Why are only Nvidia GPUs included in gaming laptops -AMD, how about it? As we all know, both “AMD vs. Nvidia” make GPUs that power the best graphics cards.
However, AMD vs. Nvidia isn’t the only decision you need to make when building a gaming laptop.
You also need to choose many other spare parts from many different brands. Each company will have different strengths and weaknesses; it also depends quite a lot on the needs and pockets of the user.
In this topic, I will focus on the graphics card and look at the performance, features, drivers, and price that show why users still prefer gaming laptops with Nvidia GPUs over AMD ones.
Here are the strengths when comparing AMD vs. Nvidia GPUs:
- Gaming performance
- Energy consumption and efficiency
- Outstanding Technology
- Drivers and software
- Value proposition
1. Gaming performance
For decades, faster GPUs have allowed game developers to create increasingly detailed and complex games.
While you can find budget or high-end GPUs from AMD and Nvidia, Nvidia has a clear lead when it comes to outright performance.
If you look at the GPU performance hierarchy, you’ll see that (excluding the Titan cards, which aren’t aimed at gamers) Nvidia holds the top five spots.
The best AMD can do in sixth place, with the Radeon VII and RX 5700 XT almost tied for overall performance.
When considering the $350 price point,
AMD GPUs have become a lot more competitive. I reviewed AMD’s RX 5700 XT against Nvidia’s RTX 2060 Super and gave the RX 5700 XT an overall look.
It is generally faster and costs less, although it uses more power and lacks support for ray tracing. Nvidia still wins with features, but performance and other metrics are similar.
What about in the budget category?
RX 5500 XT vs GTX 1660. However, I’ve retested both the performance and power of both GPUs, and additional testing only proves that Nvidia has now won the power and efficiency category.
I’ll go into more detail below, but it’s a 4-to-1 lead, even when multiple categories are close. Nvidia is a touch faster and uses slightly less power for a comparable price.
What about cards that cost even less?.
Like the Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB, Radeon RX 570 4GB, and GTX 1650? What does AMD vs. Nvidia performance look like at the bottom of the price spectrum? The RX 570 4GB is still the cheapest ‘decent’ graphics card, with a starting price of $120.
It’s slightly faster than the GTX 1650 in most games but slower than the GTX 1650 GDDR6 during use. Double strength. It’s also 20% slower than the newer RX 5500 XT 4GB.
Winner: The majority of categories go to Nvidia. AMD can compete with the RX 5700 and 5700 XT, but it falls short of the Super 2070 and older GTX 1080 Ti.
Even in the lower price ranges, a traditional stronghold for AMD, Nvidia’s current lineup often delivers outstanding performance for the same price, and that doesn’t even include ray tracing support on high-end devices RTX cards.
2. Energy consumption and efficiency
For over six years, the competition between AMD and Nvidia regarding GPU power efficiency has been decided in Nvidia’s favor.
But did Navi change all that? It can bridge the gap by using a chip built with TSMC’s 7nm FinFET process and new architecture that delivers 50% better performance per watt.
However, it lagged so far that even a 50% improvement couldn’t compensate for the lost efficiency.
Using Powenetic hardware to capture the GPU’s actual graphics card power usage, I recently retested all current and recent graphics cards from both companies.
Navi is better than any of AMD’s pre-Navi chips, but Nvidia still wins overall, even using a GPU built on TSMC’s previous-generation 12nm node.
Perhaps Big Navi will change that, but Big Navi needs to take on Nvidia Ampere, not Turing.
Let’s look at the different GPU target markets.
In the extreme performance arena,
Nvidia’s RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 use a lot of power but don’t have any direct AMD competitors.
AMD’s Radeon VII and the older Vega 64 essentially used as much energy, if not more, but delivered significantly less performance.
AMD’s RX 5700 XT splits the difference between the RTX 2070 and RTX 2070 Super while using slightly more power than the 2070 Super.
AMD’s mainstream products claim victory with the RX 5700, beating the RTX 2060 in terms of performance using the same power and second only to the Super 2060 while using less energy.
The identical 5600 XT offers slightly better performance than the RTX 2060 while using less power.
The Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB and 8GB models consume almost the same amount of power, around 125W – that’s when gaming, not in a worst-case test like FurMark, hits 170W.
For comparison, Nvidia’s GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1660 Super use slightly less power but are up to 20% faster in performance.
Also, the GTX 1660 is a touch faster than the 5500 XT 8GB and uses 10W less power. It’s not a huge difference, but it’s still a win.
Similarly, dropping to Nvidia’s GTX 1650 series, the GTX 1650 Super outperforms the RX 5500 XT 4GB in performance while using 25W less power, while the GTX 1650 GDDR6 drops another 20W of performance but also drops 17% efficiency.
Winner:
Nvidia only focuses on current-generation AMD Navi and Nvidia Turing GPUs, which are relatively close in power and efficiency.
At the top and bottom of the price and performance spectrum, Nvidia triumphs while AMD surpasses Nvidia in critical areas.
The genuine concern here is that Nvidia still wins even when using GPUs built using previous generation lithography.
3. Outstanding Technology
Do you need a ray tracing for good graphics in PC games? The answer is no, but ray tracing allows for some nice effects. This is the big difference between AMD, and Nvidia features right now.
Everything else is secondary. G-Sync uses FreeSync, Radeon Anti-Lag goes against Nvidia’s ultra-low latency, and many other areas are essentially tied up. But Nvidia offers GPUs with ray tracing hardware, and AMD doesn’t.
Nvidia has also supported variable rate variables (VRS) since the launch of Turing GPUs, and DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) uses the Tensor cores found in Nvidia’s RTX GPUs.
Turing also supports mesh shaders and several other features that are part of the DirectX 12 Ultimate spec, and the Turing RTX GPU is fully Vulkan Ray compliant.
If we’re talking about the company that has developed a lot of new graphics features over the years, the features that become part of a larger graphics ecosystem, that’s Nvidia.
That’s despite big hits, like PhysX and 3D Vision, never really caught on.
4. Drivers and software
Identifying a clear winner in the driver and software category is tough. Quite a few people have experienced black screen issues with AMD drivers on RX 5000 Navi series GPUs, while others have had no problems.
Newer drivers are said to have fixed these issues, but some user complaints continue. Nvidia drivers aren’t all that good either, and depending on the game and hardware, problems will add up for both companies.
5. Value proposition
So far, Nvidia has won on three criteria and drawn one, but the price is a great equalizer.
AMD may not have the fastest or most efficient GPU, but it will often sell you competitive performance for less. Here’s how prices break when looking at current GPUs.
Final Thoughts
With the comparisons above, Nvidia continues to reign as the GPU champion of the world. AMD has dealt some mighty blows, especially as a value proposition.
But suppose you’re looking at the big picture, which includes performance, efficiency, features, and underlying technology.
In that case, Nvidia is leading the way – and you could even argue that Nvidia deserves the driver category too…
However, when looking for the best graphics card for your needs, it could be the graphics card offered by AMD, depending on their needs and the price.