AMD Lose More Market Share To Nvidia - Now Only Got 18%

KompuKare · 13 Mar 2021 at 12:52

Grim5 said:
AMD needs to get to 5nm ASAP so it can leave consoles eating so much 7nm capacity while desktop gets 5nm - as long as consoles and desktop are 7nm there will be stock shortages for amd pc products

Surely there are least three factors here

The capacity of 7nm vs 5nm, and there with 5nm being the new node it has less capacity.
Whether any high-bidders (Apple) have booked most of the 5nm capacity.
Whether the price per transistor actually goes down or at least doesn't increase. No point if density increases (7^2 is 49 vs 5^2 which is 25, but we all know that the headline node sizes are almost meaningless now - Google finds a claimed 80% density increase).

If capacity is scares, I would expect AMD to priorities Server CPUs, Laptop CPUs and Desktop CPUs (which would be third in line except due to chiplet strategy Server and Desktop should continue to share the same chiplets).
So yes, consoles won't be in the running (until a few years from now when Sony / Microsoft have paid for a port / redeisng to 5nm), but that doesn't meant that 500mm² GPUs will make sense soon.

KompuKare · 13 Mar 2021 at 12:55

CuriousTomCat said:
Don't the existing fabs get upgraded to 5nm though? So they would loose 7nm? Surely they don't build a whole new fab plant for each new process?

You're thinking of Intel.
TSMC generally doesn't do that as long as there is demand and are still running plenty of older nodes.
I suspect their model is more like: new nodes in new fab and building, then build more fabs / building for the new nodes as demand and yields increase. Eventually, as demand for older nodes dies off, re-use anything from the older fabs. But I don't think they do the Intel thing of aggressively upgrading all / most of their fabs.

henson0115 · 13 Mar 2021 at 13:06

CuriousTomCat said:
Don't the existing fabs get upgraded to 5nm though? So they would loose 7nm? Surely they don't build a whole new fab plant for each new process?

partly i would imagine as people still need the 7nm, not everyone upgrades at the same time.

D.P. · 13 Mar 2021 at 17:25

Just highlights how genius Nvidia's Samsung move was

Gerard · 13 Mar 2021 at 22:11

D.P. said:
Just highlights how genius Nvidia's Samsung move was

It really doesn't, AMD still had the console parts to produce regardless of what foundry they used, plus MS and Sony both asked them to help with more allocation (already at an alleged 70%) which doesn't help matters for availability of pc components.

Grim5 · 13 Mar 2021 at 22:19

Gerard said:
It really doesn't, AMD still had the console parts to produce regardless of what foundry they used, plus MS and Sony both asked them to help with more allocation (already at an alleged 70%) which doesn't help matters for availability of pc components.

If Nvidia jumped on the tsmc bandwagon like everyone else we'd have even worse stock of gpus on the market

henson0115 · 13 Mar 2021 at 22:42

Grim5 said:
If Nvidia jumped on the tsmc bandwagon like everyone else we'd have even worse stock of gpus on the market

Nvidia still use tmsc for other bits... Yes it was a good move but still not perfect. This is not really a good situation and its not gunna improve with 5nm due to apple, better hope they can get more fabs up asap.

Likely why they want fabs up in the us.

Gerard · 13 Mar 2021 at 23:09

Grim5 said:
If Nvidia jumped on the tsmc bandwagon like everyone else we'd have even worse stock of gpus on the market

Well i remember at the time plenty of this doing the rounds, they didn't jump on any bandwagon, they tried a powerplay which didn't work out for them and they had to go with option 2. In the long run it worked out "ok" for availability at vastly increased prices for the most part by mere chance of circumstance and nothing more, and certainly not due to any foresight by nvidia.

The reason why Nvidia went with Samsung isn't just because they were 'cheaper'.

Nvidia tried to hardball by threatening to take their Ampere wafer orders to Samsung if TSMC didn't price match them and TSMC just called their bluff. The very fact that Nvidia chose to use TSMC's 7nm node for their GA100 die from the very start (which began months before the other graphics card dies started production) just proves how much the Samsung option was a second choice offering all along.

They screwed up by being dicks about it and trying to bully TSMC into kowtowing, despite the fact that everyone was aware of the massive queue waiting to snatch up that freed up node capacity.

Gerard · 13 Mar 2021 at 23:10

henson0115 said:
Likely why they want fabs up in the us.

