AMD GPU sales tanking

[tamzzy]

AMD's graphics card sales just took a nosedive | Digital Trends

AMD just reported its financial results for the first few months of 2024, and its gaming business isn't doing so hot.

www.digitaltrends.com

AMD confirms Radeon GPU sales have nosedived

As part of its Q1 2024 financial report, AMD highlights that a decline in its 'Gaming' revenue is due to lower sales of its Radeon GPUs.

www.pcgamesn.com

I'll preface this by saying that I'm a 7900XT user. But am I surprised? Totally not.

Yes, AMD has to make some profit with their GPUs, but they're priced so close to their team-green alternatives that for most users, it would be better to pay the extra and get an nvidia gpu instead.
You get more VRAM with Radeon cards, but...

...Team green has better ray-tracing, DLSS is better baked compared to FSR, not to mention CUDA and NVENC
And for this gen, RTX 4k also has better (less) power draw and spikes
In general, nvidia has better resale values that negates the slightly higher up front costs

I can't see how AMD can compete without taking a massive haircut to their RRP

 

[Gray2233]

I'm a little surprised by this given the fact current gen Nvidia has absolutely nothing worth buying at the current lower end. I'd say mid range, but that's the 4070/7800XT at this point.

The 4060 is laughably bad, but it seems the old 3060 12gb has been doing consistently well even when being a poor alternative to AMD's offerings such as the consistently available 6800 for a similar price.

Poor advertising, long term public bias and ignorance are certainly a problem. I do think AMD needs to sort out FSR and their frame gen tech, I don't care what anyone claims FSR/DLSS/Xess aren't going anywhere. DLSS is lightyears ahead of FSR in all but a handful of titles.

 

[tamzzy]

The 4060 is laughably bad

it is, but the equivalent is the RX7600

nowadays the 4060 can be had for £280 vs £250 for the RX7600 new (not wanting to go down the rabbit hole of used cards)
back when there was a £50 differential (£300 4060) the argument could be had to get the RX7600 - and I have made this argument for the RX7600 in several budget "spec-me" threads
but now when it's only £30...I'd pick the 4060 over the RX7600 any day of the week

same with the 4070 (£480) vs 7800XT (£470)
and the 4070S (£540) vs 7900GRE (£530)

it's only when we get to the more enthusiast parts where AMD has some separation in prices

 

[Gray2233]

The problem is heavily related to generational offerings, it means more for Nvidia as a raw gamer due to tech being locked behind generations. AMD is not the same, I don't think that many would spend £250 on a 7600, or a little more on a 4060 when a 6600 can still be had for £200.

Most gamers go for cards in that performance group, and let's face it nobody is enjoying the benefit of things like RT on those levels of cards.

As I mentioned earlier, the 6800 can be had for 360-370 and it's one of the few good cards in terms of raw performance in it's price point. It's also last gen, and implies the cards weren't moving.

People are largely poorly informed and will view the top end as representative of entire product stacks.

AMD are **** at properly advertising and buyers aren't smart. I agree, they need to much more heavily undercut to gain market share. At least until they can match Nvidia in features and the mind space.

 

[tamzzy]

I don't think that many would spend £250 on a 7600, or a little more on a 4060 when a 6600 can still be had for £200.

actually i would say that £250 is just about okay for a 7600. the 7600 is about 25-30% faster than the 6600, so the price/performance is perfectly linear.
(£200 x 1.25 = £250)
though would still prefer the 7600 to be around £230

 

[Rroff]

AMD are **** at properly advertising and buyers aren't smart.

They have this weird thing of running their mouth when they have nothing to show for it, absolute silence when they've got something great. Even though a lot of games don't really push ray tracing yet I think going the direction they have with ray tracing and some other features has actually hurt them - it immediately marks them down in the average consumer mind even when the average consumer might not even play a game with RT and/or those features enabled...

When PC hardware becomes a topic at work with a bunch of everyday people Ryzen CPUs might get a mention but everyone is talking nVidia when speccing GPUs.

 

[Gray2233]

actually i would say that £250 is just about okay for a 7600. the 7600 is about 25-30% faster than the 6600, so the price/performance is perfectly linear.

While true, the people buying those cards are already budget gamers. I'd never say it's worth spending the extra £50 on an 8gb card for relatively minor uplift.

 

[Gray2233]

They have this weird thing of running their mouth when they have nothing to show for it, absolute silence when they've got something great. Even though a lot of games don't really push ray tracing yet I think going the direction they have with ray tracing and some other features has actually hurt them - it immediately marks them down in the average consumer mind even when the average consumer might not even play a game with RT and/or those features enabled...

