Do AMD provide any benefit to the retail GPU segment.

[humbug]

Given the current state of the GPU market i have been thinking a lot about this lately.

I'm inspired to some extent to make this post by this video, which makes many good and valid points but its conclusion seems to be born out of complete denial of what's been happening for at least a decade.

I will try to condense this down as much as i can as i don't want people to be put off by a wall of text. So please excuse the short handed nature of it.

He is right, IMO, that AMD have no interest in competing for market share, or rather perhaps they lack the confidence to try, they have no reason to believe it would work for them, but plenty of reasons to believe it wouldn't, they have been steadily loosing market share for a decade + despite during that time having tried to compete for that market share.

These are not exacting figures, so without watching the video again to get those this is close enough.
AMD segment their revenue result reports, one of those is gaming, it consist of GPU's and Consoles.
AMD's 2022 revenue for the "Gaming" segment was about $6.5 Billion, $3.5 Billion of that was from Sony, consoles like the PS5, about $2 Billion of that was from Microsoft, the XBox, the remaining $1.5 Billion was from GPU's and other assorted consoles, like the Steam Deck and its clones, so probably about $1 Billion revenue for the whole of 2022 for GPU's.
That's nothing, for a total revenue for that year of about $24 Billion, its about 4% of AMD's revenue, and that's revenue, not profit, this matters because developing GPU's is very expensive, the profit margins for that $6.5 Billion on the Gaming segment was less than $1 Billion, about 16%, if those are the margins for the GPU's that is $160 Million profit on GPU's for 2022.

If it costs $500 Million per year to keep up development for your GPU's then AMD are losing $350 Million per year to stay in this game, Intel spent $3.5 Billion over 3 or 4 years on ARC, and it is under developed, so i don't know how much AMD spend on GPU R&D but i'm willing to bet the consoles and Ryzen are propping it up heavily.

How much longer are AMD willing to go on with that and can they even invest more to fight Nvidia harder? AND do not want to take away R&D from where they are successful, they can't do it all and they have to stay ahead of the curve in the segments they are winning.
Its also about volume, the irony is that if AMD had 25 or 30% market share they would be better placed to fight Nvidia, because they would be selling a lot more GPU's than they actually are, so brining in more money and with that the task would be less extreme and difficult than it actually is.

That low volume also presents another problem, because it costs so much to develop them, and you sell so few you have no room to reduce your margins, you almost have to make it low volume high margin or you're just burning money keeping up with the R&D cycle.
So its no good saying AMD have to be 30% cheaper than Nvidia because RT isn't as good and they don't have DLSS, if that's how you see it good luck to you as Nvidia have you right where they want you, at that there is no point in AMD being in this game at all as they don't have the market share for low margins,

So, its up to us, it always has been, and tech tubers need to get angry at Nvidia instead of sighing and moaning that AMD aren't cheaper to make Nvidia cheaper, that being your reason for existing is exactly what did ATI in and it was AMD who bailed them out, so they aren't going to go down that road, if you don't buy them they will just stop making them and probably be glad of it.

AMD are a business, they will make decisions that are best for them, if they think they can get from 8% to 50% market share by being significantly cheaper than Nvidia, that is what they will do. In the same way that if Nvidia think they can maintain 90% market share with £1300 ##80 class cards that are really ##70 class cards.... that is exactly what they will do.

As for Intel, IMO they have realised they do not want to get tied up like AMD have in this massive mindshare monster that is Nvidia, and that is something we created. Yes putting someone on a very very high pedestal just gives them grater hight to spit on you, Nvidia feel absolutely untouchable, like they can do no wrong, because where else are you going to go? AMD? Yeah didn't think so...

Honestly i don't know why AMD don't just throw in the towel, i think if it wasn't for the consoles they would, irronically, but the fact that they are still in this game, despite everything perhaps indicated that on some level they do care.

