- AMD on Wednesday unveiled Radeon VII, the first 7-nanometer gaming graphics card available to consumers.
- Right after AMD's announcement, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang reportedly slammed the new chip, saying its "performance is lousy."
- Nvidia recently unveiled GeForce RTX 2060, the company's cheapest graphics card that can provide ray tracing.
- AMD CEO Lisa Su fired back, saying AMD isn't all in on ray tracing just yet simply because other parts of the ecosystem are not ready.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang slammed rival AMD's first 7-nanometer gaming graphics card right after it was unveiled.
Huang described the performance of AMD's latest Radeon VII graphics processing unit as "lousy," according to Gizmodo, which was at the roundtable attended by media outlets. AMD says the new chip can provide up to 36% higher performance than its previous top-of-the-line graphics cards.
Huang described the announcement as "underwhelming" and said Nvidia's RTX 2080 would "crush" the Radeon VII in benchmarks.
On Sunday, Nvidia said it was bringing its RTX 2080 graphics processing unit to gaming laptops and also introduced the GeForce RTX 2060, its cheapest graphics card that can provide ray tracing, a niche technology that it has been touting in its GPUs. Ray tracing allows for more cinematic and realistic visuals.
AMD's latest GPUs do not support ray tracing, and will cost $699 when they're available February 7. For comparison, Nvidia's RTX 2060 sports a starting price of $346. Its top GPUs cost at least $1,000.
AMD CEO Lisa Su responded to Huang's comments, suggesting he probably hasn't seen the new GPU before revealing why AMD isn't all in on ray tracing just yet.
"The consumer doesn't see a lot of benefit today because the other parts of the ecosystem are not ready," She said, according to Gizmodo. "I think by the time we talk more about ray tracing the consumer's gonna see the benefit."
And analysts have also noted Nvidia's struggles with its transition to ray-tracing chips.
"When you turn on the ray tracing, it affects the overall performance of the GPU pretty substantially," Christopher Rolland, a semiconductor analyst at Susquehanna International Group recently told Markets Insider.
"Nvidia promises people real-time ray tracing, but you practically can't use it. That's definitely a disappointment."
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