AMD - What can they do to improve?

setter · 10 Mar 2015 at 18:57

SiDeards73 said:
Great responses so far folks. Seems like most of us are of the same opinion. Part of me wishes AMD would ditch either GPU or cpu to focus on just one and become great at It, however lack of competition in the market for either would be a disaster.

Agreed, we need them to remain competitive. On the gpu front i still think theyre doing very well, good range to cater for all budgets/needs. Just a few niggles that ive mentioned previously are my only gripes.

However, on the cpu front they are struggling a bit, finding it hard to compete with intels mainstream. Which is due for another boost shortly with the upcoming 14nm 65w tdp broadwell k chips, then followed by skylake with ddr4. The former is looking to be pretty impressive so far.

elmuzzy66. · 10 Mar 2015 at 18:57

AMD are one of those conundrums. They have less R&D than NVidia, have been releasing cards that are as fast or faster in some cases than NV. The cards have been cheaper and with up to 6 free games and yet lost market share. They really need to shake off the value image and market themselves much better.

Dave2150 · 10 Mar 2015 at 18:59

Final8y said:
If they drop the GPU side then you are only left with NV, if they drop the CPU side then you are only left with Intel, so no dropping one side is not a good idea.

Its the sum of all AMD parts that keeping them going and keeping Intel and NV in check to some degree.

In past years they have been good at keeping Intel and NVIDIA in check.

However, on the CPU side of things Intel have almost completely annihilated AMD. AMD only competes for the ultra budget builds now. For mid range, high end and enthusiast, there's only one sensible option, Intel. This will only get worse with Broadwell and Skylake coming out this year, with no new CPU for AMD this year.

On the GPU side of things, it's not so bleak yet, though with the recent market share gain of NVIDIA, things are starting to turn sour. Gamework enabled games will mean that even if AMD have a highly competitive GPU, they'll still loose in games. I don't see a good future for AMD's GPU's either, though a better future than their CPU's for sure.

setter · 10 Mar 2015 at 19:06

elmuzzy66. said:
AMD are one of those conundrums. They have less R&D than NVidia, have been releasing cards that are as fast or faster in some cases than NV.

This i find very impressive, how well they do with such limitations on R&D, kudos to them.

J.D · 10 Mar 2015 at 19:11

AMD being in both PS4 and XBOX1 can't be a bad thing either I'd imagine.

Final8y · 10 Mar 2015 at 19:12

Dave2150 said:
In past years they have been good at keeping Intel and NVIDIA in check.

However, on the CPU side of things Intel have almost completely annihilated AMD. AMD only competes for the ultra budget builds now. For mid range, high end and enthusiast, there's only one sensible option, Intel. This will only get worse with Broadwell and Skylake coming out this year, with no new CPU for AMD this year.

On the GPU side of things, it's not so bleak yet, though with the recent market share gain of NVIDIA, things are starting to turn sour. Gamework enabled games will mean that even if AMD have a highly competitive GPU, they'll still loose in games. I don't see a good future for AMD's GPU's either, though a better future than their CPU's for sure.

There is virtually nothing in gameworks that has not been used for years already, shadow technique and AA modes, physx/Apex..ect, that can only be used with NV card for years, its just a renaming of the various tech and if that tech could not doom AMD before even when they didn't have anything to compete with like gaming evolved so it will not doom them now.

The biggest game changing noticeable aspects of gameworks is physx/Apex (been around for a long time now) and the majority of gameworks dont have GPU physx/Apex.
It just shows the power of marketing if you thought this was all new.

If anything happens to AMD, gameworks will having nothing to do with it.

RanxZy · 10 Mar 2015 at 19:27

It's a funny coincidence that crossfire profiles are almost impossible to make for these NVIDIA sponsored Gameworks titles :rolleyes:

setter · 10 Mar 2015 at 19:30

Ubisoft titles with gameworks features dont work that well on nvidia cards either.

whyscotty · 10 Mar 2015 at 19:32

setter said:
Ubisoft titles with gameworks features dont work that well on nvidia cards either.

Ian Evey · 10 Mar 2015 at 19:37

If amd gets the next flagship card fast enough with a decent amount of vram then i think they will have answered the ops question.

