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

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$550 -33% is $370 @Joxeon and AMD aren't selling them at that, AIB's take a slice before the supplier takes a slice before the retailer takes a slice and these things cost billions to develop.

ATI undercut Nvidia like that, Nvida didn't reduce prices, they sat and watched with popcorn, ATI maybe didn't lose any money on BOM costs but they also didn't make enough money to develop the next generations, which is why at the end of ATI's life they ended up with badly rehashed GPU's and ultimately went bust, AMD bailed them out to the tune of $5.9 Billion.

 

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So what's the solution, produce basically the same level of GPU, with slightly worse feature set and sell for slightly less like they did this generation? How did that work out for AMD this time around? Clawed back massive amounts of marketshare did they?
If so, yeah, keep doing the same thing.
If that didn't work, maybe try something different?

I mean if the market was roughly 50/50 between Nvidia and AMD and if your average consumer thought of them both as being premium brands then releasing a similar product for a similar price seems reasonable. But with lower marketshare and and the mindset of most consumers that Nvidia make the best graphics cards it feel like you need to give non-enthusiast people a reason to buy AMD.

Lots of people won't spend that much time researching things as they may not know or care how much difference some thing can make.
Some people will just buy a Ninja air fryer because it's what a lot of people think of as being the top brand.
Some people will buy a Dyson vacuum because it's what a lot of people think of as being the top brand.
Some people will buy an Nvidia based PC or graphics card because it's what a lot of people think of as being a top brand.

If Aldi wanted to sell their brand of vacuum, even if it was really good, I think they'd struggle if they listed it at £1.99 less than a Dyson. Ultimately things are worth what someone is willing to pay for it. That will vary from person to person, the question is, how many people do you want to be willing to pay for your product?
I feel this is what AMD need to decide. Are they happy with a relatively small number of people buying their products or do they want to grow their marketshare?

Do AMD want to grow their market share? Not at any cost, no they don't.

 

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And yet their statement was that they wanted to grow their market share. But they're not willing to do anything in order to make that happen?

Nvidia make the fastest graphics cards, most people want the fastest graphics cards, so they'll buy Nvidia.
What do AMD do? It would seem, the absolute barest of bare minimums about 18 months after their competition.
How do they think they're going to grow market share doing the same thing they done, or not done, for the last few generations? And this time they're possibly not even making a top end card, so they're doing even less.

None of this makes any sense, they haven't done anything regards to your cited statement RDNA 4 isn't out yet.

 

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The problem is AMD just launches everything too late because of their obsession of clearing out old stock,instead of just using other channels to do so. Nvidia no doubt has the same issues with old stock too,but it doesn't affect their launch cadences as much. The RX7800XT was launched 5 months after the RTX4070.

They also need to stop trying to base all their pricing and naming on what Nvidia decides it to be. For example,the RX7800XT is an RX7700XT and the RX7900XT is an RX7800/RX7800XT and should have been priced in line with the previous generations. The RX5700XT was £360~£400(using a brand new TSMC 7NM process and GDDR6),the RX6700XT was £420+ during a time of very high components pricing and the RX7800XT at best should have been a £400 to £450 card,like the RTX4070 which is really an RTX4060TI at best.

Just because Nvidia wants to overcharge doesn't mean AMD has to. AMD is also trying to get repeat business from its own customers,who also generally tend to be a bit more clued on up why they might go for them over Nvidia,ie,better value for money is one reason.

If AMD had launched the RX7800XT within a month of the RTX4070 launch even at £470ish,with a copy of a game(it was Starfield at launch),when the RTX4070 12GB was £580,they might have looked OK. This is despite me considering both the RX7800XT and RTX4070 being £400ish class dGPUs. Instead by the time they did launch it,the RTX4070 price had dropped much closer to £500 and Nvidia had also bundled Alan Wake 2 with the cards.

I agree with a lot of that but the RX 6700 XT was launched at $480, the RX 7800 XT was $20 more at $500, its 56% faster in raster and 64% faster in RT with 4GB more VRam, AV1 Encode / Decode and has hardware level AI.

Wrong naming, i agree but the amount of GPU you're getting comparatively for $20 more is frankly fantastic, stop hating on it, it makes no sense. Inflation taken in to account its actually cheaper, much cheaper.

 

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Yep was saying that at the time. The 7800xt was really a 7700xt chip but even with the 7800xt name it was priced like a 7700xt. It was only named the 7800xt as AMD decided to name the real 7800xt the 7900xt to price up a very stupid mistake. They should have just followed the 6 series namning and pricing and they would have looked great even with $20 on top of each card.