Spoiler: Unrelated rant

A slight digression from this but i have noticed inexplicable frustration from a lot of reviewers reviewing AMD latest CPU's, ranting about things that have been going on for years just to put a negative slant on what should be a positive for AMD. complaining about existing trends that AMD are only starting to follow because no one has ever complained about it when AMD wasn't competitive, now that AMD are they seem upset about that, perhaps because while AMD's boot is on Intel's neck they are not helping reign Nvidia in, as if that's AMD's job, not these same tech journalists who seem to go out of their way as to not upset Nvidia too much.
When you farm out your own responsibilities what you get is what we now have. My own rant over, sorry

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Amd is keeping RTG alive for the following reasons:
1.)Data centre dGPUs which can be sold with their data centre platforms on supercomputers, etc. These are evolved Vega designs.
2.)IGPs for their APUs.It's telling they kept TSMC 4NM for their new Zen4 APUs instead of using it for Navi31. These are used in laptops, OEM desktops and older ones used in industrial embedded systems in aircraft, etc.
3.)Have the ability to design SOCs for semi-custom areas such as consoles.This is partially helped by Sony and MS bankrolling R and D costs.
4.)Ability to license a GPU uarch. This is happening with Samsung.
5.)The ability to be able to bundle dGPUs with their laptops. Again you can see Navi33 being designed for low cost on TSMC 6NM.

Basically RTG now really exists to support the AMD CPU division in selling new servers, supercomputers, laptops and semi custom products, whilst being able to generate licensing fees. Sadly it also means higher end gaming dGPUs will be an afterthought at best and that gaming dGPUs will be mostly driven by consoles, IGPs and laptops.

I suspect Navi 31 is a bit like the original Fiji design, testing out new technology, ie, in this case chiplets. I suspect AMD did really want to get closer to the RTX4090 but the design probably needed a respin like the ATI X1800 did, but AMD doesn't want to throw money at it. The fact they had access to TSMC 4NM like Nvidia did and would rather make APUs is telling. If not they would have made a larger GCD on TSMC 4NM,and even delayed the launch to fix any problems. Also used stacked cache as rumoured.
It was the same during the pandemic when they would rather make more console APUs than dGPUs.

 

[humbug]

Amd is keeping RTG alive for the following reasons:
1.)Data centre dGPUs which can be sold with their data centre platforms on supercomputers, etc. These are evolved Vega designs.
2.)IGPs for their APUs.It's telling they kept TSMC 4NM for their new Zen4 APUs instead of using it for Navi31. These are used in laptops, OEM desktops and older ones used in industrial embedded systems in aircraft, etc.
3.)Have the ability to design SOCs for semi-custom areas such as consoles .This is partially helped by Sony and MS bankrolling R and D costs.
4.)Ability to license GPU uarch. This is happening with Samsung.
5.)The ability to be able to bundle dGPUs with their laptops. Again you can see Navi33 being designed for low cost in TSMC 6NM.

Basically RTG now really exists to support the AMD CPU division in selling new servers, supercomputers, laptops and semi custom products, whilst being able to generate licensing fees. Sadly it also means higher end gaming dGPUs will be an afterthought at best and that gaming dGPUs will be mostly driven by consoles, IGPs and laptops.

I suspect Navi 31 is a bit like the original Fiji design, testing out new technology, ie, in this case chiplets. I suspect AMD did really want to get closer to the RTX4090 but the design probably needed a respin like the ATI X1800 did, but AMD doesn't want to throw money at it. The fact they had access to TSMC 4NM like Nvidia did and would rather make APUs is telling. It was the same during the pandemic when they would rather make more console APUs than dGPUs.

Why waste silicon on dGPU's when laptop vendors are apparent never satified with how much they are getting?

 

[humbug]

If it was me i would keep RTG alive but knock all this on the head and instead use all these resource to keep HP, Lenovo, Asus..... as happy as i can.

Its too resource intensive are you get nothing but grief for it.

 

[Quartz]

Amd is keeping RTG alive for the following reasons:

You might have said something similar about the CPU division and then along came Ryzen, Epyc, and Threadripper.

 

[humbug]

You might have said something similar about the CPU division and then along came Ryzen, Epyc, and Threadripper.

GPU's are very different, GPU's are increasingly about added value features and AMD can't match let alone beat Nvidia on that, as many love to point out.

 

[Grim5]

Most of Radeon groups gaming profit comes from consoles so naturally APUs with iGPUs will be their focus. They still release dGPUs because they've already invested into the architecture so they may as well get more return on investment but it's clear PC GPU sales is not AMDs goal or target

Trying to get PC GPU market share used to be AMDs focus and when it was they were extremely competitive on price. Then came Lisa Su and AMD cannibalised the console market and suddenly Radeon group was making money hand over fist from gaming consoles and AMD realised it can stop caring about PC GPUs and once that happened AMD decided it no longer cares about price competition and it will just set its prices to whatever Nvidia does

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Why waste silicon on dGPU's when laptop vendors are apparent never satified with how much they are getting?