They dont need to do much at all.

pastymuncher · 10 Mar 2015 at 19:41

They really need to get on top of power efficiency and heat before i will consider them again.

chaparral · 10 Mar 2015 at 19:44

Zethor said:
Currently, Nvidia is the champion and AMD is the challenger. To take the belt, it's not enough to be the champ's equal, you need to knock him out and that's exactly what AMD needs to do with their new cards.

AMD have done that a few times before but I don't think they have managed to stay the champ for long enough...

I don't think it would be that easy for AMD as Nvidia seems have a lot more spare cash to throw at there GPU's..

Trevonn · 10 Mar 2015 at 19:50

1. Abandon Raptr

2. Greatly expand driver team

3. Add MSI afterburner style overlay to CCC with screenshotting and video recording

4. Develop a tool with the same feature set as Nvidia Inspector/RadeonPro

5. Print $$$

philo-sofa · 10 Mar 2015 at 19:54

eddyr said:
They are making a push into the pro/supercomputing market and seem to be making some inroads there I believe, which is part of the point to GCN as well as their long-term APU coprocessor goals.

Long term APU coprocessing is a biggie actually, but if their GPUs could realise the same benefits Nvidia did when they went from the '480 to the '580, I would say it's time to put a fork in the design road of discrete GPUs.

Final8y · 10 Mar 2015 at 19:56

Trevonn said:
1. Abandon Raptr

2. Add MSI afterburner style overlay to CCC with screenshotting and video recording.

3. Develop a tool with the same feature set as Nvidia Inspector/RadeonPro

4. Print $$$

OMG so such fail.

AMD dont make Raptr they only sponsor it.

Why should AMD Develop a tool with the same feature set as Nvidia Inspector/RadeonPro when NV dont even do that, Nvidia Inspector is not made or even sponsored by NV.

Trevonn · 10 Mar 2015 at 20:02

Final8y said:
OMG so such fail.

AMD dont make Raptr they only sponsor it.

Why should AMD Develop a tool with the same feature set as Nvidia Inspector/RadeonPro when NV dont even do that, Nvidia Inspector is not made or even sponsored by NV.

Abandon the sponsership and develop a tool in house instead of relying on rubbish third party developers to expose features you built into your own cards.

It doens't matter whether Nvidia makes it or not it's a great tool that is available to Nvidia user's. We Radeon user's could do with something like that. RadeonPro was good but it was abandoned long ago.

Final8y · 10 Mar 2015 at 20:06

Trevonn said:
Abandon the sponsership and develop a tool in house instead of relying on rubbish third party developers to expose features you built into your own cards.

It doens't matter whether Nvidia makes it or not it's a great tool that is available to Nvidia user's. We Radeon user's could do with something like that. RadeonPro was good but it was abandoned long ago.

Yes its a great tool and if the developer stops developing it like RadeonPro then you a you go without again and NV will not develop such a tool for users no matter how much you asked so AMD should not be expected to develop such a tool because RadeonPro is no longer updated.

You will not get such tools directly from NV or AMD period.

Trevonn · 10 Mar 2015 at 20:10

Final8y said:
Yes its a great tool and if the developer stops developing it like RadeonPro then you a you go without again and NV will not develop such a tool for users no matter how much you asked so AMD should not be expected to develop such a tool because RadeonPro is no longer updated.

You will not get such tool directly from NV or AMD period.

The thread asked "What can they do to improve?". I made a suggestion that would benefit power users like me who like to tinker with tripple buffering, vsync and all that kinda stuff.

Final8y · 10 Mar 2015 at 20:14

Trevonn said:
The thread asked "What can they do to improve?". I made a suggestion that would benefit power users like me who like to tinker with tripple buffering, vsync and all that kinda stuff.

Those suggestion have been answered before and the answer was no and for good reason, the only thing that may change is Vsync which would have to be set non globally on a game by game bases.

triss · 10 Mar 2015 at 20:15

I'd like to see a shadowplay equivalent built into CCC,, (yes i know i can install other bloat to do it), I'd like monthly drivers and tbh thats about it. Most things they actually do pretty well