The DirectX 11 era
Technology waits for no one and much has changed since 2008, especially the introduction of DirectX 11,11.1 giving better Multithreaded support and most importantly the support for Shader core 5.0 giving stunning graphics and visuals.
But in 2007 another genre of HD GPU's was introduced by INTEL ,the INTEL HD Graphics .This gave the buyer a GPU with the CPU purchased.This move by INTEL started clawing into the revenues of the low end graphics markets of the companies.
Now they had to compete with this division as well howerver insignificant the market share.
AMD being a CPU/GPU manufacturer adapted easily introducing its APU's (acronym for ACCLERATED PROCESSING UNIT) having graphic horsepower equal to the medium range graphic solutions at a fraction of its price.
This had a huge impact on the graphics industry and it led to a exponential increase in the performance of graphic cards with every iteration and also a huge drop in the prices.
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
The present features the Radeon 7000,8000 series take on the GeForce 600,700 series in a close battle,here AMD still following its maximum "Bang for the Buck" strategy gives better performance for a lower cost but Nvidia's competetive pricing and better Power Management and software support keeps the market from swinging neither way.
AMD's present GCN(Graphic Core Next) technology has the best colour reproduction in the market and NVIDIA's FERMI Architecture has the best detailing.
The near Future will have Nvidia's MAXWELL Architecture lock its horns with AMD's GCN 2.0 Technology.
Nvidia's MAXWELL is said to have an Integrated ARM CPU to assist it and make it more autonomous.
IT is Impossible to predict what the Graphics Technology holds for us in the Future but we can be sure of one thing the AMD vs NVIDIA talk will never have a decisive winner.