AMD Directly Challenges NVIDIA In New Blog Post

Over the last couple of weeks, the two most powerful graphics cards released for the PC to date made their respective debuts, the dual-Cayman GPU powered AMD Radeon HD 6990 and the dual-GF110 GPU powered NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590.

Without a doubt, both of these cards offer performance that puts any current-generation, single-GPU powered graphics card to shame. It’ll take a pair of today’s mid-range to high-end cards to match or surpass the performance of either the Radeon HD 6990 or GeForce GTX 590, they’re that fast.

With such powerful products in their line-ups, both AMD and NVIDIA have claimed the offer “the world’s fastest graphics card”. However, likely only one of the companies can really have the fastest card. And AMD says it’s theirs:

NVIDIA Says The GeForce GTX 590 Is 'The World's Fastest Graphics Card"

“Yesterday our competitor also issued a press release, announcing the launch of what they claim to be the “World’s Fastest Graphics Card”– the Nvidia GTX 590. We combed through their announcement to understand how it was that such a claim could be made and why there was no substantiation based on industry-standard benchmarks, similar to what AMD did with industry benchmark 3DMark 11, the latest DirectX 11 benchmark from FutureMark.”

Throughout our independent testing of the GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990, a particular performance pattern emerged. We summarized the GeForce GTX 590’s performance thusly, “In comparison to its chief rival, however, the dual-GPU powered Radeon HD 6990, the GeForce GTX 590 ultimately comes up a bit short in terms of framerates. While both cards are exceptional performers, the Radeon HD 6990 offers higher framerates more often than not. The cards were evenly matched in FarCry 2 and Just Cause 2, the GTX 590 came out on top in the Unigine Heaven benchmark, and in Lost Planet 2, but the Radeon HD 6990 led in 3DMark11, AvP, Metro 2033, and in F1 2010.” The general consensus amongst enthusiasts and other tech publications is in-line with our summary. Both cards perform extremely well, but the Radeon HD 6990 is generally a bit faster overall.

AMD Says The Radeon HD 6990 Is The "World's Fastest Graphics Card"

Since both companies have laid claim to the “world’s fastest graphics card”, AMD wants to settle the score once and for all. Dave Erskine, the Senior Public Relations Manager for Graphics Desktop at AMD, just published a blog post challenging NVIDIA directly. “So now I issue a challenge to our competitor: prove it, don’t just say it. Show us the substantiation. Because as it stands today, leading reviewers agree with us…” Them's fightin' words.

The PC graphics space has always been a highly-competitive, cutthroat business. It’s rare, however, for the chief rivals to call each other out so directly. The response should be interesting. Or at the very least, AMD’s challenge will spur some interesting weekend discussion. What say you?