Monday, September 9th 2024
AMD Confirms Retreat from the Enthusiast GPU Segment, to Focus on Gaining Market-Share
AMD in an interview with Tom's Hardware, confirmed that its next generation of gaming GPUs based on the RDNA 4 graphics architecture will not target the enthusiast graphics segment. Speaking with Paul Alcorn, AMD's Computing and Graphics Business Group head Jack Huynh, said that with its next generation, AMD will focus on gaining market share in the PC gaming graphics market, which means winning price-performance battles against NVIDIA in key mainstream- and performance segments, similar to what it did with the Radeon RX 5000 series based on the original RDNA graphics architecture, and not get into the enthusiast segment that's low-margin with the kind of die-sizes at play, and move low volumes. AMD currently only holds 12% of the gaming discrete GPU market, something it sorely needs to turn around, given that its graphics IP is contemporary.
On a pointed question on whether AMD will continue to address the enthusiast GPU market, given that allocation for cutting-edge wafers are better spent on data-center GPUs, Huynh replied: "I am looking at scale, and AMD is in a different place right now. We have this debate quite a bit at AMD, right? So the question I ask is, the PlayStation 5, do you think that's hurting us? It's $499. So, I ask, is it fun to go King of the Hill? Again, I'm looking for scale. Because when we get scale, then I bring developers with us. So, my number one priority right now is to build scale, to get us to 40 to 50 percent of the market faster. Do I want to go after 10% of the TAM [Total Addressable Market] or 80%? I'm an 80% kind of guy because I don't want AMD to be the company that only people who can afford Porsches and Ferraris can buy. We want to build gaming systems for millions of users. Yes, we will have great, great, great products. But we tried that strategy [King of the Hill]—it hasn't really grown. ATI has tried this King of the Hill strategy, and the market share has kind of been...the market share. I want to build the best products at the right system price point. So, think about price point-wise; we'll have leadership."
Alcorn pressed: "Price point-wise, you have leadership, but you won't go after the flagship market?," to which Huynh replied: "One day, we may. But my priority right now is to build scale for AMD. Because without scale right now, I can't get the developers. If I tell developers, 'I'm just going for 10 percent of the market share,' they just say, 'Jack, I wish you well, but we have to go with Nvidia.' So, I have to show them a plan that says, 'Hey, we can get to 40% market share with this strategy.' Then they say, 'I'm with you now, Jack. Now I'll optimize on AMD.' Once we get that, then we can go after the top."
The exchange seems to confirm that AMD's decision to withdraw from the enthusiast segment is driven mainly by the low volumes it is seeing for the kind of engineering effort and large wafer costs spent building enthusiast-segment GPUs. The company saw great success with its Radeon RX 6800 series and RX 6900 series mainly because the RDNA 2 generation benefited from the GPU-accelerated cryptomining craze, where high-end GPUs were in demand. This demand disappeared by the time AMD rolled out its next-generation Radeon RX 7900 series powered by RDNA 3, and the lack of performance leadership compared to the GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 with ray tracing enabled, hurt the company's prospects. News of AMD focusing on the performance segment (and below), aligns with the rumors that with RDNA 4, AMD is making a concerted effort to improving its ray tracing performance, to reduce the performance impact of enabling ray tracing. This, raster performance, and efficiency, could be the company's play in gaining market share.
The grand assumption AMD is making here, is that it has a product problem, and not a distribution problem, and that with a product that strikes the right performance/Watt and performance/price equations, it will gain market-share.
Catch the full interview in the source link below.
