The five worst AMD GPUs of all time: So bad we can't forget them

[Roland Of Gilead]

I'm not even going to waste time reading this article because of the lack of ethics on this site. First the best Nvidia GPUs, followed by the worst AMD/ATI GPUs.
bye bye Tomshardware!!

What are you raging about? As suggested, this is a trip down memory lane for a lot of folks on here. It's a good article. There have been some real turkey's of GPU's in days gone. For us it brings a smile to our faces.

In face of your declaration, I wish you well.

 

[Order 66]

What are you raging about? As suggested, this is a trip down memory lane for a lot of folks on here. It's a good article. There have been some real turkey's of GPU's in days gone. For us it brings a smile to our faces.

In face of your declaration, I wish you well.

It may be a trip down memory lane for most, but for me it is mostly new as I wasn't into PCs when 80% of the cards on these lists launched. I didn't even know some of them had even existed.

 

[torka]

You had me until Vega 64. It ran hot and was expensive at the time, but with undervolting it was inarguably viable up to and during the release cycle of the 5700XT.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

It may be a trip down memory lane for most, but for me it is mostly new as I wasn't into PCs when 80% of the cards on these lists launched. I didn't even know some of them had even existed.

Well, we live and learn!

 

[abufrejoval]

what is the point of this article ? I get it if you are warning people from today cards , but this is so unprofessional .

I'd say that a review like that is actually far more professional than just looking at things immediately at their release date.

Because it zooms out a little and provides you longer term perspective.

And I was actually quite impressed with just how well argued it was, avoiding any cheap bias as far as I could tell.

Of course you'd hope that vendors have learned from past mistakes and won't repeat them outright, but when you are trying to imagine how things might evolve, this article provides you with tons of things to think about.

AMD's bet on HBM or AMD going to 512 bus width even on the normal R9 290X showed great engineering skills (to my knowledge nobody has done a 512 bit PCB design since), yet also that it doesn't pay off, when you can get so much more with texture compression or an extra layer of cache: brute force often just doesn't pay off economically.

It's simply a fact of life that AMD couldn't hedge more than one or perhaps two bets: they were too small to win on all fronts and resorted to some rather cheap relabelling to crank up revenue.

If you carefully read all these tech sites, chances were you couldn't get hoodwinked, but I'll have to admit that occasionally I still got snookered, e.g. with a Kaveri A10-7850 which never really delivered on anything.

That R9 290x was my last AMD GPU after decades of ATI/AMD (it went into a Phenom II X6 system). My first ATI was the Mach8, an IBM 8514/A clone and my first accelerated graphics cards after dozens of VGAs. In fact I started with an EGA on my 80286 and I even personally ported X11R4 on a TI TMS 34020 GPU.

I've given AMD a chance on every PC purchase over the last 40 years because I like the underdog and believe it's essential to have. I've actually tried to have AMD/ATI and Intel/Nvidia side-by-side whenever possible, but in the GPU arena, there just wasn't an able bodied contender for a long, long time.

At least AMD has won the last few big CPU rounds, but that seems to matter less and less as nearly everything that requires real number chrunching power, just runs on GPUs anyway and I have 16-22 CPU cores from teams blue and red just waiting for my RTX 4090 to do the work.

I've actually gone all out and started buying some Intel ARC 770 GPUs, because they seem to be the more "under" doggies today. I guess it's a good thing they are so terribly cheap, because they sure aren't that terribly good: nor at graphics nor at GPGPU. Supporting alternatives to the leading contender is just a necessity and I'll continue to do so within the limits of my means.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I agree with most of this list but there are two cards there that I don't think should be. Not because they're great cards, but because there are two cards that are far more deserving of being on this list.

Firstly, I would replace the RX 7600 with the R5 230 because it is, without a doubt, the most pointless Radeon card ever made. I can't think of a single use-case for it that wouldn't have been better served by another card (and for less money too).

The RX 7600 can be forgiven for being a product of its time, as was pointed out by the author with reference to the RX 7700 XT and the RX 7800 XT. With the exception of high-end or better cards, the current generation (in both red and green) has been VERY disappointing. Sure, the RX 7600 is not a great card but it's not one of the worst either. It does offer decent 1080p value in the current generation. I believe that the continued existence of the previous generation makes it appear worse than it actually is.

