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
Example, the Arkham games are only playable with all eye candy if you have a Ngreedia gpu due to Rocksteady using PhyX because they signed for the “Way its mean to be played” dev program.
So those games would “force” me keep buying Ngreedia gpus at whatever prices they want because I simply dont have any options, if I want to see all the eye candy. The good thing is, eye candy doesn't really add much to gameplay (in this type of scenario) so I’m not entirely locked in.
Funny and lucky enough for me, I feel the same way about RT.Damn, got me there. :D
Have you tried testing under Linux? Assuming its not one of those games that doesn’t run due to anti cheat tech.
If you have a spare external usb drive, try ChimeraOS, so you dont need to remove tour current OS.
HOW in the hell of a company who is supposed to be a high, premier corporation ONLY made a NET profit of 32+ million last quarter after a tax write off from the government?
The Fall of AMD is when DR. Su decided to imitate Ngreedia 5 years ago by segmenting their market with more or less casts off of chips that did not meet quality control or just make sub par video cards to fit into a certain cash value.
It started with the 5000 series and has gone worse from there.
Come the !@#$ on. A 7800XT barely beats a 6800XT in performance?? Yay for Chiplets! it will solve eveerything!!! EXCEPT LATENCY.
This Dumb @$$ed mindset to copy Ngreedia marketing tatics was it's downfall.
They pissed off a lot of people not only with their sup par per performance/value, they got greedy.
DOUBLE the price (at times) for 6000 series of mother boards over the 5000 series
And I'm going to give you people another warning.
EXPECT the new motherboards to be expensive for what you are getting. The AMD tax WILL be enforced because they put themselves into a corner, business wise.
This is all BAD management. This is how large coporations go bankrupt. By alienating their customer base
Which they did. THIS is ALL DR. Lisa Su's fault. And SHE and HER management get their act together soon.
Back to the Video comment. I never thought AMD should have gone 1-1 against Ngreedia in power and performance.
They should have stuck with the formula of Getting close to Ngreedias performance with a good price so they can get more profit by quanity than this nonsense they are in now.
Make sure is big enough to install the game in it so you can test it.
try this guide: ubuntu.com/tutorials/try-ubuntu-before-you-install#1-getting-started
AMD alone won't be able to reach 20% market share not to mention 40% because it's not up to them but to Nvidia. If Nv makes a big mistake then maybe.
This is not about an awesome 4090 beater GPU or a $200 card with 7800 XT performance. This is not about Lisa Su or chiplets or the naming scheme or the techtubers.
On a worldwide scale this is about brand recognition and trust.
OEMs build machines with NV GPUs because NVidia is recognizable and is trusted.
AMD is not. That simple.
Lot of people think that their little bubble consisting the enthusiast space with these kind of forums and youtube channels can move the needle in the grand scheme of things.
They're wrong.
This guy called Jack Huynh is just spreading bs, he is a marketing guy, what he says is just plain bs and one of his interviews (about UDNA) contradicts the other interview (about RDNA4). Just think about it for a minute and you will realize. Let's just say that with exceptionally good price/performance cards (and price wars) against NVidia AMD never won any market share but made a sizeable profit loss.
You realise if there is a monopoly the stagnation we saw in the intel 14++++ era will stall out performance progression, so your 6090/7090/8090 is likely to be a few percent faster instead of 10-30% leaps common between generations.
With respect to the CPU side of things, AMD are making Intel work for their money right now in most sectors of the market, and as consumers at every level we need that.
edit - I REALLY don't want a monopoly in the gpu market, I don't want to be waiting until the mid 2030's to be gaming at high refresh at 4k with modern titles.
I am a keen gamer and technology enthusiast. My household is dual income, I have no kids, live frugally and have worked up to a 6 figure salary in my 40's.
A large portion of my disposable income after costs, investments and general savings goes into computer gear. I buy approximately every second generation but I want a "WOW" experience when I upgrade so that tends to be flagship products.
I get that AMD want to own the mid-range, which is an admirable goal, they need to offer the best value in that range in order to do so.
Colour me skeptical, but if they *could* scale up RDNA4 to make a flagship which tends to have a higher margin, why wouldn't they?
I guess I'll keep buying AMD CPU's and Nvidia GPU's.
Your question is like asking if I had the money to buy a Porsche, why wouldn't I? Buying is fine, but you have to fuel it, maintain it, insure it, not to mention I'd still only use it to drive from A to B. That's a lot of cash spent on nothing (cash that I can't afford to lose).
So it's hard to answer to this because you speak in conditional mode and you imply things but you don't say anything tangible with proof. :)
Brand recognition AND trust - I said.
price: if $25-50 here and there would count that much then AMD would be the king but they're not. Because they're always cheaper in the same price bracket. Just ask RTX 3050 owners why didn't they buy an RX 6600 instead.
performance: hmm. They haven't been able to make a flagship product for more than a decade.
innovation: as far as I can tell AMD is always the second when it comes to GPU tech, at least in the realm of known tech. NV leads, AMD copies and follows.
Can you tell us about with what did they disrupt the market which had a long lasting effect forcing NVidia to follow them for once?
cost-effectiveness: about 10% of the population buy cost-effective GPUs (if you imply that AMD is the cost effective solution), that's their market share.
I don't know Jack Huynh that's true, I don't know where did he come from and when because I never heard of him before, he must be very shy (edit I see he is one year old at AMD) because I've never heard him talk before.
But I didn't criticize him but what he said. And what he said is bs because racing to the bottom price wars never helped AMD and it seems people already forgot this. They maybe "gained some market traction" but they lost money by doing that and they also lost the traction they gained a couple of months later.
Maybe some more JRPG ports get it if Durante gets the work, but other then that I think its done on new engines. :(
Old games with SGSSAA look so amazing, often better than games praised in the last couple of years. Luckily I am addicted to replaying old games again and again so continue to experience it.
The new game is already on my wish list, sadly pretty expensive, £120 with all DLC. No discount since the launch.
I'm kinda curious about SGSSAA, I'm gonna try to see a game with it to see how it looks.
I tried Corsair RMA one time tho, I broke a front on one of my older cases and they sent me a new one in a few days for free, even tho I admitted I broke it, thats insanely good service tbh.
Maybe Seasonic improved their RMA, its been a few years and I am in the EU too which usually don't help
Just be fair when you get to that point and in my case, almost 20 years of bad experiences qualify my feelings for those 2 companies . ;)
My OS and hardware doesn't spend that much time on the “i hate intel and ngreedia” slice. :)
There are other battles to fight in life. :cool::D
As for the original topic, I'll be willing to buy Nvidia again if they come down from their high horse and price their products by their performance, not "features" (99% of which are there on AMD as well) again. I don't hate them, I just don't feel the "premium feel" that people are on about when they choose Nvidia instead of AMD. It's a damn GPU, it plays games, what else is there to it? :D