefit us all by the mere act of keeping the other two giants in check, and giving them a really hard time in the fight for the market leadership. I hope AMD still keeps doing this for decades to come.
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