AMD investing heavily to "win the graphics battle" next year

Gregster · 12 Nov 2015 at 13:45

AMD has been going through a challenging time, clearly illustrated by its most recent set of quarterly results, headlined by a $197 million loss. That result marked AMD's fourth straight quarter of losses. At the time of those results, just a under a month ago, AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su released an upbeat statement highlighting revenue growth trends, a focus upon company strengths, and upon long term goals.

Now another senior AMD exec is heralding a turnaround, a confident return to profitability for AMD. AMD's EMEA component sales manager Neil Spicer spoke to CRN yesterday, echoing the CEO's drum beat of sticking to company strengths, remaining true to its 'core ethos'.

AMD's EMEA component sales manager Neil Spicer

"I believe we are working with exactly the right customers, and over the last few years we have become much simpler to execute and do business with," said Spicer. Looking forward Spicer said that AMD has to focus on AMD's historical strengths of graphics and in making chips that are attractive enough to be included in the Windows 10 upgrade cycle.

Winning the graphics battle

AMD is going to "invest heavily," asserted Spicer with the purpose of "winning the graphics battle with gaming" and more. The next-generation Zen processor was touched upon in the CRN interview. This processor will help AMD compete in the high end desktop and server markets, thought Spicer.

AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su holds aloft a Radeon R9 Fury X2

Overall it looks like AMD has confidently set sail to deliver on its promises in 2016. Let's just hope it can reach safe harbour by returning to profitability and secure its future, and the future of competition, in the PC CPU and GPU markets.

http://hexus.net/business/news/components/87965-amd-investing-heavily-win-graphics-battle-next-year/

Shots fired!!!

Bring it on I say and a movie quote "Let them fight"

pgi947 · 12 Nov 2015 at 13:47

Less mouth more action.

Josh · 12 Nov 2015 at 13:49

Wasn't that what the Fury was supposed to be?

AMD need to deliver this time, we need more competition.

ossieclap · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:00

The problem that you may have though is that, even if they release a killer card next year: Can they supply enough in time for when they go to market? Retailers will raise prices when they can't meet demand again.

I hope that they can...the market share enjoyed by the green team cannot be healthy.

andybird123 · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:08

ossieclap said:
The problem that you may have though is that, even if they release a killer card next year: Can they supply enough in time for when they go to market? Retailers will raise prices when they can't meet demand again.

I hope that they can...the market share enjoyed by the green team cannot be healthy.

they have been blaming HBM related supply issues for the short fall... in that respect any problems with HBM next year will be felt by both sides if they still exist by then

you would hope that knowing they need start putting together several million cards for Nvidia, that that work will mean they are ready to put together a couple of million for AMD as well

mnc fear · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:11

I think its actually looking quite exciting for AMD

There will be both a CPU & GPU lineup in 14nm

Its going to be great for us consumers anyway

RavenXXX2 · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:14

Overclockers dream did they not say?

LoadsaMoney · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:17

AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su holds aloft a Radeon R9 Fury X2

*chuckles*

MooMoo444 · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:17

Heart says I hope so but brain says I doubt it. Nvidia have gotten away with ridiculous pricing the last couple of years due to not having any competition at high end.

D.P. · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:17

Lets see what happens, fingers crossed in general for AMD. 2016 is going to be an important year for them, it is paramount they stop the trend of quarter on quarter losses.They will need to be very healthy by 2019 when they have to start paying back the mega loans or it chapter 7 bankruptcy time.

Looking forward to ZEN more than their GPUs though.

Confused Stu · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:28

I know there are those who will always buy Nvidia, and there are those who will always buy AMD, irrespective of what the other side can offer on price/performance/features but I really do hope AMD can pull something out of the bag next year to capture the hearts and wallets of those people in the middle. It's not good for us if either company gets too far ahead - as has been seen with the minimal improvements in CPU performance at any given price point over the past five years or so of Intel dominance.

When Maxwell launched in 2014, it gave Nvidia headlines that have carried it through 2015 on a wave, despite the older AMD cards (290/X, 390/X) actually giving similar performance for the same price. AMD's launch of the Fury line should have done the same for AMD in the latter part of 2015, but due to many factors such as availability, they have not so AMD have not recovered any of the ground they lost earlier in the year. Fingers crossed 2016 is a good year for AMD and brings back a level of parity in GPU sales as this can only be a good thing for us customers looking for our graphics fix.

AWPC · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:38

Only way AMD will win anything is if Nvidia let them & or buy the company

Howling · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:46

Even if AMD do "win", they'll not win. Tbh, they have the med and low tiers won, heck you can even say they've got high tier won -- it's the top tier that nVidia win on, but nVidia have the whole market won somehow. It's not about the card quality it's about the name as to who wins - bring back 3dfx D:

nashathedog · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:46

andybird123 said:
they have been blaming HBM related supply issues for the short fall... in that respect any problems with HBM next year will be felt by both sides if they still exist by then

Which is why Nvidia have said they are also using this new type of gddr5. I imagine they'll only have HBM in there most expensive cards and the other stuff for the mass produced models.

