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

[Makaveli]

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.

I agree but I also think the cat is out of the bag on gpu pricing and its never going back sadly.

$500 use to be highend in fact that is what I paid for a Radeon 9700 Pro on launch.

 

[spongiemaster]

I agree but I also think the cat is out of the bag on gpu pricing and its never going back sadly.

$500 use to be highend in fact that is what I paid for a Radeon 9700 Pro on launch.

When adjusting for inflation, $500 has never been the high end. Back in 1998, I had a Voodoo2 SLI paired with a Matrox Millennium II, and each of those cards retailed for $300 then. That's $900 even before adjusting for inflation. After adjusting, it's over $1700 today. Right about where we are with AIB 4090's before the China ban kicked in.

 

[spongiemaster]

I know this article said it was biased towards post acquisition AMD GPU's, but it does list the 8500 as an dishonorable mention. I had one of those and nothing really stands out in my memory one way or the other. That said, unequivocally the worst GPU I have had the displeasure of using was the Radeon Maxx which was a dual GPU ATi card from around 2000. Thankfully, it wasn't mine, but I had to try and help my sister using it, and it was an absolute steaming pile that didn't work properly with anything and was just an all around 100% piece of garbage that never should have been released.

 

[spongiemaster]

I'll never forget THG's rabid defense of the RTX 2000 series "just buy it" was such a memorable moments.

Something you and the rest of AMD Fan Land never remember is that infamous article was part of a two article point/counterpoint series with the first article being:

Why You Shouldn’t Buy Nvidia’s RTX 20-Series Graphics Cards (Yet)

This article is NEVER brought up by the fanboys. It's kind of hard to have contrarian pieces if they both say don't buy the cards. One of the articles had to take the stance of buying the cards. Both articles were opinion pieces, they weren't buying guides recommending what you should buy.

 

[AgentBirdnest]

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.

I thought of the GT 1030 DDR4, as well. That'd be one of my picks.

I'm betting the list will include the RTX 4070 Ti. From the outrageous original name (4080 12GB) and the "unlaunch", to the bad value and stagnant price/perf over the previous gen, and now it's being phased out to be replaced with a Super variant on a new die... it's been a bumpy ride for that card.

 

[Makaveli]

When adjusting for inflation, $500 has never been the high end. Back in 1998, I had a Voodoo2 SLI paired with a Matrox Millennium II, and each of those cards retailed for $300 then. That's $900 even before adjusting for inflation. After adjusting, it's over $1700 today. Right about where we are with AIB 4090's before the China ban kicked in.

You are going back further than I did.

The 9700 Pro came out in 2002 and it was $399 USD.

I'm in Canada so the cost for me in CAD was $500 at the time.

 

[spongiemaster]

You are going back further than I did.

The 9700 Pro came out in 2002 and it was $399 USD.

I'm in Canada so the cost for me in CAD was $500 at the time.

Adjusted for inflation, that's about $685USD today.

 

[bit_user]

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.

The biggest problem with Fury X was called Maxwell - or the GTX 980 Ti, to be specific. Let's not forget that Nvidia pulled of quite the coup of doubling performance on the same process node, through a combination of tiled rendering and larger die sizes.

Had Maxwell been more in line with previous generational improvements, Fury would've mopped the floor with it. Instead, they were pretty much neck-and-neck, with the 980 Ti being the more practical option.

 

[bit_user]

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.

In bygone eras, GPUs could easily improve perf/$ simply by riding the cost curve of ever-cheaper transistors. Sadly, that has come to an end.

(Chart dated 2020, but the trend is still valid)

Source: https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor
​

GPUs are especially sensitive to this, given how transistor-intensive they are. That's why we see it more with them than certain other kinds of chips.

...but go ahead and blame it on greedy companies, if it makes you feel better.