You might have said something similar about the CPU division and then along came Ryzen, Epyc, and Threadripper.

CPUs are much higher margins for AMD than dGPUs ever were. Even when ATI/AMD were competing top to bottom in dGPU performance and had 30% to 50% sales marketshare,they made very little money compared to Nvidia,because people bought rubbish like the Nvidia FX at a premium in droves over the Radeon 9000 series,or bought Fermi over the HD5000 series.

Conversely when AMD has hit it out of the park with CPUs,it was shown in revenues and profits. AMD will continue to make higher end dGPUs for gaming but I don't think they will throw resources at stuff. So when AMD does compete at the high end,its more about Nvidia making a misstep IMHO. An example is when the GA102 misstep,meant AMD was a process node and a half ahead with Navi MK2. This time Nvidia is a bit better process node.

If AMD would have made Navi31 on TSMC 4NM and used stacked cache on the memory controller chiplets,if they truly wanted to make a proper AD102 competitor. At the least it would have shown the AD103 a clean set of heels. Chiplets are more about dropping costs,ie,yields increase so are themselves a value play. OTH,they do have certain power consumption penalties due to the extra I/O required,as well as needing more transistors for that extra I/O.Instead yet again,they tried to make an economy 5NM/6NM design and hoped it would compete against a monolithic 4NM AD102. The GCD itself is smaller than the dGPU used in the RX6700XT.

 

[The_Arbiter]

I didn't watch to the end of the video, but read all the comments here.

I think given the past few years and the data produced here, there's still no certainty in where the markets will be, or what the corporate plans are for the future.

If anything, the consumer has been played perfectly well by all the corporations here.

There's too many variables in the gaming market it seems. One random example, Windows proving to be less favoured by increasing number of users imo, and that's the primary gaming OS for desktop.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Most of Radeon groups gaming profit comes from consoles so naturally APUs with iGPUs will be their focus. They still release dGPUs because they've already invested into the architecture so they may as well get more return on investment but it's clear PC GPU sales is not AMDs goal or target

Trying to get PC GPU market share used to be AMDs focus and when it was they were extremely competitive on price. Then came Lisa Su and AMD cannibalised the console market and suddenly Radeon group was making money hand over fist from gaming consoles and AMD realised it can stop caring about PC GPUs and once that happened AMD decided it no longer cares about price competition and it will just set its prices to whatever Nvidia does

The last bit is also part of what Jim was also inferring in the video. If AMD was a bit more price competitive it wouldn't matter so much if they "only" competed with the second tier Nvidia dGPUs. But the reality is they stopped caring,and essentually just price a bit below Nvidia or plonk extra VRAM on their dGPUs and call it a day. Honestly I wish AMD would just concentrate on decent mainstream and entry level dGPUs and forget about the high end.Polaris and Navi MK1 being examples.

It's quite clear Nvidia has given up in that area like Apple did with cheaper smartphones,and even if AMD used a lagging process node for them to cut costs it would make more sense. At least AMD can bundle these dGPUs with their laptops as part of a package. At the "high end" its quite clear people are more brand focussed anyway.

 

[humbug]

CPUs are much higher margins for AMD than dGPUs ever were. Even when ATI/AMD were competing top to bottom in dGPU performance and had 30% to 50% sales marketshare,they made very little money compared to Nvidia,because people bought rubbish like the Nvidia FX at a premium in droves over the Radeon 9000 series,or bought Fermi over the HD5000 series.

Conversely when AMD has hit it out of the park with CPUs,it was shown in revenues and profits. AMD will continue to make higher end dGPUs for gaming but I don't think they will throw resources at stuff. So when AMD does compete at the high end,its more about Nvidia making a misstep IMHO. An example is when the GA102 misstep,meant AMD was a process node and a half ahead with Navi MK2. This time Nvidia is a bit better process node.

If AMD would have made Navi31 on TSMC 4NM and used stacked cache on the memory controller chiplets,if they truly wanted to make a proper AD102 competitor. At the least it would have shown the AD103 a clean set of heels. Chiplets are more about dropping costs,ie,yields increase so are themselves a value play. OTH,they do have certain power consumption penalties due to the extra I/O required,as well as needing more transistors for that extra I/O.Instead yet again,they tried to make an economy 5NM/6NM design and hoped it would compete against a monolithic 4NM AD102. The GCD itself is smaller than the dGPU used in the RX6700XT.