Would be an idea instead of outsourcing everything.

henson0115 · 13 Mar 2021 at 23:28

Gerard said:
Would be an idea instead of outsourcing everything.

Indeed and you tsmc post above is spot on.

ubersonic · 14 Mar 2021 at 03:37

CuriousTomCat said:
That's AMD Radeon Technologies R&D budget down to a minimum again then.

Don't count on it.

Desktop market share is not the same as sales, AMD cards are selling faster than they can be produced despite crazy inflated prices.

One thing that may hurt AMD's sales/bottom line in comparison to Nvida's however is that AMD's historical superiority over Nvidia in crypto mining has apparently come to an end with both the 3090 and 3080 outperforming the 6900XT.

Dontrocktheboat · 14 Mar 2021 at 04:50

D.P. said:
Just highlights how genius Nvidia's Samsung move was

It was a masterstroke jumping off the TSMC merry-go-round. AMD just put too many eggs in one basket.

Kaapstad · 14 Mar 2021 at 07:34

It is odd that the US has allowed something as strategic as silicon chip manufacture to continue to take place mostly abroad.

Having said that I know very little about the subject.

Hedge · 14 Mar 2021 at 08:41

Kaapstad said:
It is odd that the US has allowed something as strategic as silicon chip manufacture to continue to take place mostly abroad.

Having said that I know very little about the subject.

Same could be said for the UK too i suppose. Everyone's reliance on Tsmc is kinda wild.

Raelgun · 14 Mar 2021 at 12:09

ubersonic said:
Don't count on it.

Desktop market share is not the same as sales, AMD cards are selling faster than they can be produced despite crazy inflated prices.

One thing that may hurt AMD's sales/bottom line in comparison to Nvida's however is that AMD's historical superiority over Nvidia in crypto mining has apparently come to an end with both the 3090 and 3080 outperforming the 6900XT.

Thing is, GCN is a compute beast, Navi is not GCN and moved away from it in a big way and that big jump away was to get away from useless compute nodes for gaming, AMD streamlined Navi specifically for gaming and it paid off in consoles and the 6000 series.

Dontrocktheboat said:
It was a masterstroke jumping off the TSMC merry-go-round. AMD just put too many eggs in one basket.

Thing is, Sony and MS actually have used the 7nm tech in their promotional material so really AMD had their hands full with that and likely they had a committed allocation for desktop with TSMC anyways so they had to put those orders in.

Cyber-Mav · 14 Mar 2021 at 13:07

fs123 said:
I got my RTX 3080FE a few days ago and I can honestly say the AMD drivers are far better.

How did you get amd drivers to work with a rtx3080?

muon · 14 Mar 2021 at 13:08

It is hardly surprising.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

Steam hardware survey has been suggesting this for ages. The Ampere cards are slowly gaining share whilst RDNA2 is no where to be seen.

ubersonic said:
Don't count on it.

Desktop market share is not the same as sales, AMD cards are selling faster than they can be produced despite crazy inflated prices.

One thing that may hurt AMD's sales/bottom line in comparison to Nvida's however is that AMD's historical superiority over Nvidia in crypto mining has apparently come to an end with both the 3090 and 3080 outperforming the 6900XT.

Except they clearly aren't making very many. Otherwise they would start showing up in install bases.

To show up on the Steam survey you only need a 0.16% install base. 3060 Ti already has a 0.34% install base. The 3080 is at 0.77%. Even the overpriced 3090 is at 0.30%.

henson0115 · 14 Mar 2021 at 13:24

muon said:
It is hardly surprising.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

Steam hardware survey has been suggesting this for ages. The Ampere cards are slowly gaining share whilst RDNA2 is no where to be seen.

Except they clearly aren't making very many. Otherwise they would start showing up in install bases.

To show up on the Steam survey you only need a 0.16% install base. 3060 Ti already has a 0.34% install base. The 3080 is at 0.77%. Even the overpriced 3090 is at 0.30%.

nm

muon · 14 Mar 2021 at 13:28

henson0115 said:
oddly the 6700 (a card that doesn't yet exsist)has almost as much share as the 6800, i doubt that's accurate. again more proof the hardware survey is full of crap.

Oh dear

How long have you been in the computer graphics game?

Calling steam survey full of crap when it is you who is completely wrong is a little embarassing.

I suggest you google what HD 6700 and HD 6800 cards are.

Gerard · 14 Mar 2021 at 13:52

Dontrocktheboat said:
It was a masterstroke jumping off the TSMC merry-go-round.

You haven't a clue do you?