Poll: Do you think AMD will be able to compete with Nvidia again during the next few years?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

OFC,I am talking more about PC gaming.

Nvidia ATM,seems to forging forward. Volta is out,and we are now starting to see Turing/Ampere prototypes. AMD,OTH still is finding it hard to match Nvidia on performance/watt in many segments,meaning they are loosing out on laptops with regards to dGPU,Vega got delayed,and if it were not for mining,would have been uneconomic to sell at RRP,against cheaper to make Nvidia cards.

Rumours say Raja Koduri wasn't given as much funds as he wanted to make more gaming specific GPUs,as R and D was pushed towards non-gaming segments.

It seems we won't see a new gaming GPU this year from AMD meaning Nvidia will probably push ahead again. Navi apparently is only a midrange chip for release in 2019,which could only mean a high end chip in 2020. Intel also is entering the market in 2020,meaning more compeitition.

So,what do you guys/gal think,will this turn out like after Bulldozer was released,and Intel was reining supreme,where competitors will do the minimum to get sales,and prices will start to increase?? Or do you think AMD might be able to pull something out of the bag(like they did with Ryzen)??

 

[pastymuncher]

I bloody hope they come back and become competitive in all ranges again because if they don't then we are all screwed. Nvidia's prices are already a joke so I dread to think what will happen if they are the only choice. I can't see Intel hitting the ground running and being competitive straight away and aren't their drivers poor anyway?

 

[bru]

Yes AMD will compete again, it is just a matter of how long will it take.

Either AMD will bring the 7nm Vega variant out next year and it will be right up their with the currant 1080ti/next gen 1170 which would kinda put AMD in a similar position that they are in right now.

Or AMD will bring the 7nm Vega variant and it will halve power consumption but not really improve performance that much, leaving AMD battling against the currant 1080/1070 much like they are now, but of course the new NVIDIA 1160 might very well be in th mix by then, at about 1070/ti performance.

Of course we don't know just what NVIDIA will bring to the table either, as a lot of us expected their 11 series to be out by now, well announced anyway.

What will actually happen will probably be some miss mash of any or all of the above points, so we will just have to wait and see.

Either way exciting times ahead.

 

[B1gbeard]

I hope so but It seems as though AMD are not fighting for that top spot and going for the market just under that. I imagine Nvidia could release a couple of new cards before we see something from AMD that could be considered an upgrade on Vega 64 so for the absolute quickest, there won't be any competition. It's constant game of catch-up that they can't win.

 

[AETAaAS]

My feeling is they are not going to compete in the top end but stay at least price competitive in the mid range. That's what its been with Polaris and the refresh. nVidia and AMD seem to go through cycles of forgetting that huge, monolithic designs are a bad idea and Vega is the latest iteration of that. Hopefully AMD pares it back down and builds a solid next gen card for the seemingly evergreen 1080p market with shoulder room for 1440p or high refresh rates.

 

[sideways14a]

Yes definitely.
Amd have had a rough few years and its actually amazing the stuff they did push out was even competing.
But look at Zen, that has taken intel out the back and kick the four X out of there roadmaps. I have no doubt that once AMD gets more development money and a decent process that they will be back to causing nvidia the same grief.

 

[D.P.]

Nvidia's biggest growth market is HPC, around 150% a quarter. Nvidia is putting lots of focus there. The good thing for consumers is there is still a large cross-over between gaming and HPC so although products will diverge slightly there is lots of shared technology and IP. For example, the tensor cores in Volta were primarily designed for deep learning but as it turns out can be very useful for gaming

AMD wants to also make big inroads into HPC but their software stack is just not there.. CUDA is basically the industry standard. Interestingly, AMD is completely free to design their GPUS around CUDA and provide native CUDA support. Although understandable why they woudln;t want to follow someone elses standard without influence. However, If AMD could get a large foothold in the HPC market then they will increase cash-flow and can increase R&D budget for GPUs.

If AMD can;t significantly increase GPU R&D budget then they will really struggle. What happened in the CPU space with intel/Zen is not applicable to GPUs. Intel did become complacent, and also ran into technical issues with new nodes. Nvidia is pushing technology harder and faster than ever before, increasing R&D budget faster than ever, and making rapid progress. As mentioned in the OP, Volta is already old news now and Turing/Ampere are upcoming. Nvidia patents are flowing faster than ever, their R&D department is kicking out some very interesting concepts such as infinite textures and real-time RT. Nvidia occupies a fairly small niche, they are acutely aware of the risks and so are trying very hard to both diversify but cement their technological prowess. Contrary to what some would have you believe, Nvidia is actually under a huge amount of competition, it is just that excludes AMD in the gaming space. Within HPC and deep learning there is fierce competition and lots of risks forcing Nvidia to push R&D ever faster. Therefore, Nvidia is not standing still resting on their laurels whereby AMD can catch up with one big push like Zen. there is a rapidly moving goal post. Every 6 months that asses Nvidia's technology lead in GPU expands.