Yeah for sure.... the RX 7800 XT is really an RX 6800 with the RX 7900 XT an RX 7800 XT, the 7800 XT is only about 20% faster in raster and 35% faster in RT but its also $80 cheaper.... i don't care its all semantics, i don't mind @CAT-THE-FIFTH idea at all because if you're comparing price to price the 7800 XT is a massive jump for price vs the 6700 XT so...... ¯\(ツ)/¯

The 7900 XT pricing, stupid, stupid stupid stupid stupid!!!!!!! Never again AMD, that was bad. You deserve the **** **** you got for that, that was all on you.

 

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This is why I have no faith in AMD to price RDNA4 'correctly', I think they've learned nothing this last couple of years.

Yeah i get it.... the fact that after 7900 XT'gate they didn't even try for $550 on the 7800 XT gives me some hope they have already learned that lesson.

 

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There isn't much wrong with current 7000 series pricing, its not perfect but its fine, the problem is RT performance and a lack of a DLSS equivalent, so they aren't competitive, doesn't mean i think they should give them away.

Am kinda grateful that I got this XTX Nitro at a really good price s/h when prices were at their lowest, good solid well-performing card at a good price. Only weakness is the upscale, and I hope they keep on working at it but get the feeling they'll be leaving it behind soon for proper AI hardware upscale with FSR4.

I love watching my frame rates jump 20% just moving a few sliders in the performance tuning tab knowing an £800 4070 Ti has nothing on me in raster.

The card for its £470 is good, really good on its own, fast, cool, quiet, rock solid stable....... but the fact that it does that ^^^^^^ is ******* marvellous.

AMD have come out and said now what the problem was with RDNA 3, they were meant to run at around 3 Ghz but they couldn't really do it with the intended voltage curve due to a bug, so instead they run between 2.4 and 2.5Ghz, the same as RDNA 2,.

What's interesting is they held back Navi 32 for months (7800 XT / 7700 XT) and they clock like monsters, easily.

 

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Is their a link to that? I'd be interested as there was a LOT of speculation about this a year or so ago (and why it was underperforming around 20% or so). Was it just a clockspeed bug?

Don't know the technicalities of it it didn't go in to that much detail but essentially yes, intended clock speed was around 3 Ghz but they couldn't reach that on the intended voltage curve. it would have required a higher curve and with that too much power.
And yet i can run 20% higher performance at 285 watts, up from 250, that's the same power as the 4070 Ti, i don't know what Navi 31 would need to do that, i'm sure you do, remember AMD saying at one point they didn't want a 400+ watt GPU? i think that was the point where they realised the voltage curve problem they had with RDNA 3.

I can't remember where i read that, it was buried in one of those recent interviews between someone from AMD and a tech jurno, it may have been PC World.

 

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This is with my 24/7 overclock, 1080mv, 2900Mhz, power +10%.

270 watts, up from 250, clocking around 2750Mhz, i could run it at around 285 watts and then its around 2900Mhz but IMO this is a good balance, its about 15% higher performance, or 98% a 4070 Ti in raster

60c edge and low 70's hotspot with a sub 40% fan speed, nice and cool and quiet.

Ultra 1440P with high RT.

Its faster than a 6900 XT with this power here. Especially in RT, way faster.

 

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I'm going to say it.... i think they fixed it for Navi 32 but didn't clock it as to not make the 7900 XT sweat, shame to think what RDNA 3 could have been...

 

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And the other issue is that as people get used to the fact that AMD price gouge at release they're going to wait a few months for the prices to drop. This is also going to make early sales look bad.
I think this is what people mean when they expect AMD to release their cards cheaper in order to get sales. Nobody is really expecting a 7900XT for £200, but if they'd released at ~£750 instead of ~£950 it might have seemed a lot better and it would've still given them some room for special offers and price drops over time. The 7900XT might have been the worst offender but I suspect the same applies to the whole range.

Nvidia might be overpriced but at least you don't have to worry that 3 weeks after you buy it they'll drop the price by 20%.

Which is why AMD should release at the price they would have dropped to and stick with it, if people don't buy them sell them to AI people.

 

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Unfortunately AMD are yet to realise that if they sell 20 cards at a £400 profit per card they actually make less than if they sell 100 cards at £100 profit per card, until they figure this out they wont gain any market share.

5X more cards = 60% marketshare, its so simple right, like adding 2 + 2.

 

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AMD would probably be better off using AI to predict what price they need to release at

It shouldn't be difficult, 7900 XT bad, 7800 XT good. They have apparently changed their teams doing this so lets see.