Secondly, I would replace the R9 290X with the R9 280X because at least the R9 290X was a new product while the R9 280X was just a renamed HD 7970, a card that is probably one of the greatest to ever bear the name Radeon. How many people bought the R9 280X without realising that it was just a renamed card from the previous generation? I think that re-branding cards is a slimy practice which is also why I was never a fan of the 9800 GTX or GTS 250. It's ok to continue to sell a card to fill a gap in the new generation but I don't think that it's ok to change the name of the card to make it appear as if it's a part of the new generation.

The rest of the list sounds about right to me.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Is there going to be a follow-up article about The Five Worst nVidia GPUs of All Time?
Seems only fair.

I would say that it's in the works. After all, Matthew did a best of GeForce and a best of Radeon article in the past so he seems like an even-handed author to me.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Firstly, I would replace the RX 7600 with the R5 230 because it is, without a doubt, the most pointless Radeon card ever made. I can't think of a single use-case for it that wouldn't have been better served by another card (and for less money too).

The R5 230 existed for the purpose of adding (additional) display outputs if you didn't have any/enough. And/or HW video decoding. Same idea as the GT 720, around the same time and price from what I can tell. What were the better/cheaper options?

 

[rluker5]

The R5 230 existed for the purpose of adding (additional) display outputs if you didn't have any/enough. And/or HW video decoding. Same idea as the GT 720, around the same time and price from what I can tell. What were the better/cheaper options?

I am so pleased with my K620 for this purpose. If you have a DP to HDMI2 active adapter it does a nice 4k60 out for negligible watts and $20 from ebay. Games like 384 Maxwell cores, so iGPU territory there.

 

[Makaveli]

I'm not even going to waste time reading this article because of the lack of ethics on this site. First the best Nvidia GPUs, followed by the worst AMD/ATI GPUs.
bye bye Tomshardware!!

lol dude go get a coffee and chill out.

They will have a follow up article for Nv in a couple days.

 

[ilukey77]

Is there going to be a follow-up article about The Five Worst nVidia GPUs of All Time?
Seems only fair.

the Nvidia list will blow out to way more than 5 !!

 

[Makaveli]

the Nvidia list will blow out to way more than 5 !!

I expect to see the GTX480 on that list for sure.

 

[ilukey77]

I expect to see the GTX480 on that list for sure.

i expect the 2 3080s 10 and 12gb every 8gb card they have shoved out in 2023 the re release of the 2060 /gt 1630 during the pandemic ..
ive not even started on the old school Nvidia !!

 

[Amdlova]

I expect to see the GTX480 on that list for sure.

No gtx 480/470 is a space heater... you can play, fry eggs and heat the whole house... it's perfect.

 

[user7007]

I had an 8500 and it was fine. not sure what you're talking about. There were some driver issues for sure but it was pretty fast at the time.

Only AMD card I hated was the HD2900XT I bought. Too hot, too loud, not fast enough. I did bios editing to help but eventually moved onto something else. My brothers got the nvidia 6800GT?( I think) and it had more ram and ran better and quieter. They were losers as well, both dying of bumpgate eventually.

I had an fx 5900XT that wasn't great either (I won it).

I have no experience with radeons after the rx580 (which I like just fine). If they can figure out their idle power consumption running many high res displays I'll consider them again.

 

[COLGeek]

Stay on topic folks. Thanks.

No fanboy attacks. Period.

 

[bit_user]

It's not just the RX 7600, either: The RX 7000-series as a whole hasn't been as competitive as we'd like.

It's the entire GPU market. What happened is that they almost certainly planned the RX 7600 to be the RX 7500, but then GPU prices cratered and they had to sell it as a x600 tier to justify its price.

Same thing with RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT. They both totally make sense as generational upgrades, if they were sold as x600 and x700 tier. They just couldn't do that because of the price. I'll bet they originally intended the RX 7800 XT to be like the current RX 7900 GRE, but with roughly the same GDDR6 speed as its elder siblings. IMO, memory speed is the main thing holding back the RX 7900 GRE.

The same exact thing happened to Nvidia. All of their RTX 4000 cards look pretty good (up to & including the RTX 4080), if you just notch them down a tier. That also explains the huge gulf in price between the RTX 4090 and the rest. I'll bet the RTX 4080 was originally supposed to be made from the same die as the RTX 4090, like how they made the RTX 3080 from the same die as the RTX 3090.