AMD also needs to change their whole design ethos. They seem very much to design GPUs in a way that they think software developers should write games and expect developers to follow their lead. Nvidia on the other hands designs GPUs around the way game developers actually make games and how APIs are actually used. As we can see, game developers are just not interested in DX12, and Nvidia's front end for DX11 handle current games much better allowing far smaller and cheaper to manufacturer GPUs.

 

[D.P.]

My feeling is they are not going to compete in the top end but stay at least price competitive in the mid range. That's what its been with Polaris and the refresh. nVidia and AMD seem to go through cycles of forgetting that huge, monolithic designs are a bad idea and Vega is the latest iteration of that. Hopefully AMD pares it back down and builds a solid next gen card for the seemingly evergreen 1080p market with shoulder room for 1440p or high refresh rates.

The thing is, having a a high end part that is competitive is very important for marketing. Secondly, Having the very high end part being competitive means you have an architecture that can scale from high to low end performance. This is something AMD has struggled to do recently, with segregated technology at different performance levels, e.g. no low end Vega.

Nvidia doesn't make 1080tis and Titan to make much money, that is just a side effect of having a GPU architecture that can scale high and low. And that becomes important because all the R&D needed to gain that high end performance crown is exactly what will be needed for next generation's mid-range.If parts of the GPU are heavily bottlnecking so you can;t scale upwards, then that is a problem you will have to solve sooner or later anyway. Nvidia is solving these scaling issues sooner, which allwos for much higher performance at the high end.

 

[D.P.]

Yes definitely.
Amd have had a rough few years and its actually amazing the stuff they did push out was even competing.
But look at Zen, that has taken intel out the back and kick the four X out of there roadmaps. I have no doubt that once AMD gets more development money and a decent process that they will be back to causing nvidia the same grief.

As I emntrioend, the CPU/Zen win against Intel is just not that comparable for many reasons, not least Nvidia is charging ahead faster than ever.

 

[0h_no_not_again]

Knowing the time from architectural changes to getting a piece of silicon to market, I'd guess we will be waiting till 2020/21 until AMD are properly competetive. Making changes late in the design lifecycle is prohibitively expensive, so (generally) what is in the pipeline needs to be flushed out before a new design can come through.
One positive thing is that AMD will be using TSMC and GloFo for fabbing, where the GloFo 7nm process is looking excellent, so the battle will be purely on the design of the GPU and drivers.

We may see AMD become more competetive sooner if the VEGA currently broken secret sauce (DSBR, etc) can be easily modified for NAVI to work without significant driver intervention, but I'm not holding my breath. Not for the secret sauce providing big gains or that it will be corrected for NAVI. VEGA sounds like a typical left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing situation, hence the broken features.

 

[Quartz]

OFC,I am talking more about PC gaming.

Nobody (outside AMD) expected the Spanish Inquisition Ryzen to be so good did they?

 

[jigger]

The bigger questions for me though is how long can the gaming end of the graphic market sustain these insane add in board prices and what will consoles offer over the next few years.

 

[D.P.]

The bigger questions for me though is how long can the gaming end of the graphic market sustain these insane add in board prices and what will consoles offer over the next few years.

Considering GPu sales are higher than ever, I think the answer to that is a very, very long time.

it is only a few people on some tech forum whinning that they can't afford the highest high offerings. that has always been the case. You don't see people complaining at car prices because a Ferrari is unaffordable. People on a budget buy a Ford Fiesta and get on with their lives.
Consoles have alwyas been low cost gaming. PC has always been relatively high cost

 

[nashathedog]

Yes,

It may take several years to compete across the range but as long as they're honest with themselves and price products based on performance rather than where they want it to sit compared to the competition they'll only be unable to to compete with the high end Titan chipped cards.
For example, If a card can't compete with a 1080ti it shouldn't be priced like one, especially when Nvidia are purposely pushing prices up due to no competition at that level. So a Vega 56 should cost somewhere in the low £400's and a Vega 64 in the low £500's, That's at most.

 

[Samwell]

OFC,I am talking more about PC gaming.