 

[7K320]

I appreciate that part of the criteria involved is whether the cards made sense for AMD, notably for the R9 Fury X and Vega 64. As a gamer, did I want them? Yeah... except the water-cooling requirement on the Fury X. Did they wind up making sense from a business standpoint? Definitely not, and as appealing as the cool new HBM was, it always seemed a bit questionable from a "is this where [then] struggling AMD should be investing its money?"

I did briefly own an R9 290X. Briefly as in it got returned to the store before the return period ended, so it counts as the worst AMD GPU I've owned (sample size = 5, haven't owned any of the others in the article). Why'd I return it? The price was right at the time I bought it, it was marked way down, I'm not sure it even cost as many dollars as its model number. But it was a reference blower card and you would thought it had "Make Some Noise" as its motto, it was ridiculously loud to the point I decided to just stick with my old Radeon HD 6870 for another year and have slower performance but a much quieter environment. The RX 480 I eventually upgraded to was a much better choice.

Looking forward to the "5 Worst Matrox GPUs" article! Never had a bad one of those.

 

[Tac 25]

We'd really hate for AMD to forget how to make good GPUs, so here's how AMD made five really awful ones.

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

well, this enlightening. Did not know the 6500xt is that bad. Won't be recommending it to friends looking for cheap gpu.

 

[Amdlova]

well, this enlightening. Did not know the 6500xt is that bad. Won't be recommending it to friends looking for cheap gpu.

If your friends don't have pci 4.0 system will be bad... the rx7600 and 4060 4060ti suffer too. The cheap option today is the 6650xt or the 6700xt for old machines

 

[bit_user]

Looking forward to the "5 Worst Matrox GPUs" article! Never had a bad one of those.

The Matrox Millenium and Millenium II were awesome at GUI acceleration. They had some level of triangle acceleration, but I never saw a good demo of their limited 3D capabilities, beyond the WinNT OpenGL screen savers.

The Matrox Mystique, on the other hand, was often derided as the Matrox Mistake. Pretty much a disaster. Its cards like that which are the reason Matrox is barely a shadow of its former self.

 

[bit_user]

well, this enlightening. Did not know the 6500xt is that bad. Won't be recommending it to friends looking for cheap gpu.

It has a couple big caveats, but still could be recommended at the right price. The PCIe x4 interface is mainly an issue if you game with the quality or resolution turned up too high for everything to fit it on-board memory. Once it has to start paging out to system memory, that's when performance tanks.

Other than that, its downsides are just:

• 4 GB
• no AV1 acceleration
• only 2 display outputs

Could still be usable for 1080p gaming and 1-2 monitor setups.

If your friends don't have pci 4.0 system will be bad...

Every time I've seen someone try to demonstrate what a problem it is, it's always because they were running hi-res textures or something similarly dumb for that card. As long as you work within its limitations, it can be a viable option for entry-level.

 

[hannibal]

So there will be 5 worst Intel GPUs coming… can be interesting list!
🤣

 

[usertests]

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.

I don't think "bad price" is a good enough reason to get on one of these lists, especially in the case of 7600/7700 XT/7800 XT where AMD is making a decent margin and can easily lower the price in response to competition. Folks will love the 7700 XT when it's $350 and below, as it's about 20-25% faster than the well-regarded 6700 XT.

6500 XT clearly belongs because of the design choices behind it, not the price. GT 1030 DDR4 that someone mentioned might be a good pick for the Nvidia side.

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.

6500 XT will age poorly, but it can deliver acceptable 1080p performance in many games, and it was the right purchase for some people at various times. In particular I remember it going down to $100 with a free game in late 2022.

Intel should get a 5 Worst GPUs list that consists of 5/6 of its Arc lineup. 😉

 

[little_me]

I will say that I think most in the list seemed to be accurate except... R9 290X
I had that card.
I chose it over 970 due to it being 150eur cheaper than 970, so yeah, about same performance, bigger power draw but... performance gain was not worth that 150.
(I think prices were like 700 vs 850eur)

Situations outside MSRP and US can change whole board making a board that in unattractive only due to price possibly a good choice.