 

[ilukey77]

It's the entire GPU market. What happened is that they almost certainly planned the RX 7600 to be the RX 7500, but then GPU prices cratered and they had to sell it as a x600 tier to justify its price.

Same thing with RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT. They both totally make sense as generational upgrades, if they were sold as x600 and x700 tier. They just couldn't do that because of the price. I'll bet they originally intended the RX 7800 XT to be like the current RX 7900 GRE, but with roughly the same GDDR6 speed as its elder siblings. IMO, memory speed is the main thing holding back the RX 7900 GRE.

The same exact thing happened to Nvidia. All of their RTX 4000 cards look pretty good (up to the RTX 4080), if you just notch them down a tier. That also explains the huge gulf in price between the RTX 4090 and the rest.

I think Nvidia caught AMD with there pants down and released the 4090 ..

I do hope that AMD have a big swing at the 5090 otherwise ill be buying Nvidia next gen

I do believe that AMD ( if you exclude RT ) have beat Nvidia with everything from 4080 down to 4060 on both price and performance ..

BUT
AMD is not with out right disgusting products !!
7600 is a pathetic waste of space 8gb in 2023 is just BS !!

 

[bit_user]

I think Nvidia caught AMD with there pants down and released the 4090 ..

AMD claimed they were never trying to beat the RTX 4090.

AMD says it could have launched an RDNA 3 GeForce RTX 4090 competitor

AMD says it could have launched an RDNA 3 GPU that directly competes with the GeForce RTX 4090 but chose not to, citing costs and power draw as the reason.

www.tweaktown.com

7600 is a pathetic waste of space 8gb in 2023 is just BS !!

I think the main problem with it is just pricing. At the right price & positioning, it could be an attractive card.

Why else do you think AMD has no RX 7500? It seems clear to me that's what the RX 7600 was meant to be.

 

[Thunder64]

As noted in the intro, we've trended toward newer rather than digging way back into the pre-Radeon era. We'll be doing the same for Nvidia, just like we did with both the Best AMD and Best Nvidia articles. These are a "nostalgia series" of articles, talking about some of the good and bad old days. Don't worry, the RTX 40-series will also get its fair share of derision with the next and final piece.

The RX 7600 represents the worst of the 7000-series, though the 7700 XT certainly gives it some competition, and the 7800 XT isn't riding high on the hog either. It's simply lackluster in almost every important way. DP 2.1 is a checkbox feature that has almost no practical bearing on a ~$250 graphics card — are you really going to pair it with a new $750 monitor to make use of the ultra-high bandwidth it supports? AV1 and boosted AI performance are at least something, but these are primarily gaming cards and so a few percent improvement over the RX 6650 XT while bumping the price $20–$40 isn't a great showing.

These best/worst articles were planned weeks ago. Nvidia hitting 500+ was merely a news story, and while I did have something positive to say, if you actually read the text there's plenty of cynicism as well. We did the Best AMD GPUs before the Best Nvidia GPUs, and no one complained. Doing the Worst AMD GPUs before the Worst Nvidia GPUs just follows that pattern.

You can still be Radeon and bad. The Radeon HD 2900 was crap, wasn't it? I wouldn't know, because I didn't buy one. I just remember hearing a lot about how bad they were.

The RX 7600 really shouldn't be on this list. If any 7000 series I'd say the 7700 XT. Great card, wrong price. I'd hardly say the 7800 XT isn't all that great either. It fits in well.

As for the other cards:

Fury aged like milk. Great at first, but very memory limited. But 4K gaming wasn't really all that big then.

Vega was largely crap. Vega 56 wasn't terrible as it provided nice performance for way lower power consumption than Vega 64. Radeon VII was niche at best. Vega did do a good job in low power APU's though.

When I think of bad Radeons, I think of anything post 9800 Pro until 4870/4850. Maybe HD 3000, I wouldn't know as I was using the glorious 8800GT at the time. I had an X800 GTO which was nice but used a dual slot blower so Geforce FX loud. I would've kept the 9800 Pro for far longer if it wasn't for the AGP to PCI-e transition.

