AMD Polaris architecture – GCN 4.0

pmc25 · 10 May 2016 at 12:20

Steampunk said:
I always thought the Fury would have a short life, but I don't want to see Vega go in at that kind of price point. It would still leave a big gap between the 480/490 price wise. Ideally, I'd like to see Vega take a step down from where Fury is now, leaving Nvidia products looking very overpriced and Vega offering powerful performance at the £300-350 mark.

Per Fiji, there will be different products based on it, even if there is only one chip. There are likely 3 different discrete cards based on Polaris 10 coming too, as an illustration.

Nanos have sold for as low as £335, vanilla Fury £325. It's not only Fury Xs. It's NVIDIA with the huge price and performance hole in their portfolio, not AMD.

GFX-Kid · 10 May 2016 at 12:24

Steampunk said:
I always thought the Fury would have a short life, but I don't want to see Vega go in at that kind of price point. It would still leave a big gap between the 480/490 price wise. Ideally, I'd like to see Vega take a step down from where Fury is now, leaving Nvidia products looking very overpriced and Vega offering powerful performance at the £300-350 mark.

I would too, but I just cannot see that happening. £400-£450 more likely for a vega which competes with 1080Ti. Probably even more if they want to go down the route of premium price for premium product like they did with Fury X. Which I can see them doing to be honest, especially if they have nvidia beat in the mainstream market.

My feeling is that the best Polaris will only compete with 1070 (hope I am wrong) and nvidia will have the performance crown until vega is released. But when it is, vega will get the performance crown back to AMD beating out the 1080Ti and Titan X2.

Gregster · 10 May 2016 at 12:30

You have to remember what Lisa Su said as well and that is "AMD are no longer the budget brand". The FX/Fury/Nano launch prices proved that as well.

I am sure someone will correct me on what Lisa said but it was something like that.

D.P. · 10 May 2016 at 12:41

Gregster said:
You have to remember what Lisa Su said as well and that is "AMD are no longer the budget brand". The FX/Fury/Nano launch prices proved that as well.

I am sure someone will correct me on what Lisa said but it was something like that.

That is exactly what she said. The only question is if AMD will do a u-turn on that decision. I'm not so sure, selling cards within minimal profit margin just to be seen as competitive is not a long term strategy as it greatly restricts future R&D and has lots of negative marketing effects. At the same AMD now need to desperately claw back market share or there will be no morfuture.

Freddie1980 · 10 May 2016 at 12:48

D.P. said:
That is exactly what she said. The only question is if AMD will do a u-turn on that decision. I'm not so sure, selling cards within minimal profit margin just to be seen as competitive is not a long term strategy as it greatly restricts future R&D and has lots of negative marketing effects. At the same AMD now need to desperately claw back market share or there will be no morfuture.

What market share though? In the PC sector sure but AMD rule the roost in terms of gaming hardware. Market share is overhyped anyway, your bottom line that matters and that's what Nvidia does better then AMD by far, they sell fewer parts but at massive margins. AMD has gone the other way with mass market hardware at lower margins, if AMD could sort out there CPU's they would make a lot more money but as it is there not and that's why to continue to hemorrhage cash every quarter.

Howling · 10 May 2016 at 12:59

Yeah, it's a dumb statement. Telling people you're not a budget brand doesn't work, you have to lead them to that conclusion on their own - then it sticks. AMD need a marketing team tbh.

KillBoY_UK · 10 May 2016 at 12:59

Freddie1980 said:
What market share though? In the PC sector sure but AMD rule the roost in terms of gaming hardware. Market share is overhyped anyway, your bottom line that matters and that's what Nvidia does better then AMD by far, they sell fewer parts but at massive margins. AMD has gone the other way with mass market hardware at lower margins, if AMD could sort out there CPU's they would make a lot more money but as it is there not and that's why to continue to hemorrhage cash every quarter.

Doing well in gaming hardware (ie the consoles) is all well and good but its not making them much money, they are down almost 20% year on year in revenue with that part of the business being hit hard.

Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom segment revenue was $372 million, down 24% compared to the prior quarter, primarily driven by lower sales of our semi-custom SoCs.

http://wccftech.com/amd-q1-2016-earnings-financials/

Hopefully the combination of Zen+Polaris will help stem the tide

N19h7m4r3 · 10 May 2016 at 13:16

Howling said:
Yeah, it's a dumb statement. Telling people you're not a budget brand doesn't work, you have to lead them to that conclusion on their own - then it sticks. AMD need a marketing team tbh.