It is smaller yes, 304mm for the 7900XTX logic die vs 335mm for the 6700XT / 6750XT, with the mem dies its 530mm but they are on 6nm, all of it on 5nm and without all the extra interconnect stuff it would probably be around 450mm, still 150mm smaller than the 4090 which is also on 4nm.
It is a smaller GPU that could be a lot larger, as Jim pointed out, but they chose not to do it, even though larger ones were apparently designed.

Who knows what the margins are on Navi 31, they could be higher than Navi 21, which was 520mm on 6nm, i would not be surprised if AMD deliberately cancelled a larger more 4090 region Navi and simply made the smaller one the $1000 6900XT replacement to get more margins from it once AMD realised the 4080 was going to be a $1200 GPU.
Yeah, absolutely. That is cynical and disrespectful, yet at the same time the situation is such that this card at $1000 still looks half decent and there is nothing AMD can do about that so as a business they are going to make a business decision, in the same way that Nvidia did making the 4080 a $1200 card.

Consoles are probably the bigger threat to Nvidia than AMD, oh... wait.

 

[humbug]

The last bit is also part of what Jim was also inferring in the video. If AMD was a bit more price competitive it wouldn't matter so much if they "only" competed with the second tier Nvidia dGPUs. But the reality is they stopped caring,and essentually just price a bit below Nvidia or plonk extra VRAM on their dGPUs and call it a day. Honestly I wish AMD would just concentrate on decent mainstream and entry level dGPUs and forget about the high end.Polaris and Navi MK1 being examples.

It's quite clear Nvidia has given up in that area like Apple did with cheaper smartphones,and even if AMD used a lagging process node for them to cut costs it would make more sense. At least AMD can bundle these dGPUs with their laptops as part of a package. At the "high end" its quite clear people are more brand focussed anyway.

I completely agree with that, 7700XT type card with 12GB of VRam, its not necessary to put the fastest memory IC's on it, good card, inexpensive, job done.

Let Nvidia have the high end and ignore the inevitable "Its AMD's fault for not competing" moaning, those people will have to learn to stand their own ground and if they never do why should AMD care?

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It is smaller yes, 304mm for the 7900XTX logic die vs 335mm for the 6700XT / 6750XT, with the mem dies its 530mm but they are on 6nm, all of it on 5nm and without all the extra interconnect stuff it would probably be around 450mm, still 150mm smaller than the 4090 which is also on 4nm.
It is a smaller GPU that could be a lot larger, as Jim pointed out, but they chose not to do it, even though larger ones were apparently designed.

Who knows what the margins are on Navi 31, they could be higher than Navi 21, which was 520mm on 6nm, i would not be surprised if AMD deliberately cancelled a larger more 4090 region Navi and simply made the smaller one the $1000 6900XT replacement to get more margins from it once AMD realised the 4080 was going to be a $1200 GPU.
Yeah, absolutely. That is cynical and disrespectful, yet at the same time the situation is such that this card at $1000 still looks half decent and there is nothing AMD can do about that so as a business they are going to make a business decision, in the same way that Nvidia did making the 4080 a $1200 card.

Consoles are probably the bigger threat to Nvidia than AMD, oh... wait.

If AMD really wanted more 4NM supply,they could have gotten it as they are one of TSMC's largest customers and unlike Nvidia were not trying to play games with them. TSMC is no doubt a better version of TSMC 5NM,otherwise the APUs wouldn't be made on them. But I suspect it would cost more too.

I completely agree with that, 7700XT type card with 12GB of VRam, its not necessary to put the fastest memory IC's on it, good card, inexpensive, job done.

Let Nvidia have the high end and ignore the inevitable "Its AMD's fault for not competing" moaning, those people will have to learn to stand their own ground and if they never do why should AMD care?

The thing is Nvidia is trying to be like Apple and make only expensive smartphones,and it means there is a huge lower margin market left untouched. Samsung tried to copy Apple,and the Chinese companies came in and took a lot of their marketshare worldwide. In the end Samsung now made sure it has decent mainstream options,and they might not make as much money as Apple in smartphones but certainly they make a decent amount(so do the Chinese companies).

