Speaker: Are small players bled, or is there a conscious segmentation?

We briefly review the bottom corner of the new generation entry-level video card market. It looks like the two manufacturers have come to a common denominator here - that usually doesn’t bode well - but we’re going to turn the subject around thoroughly. Pros and cons follows.

Opened eyes saw it early on both the AMD Radeon RX 550 and the NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030, and there could be serious trouble here. Let's start with the former.

The smallest member of the RX 500 series (so far) is the only model that can’t be considered a wrinkle-stitching GPU seen before. Cost-effectiveness was certainly the main goal when designing the chip running under the Polaris 12 name, which is not a problem in itself. The problem starts there that the radical decline in computational and texturing performance is not really followed by the price tag, which obviously gives rise to a poor price / value ratio. The situation is well illustrated by the fact that the next member of the product family (Radeon RX 560) can manage twice as many resources in some areas as small salt. At this point, unfortunately, the comparison is made very difficult by the fact that AMD did not send out test copies of any of the models - obviously not by accident - so we had to rely on the predecessor out of compulsion. The difference is not significant anyway, it hardly affects the overall picture.

Note that AMD only provided the number of CUs, which is less clear data.

A Tom's Hardware Radeon RX 460, RX 550 and, interestingly, R7 260X were also included in the relevant measurements - the Intel HD 530 is not interesting in this case. The first member of the trio delivers 60% more performance in better moments - making it just a breath more expensive - and the R7 260X, now in its fourth birthday, is looking at events from above. It seems to be outlined by the numbers, the RX 550 is moving in a league with the R7 260 - it no longer uses the full-fledged Bonaire chip. Then let's stop here for a moment. The protagonist of our present article started a month ago with a $ 79 price tag, and the latter saw the light of day in December 2013 (!) With 30 more green bellies. The situation seems pretty clear, but at this point, the reader can rightly throw in that, based on the numbering of the two products, they are already moving in a different league. We reassure everyone, that’s what we thought.

The Radeon R7 250 is also fair when it comes to eSports.

As can be seen from AMD’s presentation, the R550 7 is considered to be the direct predecessor of the RX 250. Let’s bring to life the most important facts about the latter, because we are not exactly a child of today; the release was in the fall of 2013, and $ 89 had to be put on the counter for the stuff. A TechPowerUp! Based on the numbers, we can say that after a tight selection cycle, we get roughly 50% more frames, minimum lower power consumption (about 10-15 watts) and, of course, a more timeless design that works with VP9 and HEVC encoded videos, among other things. - for us as a whole, we are reminded of Arkady Isaakovich Rajkin's relevant sentence.

The GeForce GT 1030 comes in a similar shoe. The Expreview in its analysis, the card lags behind its red rival, though, this is also reflected in its lower purchase price - although it’s only $ 10. Compared to its in-house predecessor, the GT 730, the picture of the newcomer is somewhat more favorable, but this is largely due to the latter’s poor production. It's worth mentioning that the 5-year-old (!) Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition, which is also not today's HD 5850, but even the GeForce GTX 460 represents a similar force - again, TechPowerUp! the summary table provided the support.