*** The AMD RDNA 4 Rumour Mill ***

[melmac]

Unfortunately there's no concrete source, it's all rumours and hearsay from multiple places across the net. We are in the rumor thread, and of course you are right to take anything and everything I say with a generous heaping of salt!

Well, AMD does have a history of completely messing up the prices and coming out with ridiculous prices when they feel they can get away with it.

Remember the HD 7900 cards. AMD priced the HD 7970 at $549!! $549 for a midrange card. It was a nearly $200 price increase over the HD 6970. They had to reduce the price twice to get them to sell. The HD 7970 went from $549 at launch, to $479 after the GTX 680 launched, to $429 in June.

And who can forget the pricing fiasco when Vega Launched. Remember all that confusion with the included games and the price that AMD said was only for a limited number of cards. But, even at the lower price, the cards were still more expensive and worse performing then their Nvidia counterparts. Lets not forget that these cards arrived a year after the Pascal cards too. AMD eventually got drivers sorted that increased performance, but that was months later.

I really hope that AMD gets the launch of these cards right and they don't repeat mistakes of the past.

 

[Martini1991]

Well, AMD does have a history of completely messing up the prices and coming out with ridiculous prices when they feel they can get away with it.

Remember the HD 7900 cards. AMD priced the HD 7970 at $549!! $549 for a midrange card. It was a nearly $200 price increase over the HD 6970. They had to reduce the price twice to get them to sell. The HD 7970 went from $549 at launch, to $479 after the GTX 680 launched, to $429 in June.

And who can forget the pricing fiasco when Vega Launched. Remember all that confusion with the included games and the price that AMD said was only for a limited number of cards. But, even at the lower price, the cards were still more expensive and worse performing then their Nvidia counterparts. Lets not forget that these cards arrived a year after the Pascal cards too. AMD eventually got drivers sorted that increased performance, but that was months later.

I really hope that AMD gets the launch of these cards right and they don't repeat mistakes of the past.

Didn't AMD also with the 7970 do the unprecedented move of having pre orders with no reviews lol

 

[NZXT30]

Well, AMD does have a history of completely messing up the prices and coming out with ridiculous prices when they feel they can get away with it.

Remember the HD 7900 cards. AMD priced the HD 7970 at $549!! $549 for a midrange card. It was a nearly $200 price increase over the HD 6970. They had to reduce the price twice to get them to sell. The HD 7970 went from $549 at launch, to $479 after the GTX 680 launched, to $429 in June.

And who can forget the pricing fiasco when Vega Launched. Remember all that confusion with the included games and the price that AMD said was only for a limited number of cards. But, even at the lower price, the cards were still more expensive and worse performing then their Nvidia counterparts. Lets not forget that these cards arrived a year after the Pascal cards too. AMD eventually got drivers sorted that increased performance, but that was months later.

I really hope that AMD gets the launch of these cards right and they don't repeat mistakes of the past.

After the Ryzen "honeymoon" period they have been doing the same with their CPU prices.

To be honest I dread to think a hardware market with AMD as the leader. AMD has shown extremely alarming gouging signs.

 

[melmac]

ATI were heavily in debt, they had no money and no new products, what are you trying to say with these semantics? That ATI were doing just fine?

what are you talking about? They had the most successful few years of their business from 2003 to 2006. They were rolling.

They weren't in debt.

 

[melmac]

Didn't AMD also with the 7970 do the unprecedented move of having pre orders with no reviews lol

That's right!! That slipped my mind.

Or I have one better, what about all the promises they made about Vega been for gamers and not crypto miners, blah blah. Then proceeded to release blockchain drivers long before they fixed the problems with their gaming drivers.

 

[ICDP]

Yes I think they did. Though to be fair the 7970 was competing with the 3GB 580GTX at a much better price/perf ratio on release. But all that proves is that AMD just follow Nvidia’s price gouging lead.

Effectively if these prices are true, the 9070 XT is getting about 12% - 15% better raster price/perf over a 7900 GRE. If that is not effectively upping their mid range a tier, I don’t know what is.

Sorry but if I am going to call out Nvidia for upping their prices and or lowering their tiers, then I will do the same when AMD do it.

 

[Grim5]

what are you talking about? They had the most successful few years of their business from 2003 to 2006. They were rolling.

They weren't in debt.