It's wrong in my opinion to look at the pc gaming market alone, as most games are multisystem games nowadays. Nvidia might have a advantage at the moment and with turing, but amd is dictating the market with the consoles. When the next console gen arrives, the same will happen with Nvs gen as with Kepler. Games will get optimized on AMDs new architecture and nvidia, just as gcn, will have a disadvantage. So even if Nvidias next gens at that time will be better, a shift will occur which should make amd competitive again. Nvidia will then need to change their architecture in a way, which is more similar to amds architecture.

 

[nashathedog]

Considering GPu sales are higher than ever, I think the answer to that is a very, very long time.

it is only a few people on some tech forum whinning that they can't afford the highest high offerings. that has always been the case. You don't see people complaining at car prices because a Ferrari is unaffordable. People on a budget buy a Ford Fiesta and get on with their lives.
Consoles have alwyas been low cost gaming. PC has always been relatively high cost

Are they still higher than ever? I'd guess no.

If they were we wouldn't see such high price drops and we wouldn't see articles claiming insiders have stated there's over stock due to sale slumps. Sales have been on the decline all year. Vega's never been sold out & today is offered for as much as £400 less than it was when sales were booming due to mining. At one point some Vega 64's were priced at £1100 here at OCUK. At the time there was plenty of stock available so it can't be blamed on that. Everyone was trying to take advantage of mining sales and we suffered, and now they're going to suffer as sales are on the decline.

 

[jigger]

Considering GPu sales are higher than ever, I think the answer to that is a very, very long time.

it is only a few people on some tech forum whinning that they can't afford the highest high offerings. that has always been the case. You don't see people complaining at car prices because a Ferrari is unaffordable. People on a budget buy a Ford Fiesta and get on with their lives.
Consoles have alwyas been low cost gaming. PC has always been relatively high cost

Cards have not been getting sold into the gaming market though and that is the distinction. I could afford to build any system I liked, however I understand the value of money and the functions of markets pretty well. The only way these prices could be sustained if AMD and Nvidia focus more of graphics card design to mining cryptography.

 

[D.P.]

Cards have not been getting sold into the gaming market though and that is the distinction. I could afford to build any system I liked, however I understand the value of money and the functions of markets pretty well. The only way these prices could be sustained if AMD and Nvidia focus more of graphics card design to mining cryptography.

No, there are more gamers than ever before. I expect you are just using personal and anecdotal evidence to come to conclusions. A lot fo people on this forum are getting older and are moving away form being gear heads, overclocking everything to the limits, messing with settings. Very busy jobs, wives, kids, financial woes buying a house etc. Buying a console for a quick 30min bash on the TV before bed becomes way more attractive.

But that is not the whole world. There are younger generations that are happy enough buying the latest GPUs, often with sufficient disposable income without a mortgage to pay. Moreover, asia is seeing a massive increase in gaming demographics.

Total GPus sales are increasing, as are the number of PC gamers.

 

[jigger]

Are they still higher than ever? I'd guess no.

If they were we wouldn't see such high price drops and we wouldn't see articles claiming insiders have stated there's over stock due to sale slumps. Sales have been on the decline all year. Vega's never been sold out & today is offered for as much as £400 less than it was when sales were booming due to mining. At one point some Vega 64's were priced at £1100 here at OCUK. At the time there was plenty of stock available so it can't be blamed on that. Everyone was trying to take advantage of mining sales and we suffered, and now they're going to suffer as sales are on the decline.

Yes. I could have made a fortune on Vega cards at one point. That is an unsustainable market and very different to what we have seen in the graphics card market.

Vega 56 was commanding price over £1100 at one point. More valuable than any Titan or Vega 64 card that offer faster gaming performance.

 

[jigger]

No, there are more gamers than ever before. I expect you are just using personal and anecdotal evidence to come to conclusions. A lot fo people on this forum are getting older and are moving away form being gear heads, overclocking everything to the limits, messing with settings. Very busy jobs, wives, kids, financial woes buying a house etc. Buying a console for a quick 30min bash on the TV before bed becomes way more attractive.

But that is not the whole world. There are younger generations that are happy enough buying the latest GPUs, often with sufficient disposable income without a mortgage to pay. Moreover, asia is seeing a massive increase in gaming demographics.

Total GPus sales are increasing, as are the number of PC gamers.

Maybe although I take what you say with lots of salt. According to steam the GTX750Ti is one of the cards responsible for the boom in China and even that was very likely a result of GPU mining farms upgrading.