 

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Hope so.. would like to upgrade from the 3060Ti but as its doing a decent job still, I can wait and see how RDNA4 turns out. Be nice to see them under £500, I'd jump on that but history tells me its all hope until reality smacks us in the face again lol

At my age I think I have one more GPU upgrade and one more platform upgrade before retiring from gaming so they need to be worthwhile upgrades.. reaction times starting to slow down now Im in my mid 50's

On a side note.. I have been dual booting Windows 10 and 11 so I can see what 11 runs like, getting around 11 is taking some getting used to but I have noticed DayZ running much smoother than it does on 10 even though DayZ runs nice on 10, just feels a little more fluid, cant explain it, its a weird one. Maybe its because I dont have everything else installed on there yet lol

Win 11 is a better OS than 10 these days tho i don't like the direction MS are heading with it, just have to be vigilant about that to mitigate it.

I'm 48, my gaming mate is 49, sometime we go back to FPS games we were playing a decade ago and end up telling ourselves the game has gotten a lot harder, somehow... like a couple of old gamers in denial. I don't want to retire....

Anyway, i changed out my 2070 S for an RX 7800 XT, with some trepidation, i just didn't think £600 for a 4070 that didn't have a crap cooler, a lot of the cheaper ones do, i needn't have worried, been running it since February, its a really good card, great 1440P performance and rock solid.

 

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amd waiting for nvidia to announce prices so that they can quote a full 5 bucks lower

Come on now don't be facetious, 7 bucks.

 

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AMD's earnings call was today. Results were not as good as expected so the share price fell 6 or 8%. And AMD is not bullish on future gaming revenue.

But Lisa did make an announcement about rdna4. She said they will launch new RDNA4 GPUs in early 2025 and Lisa went on to say RDNA4 has significantly higher Ray Tracing performance and has new AI features that RDNA3 does not have

Strange..... AMD beat estimates, currently rated 'buy' due to strong datacentre, 125% growth this year and expected to grow 45% next year, if that's true it would put AMD datacentre share at between 45 to 50% by the end of next year.

I think some people write the narrative they would have liked to have seen, they do that all the time in that world because they have competing interests.
But the facts are the numbers, the numbers have no elegances and AMD's numbers are good.

They are 4% up, on to of a few % up ever the last couple of days.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4730693-amd-q3-robust-ramp-instinct-gpu-epyc-cpu-shipments-maintain-buy

 

[humbug]

Not really. Either by AMD, which seemed weirdly broken this gen... or Nvidia, and be locked out of the next dlss version because I don't have the latest and greatest.

No, waiting seems better?

RDNA 3 was overpriced, or the 7900 XT certainly was, FSR isn't as good as DLSS and nor is RT, with that tech jurnoes had a real downer on RDNA 3.

That gave the impression it was a bad GPU, a failed generation, while this mood around them was not unjustified, i agree with those specifics the GPU by its own merits is in my view really good, i have an RX 7800 XT, had for 9 months now, its a lovely GPU with fantastic drivers, it runs all my games beautifully, like warm butter, somehow it even manages to smooth out and stabilise the horrendous mess that currently is Star Citizen very much Alpha testing, from what i can tell it runs it more stable and better than equivalent Nvidia GPU's.

This is the first GPU i have had in many years that's been so well behaved i have entirely forgotten its there, there are valid criticisms, but i wont have "broken"

It might not be as good in some aspects, but it is well designed and well engineered, its very dependable, there is more to these products than plugin features.

 

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AMD has a lot of work to do but they *need* to do it.

I think a comparison like this is irrelevant, the 4090 is also 40% faster than the 4080 in RT while the 4080 is still 20% more expensive than a 7900 XTX which is price more like' actually very close to a 4070 Ti Super.

It was an interesting video because i found some good data in it to draw a narrative from, not the narrative they wanted to portray, their narrative being this, its bottom feeder garbage clickbait.

 

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It's more about Nvidia's best vs AMD's best.

But yeah, against 4080 would have been interesting as well.

Or a price comparison, 4070 Ti Super. I think that would set a different narrative, which is why it will never happen.

 

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Probably not just me thinking this but the XTX is currently around £800 whereas the 4090 is slightly increasing at retailers around £1800 upward lately. So being the 50% stronger in RT is great but your also paying more than double for that. Though I suppose this is only for people that are comparing them to buy right now.

Would be better to also show how the RT compares with 7800XT v 4070 to see what the gap was like for more regular type spenders as a follow on video.

Right, the 4070 Ti Super is around the same....

I would like to see a comparison between the 4070 and 7800 XT, i'm expecting to lose but......... you know what. The 4060 Ti 16GB is the same money, there you go...