Looks like 2004 was a record year for ATI and by end of 2006 they still posted a $45 million profit for the year, where was AMD posted a loss for the same year. Their margins were a bit low though at 29% - usually for this industry back then was 50%, it's what Nvidia, AMD and Intel had.

ATIs low margins would have been one of many reasons why they became an acquisition target; if as a company you're making only about half the margins as your competitors, investors won't want to invest in your company and they will leave, and now you have no money for RnD or expansion. When Lisa Su joined AMD, one of her top tasks was to increase AMD's margins to attract new investors

 

[Pete Tong]

What card did AMD have when the gtx280 was released?

 

[Grim5]

What card did AMD have when the gtx280 was released?

ATI HD4870

 

[melmac]

Most of that is down to low console margins and Pandemic overproduction of the RX6000 series. Nvidia had over a billion USD to get rid off,but unlike AMD have good system integrator relations. Whose fault is that? AMD.
They too could build better system integrator support,but clearly haven't for their own dGPUs.

Also,why should an end user care about profit margins? If someone shops at B and M Bargains,do they care that Harvey Nichols makes more margins? AMD CPUs were behind Intel,so for years had to cheaper. Only when AMD matched or beat Intel could they charge as much or more. No different here.

AMD,overall,makes worse cards than Nvidia. When it comes to even simple things like upscaling,their support is much worse because they spend less money.

In the end,as a user AMD have to offer good value for money. Nvidia are a market leader who have spent 10x the amount AMD has spent in R and D,etc to get there. They spent billions of USD on software and pushing it into games.

If AMD wants to charge Nvidia money,they have to put that level of money into their graphics division.

If they CBA,then they are the budget option and have to charge less. As much as AMD is not a charity,neither are consumers.

That is a great post.

Their GPU division made crap profits because they made decent products 7 months late, or tried to price far too high. The market decided too little too late and too expensive.

They didn’t make crap profits because they weren’t selling at high enough margins. They made crap profits because their market share dropped another ~10%.

This is also a great post.

And I will add another reason, well two reasons, why AMD are where they are now. Consistency and messing up their launches and tied to that, no point in saying a GPU is great against the competition 8 months down the line.

RDNA 2 was brilliant. Everything from the launch to the drivers to the price. It was all good. The only thing that went against them was the Crypto mining boom.

All they had to do was more of the same with RDNA 3. Instead they priced them wrong, had very little availability, and had driver problems(with VR and power) So they went straight back to old AMD. Eventually they managed to solve these problems and corrected the price but the damage was done.

And people go, but, but Nvidia do the same. That's whataboutism at it's finest. AMD has to get their own house in order. Release good products consistently and don't mess up the launches. That's how you change mindshare. You won't do it over one or two generations either.

Nvidia can afford to make mistakes. AMD can't. It's not up to us to buy AMD just because. AMD has to do what they did on the CPU side of things, make products that make us want to buy them.

 

[melmac]

Looks like 2004 was a record year for ATI and by end of 2006 they still posted a $45 million profit for the year, where was AMD posted a loss for the same year. Their margins were a bit low though at 29% - usually for this industry back then was 50%, it's what Nvidia, AMD and Intel had.

ATIs low margins would have been one of many reasons why they became an acquisition target; if as a company you're making only about half the margins as your competitors, investors won't want to invest in your company and they will leave, and now you have no money for RnD or expansion. When Lisa Su joined AMD, one of her top tasks was to increase AMD's margins to attract new investors

Have you forgotten that AMD tried to acquire Nvidia first. And Nvidia only had margins around the 29/30% back then.

 

[ICDP]

Exactly, AMD need to simply show some consistency. It’s not about Nvidia, it’s about the lack of consistency from AMD.

This is the first time in a few generations AMD have the ability to dictate at the mid range. A good product at a good price and it becomes about AMDs mindshare improving.

Now the prices being mooted aren’t terrible, they just aren’t great and work out about 10% - 15% price/perf improvement over last gen.

 

[TrixP10]

All you are doing is demonstrating how little you actually understand.

pot / kettle

 

[Grim5]

Have you forgotten that AMD tried to acquire Nvidia first. And Nvidia only had margins around the 29/30% back then.

Good says 43%

 

[TrixP10]

After the Ryzen "honeymoon" period they have been doing the same with their CPU prices.