Used it until upgrading to RTX2070FE which I still have in use.

 

[Neilbob]

The Matrox Mystique, on the other hand, was often derided as the Matrox Mistake. Pretty much a disaster. Its cards like that which are the reason Matrox is barely a shadow of its former self.

I thought it was the Parhelia that was the nail in the coffin, and the Mystique was okay. Though I am admittedly very hazy on this, I definitely, maybe, possibly remember quite the hype for this one, particularly the AA capabilities that were supposed to steamroll all over Nvidia and ATI.

 

[spongiemaster]

I thought it was the Parhelia that was the nail in the coffin, and the Mystique was okay. Though I am admittedly very hazy on this, I definitely, maybe, possibly remember quite the hype for this one, particularly the AA capabilities that were supposed to steamroll all over Nvidia and ATI.

Parhelia was Matrox's last attempt at a high end gaming GPU. The image quality was top notch, as it always was with Matrox cards, but the performance was not nearly good enough. Mystique was an unremarkable midrange card.

 

[1_rick]

"Overclocking the HBM was also totally locked down, which chaffed against that "overclocker's dream" statement even more."

Chafed, not chaffed. Chafing means "To wear away or irritate by rubbing or friction." Chaff is the stuff tanks and planes eject to confuse missiles.

 

[COLGeek]

Article suggestion: The most obscure GPUs of all time

The Matrox discussion above reminded me of old-school offerings from VIA, SIS, and even early Intel devices. Many don't remember AGP, but some of us do.

 

[Amdlova]

Trident 3d image 9750 first true 3d and 2d (marketing)
Have one of these with the 3dfx voodoo 2 old times
Agp on that age is a nightmare 2x 4x 8x... ended with a bunch of motherboard with the agp slot who catches fire because loose connection

 

[tjvaldez01]

So one day we have a video of Nvidia touting its "500" games with dlss, then the following day we get "5 WORST AMD CARDS OF ALL TIME!"

yea this isn't sus at all.... this kind of behaviour specifically makes me WANT to get an amd gpu next upgrade...

Actually, the NVIDIA headline is 500 Games and Apps. So, not sus at all.....as long as they do the Worst NVIDIA GPU article too.

 

[bit_user]

Many don't remember AGP, but some of us do.

I bought a Pentium 4, right at the transition from Socet 478 to LGA-775. The latter sure had some longevity, as Intel would later reuse it for Core 2, IIRC.

Well, my silly self decided to go with the "tried and true" socket 478 option, largely because PCIe was so new and I didn't fully trust that all of the bugs and kinks would've been worked out. One sort of upside was it still used DDR, not DDR2 - which initially had more latency but not much more performance. Of course, that meant I was stuck at AGP 8x.

I went through 3 GPUs in that system - or 4, if you count the ATI X1650 which I pulled out for excessive fan noise. I started with the 9600 Pro, then some issue with dual 1080p monitors in Linux forced me to upgrade to X1350. After that, the aborted X1650 upgrade in search of a little more performance. Ultimately, finished on the HD 4650 - but sadly, must've been one of the slower-memory versions. At this point, AGP was really restricting my GPU selection.

First GPU in my next system (Sandybridge) was a HD 7870. It was XFX-made and sounded like a lawn mower, when stressed by something like 3D Mark Firestrike or Furmark. I don't really game, though. So, I kept it until my EVGA GTX 980 Ti which pulled up to 100 W more under load - and the 2-fan, 2-slot EVGA card turned out to be a revelation in how much quieter an air-cooled flagship GPU could be!

 

[Order 66]

Article suggestion: The most obscure GPUs of all time

The Matrox discussion above reminded me of old-school offerings from VIA, SIS, and even early Intel devices. Many don't remember AGP, but some of us do.

Yes, I would love this as I was very young or not alive when these GPUs were released, and i would love to see an article about it.