Why Every New GPU Looks the Same
If you have ever browsed through pages of graphics cards from different brands and thought they all looked and performed almost the same, you are not imagining it. According to Sapphire's North America PR representative and PC gaming evangelist Edward Crisler, there is a reason behind this sameness and it starts with the GPU makers themselves.
Crisler shared some unusually honest insights on the Hardware Unboxed podcast, where he and host Tim Schiesser talked about modern gaming graphics cards, the AMD RDNA 4 generation, VRAM decisions, Nvidia's 12VHPWR power connector problems, and how much freedom board partners really have.
What came through clearly is that companies like Sapphire, XFX, and PowerColor are far more restricted than many gamers might expect. They are not simply free to take a GPU chip and go wild with performance and design.
How GPU Makers Limit Board Partners
One of the most interesting comments from Crisler was his wish that AMD and Nvidia would "get out of the way" and let partners truly design their own cards.
In his words, the ideal situation would be simple. The chip maker would provide:
- The GPU itself
- The compatible memory (VRAM)
- The basic requirements for power delivery and board design
Then they would let partners build whatever they wanted around that. Higher clocks, different VRAM amounts, and more creative board designs could all create real differences between brands.
In reality, Crisler says, that is not how it works. GPU vendors place strict limits on what add in board partners can do, especially around things like clock speeds, power limits, and sometimes memory configurations. The result is that when you compare, for example, different models of an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, the performance gap is tiny.
Crisler claims that from the slowest 9070 XT to the fastest, you are only looking at around one and a half to two percent difference in performance. That is well within the margin of error for most benchmarks. In other words, when you stay within the same GPU model, performance between brands is almost irrelevant.
This also lines up with what reviewers regularly see. Even heavily overclocked "OC edition" cards rarely offer more than a couple of percent improvement over reference or basic models.
What Actually Makes One Graphics Card Better Than Another
If performance is usually the same, what does a company like Sapphire actually focus on to stand out in such a tight space?
Crisler explains that Sapphire spends most of its time and effort on three main areas:
- PCB design The layout of the board, power delivery, and electrical design
- Cooler design Heatsinks, heatpipes, fan configuration, and shroud design
- Noise levels Aiming for quiet operation under gaming load
These are the things that partners are still able to tune and improve. Better VRMs, more effective and quieter coolers, and a thoughtful PCB layout can all make a difference to the user experience, even if the frame rate only changes by a fraction of a percent.
Crisler also highlights other elements that matter but are hard to measure in a simple benchmark chart:
- VRM quality which can impact long term reliability and stability
- Thermal behavior how hot the GPU and memory actually run
- Customer support and warranty when something goes wrong, some brands are much easier to deal with than others
These details are very important for gamers, especially those planning to keep a card for several years, but they do not always show up clearly in reviews that focus narrowly on average FPS.
Why GPU Makers Enforce Consistency
From the GPU vendor's point of view, there is a clear reason for these restrictions. Companies like AMD want every product that carries their chip and branding to offer a consistent experience. If one partner pushed their cards to run far faster but also much hotter, noisier, and less stable, it could damage Radeon’s reputation overall.
So they lock down clock ranges, power limits, and other parameters to keep every Radeon card within a narrow performance and behavior envelope. That way, no partner can create a wildly different product that might cause huge issues for some users.
The downside for gamers is that this also means very little true differentiation between brands at the same GPU tier. For most models you can buy a Sapphire, XFX, or PowerColor version of the same chip and see almost identical frame rates in games. In many cases it makes sense to simply buy the cheapest model from a reputable brand and pay attention to cooler quality and noise rather than raw performance claims.
There is another factor holding things back. Profit margins on midrange and lower priced GPUs are often quite small, especially under around 600 dollars. That leaves little room for partners to invest in exotic designs or risky experiments that could make their cards stand out more.
What This Means For Your Next GPU Upgrade
Putting it all together, Crisler's comments paint a clear picture of today’s graphics card market:
- Within the same GPU model, performance between brands is usually almost identical
- Partners are heavily constrained by AMD and Nvidia on clocks and power limits
- Real differences come from cooler design, noise, build quality, and support
- Review benchmarks will rarely show more than a tiny FPS gap between models of the same chip
For gamers planning a new GPU purchase, this changes where you should focus your attention. Instead of obsessing over claims of higher factory overclocks, it is often smarter to look at:
- Temperature and noise measurements in reviews
- Build quality of the cooler and PCB
- Brand reputation for support and warranty handling
- Actual price versus other cards using the same GPU
As Crisler suggests, interviews where industry reps speak openly about these limitations can actually build trust. When you know that a Sapphire RX 9070 XT and a rival’s 9070 XT will perform almost the same in games, you can focus on the things that genuinely affect your day to day experience: how cool, how quiet, and how reliable your card will be over years of gaming.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/give-us-the-chip-give-us-the-ram-let-us-have-our-fun-let-us-go-nuts-sapphires-pc-gaming-evangelist-wants-amd-to-get-out-of-the-way-when-it-comes-to-designing-graphics-cards/
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