The reality is AMD should do another Polaris or HD4000 series type dGPU,and then bundle them with their laptop and desktop CPUs to AIB partners as a package. Design a reference platform too. I am hoping the RX7600 series is that because it is 6NM,but I am concerned AMD might get a bit greedy because of Nvidia,and it will cost them sales. That way they get to sell even more CPUs,because AIB partners get to integrate full designs at a lower cost. Intel is no doubt going to do the same with their ARC dGPUs. This is probably why they seem to be focussing on "economy" dGPUs for now,because these will be lower power.

Also try and work with games devs,to make sure they optimise for these dGPUs for games at medium/high settings,which shouldn't be as hard before,as the consoles integrate AMD hardware. That means a good base specifications for these multi-platform games. Polaris might have not been an exciting dGPU design,but it was reasonably priced and could run most games at reasonable settings for years. I even doubt it cost AMD that much to develope. If Nvidia wants RT Overdrive MK20 with ultra-reflective marble floors with the superhero wearing latex bodysuits,they can have that market.

 

[Darujhistan]

I completely agree with that, 7700XT type card with 12GB of VRam, its not necessary to put the fastest memory IC's on it, good card, inexpensive, job done.

Let Nvidia have the high end and ignore the inevitable "Its AMD's fault for not competing" moaning, those people will have to learn to stand their own ground and if they never do why should AMD care?

Agreed with this, let the brand orientated people pay NV tax on their next gen 5000 series halo card that now costs 2.5K. Because it will cost 2.5K...

 

[melmac]

Given the current state of the GPU market i have been thinking a lot about this lately.

I'm inspired to some extent to make this post by this video, which makes many good and valid points but its conclusion seems to be born out of complete denial of what's been happening for at least a decade.

I will try to condense this down as much as i can as i don't want people to be put off by a wall of text. So please excuse the short handed nature of it.

He is right, IMO, that AMD have no interest in competing for market share, or rather perhaps they lack the confidence to try, they have no reason to believe it would work for them, but plenty of reasons to believe it wouldn't, they have been steadily loosing market share for a decade + despite during that time having tried to compete for that market share.

These are not exacting figures, so without watching the video again to get those this is close enough.
AMD segment their revenue result reports, one of those is gaming, it consist of GPU's and Consoles.
AMD's 2022 revenue for the "Gaming" segment was about $6.5 Billion, $3.5 Billion of that was from Sony, consoles like the PS5, about $2 Billion of that was from Microsoft, the XBox, the remaining $1.5 Billion was from GPU's and other assorted consoles, like the Steam Deck and its clones, so probably about $1 Billion revenue for the whole of 2022 for GPU's.
That's nothing, for a total revenue for that year of about $24 Billion, its about 4% of AMD's revenue, and that's revenue, not profit, this matters because developing GPU's is very expensive, the profit margins for that $6.5 Billion on the Gaming segment was less than $1 Billion, about 16%, if those are the margins for the GPU's that is $160 Million profit on GPU's for 2022.

If it costs $500 Million per year to keep up development for your GPU's then AMD are losing $350 Million per year to stay in this game, Intel spent $3.5 Billion over 3 or 4 years on ARC, and it is under developed, so i don't know how much AMD spend on GPU R&D but i'm willing to bet the consoles and Ryzen are propping it up heavily.

How much longer are AMD willing to go on with that and can they even invest more to fight Nvidia harder? AND do not want to take away R&D from where they are successful, they can't do it all and they have to stay ahead of the curve in the segments they are winning.
Its also about volume, the irony is that if AMD had 25 or 30% market share they would be better placed to fight Nvidia, because they would be selling a lot more GPU's than they actually are, so brining in more money and with that the task would be less extreme and difficult than it actually is.

That low volume also presents another problem, because it costs so much to develop them, and you sell so few you have no room to reduce your margins, you almost have to make it low volume high margin or you're just burning money keeping up with the R&D cycle.
So its no good saying AMD have to be 30% cheaper than Nvidia because RT isn't as good and they don't have DLSS, if that's how you see it good luck to you as Nvidia have you right where they want you, at that there is no point in AMD being in this game at all as they don't have the market share for low margins,

So, its up to us, it always has been, and tech tubers need to get angry at Nvidia instead of sighing and moaning that AMD aren't cheaper to make Nvidia cheaper, that being your reason for existing is exactly what did ATI in and it was AMD who bailed them out, so they aren't going to go down that road, if you don't buy them they will just stop making them and probably be glad of it.