Source:
Tom's Hardware
On a pointed question on whether AMD will continue to address the enthusiast GPU market, given that allocation for cutting-edge wafers are better spent on data-center GPUs, Huynh replied: "I am looking at scale, and AMD is in a different place right now. We have this debate quite a bit at AMD, right? So the question I ask is, the PlayStation 5, do you think that's hurting us? It's $499. So, I ask, is it fun to go King of the Hill? Again, I'm looking for scale. Because when we get scale, then I bring developers with us. So, my number one priority right now is to build scale, to get us to 40 to 50 percent of the market faster. Do I want to go after 10% of the TAM [Total Addressable Market] or 80%? I'm an 80% kind of guy because I don't want AMD to be the company that only people who can afford Porsches and Ferraris can buy. We want to build gaming systems for millions of users. Yes, we will have great, great, great products. But we tried that strategy [King of the Hill]—it hasn't really grown. ATI has tried this King of the Hill strategy, and the market share has kind of been...the market share. I want to build the best products at the right system price point. So, think about price point-wise; we'll have leadership."
The exchange seems to confirm that AMD's decision to withdraw from the enthusiast segment is driven mainly by the low volumes it is seeing for the kind of engineering effort and large wafer costs spent building enthusiast-segment GPUs. The company saw great success with its Radeon RX 6800 series and RX 6900 series mainly because the RDNA 2 generation benefited from the GPU-accelerated cryptomining craze, where high-end GPUs were in demand. This demand disappeared by the time AMD rolled out its next-generation Radeon RX 7900 series powered by RDNA 3, and the lack of performance leadership compared to the GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 with ray tracing enabled, hurt the company's prospects. News of AMD focusing on the performance segment (and below), aligns with the rumors that with RDNA 4, AMD is making a concerted effort to improving its ray tracing performance, to reduce the performance impact of enabling ray tracing. This, raster performance, and efficiency, could be the company's play in gaining market share.
The grand assumption AMD is making here, is that it has a product problem, and not a distribution problem, and that with a product that strikes the right performance/Watt and performance/price equations, it will gain market-share.
Catch the full interview in the source link below.
272 Comments on AMD Confirms Retreat from the Enthusiast GPU Segment, to Focus on Gaining Market-Share
You could maybe borrow one from a friend, PC shop, etc.
If the AMD display driver really had issues with CS, then other players would have complained, too. So it could be a PSU or motherboard issue, some unstable OC, RAM, hardware or driver incompatibility, or a million other things. Don't point fingers until you rule everything out. Just saying.
You can see my config, my rig can do 100% CPU and 100% GPU for days continuously (handbreak)
It might also be something in your GPU driver settings. Some games don't like some features. For example, Radeon Boost turns some games into a stuttery mess.
While I do agree without AMD competitive tiers, Nvidia will default to greed in pricing model hence rtx 4090 went up In price and 4080 dropped by $200 when 4080 super dropped; Intel's success would improve duoppoly stagnation game team Red and green are playing. I always had a feeling why is AMD fortying it's position in the midrange now especially when Intel Blackmage can eat its lunch. Are they willing to fall on the sword for Nvidia's sake? Something doesn't add up. Nvidia will allow prices to further swell based on the no competition in the high to enthusiast end with Blackwell. AMD knows prices of silicon is skyrocketing imo they are complacent in the swelling of prices gpus.
I have been buying AMD budget GPUs for a long time.
They always worked perfectly and the performance was always slightly higher than equally expensive Nvidia GPUs.
My four favourite operating systems are Alpine Linux, OpenBSD, Clear Linux and Devuan.
None of these four systems has decent support for Nvidia cards.
Never used any of those features, not interested.
I don't recall anything from the release note regarding cs.
I know you mentioned non Windows OS, but of course Windows is by far the most popular OS, maybe in the nix space AMD is actually the market leader?
Some people believe that if AMD held the crown in gpu performance and all those 7800X3D charts with 4090s at the top of the past 2 years that it wouldn't have made a difference for AMD. yeah I don't see it. If AMD held the crown at a minimum they would have kept market share not lost it. If AMD somehow has revolutionary rt performance with rdna4 it's not like Nvidia is stagnating performance and is limited on cash to squeeze even more performance with Blackwell.
I don't think AMD has a choice right now. Something like 1/2 of their RDNA design/development group was moved over to the CDNA group. AMD followed the money. They probably don't have the resources right now to try and compete on the high end.
Swapped the PSU for a better brand and never had any issues.
