Sunday, August 6th 2023
AMD Retreating from Enthusiast Graphics Segment with RDNA4?
AMD is rumored to be withdrawing from the enthusiast graphics segment with its next RDNA4 graphics architecture. This means there won't be a successor to its "Navi 31" silicon that competes at the high-end with NVIDIA; but rather one that competes in the performance segment and below. It's possible AMD isn't able to justify the cost of developing high-end GPUs to push enough volumes over the product lifecycle. The company's "Navi 21" GPU benefited from the crypto-currency mining swell, but just like with NVIDIA, the company isn't able to push enough GPUs at the high-end.
With RDNA4, the company will focus on specific segments of the market that sell the most, which would be the x700-series and below. This generation will be essentially similar to the RX 5000 series powered by RDNA1, which did enough to stir things up in NVIDIA's lineup, and trigger the introduction of the RTX 20 SUPER series. The next generation could see RDNA4 square off against NVIDIA's next-generation, and hopefully, Intel's Arc "Battlemage" family.
Source:
VideoCardz
With RDNA4, the company will focus on specific segments of the market that sell the most, which would be the x700-series and below. This generation will be essentially similar to the RX 5000 series powered by RDNA1, which did enough to stir things up in NVIDIA's lineup, and trigger the introduction of the RTX 20 SUPER series. The next generation could see RDNA4 square off against NVIDIA's next-generation, and hopefully, Intel's Arc "Battlemage" family.
363 Comments on AMD Retreating from Enthusiast Graphics Segment with RDNA4?
RDNA 3 is really a repeat of Vega, where there was a lot of marketing about feature that would revolutionize everything(packed math, hbcc, primitive shaders, etc etc) and they were really, never used or not even enable in the drivers.
Tegra X1 was such a failure that Nvidia never even tried to enter the Android market again.
Meanwhile Zen 4 launched with 50$ lower MSRP on 7700x (5800x MSRP was 450$) and 100$ lower MSRP on 7950x (5950x MSRP was 800$) and the non X parts now also include box coolers. Currently ryzen 7000 prices are very reasonable.
Your claims on zen4 being "high margin" are even less true once you realize that Zen3 was still using that dogshit dirt cheap Global Foundry 12nm for IO die which made all of their cpus have awful idle power draw compared to intel. Now zen4 uses much better and more efficient (also a lot more expensive) TSMC 6nm IO die. May i also remind you that IO die is actually bigger than the core complex die and it heavily factors in the total BoM cost
Its crazy how you speak with such confidence about company's startegy, profit margins, leadership, greed and even future "bankruptcy pies", when the underlying facts that formed your opinion are untrue. I'd argue that zen4 launch timing into ddr5 market when the memory prices started to plummet is more impressive, especially considering AM5 should last to 2026 and people will reuse their memory kits Server market? Consoles and handhelds?
When AMD abandoned the high end market for GPUs with GCN, this gave nvidia's maxwell the top tier on a silver platter. That immediately led to GCN 4.0, AKA polaris, where AMD didnt have anything above the low tier. The result was nvidia's 1070 making more money per unit then any GPU, and outselling all of AMD COMBINED. As did the 1080. And the 1060 sold 4x as all of polaris. rDNA1 had a decent run, with AMD fixing drivers and fixing their reputation, but at the same time high end buyers had no options. Anyone who had a vega card had no upgrade path, meanwhile the 1080ti/2080/2080ti sat right there with a whole market to themselves.
All of this funneled money into nvidia, allowing them to pull further ahead with things like RT. The last thing AMD needs to do now is abandon the high yield cards. They need to get a competent stack of cards with a true halo product out there, like nvidia has consistently done for 15 years. The first time AMD's marketshare increased since 2014 was with rDNA2, the first full stack since 2014.
Or just sell RTG to intel with a clause that they can continue to license the GPU IP for their APUs in the future. Or maybe samsung, they would have their own fabs.
Sure most of them probably end up in servers but again not low volume!
RTX 3000 once again had superior RT performance. rDNA2 had a niche for itself, it was superior in raster at 1080p and 1440p, and had larger framebuffers. rDNA2 also sold very well, held back by AMD themselves whom prioritized ryzen production, meaning that for over a year you couldnt physically buy a rDNA2 card. I know, I was one on them trying to find one.
Then with rDNA3 we're back to not competing with the top dog, with now vastly inferior RT performance, propelled on by an arch that seemingly bring little improvement clock for clock to rDNA2. AMD themselves have struggled with it. We, once gain, have to compete on price.
Sure seems to me that for over a decade AMD has played second fiddle to nvidia, which worked fine until AMD decided it wanted to be a "PrEeEeMiUm BrAnD" and jacked up prices. Everyone bashed nvidia for having a flat perf/$ increase over the last gen, but AMD did the exact same thing with the 6700xt and 6600xt.
If AMD couldnt actually make a superior product, like they did with the HD 5870, or the 7970, or the 290x, they would have no problem selling cards. But they havent really done that. They have a good card, like the RX 480 8GB, and that card does well, but the whole stack doesnt.
What is high end next generation..
Ask Nvidia and it would be a 5060ti on price, a 5070 on specs.
Ask Intel and it will be A870
Ask AMD and they're not bothering.
Interesting times ahead.
I personally think they'll work on multi die GPU by perfecting that GCD die FIRST.
All while hopefully releasing decent APUs for entry level.
And having very viable low to mid entrant GPUs.
Shit times ahead though AI is spanking wallets all round.
AMD high end thread, all debate APU.
AMD low end thread, the high end is shit, 4090 rule's.
For example the graphic below shows TechEpiphany's tweet on the latest (week 31) GPU sales at Mindfactory, Germany.
So AMD achieves 51.56% in unit sales. But the AMD ASP(Average Selling Price) is lower. As a result AMD gets only 41.63% of the revenue, with NVIDIA on 58.25%. So unit sales (and % market share numbers based on them) are not the whole story.
I'm in popcorn/wait and see mode here in every possible way. Just glad I bought a 7900XT as it is because the coming gens aren't looking to get much better and the lower you go in current gen stacks, the worse it gets. That still strikes me as a novelty many fail to recognize. High end purchases are equally effective cost/frame, and therefore better as they resell much more easily too and hold value.
What's not a novelty here though is AMD's 'consistency' wrt their GPU updates. Mother of god, what a mess.
They looked at where the market is heading and they probably see no huge gain for RT and AI without doing a new clean sheet architecture. So instead of spending for 3-4 chips for RNDA 4, they would just do one while they work on their next gen architecture.
This is pure speculation like almost everything under this post. But with the recent release, it could be something probable.