AMD are a business, they will make decisions that are best for them, if they think they can get from 8% to 50% market share by being significantly cheaper than Nvidia, that is what they will do. In the same way that if Nvidia think they can maintain 90% market share with £1300 ##80 class cards that are really ##70 class cards.... that is exactly what they will do.

As for Intel, IMO they have realised they do not want to get tied up like AMD have in this massive mindshare monster that is Nvidia, and that is something we created. Yes putting someone on a very very high pedestal just gives them grater hight to spit on you, Nvidia feel absolutely untouchable, like they can do no wrong, because where else are you going to go? AMD? Yeah didn't think so...

Honestly i don't know why AMD don't just throw in the towel, i think if it wasn't for the consoles they would, irronically, but the fact that they are still in this game, despite everything perhaps indicated that on some level they do care.

Spoiler: Unrelated rant

A slight digression from this but i have noticed inexplicable frustration from a lot of reviewers reviewing AMD latest CPU's, ranting about things that have been going on for years just to put a negative slant on what should be a positive for AMD. complaining about existing trends that AMD are only starting to follow because no one has ever complained about it when AMD wasn't competitive, now that AMD are they seem upset about that, perhaps because while AMD's boot is on Intel's neck they are not helping reign Nvidia in, as if that's AMD's job, not these same tech journalists who seem to go out of their way as to not upset Nvidia too much.
When you farm out your own responsibilities what you get is what we now have. My own rant over, sorry

Will you stop with the bleeding heart nonsense. I told you once before that you need to get a life. Your obsession with AMD can't be good for your health.

Your wall of text is delusion of the highest order. AMD aren't where they are in the GPU market because of us or tech tubers or anyone else. They are where they are because of a decade or more of poor decision making and very mediocre GPUs. The mindshare that Nvidia have has is because of that and that only. AMD have only themselves to blame.

AMD can't keep messing up launches. Everything has to be perfect. They had two open goals the last two generations and missed both of them. RDNA 2 was delayed and everyone(well mainly the AMD faithful) thought that AMD were doing the right thing, building up stock so it wasn't the same as Nvidia's 3 series launch. But, no, they weren't, they had even less availability than Nvidia. Did the learn their lesson for the RDNA 3? eh nope. Again, they had a great opportunity to do some damage to Nvidia, instead they did damage to themselves. The 7900 series wasn't ready. The drivers weren't ready. They didn't have enough stock at launch and the 7900XT price made no sense when compared to the 7900XTX. Lots of people were disappointed with Nvidia's releases and were waiting for the 7900 cards to be disappointed again.

AMD is behind. Nvidia is way out in front. AMD has to change mindshare. Nvidia can afford to make mistakes, AMD can't. The RDNA 2 launch was perfect, the only problem with it was they didn't have enough stock. I said at the time that the RDNA 3 and RDNA 4 launches would also have to be perfect for them to make inroads into Nvidia's market share. Instead, they did the usual AMD thing and mess up the launch. Just like they messed up the Tahiti, Hawaii, Polaris, Vega and other launches for one reason or another. Some of the GPUs from those bad launches turned out to be amazing, like the HD 7970, but, as always too late. But, yeah, it's consumers fault.

There is one other thing that you are forgetting about. There is a reason why Nvidia puts in so much effort to having the best GPU of each generation. There is a reason why ATI's market share was at it's highest when they had the top GPU. Because it matters. Like or not, Nvidia has become known as the best and people want to buy the best. For AMD to increase their market share, they will have to compete at the top end and they will have to get their GPUs ready at launch not six months later. I think Lisa Su knows this and I think she plans to push for the top spot. She has already said that she doesn't want AMD to be seen as the budget brand. She has been slowly rising prices since that statement. Her pricing of the 7900XTX is preparing us for that day when AMD will release a GPU that will knock Nvidia off the top spot, but, you will pay for it!!

As for the nonsense about AMD not caring or leaving the discrete GPU market. LOL. Please stop. The GPU market is massive. Of course they care. GPUs are also becoming much more important in the business market, data centres etc.

As for your rant, it's not a rant, it's just typical Humbug AMD Biased nonsense.

 

[Zarax]

I would like to put a slightly more positive spin to it.
IMHO AMD is going for a controlling the bottom of the market strategy and moving up from there.