Well they did recently get NVIDIA's top PR person that was with them for 12 years. I do hope she helps them a lot. AMD's PR is atrocious.

Freddie1980 · 10 May 2016 at 13:18

KillBoY_UK said:
Doing well in gaming hardware (ie the consoles) is all well and good but its not making them much money, they are down almost 20% year on year in revenue with that part of the business being hit hard.

http://wccftech.com/amd-q1-2016-earnings-financials/

Hopefully the combination of Zen+Polaris will help stem the tide

A lot of that will have do with the console market maturing, with the release of the new consoles I would expect that to spike back up next year.

KillBoY_UK · 10 May 2016 at 13:19

N19h7m4r3 said:
Well they did recently get NVIDIA's top PR person that was with them for 12 years. I do hope she helps them a lot. AMD's PR is atrocious.

Indeed that was a massive win for them

fs123 · 10 May 2016 at 13:35

KillBoY_UK said:
Indeed that was a massive win for them

And maybe that's why AMD may have been expecting Nvidia's move and is ready to launch Polaris by the end of the month. Potentially they will have insider knowledge of how Nvidia's marketing works and even how their new cards perform.

shankly1985 · 10 May 2016 at 13:40

I do feel AMD has something they not shown yet. I just want something worth upgrading to by end of this year.

queamin · 10 May 2016 at 13:41

It been known Amd were/is launching around June/July anyway for months.

D.P. · 10 May 2016 at 13:51

Howling said:
Yeah, it's a dumb statement. Telling people you're not a budget brand doesn't work, you have to lead them to that conclusion on their own - then it sticks. AMD need a marketing team tbh.

Indeed, becoming a premium name means more than simply raising prices. Marketing and PR is the biggest piece but they need to take a strong look at customer support. AMD drivers are the best they have ever been but they still need to work on getting day 1 drivers for bug games, xfire rivers as soon as possible, drivers for new GPUs up to speed at launch not 12 months later. Just imagine how the 290X sales would be if the drivers were close to what they are now! The drivers seem to be moving in the right direction, linux drivers aside. But its the whole package that needs working on. No point whining like a spoiled brat that Nvidia has partnered with a developer to integrate Hairworks, AMD need to actively go out and support developers and to be seen as proactive, not reactive smear campaigners.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 10 May 2016 at 13:54

shankly1985 said:
I do feel AMD has something they not shown yet. I just want something worth upgrading to by end of this year.

Polaris 9??!!

D.P. · 10 May 2016 at 13:55

N19h7m4r3 said:
Well they did recently get NVIDIA's top PR person that was with them for 12 years. I do hope she helps them a lot. AMD's PR is atrocious.

Hopefully we see a change but I think it take time for the culture to trickle through to all the right people. They need to realize that big marketing budgets can drive sales volumes, that poor drivers on release of a AAA game can turn people away etc. AMD always seem to engineer good products and then sit back and believe that a good products will market itself, which is pretty much never the case.

shankly1985 · 10 May 2016 at 13:56

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Polaris 9??!!

Not a clue haaa

Howling · 10 May 2016 at 13:57

Strangely agree with you o.O

D.P. · 10 May 2016 at 13:58

shankly1985 said:
I do feel AMD has something they not shown yet. I just want something worth upgrading to by end of this year.

I do find it hard to believe that AMD don't have a mid-sized chip to take on the 1080 and will jump form small Polaris 10/11 to giant Vega 9 months later. A 350-400mm chip makes sense, but no rumours. With Nvidia at least there are some vague news about a GP106 so at some point Nvidia will most liekly have soemthign to compete on price-performance with Poalris 10, its just a question of how far behind nvidia are.

N19h7m4r3 · 10 May 2016 at 13:58

D.P. said:
Hopefully we see a change but I think it take time for the culture to trickle through to all the right people. They need to realize that big marketing budgets can drive sales volumes, that poor drivers on release of a AAA game can turn people away etc. AMD always seem to engineer good products and then sit back and believe that a good products will market itself, which is pretty much never the case.

So true. I'm still shocked it takes them so long to get a proper driver out after the launch of the product or game sometimes.

It's still great that their 79xx and 290 series are still doing amazingly well now, but it also shows how lacking their original drivers were. I hope these latest cash injections really give them the resources they need for Driver development and PR.