Lets have a look at the last few graphics card launches then:
1.)R9 290/290X - subpar stock cooler which then had a stupid quiet mode which Nvidia managed to exploit to their advantage.Bad first impression.
2.)R9 285 - AMD seeded cards out for review,but most of them were of one model which had excessive power consumption and regressed in performance/watt and this is when Nvidia had launched Maxwell that year.Bad first impression.
3.)R9 390/390X - went fine but was a rebrand and helped by Nvidia PR and their own goal
5.)R9 380/R9 380X - went fine but was a rebrand
6.)R9 295X2 - generally OKish but issue of whether card overdrew power from certain connectors IIRC but the Nvidia equivalent failed badly so a moot point.
7.)AMD Fury X - an utter shambles with poor cooler QC.Bad first impression. You could barely get cards for a month so there was no need to panic rush it out.
8.)Radeon Pro Duo - seemed OK
9.)RX480 - rubbish stock cooler despite AMD calling it premium and had the power draw bug from the PCI-E slot. Nvidia managed to get aftermarket GTX1060 cards out before aftermarket RX480 ones. Hence Nvidia managed to steal some thunder from the launch.
10.)RX470 launch - OK but price was too near RX480. GTX1060 3GB looked faster at launch and so many people have still bought the latter despite its obvious weakness.
11.)RX460 - launch OK but was more cut down than expected and it meant an easy victory for the GTX1050 two months later. Cards in prebuilds and laptops seemed to use the fully enabled chip.
12.)RX580/RX570 - decent enough performance and no crap stock cooler but was a rebrand but performance/watt got worse
13.)RX560 - quite competent but should have been what the RX460 was and is essentially based on a older and proven chip
14.)Vega - they launch a prosumer card with drivers which are not upto scratch and it looks no better than a GTX1080,so in the end anyone looking at one might just get a Titan Xp instead
Outside the rebrands its a common theme,AMD rush half finished cards out,which look meh during the first reviews,and when these cards are fixed they are solid,but by that time its too late as those old reviews are still up and first impressions count.
Then you add the whole Ryzen launch - I mean loads of issues ,and that wouldn't be as bad a problem as the fact that for the first month you could barely get motherboards.
Nothing to do with confirmation bias - Intel has multiple platforms on the get-go so can get away with the odd issue here and there,and AMD does not so half the reviews which were slating gaming performance was since AMD pushed it out too early and the motherboards were in a crap state. Nvidia also by extension has more mindshare so even if they have the odd issue,the fact is they have plenty of solid launches behind them,so people gloss over it.
With AMD its becoming a habit - look at launches like the HD4000 and HD5000 series - performance was there from day one,and even if the HD5000 series did have some slight issues,they launched six months before Nvidia so could get away with it. These are all ATI launches - look at the 9700 PRO. I can still remember them launching months before Nvidia and it was near perfect in hardware and even if Nvidia was considered to have "better drivers" back then,the performance,power consumption and even performance/watt was there.
I mean I have a GTX1080 FE,and people had criticisms of the cooler on that,yet its probably the best blower cooler I have used ever,and I have it in a mini-ITX rig.
It's in a box in a cupboard now as I bought a 650 watt model a couple of months back which is now in my PC, I'm sure that'll be plenty but if not I can swap them around easily enough.