What is the bottom of the market today?
It's not GPUs!

It's in order:

-iGPU
-APU (including semicustom)
-Console

The first one is enjoying an ever increasing market share and that ensures at least proper nominal support from all players.
The 2nd one is actually a master stroke: AMD made a powerful ally in Valve ensuring that on PC developers will have to at least try to make some optimizations for the Steam Deck, meaning that they get free optimizations for the rest of the architecture with that.
The 3rd one is the historical strategy but with increasing weight as the PC gaming market is gradually shrinking.

What do you think?

 

[hyperseven]

I didn't watch to the end of the video, but read all the comments here.

I think given the past few years and the data produced here, there's still no certainty in where the markets will be, or what the corporate plans are for the future.

If anything, the consumer has been played perfectly well by all the corporations here.

There's too many variables in the gaming market it seems. One random example, Windows proving to be less favoured by increasing number of users imo, and that's the primary gaming OS for desktop.

Windows has been 74-75% over the past 12m, seems quite consistent.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

As humbug said, AMD are not a charity. As such we shouldn't treat them as one. Don't buy their products to keep them going, buy their products if they're good enough. Don't let AMD get away with putting in little effort because they know people will buy their products to keep them in the game.

AMD made some great products at certain points. I had a couple of the IceQ HD7950 cards and they were great. The 290/290X I had had some issues (power draw and associated heat) but other than that were nice. But then I fell into the trap of buying some AMD cards that were just not good. The FuryX for example. I know this was a test of HBM, but maybe it should've stayed as an R&D piece rather than something they released. I bought these over the 980Ti because I was going AMD the benefit of the doubt. Nice AIO cooler though. That's something I feel they should've taken as a positive from that and reused more. I also bought a Vega 64 LC. This wasn't as bad as the FuryX but it was no 1080Ti. Again I gave AMD the benefit of the doubt. It performed worse than the 1080Ti, it had less VRAM than the 1080Ti, it used more power than the 1080Ti, but at least it was cheaper.

So I think we should buy AMD cards on merit not because we want to keep them in the fight in the hope that they'll eventually do something good. Or because we want to keep Nvidia prices down by having a competitor. We don't get to benefit from the Nvidia prices that way because we buy the AMD cards!

So making a decent mid-range card at a price it can justify given the performance and features on offer is probably where I'd like to see AMD. Let Nvidia do the expensive top end stuff. If that results in the very top end cards being bought by lesser numbers because most can justify it then so be it, maybe Nvidia will push it too far.

Basically AMD should earn their place in the dGPU or GTFO, we shouldn't be expected to prop them up. They're a business not a charity, there's no need to defend a billion dollar company that's only interested in your money, which company that may be.

Thinking back to those old AMD cards did remind me that those card used to suck so much more power than the Nvidia cards for similar performance. I remember being told that nobody cares about efficiency and yet now I read stuff on the new X3D chips and "efficiency" seems to make up about 25% of the word count...

 

[Bencher]

Given the current state of the GPU market i have been thinking a lot about this lately.

I'm inspired to some extent to make this post by this video, which makes many good and valid points but its conclusion seems to be born out of complete denial of what's been happening for at least a decade.

I will try to condense this down as much as i can as i don't want people to be put off by a wall of text. So please excuse the short handed nature of it.

He is right, IMO, that AMD have no interest in competing for market share, or rather perhaps they lack the confidence to try, they have no reason to believe it would work for them, but plenty of reasons to believe it wouldn't, they have been steadily loosing market share for a decade + despite during that time having tried to compete for that market share.

These are not exacting figures, so without watching the video again to get those this is close enough.
AMD segment their revenue result reports, one of those is gaming, it consist of GPU's and Consoles.
AMD's 2022 revenue for the "Gaming" segment was about $6.5 Billion, $3.5 Billion of that was from Sony, consoles like the PS5, about $2 Billion of that was from Microsoft, the XBox, the remaining $1.5 Billion was from GPU's and other assorted consoles, like the Steam Deck and its clones, so probably about $1 Billion revenue for the whole of 2022 for GPU's.
That's nothing, for a total revenue for that year of about $24 Billion, its about 4% of AMD's revenue, and that's revenue, not profit, this matters because developing GPU's is very expensive, the profit margins for that $6.5 Billion on the Gaming segment was less than $1 Billion, about 16%, if those are the margins for the GPU's that is $160 Million profit on GPU's for 2022.