Howling said:
Even if AMD do "win", they'll not win. Tbh, they have the med and low tiers won, heck you can even say they've got high tier won -- it's the top tier that nVidia win on, but nVidia have the whole market won somehow. It's not about the card quality it's about the name as to who wins - bring back 3dfx D:

The problem is the inconsistency in how well the cards run.
Like someone said the thing is we was sat here expecting Fiji to be something it wasn't for AMD and they priced it like they did due to not wanting to be seen as the cheaper option while not delivering a higher quality product. Software is an important part of the package and we get let down the same as we did before, Poor crossfire support, lack of driver releases. Today's example is Fallout 4 with the 970 sitting pretty with the 390x. Yes the game runs fine (It does for me with my Fury) but it needs to be seen to do so while holding it's own against the competition.
There's always excuses why we don't have day one optimizations, I'm sure that now it'll be because there working on Crimson, last time it was because they was busy with the 300 series cards. Whatever the reason it is not good enough, especially if you are pricing yourself as not being a cheaper option. If it's not going to be a cheaper option it needs to have better support.

maonayze · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:51

Well I hope they have a good launch for those products....they certainly need to have a positive one and not drop the ball as they have done too many times recently.

Very exciting times for both AMD and Nvidia with the full fat DX12 cards in the next 6 months (I hope so anyway). Without all of this what would we have to argue about.

TheRealDeal · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:52

MooMoo444 said:
Heart says I hope so but brain says I doubt it. Nvidia have gotten away with ridiculous pricing the last couple of years due to not having any competition at high end.

The competition has been pretty good tbh it's just not been enough to sway buyers. We have had 7970 v gtx680, 290x v 780ti and Fury X v 980ti. The only card there that i would pick over the AMD variant is the 980ti.

Even if we look at dual cards AMD's variant is the better card ie. 7990 v gtx690 and 295x2 v Titan Z.

The way the market is going you would think AMD had some real stinkers on the market but the truth is they have had some seriously good cards on the market over the years and still there sales are dwindling.

KillBoY_UK · 12 Nov 2015 at 14:55

Howling said:
Even if AMD do "win", they'll not win. Tbh, they have the med and low tiers won, heck you can even say they've got high tier won -- it's the top tier that nVidia win on, but nVidia have the whole market won somehow. It's not about the card quality it's about the name as to who wins - bring back 3dfx D:

16bit textures (well until VSA-100) and lack of features no thank you

.

But the numbers from the ES Rampage boards on Alpha drivers would blew everything away for what would have been a couple of generations if the dam thing got released.

LoadsaMoney · 12 Nov 2015 at 15:02

Heres to them getting back in it

Marine-RX179 · 12 Nov 2015 at 15:03

"Winning graphic battle" and "shifting more cards" and "making more profit per sales" mean different things though. Take 970 vs 390 for example, even if the sales were 50/50, Nvidia still win as a business as they make greater profit margin per card sales due to lower costs for making the card.

AMD is still going to be stuck in the same old quicksand and won't be able to get out of it

D.P. · 12 Nov 2015 at 15:03

Howling said:
Even if AMD do "win", they'll not win. Tbh, they have the med and low tiers won, heck you can even say they've got high tier won -- it's the top tier that nVidia win on, but nVidia have the whole market won somehow. It's not about the card quality it's about the name as to who wins - bring back 3dfx D:

Depends on how you define "win".

Too many people get caught up in the average FPS per $, which is fairly pointless because if you really cared that much everyone would be buying 950 type cards.

There is much more to a grpahcis card than being 3% faster at some resoluton that a tiny fraction of people play at. More important is software support, driver, Multi-GPU profiles, customer support, developer interaction, additional features like shadow play, integration of technologies like GPU-physX, having a true plug and play experience, liux support, , having technologies liek GSYNC and VSR come to market quickly with strong intial support etc.

Nvidia has historically always been strong at these things, AMD/ATI has historically always played second fiddle. The cheap and cheerful brand, a good card without the frills where you might have to poke around with drivers or game INI files, or be patient waiting 6 months for good driver improvements so the card really shines. You have to listen to AMD's promises about "its ready when its ready" while nvidia users enjoy the technologies and toys for months before hand.

There are of course plenty of counter examples but on average Nvidia users just get a better overall experience IMO. On average day particular game is more likely o work OK on NVida on release day, or have exclusive features, or better SLI. A new technology like 3D or Gsync or VSr will more likely just work on nvidia early on.

people like that, and until they get a bad experience or some disruption technology comes about then they are less liekly to change. AMD need to concentrate on the overall customer experience, they need to be fighting GameWorks hard and throw more resources at developers, they need to get their software support equal to Nvidia.

AMD definitely need to stop their whole "little underdog, so innocent, we are a charity, nvidia kills puppies" PR campaign. It only works for Fanboys. Anyone unbiased sees through the crud and buys the cards that works for them.