An interesting watch and a good reason why AMD have struggled over the years. Watching this made me remember when AMD tried to buy NVidia but didn't want Jensun as the big boss, so pulled out and bought ATI for a massively inflated price.
-
Competitor rules
Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.
A history of why AMD has lost.
- Thread starter Gregster
- Start date
Good, as you've watched it then can you give a TLDR?
Buying fabs that were not needed, bleeding money on poor CPUs, paying massively OTT for ATI, mis-management and not putting in enough for R&D.
Ahh so the usual nonsense that is only applicable via hindsight then ^^
The real reason AMD are always thought of as the losers is simple, Intel beat them to becoming the dominant IBM-PC CPU manufacturer and Geforce launched before Radeon. Once those things happened it established Intel and Nvidia as #1 and everyone else as #2 or lower, hence why even during the occasions when AMD's products have been dominating Intel's/Nvidia's they still have never been able to compete on sales because people just see them as second tier.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Soldato
- Joined
- 30 Nov 2011
- Posts
- 11,528
thats not entirely fair, as ATI were neck and neck with Nvidia for years, its been entirely under AMD's watch that their market share dipped to almost irrelevance in the discrete GPU market
its also not hindsight as everyone pointed out at the time they were making mistakes as they announced them
Soldato
- Joined
- 20 Apr 2004
- Posts
- 4,463
- Location
- Rugby
It was clear they massively overpaid for ATI at the time
It is also completely false. ATI existed long before Nvidia did, and was the dominant graphics manufacturer. Nvidia was a very new startup, much less funding, no market, no brand. Their first GPU wasn't even that great, but they invested heavily in R&D which ultimately led to teh first Geforce with hardware TnL which killed off 3DFX.
One of the reasons nvidia did so well is they Supported both OpenGL and DX D3D, and had extremely dependable drivers that worked great in both APIs. At the tiem you had cards that only supported OpenGL, or supported DX but OGL was dire, worse still You had 3DFX trying to fore developers to use their own low-level close to the metal API (GLIDE), and funnily enough S3 were trying to push Metal. Developers hated the concept then just as they do now.
I loved my Riva TNT, meant I didn't have to have two graphics cards and as above, it supported everything.
Think I've only ever had one AMD GPU (x800 XL) but had a couple of CPUs. Only ever expected out an AMD card once (7850) but recently built a Ryzen/1070 for my stepson.
I have zero brand loyalty but Nvidia tends to win for me as I am SFF and need the most efficient cards.
Think I've only ever had one AMD GPU (x800 XL) but had a couple of CPUs. Only ever expected out an AMD card once (7850) but recently built a Ryzen/1070 for my stepson.
I have zero brand loyalty but Nvidia tends to win for me as I am SFF and need the most efficient cards.
Also factor in AMD has fought on 2 fronts for a good long while now, trying to overtake Intel AND Nvidia is no easy feat and they have still as of yet managed to pass either...
They are looking like making inroads with Intel, which is a good thing, once they take enough market share they can and hopefully will funnel cash towards their GPU department.
Problem AMD now have is bettering their already impressive current batch of CPU's and doing it consistently and regularly, the minute they fail this they will be back where they were.
If i was AMD right now, id carry on with their current strategy of punching Intel while their guard is down and they are seemingly on the ropes in some areas, keep attacking Intel to get a decent 20%+ Marketshare, then channel some cash towards R&D in the GPU space.
They are looking like making inroads with Intel, which is a good thing, once they take enough market share they can and hopefully will funnel cash towards their GPU department.
Problem AMD now have is bettering their already impressive current batch of CPU's and doing it consistently and regularly, the minute they fail this they will be back where they were.
If i was AMD right now, id carry on with their current strategy of punching Intel while their guard is down and they are seemingly on the ropes in some areas, keep attacking Intel to get a decent 20%+ Marketshare, then channel some cash towards R&D in the GPU space.
ATI were sinking slowly and it was only a matter of time before they were bought out. They had a brief rally with the 9700/9800 cards but they were sinking again shortly afterwards. IF they hadn't been taken over by AMD the 2900 series cards would have finally sent them under I reckon. AMD would have been able to buy them out for next to nothing if they have waited a couple of years.
It's actually kind of amazing that AMD still exists and is still competitive in most of the markets that they care about when you consider what a ****-show their start to this millennium was. It does annoy me that people still refer to what Intel did (paying off OEMs) as a "shady tactic". No, it was illegal and they were never appropriately punished for it. (As a side note, it would be nice if individuals were actually held to account for business decisions they make, *cough* bankers.) No matter how badly AMD's move from Athlon X2 to Phenom went, saying that they were "equally responsible" for their downfall is pretty ridiculous. You only have to look at the general public's huge indifference to the Intel Spectre and Meltdown situation to see that a performance-harming bug fix wouldn't have been a huge problem by itself.
It's enough of a struggle to come from behind and stay in the game against a behemoth like Intel but to not even enjoy any good times when you're ahead due to your opposition's illegal practices means you're dead in the water.
It's enough of a struggle to come from behind and stay in the game against a behemoth like Intel but to not even enjoy any good times when you're ahead due to your opposition's illegal practices means you're dead in the water.
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 25 Sep 2009
- Posts
- 10,375
- Location
- Billericay, UK
Some very pertinent points, I must admit I never thought about AMD's lack of advertising over the years which had contributed to it's lack of brand awareness.
He could have made a whole video on Vega's faults but he did touch on the decision that 2/3rd of Raja's engineering team was moved to work on Navi (I thought the whole point of creating RTG was that it had independence from the rest of AMD???) which resulted in an underwhelming Vega release. He could have also mentioned the management decision to make Vega a jack of all trades GPU meant it final design ended up compromising it's gaming performance for gains in professional and HPC environments (if you don't have the money to have separate designs why not concentrate one or the other?).
Yes the whole DX10 fiasco was what really put Nvidia ahead in the Graphics chip arena. Apparently Nvidia insisted that Micorsoft made changes to the DX10 API which benefited them and ATI were caught out. So many people bought into the 8000 series (myself included) because of the performance it offered Nvidia just become the go to brand for causal gamers who wanted a new video card.
He could have made a whole video on Vega's faults but he did touch on the decision that 2/3rd of Raja's engineering team was moved to work on Navi (I thought the whole point of creating RTG was that it had independence from the rest of AMD???) which resulted in an underwhelming Vega release. He could have also mentioned the management decision to make Vega a jack of all trades GPU meant it final design ended up compromising it's gaming performance for gains in professional and HPC environments (if you don't have the money to have separate designs why not concentrate one or the other?).
Yes the whole DX10 fiasco was what really put Nvidia ahead in the Graphics chip arena. Apparently Nvidia insisted that Micorsoft made changes to the DX10 API which benefited them and ATI were caught out. So many people bought into the 8000 series (myself included) because of the performance it offered Nvidia just become the go to brand for causal gamers who wanted a new video card.
Last edited:
Yes but they were always seen as second best (even when they were firmly winning), this is essentially because Geforce launched a couple of months before Radeon, and so Nvidia became known as the company that slayed 3DFX and took their crown and ATi became known as the company that was chasing Nvidia up the mountain (the AMD to Intel, the SEGA to Nintendo, etc). Ever since then even when ATi/AMD have been firmly beating Nvidia they have been waaaaay behind on sales simply because of the perception of them being second best (this is the same issue they have with Intel too).
Yes. On YouTube everyone's an expert.
The success of AMD as a business has very little to do with their ability to compete with nVidia at the premium end of the gaming GPU market, however much it may annoy people that nVidia has free reign in that market segment to price as they please.