When PC hardware becomes a topic at work with a bunch of everyday people Ryzen CPUs might get a mention but everyone is talking nVidia when speccing GPUs.

They actually had a bunch of opportunities they missed with that, Hogwarts running better with RT on AMD due to not being tanked by VRAM as an example.

Then there's games such as CoD which seem to absolutely love AMD.

Play to your strengths, push it via marketing.

 

[tamzzy]

They have this weird thing of running their mouth when they have nothing to show for it, absolute silence when they've got something great.

Agree lol. Jaws, victory, defeat comes to mind...except for the Radeon team, they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, literally every time.

While true, the people buying those cards are already budget gamers. I'd never say it's worth spending the extra £50 on an 8gb card for relatively minor uplift.

I'm not sure I would call 25-30% on a budget card minor...for a casual who only changes their computer every 5+ years it could mean soldering on for another couple of years before wanting an upgrade.

 

[Gray2233]

I'm not sure I would call 25-30% on a budget card minor...for a casual who only changes their computer every 5+ years it could mean soldering on for another couple of years before wanting an upgrade.

I have memories of the 2012-2016 sort of era where people argued the necessity of VRAM. What we have now is almost the polar opposite, in which GPU's actually have enough grunt to use more memory but flat out don't have it rather than having more than they could potentially use.

I feel that someone on a 6600 is borderline in that regard with some current games even at 1080p, I don't feel that the extra power is worth the cost when the card can't use it due to other limitations.

 

[tamzzy]

Personally I think the 4060/RX7600 is the top end of performance where 8GB is just about acceptable. It is, after all...near the performance of a 2080/2080 super.
Would I want more VRAM, of course! But I can see why both team red and green have not done so. In more demanding/future games, these cards would presumably need the settings turned down which should hopefully mean that the buffer would not overflow.

Definitely anything higher performing than the 4060/RX7600 must have more VRAM.
(We can see this played out in the 3060ti/6700XT battle, and definitely evident with the 3070 )

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

AMD's graphics card sales just took a nosedive | Digital Trends

AMD just reported its financial results for the first few months of 2024, and its gaming business isn't doing so hot.

www.digitaltrends.com

AMD confirms Radeon GPU sales have nosedived

As part of its Q1 2024 financial report, AMD highlights that a decline in its 'Gaming' revenue is due to lower sales of its Radeon GPUs.

www.pcgamesn.com

I'll preface this by saying that I'm a 7900XT user. But am I surprised? Totally not.

Yes, AMD has to make some profit with their GPUs, but they're priced so close to their team-green alternatives that for most users, it would be better to pay the extra and get an nvidia gpu instead.
You get more VRAM with Radeon cards, but...

...Team green has better ray-tracing, DLSS is better baked compared to FSR, not to mention CUDA and NVENC
And for this gen, RTX 4k also has better (less) power draw and spikes
In general, nvidia has better resale values that negates the slightly higher up front costs

I can't see how AMD can compete without taking a massive haircut to their RRP

AMD just took too long to push out the entire RX7000 range. The RX7600 was a pointless release and not even full RDNA3 and is 6NM. As a result the RTX4060 is a far better fit for laptop and desktop OEMs. Just look how high up the laptop RTX4060 is on Steam.

DIY sales are massively dwarfed by sales in Prebuilt systems.Moreover, almost half of all sales of dGPUs are in laptops where AMD is poorly represented in and it's getting worse. If there is a big decline then it's most likely in laptops. Unfortunately for AMD they failed miserably in getting more of these systems shipping with their DGPUs which is hilarious as they make the Ryzen platform.

It's why you suddenly see AMD pushing the high end laptop APUs and focusing on mainstream RDNA4.

Gaming revenue also includes consoles and console sales are down. XBox sales are terrible and the PS5 is nearly 3.5 years old so sales are tailing off.

Consoles make a significant amount of AMD Gaming revenue sales and more than dGPUs! At one point the PS5 was 40% of Amd's entire wafer allocation!

Wccftech.com again just implied it's 100% down to desktop DIY GPU sales and those two sites just parroted it. Sadly it's not as simple as that.

