blazorthon :
The last time they had the best graphics card on the market? That would be when the Radeon R9 290X launched and before it, the Radeon 7970 when it launched. Before that, the Radeon 5870 when it launched. For CPUs, it's been a while. I think the last itme they had the best for CPUs was before Core 2 launched when it was netburst against Athlon 64.
Of course, that depends on what you mean by best... I'm assuming you mean highest performance with a single GPU consumer card or a single consumer CPU.
The last time I can remember was when nVidia stumbled badly and missed the XMas season in 2009 .... the 4-6 month period between the 5870 and the 480 release was AMDs last hurrah.
As for the the 290x, that just doesn't hold water. Yes, we could talk about the week or so that the 290x existed before nVidia blew the dust off the card they has sitting on the shelves all that time and released the 780Ti. .....
.... or we could talk about the fact that AMD's very aggressive "in the box" overclock made headlines on release day but soon everyone started to realize just how small the gains that were to be had when overclocked. When we got a hold of them and fired up Afterburner, we were all going "whaaat"like the guy in Sandler's Grownups movie.
Unfortunately, overclocked couldn't catch the 780 let alone the 780 T (8:40). We managed just 7 - 12% overclocks (16% once) on our 290x builds but the 780s reliably did 24 - 27%, and widened the gap when both were under water (4:30).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djvZaHHU4I8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqaHh-y51us
And I agree 2 GPU cards are always outperformed by two single cards using the same GPUs
AMD held there own for a good run owning the low to mid market up thru the 6xx / 7xxx period and ceding the high end. The 650 Ti Boost was a big blow to AMD but AMD has held the $200-$250 segment for two generations, to getting pressure from the top with what appears to be predatory pricing on the 970. Intel's starting to cut in on the low end and nVidia pushing them from the top puts them in a position of fighting on 2 fronts w/o even considering CPUs.
Assuming they have the margins, something in at $280 could make the 960 irrelevant and put pressure on the 970. I shudder to think the market share graph looks like today.
expunged :
Benchmarks show that the Radeon R9 290X was below the gtx 690 as shown here, while it did win in some categories it fell behind in most of them. Don't get me wrong i am not a fanboy, If AMD was to bring out a card that would out perform it's rivals i would buy it. Currently I am waiting on windows 10 with DX12 so I can see the results of the fury x. then i will make the decision on either the Fury x or 980 ti. As it stands now they are neck and neck.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290x-hawaii-review,3650-10.html
Again, at reference speeds....
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/
GTX_980_Ti_G1_Gaming/33.html
the 980 Ti overclocks (134.8 / 102.6) ~ 31.4 %
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_Fury_X/34.html
The Fury X just (108.1 / 102.9) ~ 5.0 %
That's not neck and neck....that's Secretariat at the Belmont Stakes.