And finally, if you want to talk about drivers, talk about the Rage 128! I had an All-In-Wonder, what a pain in the butt that was! But once set up correctly, did well.

 

[ilukey77]

AMD claimed they were never trying to beat the RTX 4090.

Yeah a bit sus on that one !!

Id claim that i was wasnt going to compete with something if i knew i couldnt beat it either !!

MCM in higher end 7000 series has performed well enough to compete with the likes of Nvidia's monolithic die 4080s and down ( which for being a new architecture is impressive )

MCM though is in its infancy i hope and expect bigger and better things from AMD using the MCM design next gen ..

But to out right say they didnt want to compete is PR speak for we couldnt ..

100% if the 7900xtx cost $1500usd and was trading blows with the 4090 people would have still bought it and not left AMD fans wondering after the big leaps the 6000series had VS the 30 series cards can AMD actually compete !!

 

[dimar]

I'd love to see AMD product that's fast and power efficient. At the moment NVIDIA is the king. But I'm pretty sure I'm going for Zen 5 CPU for the next upgrade.

 

[jlake3]

I know a list with half the spots given to old and forgotten rebrands wouldn't be as interesting, but I read this and immediately felt the need to dust off my old account because some of these feel like weird choices.

The R9 390X feels like it should be on the list rather than the 290X? Unless I'm badly misremembering, the 290X was a solid engineering effort that got overshadowed by rapid releases and price drops, while the 390X was a desperate attempt to crank the factory OC up and raise the prices back up from where the 290X had dropped to. Guess they are pretty close to the same card?

The 7600 didn't really shake anything up, but it generally seems... fine. Not great, but if that's one of the 5 worst AMD has done then they're doin' pretty good. I think this is where one of the R7 300 cards that was twice rebranded and had driver support dropped at the same time as the HD 7000-series would go.

The 6500XT is a pretty bad card in design terms with all it's frustrating limitations, so it's hard to contest that one... but hot take; It was a product of a dark time in the tech space that did succeed on a few points? It cost less than the street price of a GTX 1650 (non-super) at release, it was actually in stock in decent quantities, and I don't think I saw the cheapest in-stock model ever go more higher than $220? Someone I know had a computer that was circling the drain and thankfully it held on, but I was scouting parts in case I needed to do a budget build for them, and the RTX 3050 was a defacto $350 card with poor inventory. And while post-shortage prices suck in many ways, the 6500XT is now priced just above the Intel A380 that's also slow and also doesn't run well in old systems, and is somehow priced less than what Nvidia wants for a GTX 1630? (There's a real candidate for the Nvidia list). I might make the 6500XT my dishonorable mention and give this spot to one of the TeraScale-rebrand cards that snuck all the way into the R5 200 series? Even if those were just a display adapter and not for gamers, those feel like old tech that lingered too long.

Fury X had some cool tech and big specs on paper, but cost too much and didn't perform up to the hype, and wasn't availability poor to boot? Agree there.

Vega 64 I remember being hot and expensive and power hungry, and sticking around too long. Agree on that one too.

Real curious to see the Nvidia list. I'm thinking Titan Z (impractical), GTX 480 (hot), GTX 1630 (for misuse of GTX branding, awful value), the GT 210 (for continuing to ship an obsolete architecture for so long), and... maybe the RTX 2060 (for not being powerful enough for it's namesake feature)? And the Titan Xp (for giving two different GPUs the same name) or the GT 1030 (for offering GDDR5/DDR4 version schenanigans) as a dishonorable mention.

 

[UnforcedERROR]

I'm not even going to waste time reading this article because of the lack of ethics on this site. First the best Nvidia GPUs, followed by the worst AMD/ATI GPUs.
bye bye Tomshardware!!

They literally started this series with the 5 best AMD GPUs of all time...

 

[razor512]

With the exception of massively unstable cards in the past, many of AMD's issues stem from horrible pricing. The increases from the mining craze, never went away. Since the days of GTX 1000 series, video cards have pretty much all shifted up 2 price tiers. Beyond that, AMD has made themselves less competitive by trying to essentially match the price gouging of Nvidia while offering fewer features.
For example, the RX7600 is not truly bad card, it is just utter crap at the current price.

The RX 7800 XT is a good card at $379-$400, it is not a good card at $500.