If it costs $500 Million per year to keep up development for your GPU's then AMD are losing $350 Million per year to stay in this game, Intel spent $3.5 Billion over 3 or 4 years on ARC, and it is under developed, so i don't know how much AMD spend on GPU R&D but i'm willing to bet the consoles and Ryzen are propping it up heavily.

How much longer are AMD willing to go on with that and can they even invest more to fight Nvidia harder? AND do not want to take away R&D from where they are successful, they can't do it all and they have to stay ahead of the curve in the segments they are winning.
Its also about volume, the irony is that if AMD had 25 or 30% market share they would be better placed to fight Nvidia, because they would be selling a lot more GPU's than they actually are, so brining in more money and with that the task would be less extreme and difficult than it actually is.

That low volume also presents another problem, because it costs so much to develop them, and you sell so few you have no room to reduce your margins, you almost have to make it low volume high margin or you're just burning money keeping up with the R&D cycle.
So its no good saying AMD have to be 30% cheaper than Nvidia because RT isn't as good and they don't have DLSS, if that's how you see it good luck to you as Nvidia have you right where they want you, at that there is no point in AMD being in this game at all as they don't have the market share for low margins,

So, its up to us, it always has been, and tech tubers need to get angry at Nvidia instead of sighing and moaning that AMD aren't cheaper to make Nvidia cheaper, that being your reason for existing is exactly what did ATI in and it was AMD who bailed them out, so they aren't going to go down that road, if you don't buy them they will just stop making them and probably be glad of it.

AMD are a business, they will make decisions that are best for them, if they think they can get from 8% to 50% market share by being significantly cheaper than Nvidia, that is what they will do. In the same way that if Nvidia think they can maintain 90% market share with £1300 ##80 class cards that are really ##70 class cards.... that is exactly what they will do.

As for Intel, IMO they have realised they do not want to get tied up like AMD have in this massive mindshare monster that is Nvidia, and that is something we created. Yes putting someone on a very very high pedestal just gives them grater hight to spit on you, Nvidia feel absolutely untouchable, like they can do no wrong, because where else are you going to go? AMD? Yeah didn't think so...

Honestly i don't know why AMD don't just throw in the towel, i think if it wasn't for the consoles they would, irronically, but the fact that they are still in this game, despite everything perhaps indicated that on some level they do care.

Spoiler: Unrelated rant

A slight digression from this but i have noticed inexplicable frustration from a lot of reviewers reviewing AMD latest CPU's, ranting about things that have been going on for years just to put a negative slant on what should be a positive for AMD. complaining about existing trends that AMD are only starting to follow because no one has ever complained about it when AMD wasn't competitive, now that AMD are they seem upset about that, perhaps because while AMD's boot is on Intel's neck they are not helping reign Nvidia in, as if that's AMD's job, not these same tech journalists who seem to go out of their way as to not upset Nvidia too much.
When you farm out your own responsibilities what you get is what we now have. My own rant over, sorry

I don't know why people think that if amd actually made competitive products they wouldnt sell. They would. I would definitely buy them, and I'm considered an nvidia fanboy for whatever reason.

They just don't want to make a competitive product for us end users, they are happily milking the server segment. The same thing that happens to the cpu division as well, why would they bother selling competitive products there when they can sell for 10 times the profit to servers? That's how we ended up with 350 euro 6core cpus in 2023, lol.

 

[Poneros]

The biggest problem with people talking about these things, including dummies like ATV, is that they keep framing this discussion in terms of simple moves, as if AMD is a bakery and they should just tweak the dough a bit, not understanding the time horizon of this industry and the way these moves are made. The reality is AMD made the moves we see today many years ago, and so whatever adjustments to the strategy they will make we will only see long after they are made, so any discussions of what they "should" do from us the masses is pointless - we have incomplete information and even that only years later; yeah, good luck making assessments with that! Ultimately this all ends up as nothing more than yapping.

As for the title question, the answer is: yes, obviously. AMD gives you the option of a cheaper GPU & more vram and overall better value if you don't care about RT, as well as providing a counter-weight to Nvidia's monopolistic tendencies - if you think things are bad now, just imagine if Nvidia DIDN'T have to think of AMD at all. So that's a clear benefit.