The error was weird, pointing to a USB device, but coming from the GPU.
See if you can borrow another PSU.If I didnt knew Ngreedias MO, I would say ok, but Gameworks itslef had some arbitrary code that worked great on their GPUs and like crap on AMD and that was no coincidence.
Do you remember Aegia PhyX?
It was a stand alone card that was GPU agnostic. Ngreedia bought them and integrated on their GPU's.
But in those days, ATI was competitive and even faster than the top of the line Ngreedia GPU, so people were buying ATI's gpu as primary and using a Ngreedia gpu just for PhysX.
Remember what happened after? People started complaining that their Ngreedia GPUs stopped working after a driver update. Well, they were son anticonsumer that they included a check in their drivers, that if it detected an ATI GPU, it would disable their own GPU, the one that you already paid for.
Hairworks was the same nonsense.
So yes, I will not just ignore or forgice such things because they do affect me as a consumer and end up limiting my options.Same MO, worse results, because before that would be a con on any review, now is praised as a must have "feature".
Actions like that is why I dont like Ngreedia but the funny thing is, people like me get called being toxic for simply not drinking the kool aid.
And yes, I know that in the end these companies simply want money but as a consumer, I cant simply support a company that is limiting my choices.
www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amd-announces-unified-udna-gpu-architecture-bringing-rdna-and-cdna-together-to-take-on-nvidias-cuda-ecosystem
Between the fuing DLSS and the horrible TAA and unreal engine 5: get less for more... Is there any sharp game left?
I still wonder why there didnt work on AI based SSAA/MSAA, well I know the answer but, please.
Also, how good a graphics card is has nothing to do with fans of the brand.People, please stop looking at market share. It's just one arbitrary number that has nothing to do with how a company is doing, or how competitive they are. Or do you think that a street corner burger van has to be on 50-50 market share with McDonald's? Come on...
For now, Nvidia has to be careful not to overprice their cards too much to keep the market share they have. Would anyone buy a 4060 for $500? No, because the 7600 would make much more sense. This is the kind of sensibility we would lose if there was only one graphics card maker.
Why these basic things are so hard to understand, I don't get it. :confused:I didn't mention these things to start talking about the past. But in any case, I said what I said. Nvidia bought Ageia with PhysX and all other IPs, so why would they have left it to rot instead of developing for it? Is using IP that you legally own anti-competitive? Should they have spent extra resource to make sure it runs equally well on AMD? Why would they have? If you gain some advantage in a race, should you give it up on purpose because... Reasons? Like I said, be reasonable, please.
AMD is betting to much of Battlemage failing imo.
Edit: This is similar to a driver in any motorsport running low on fuel just before the end of the race. As the strategist, you're not gonna ask him to go full blast and risk having to pit before the end of the race while half of the lineup drives past him. No, you're gonna ask him to start saving fuel without losing too many positions. You may lose the podium, but there's no reason to lose the entire race as well.
Also would repeat, that with the 24.8.1 driver were really bad while the 24.6.1 is much better, it is a software issue.
If you do your due diligence, you will realize that all 3 AMD, Intel & Nvidia have fanboys, some toxic and some not. The many prefer certain brands while others prefer all 3 based on Price/Performance.
If you ventured onto other sites like w c c F t e c h for example, Nvidia and Intel owners are highly toxic & wish AMD go bankrupt so that Nvidia & Intel would be the only choice. They themselves admit if that ever happens, the prices for CPUs and GPUs would be much more expensive.The only main thing that differentiates AMD with Nvidia regarding high end GPUs (Which are close to each other in performance) is Ray Tracing. That's it. If it wasn't for Nvidia's RT, they wouldn't be viewed as the top dog.
Today they are viewed as offering the WORST Price/Performance/Watt/FPS on the planet.One way AMD can get ahead of this image is surprising the PC gaming industry by an "Unexpected High End" surprise launch at an affordable price. But still priced strategically for AMD to make a profit.
This of course would force Nvidia to drop it's prices & also upset Nvidia owners for overpaying too.