I figured it would be fun chatting about this, Nvidia is usually the very standard go to these days and I can see why, you slot it in it's all very straightforward and pretty much guaranteed to work for the most part. Back in the day I would be going with AMD graphics cards because that's the budget option but I am one of those people who failed the hardware lottery multiple times when it came to AMD and I've had nothing but trouble with them.
Would you recommend AMD cards in 2024? Their software has certainly gotten much better and it's not weird login required crap like GeForce Experience. I've been pondering if I ever get some kind of rendering setup which hardware would be a good idea to go with.
I've no strong feelings about AMD Vs nvidia, other than what you have roughly lined out.
I've heard rumblings from other more hardcore hardware benchmark nerds that AMD don't seem to have any real desire to push for more market share in the discrete desktop GPU market anymore, and are instead focussing more on their integrated GPUs in other third party devices. Which if they do slowly abandon the desktop GPU market you can expect support for them to only get worse as time goes on.
But I will say if you're worried about the hardware lottery, don't get an ASUS manufactured card currently. Their policies have shifted in the last couple years and now their idea of an RMA repair is either to straight up lie to you and charge for the pleasure, or telling you to shove the defective hardware up your ass and get fucked.
AMD got burnt on being competitive in pricing back then (like 10-15 years ago), leaving lots of money on the table.. but back then gaming GPU were not really a hot commodity.
AMD could've gambled during crypto and even now during AI craze to gain market share. they gained SOME, like 5% increase. the problem is that most things are designed with nvidia in mind because they still make up the super majority of the market share, so that is also kinda killing AMD. I am not surprised if AMD market share doesn't grow much more anymore.
The 7900xtx is between a 4080 and 4090 in power, and started out 200 dollars cheaper than a 4080 and trade blows with the 4090 in rasterization. i think a lot of people got the 7900xtx. the lower tier cards, i think people get nvidia over amd because the price difference is just 50ish dollars. people will get nvidia if prices are too similar and the performance is not that much different, even if nvidia is 50 dollars more expensive, maybe even 100 dollars more expensive.
A lot of people thought AMD would be priced super competitive because of "chiplets" for GPU. but most people will still buy nvidia because i think most people think a little ahead like "what if i want to do AI?" or "what if i wanna render?" so they will go with nvidia. or they see all their friends have nvidia.