To be honest I dread to think a hardware market with AMD as the leader. AMD has shown extremely alarming gouging signs.

Really, look at their quarterly or yearly profits

 

[FredFlint]

This GPU does not even need to be the fastest or within x% of y card, it just needs to be good enough and priced well. Most users will except a slower card(but good enough) if it offers good value. Look at how fast the Intel cards sell out, I hope Intel releases a higher end version for ~£300-350.

 

[TrixP10]

Most of that is down to low console margins and Pandemic overproduction of the RX6000 series. Nvidia had over a billion USD to get rid off,but unlike AMD have good system integrator relations. Whose fault is that? AMD.
They too could build better system integrator support,but clearly haven't for their own dGPUs.

Also,why should an end user care about profit margins? If someone shops at B and M Bargains,do they care that Harvey Nichols makes more margins? AMD CPUs were behind Intel,so for years had to cheaper. Only when AMD matched or beat Intel could they charge as much or more. No different here.

AMD,overall,makes worse cards than Nvidia. When it comes to even simple things like upscaling,their support is much worse because they spend less money.

In the end,as a user AMD have to offer good value for money. Nvidia are a market leader who have spent 10x the amount AMD has spent in R and D,etc to get there. They spent billions of USD on software and pushing it into games.

If AMD wants to charge Nvidia money,they have to put that level of money into their graphics division.

If they CBA,then they are the budget option and have to charge less. As much as AMD is not a charity,neither are consumersA.

At that time Nvidia's concerns were solely GPU's. Their goal - to be was to be the complete dominate player. Besides massive R&D and support, millions were being paid to games devs (sometimes to the determent of AMD). 'Locked in' software and win at all cost policies.
AMD were developing CPU's and GPU's without the luxury of a bottomless pit of cash.
We're lucky that AMD have survived on both CPU and GPU fronts.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

At that time Nvidia's concerns were solely GPU's. Their goal - to be was to be the complete dominate player. Besides massive R&D and support, millions were being paid to games devs (sometimes to the determent of AMD). 'Locked in' software and win at all cost policies.
AMD were developing CPU's and GPU's without the luxury of a bottomless pit of cash.
We're lucky that AMD have survived on both CPU and GPU fronts.

I can appreciate that,but at the same time the AMD cards have to be priced lower until AMD can match Nvidia. No different than when Ryzen for a few generations was also priced lower than Intel. I don't also think 25% over a £480 RX7800XT at a similar price is a huge ask! It would be less than the performance jump of the RX6700XT and RX7800XT. If not the sub £500 market will show even more massive stagnation.

If Nvidia was being competitive,this would be level of performance of sub £400 cards. The RTX5070 uses a die typical of a 60 series dGPU.So did the RTX4070.So,AMD can still win in price/performance, whilst charging more than they could have done in a competitive market.

 

[harmattan]

Looks like 2004 was a record year for ATI and by end of 2006 they still posted a $45 million profit for the year, where was AMD posted a loss for the same year. Their margins were a bit low though at 29% - usually for this industry back then was 50%, it's what Nvidia, AMD and Intel had.

ATIs low margins would have been one of many reasons why they became an acquisition target; if as a company you're making only about half the margins as your competitors, investors won't want to invest in your company and they will leave, and now you have no money for RnD or expansion. When Lisa Su joined AMD, one of her top tasks was to increase AMD's margins to attract new investors

As someone who was very close to the wire on that trade, you are correct on all accounts, sir The other motivation was a question of scaling and efficiences against the juggernaut that was Intel on one side and the more efficiently-structured amd OEM-embedded nVidia on the other -- "synergies", as we used to call them.

 

[TrixP10]

I can appreciate that,but at the same time the AMD cards have to be priced lower until AMD can match Nvidia. No different than when Ryzen for a few generations was also priced lower than Intel. I don't also think 25% over a £480 RX7800XT at a similar price is a huge ask! It would be less than the performance jump of the RX6700XT and RX7800XT. If not the sub £500 market will show even more massive stagnation.

If Nvidia was being competitive,this would be level of performance of sub £400 cards. The RTX5070 uses a die typical of a 60 series dGPU.So did the RTX4070.So,AMD can still win in price/performance, whilst charging more than they could have done in a competitive market.

IMHO that's what AMD will try to achieve - a profit, although relatively small. It's very unlikely will we see a 'Zen' moment