Also another thing about Nvidia gaming revenue - Chinese companies have also been stockpiling Nvidia gaming cards due to the US AI sanctions. That includes using third parties in other countries.

it is, but the equivalent is the RX7600

nowadays the 4060 can be had for £280 vs £250 for the RX7600 new (not wanting to go down the rabbit hole of used cards)
back when there was a £50 differential (£300 4060) the argument could be had to get the RX7600 - and I have made this argument for the RX7600 in several budget "spec-me" threads
but now when it's only £30...I'd pick the 4060 over the RX7600 any day of the week

same with the 4070 (£480) vs 7800XT (£470)
and the 4070S (£540) vs 7900GRE (£530)

it's only when we get to the more enthusiast parts where AMD has some separation in prices

The RX7600 was never that competitive, as it was bracketed by the RX6600 at under £200 and the RX6700XT. It was a useless release.

The RX6700XT and RX6750XT have been frequently below £300 over the last year. Just saw an RX6750XT for under £280 a few days ago. The RX6700XT was priced last year the same as the RTX3060 12GB but was around 30% to 35% faster.

RTX4060 8GB or RX7600 8GB over an RX6700XT/RX6750XT? No way! My RTX3060TI is already running out of VRAM.

The RX7700XT is easy to get for £350 to £400 now. The RX6800 16GB has been around the £350 to £380 mark for ages - sometimes it's dipped under that. An RTX4060TI 8GB is worse in most ways than those.

RX7800XT cards have been as low as £420 and have been several times around £450 in the last few months and RTX4070 only recently started to trend downwards. The RX7900GRE had been as low as £500ish. The RX7900XT has now dipped under £600 for the last two weeks.

According to some on here, EU prices are even lower for AMD cards. I can't talk about other markets - could be AMD is much worse for pricing in them.

 

[D1craig]

The whole point of a newer generation is supposed to be the same price for extra performance isn't it? Not increased price relative to performance?

 

[Aretak]

There seems to have been a massive overreaction to these quarterly results. The sky is falling, AMD GPUs are dead, nobody's buying them, etc. Great clickbait to push a narrative. And yet they were steadily gaining discrete GPU market share from Nvidia throughout last year according to JPR's numbers.

I'm not sure A) why being down in Q1 versus Q4 is being touted as unusual in consumer electronics and B) why the gaming side of the business is being limited to Radeon graphics cards by the PC-centric media. It covers a lot more than that, including their dealings in the console business. Demand for the PS5 and Xbox consoles has been slow, resulting in Sony cutting their sales forecast by millions a few months back, whilst Xbox is in such a bad spot that people thought they might be quitting hardware entirely. That's something which also directly affects AMD.

 

[KompuKare]

Gaming revenue also includes consoles and console sales are down. XBox sales are terrible and the PS5 is nearly 3.5 years old so sales are tailing off.

Consoles make a significant amount of AMD Gaming revenue sales and more than dGPUs! At one point the PS5 was 40% of Amd's entire wafer allocation!

Wccftech.com again just implied it's 100% down to desktop DIY GPU sales and those two sites just parroted it. Sadly it's not as simple as that.

Yes the articles in the OP did seem rather suspect as the various financial results thread had implied that by far the main reason for AMD gaming division being down was consoles.

AMD's dGPU business has been very minor for ages now and with RDNA3 they seem to have made some really poor choices - Navi 32 should have been monolith IMO, and to go chiplets and have your max graphics chiplet only 300mm² makes no sense. A 500mm² graphics chiplet clocked a bit lower - since Navi 31 was already power hungry - would probably have had the performance crown.

 

[Adrianr]

I know the talk around GPUs is mostly focused on games, but it feels like AMD completely abandoned the professional market too. I need CUDA, because all the render engines use CUDA, because there's no good equivilent from AMD, because everything uses CUDA, etc etc. I guess they're trying to go after ML stuff now so maybe some of that will trickle down but it's been naff having a choice of basically one single card from one manufacturer for eons.

 

[MCFC_ANDY]

they overpriced the gpu's, then cut prices down the line, not a good look as everyone knows price cuts on their way after launch, but the taking the mick with some prices.

 

[Captain Chaos]

GPU prices in general have gotten silly and they do need to reduce.

 

[MCFC_ANDY]

AMD prices are coming down everywhere except uk it seems. you see it daily especially us and eu, but see very little movement here. dont call the uk treasure island for no reason

 

[cosmogenesis]

AMD got it wrong on GPU. They should have targeted from the bottom up and not top down. They could have provided low end PC graphics capable of playing games at 720/1080p at 60 fps. Yeah ok not much profit but they would have bee more successful.

They will always be playing catch up with Nvidia with RTX and DLSS but their bespoke XBOX and PS5 graphics solutions show they could make the PC good at the bottom end.