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| Software | Windows 11 Pro |
You may have read our report from earlier today, covering the main points that AMD was trying to make in its recent teleconference with the European press (which includes us). While in the call, we were a little jolted by the choices of words some of AMD's executives used to describe their company's consumer graphics outlook for 2013, how they believe they can hold out for almost the entire year with little or no major updates to their product stack, and more interestingly, a few above-the-belt jabs at NVIDIA and its upcoming GeForce GTX Titan product.
The crux of AMD's emergency meeting with the press was to bust some misconceptions spread in the press over the last couple of weeks, to tell them a Graham's Number of times that they still hold the fastest single GPU on the planet, which powers the fastest graphics card there is (ASUS ARES II). The most ironic part of AMD's emergency meeting with the press was the one in which they called GeForce Titan NVIDIA's emergency/knee-jerk reaction to AMD's getting cozy with game developers, and netting some of the biggest PC game launches of the season for its Never Settle Reloaded bundle.
Although we sat through the teleconference, it was only today that its audio recording was released to us. No text transcript of the recording exists on the web. AMD states that the content of the conference are not bound by an NDA or any other confidentiality agreement, and so we spent the last couple of hours transcripting the audio recording, including grammar correction, stammer correction, and ethical redaction, all on a war-footing. Find the transcript below, and attempt to read through the lines. You could draw several inferences, and laugh your rear vents out on some of the more weird/ironic parts. Please link back to this article if you're copy-pasting the text from below. We know exactly what we edited.
**Conference coordinator welcomes participants, briefs on the technical format of the teleconference**
"...thank you for standing by, and welcome to the AMD graphics strategy update. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation, followed by a question & answer, at which time if you wish to ask a question, you need to press * and 1 on your telephone."
"…I would now like to hand over the conference to your speaker for the day, Chris Brown, please go ahead."
**Speaker for the day Christine Brown takes over, welcomes journalists, and makes opening remarks**
"Thank you [coordinator], good afternoon everyone, my name is Chris Brown, from AMD EMEA PR, and I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. We really appreciate your time. During our call today, we'd really like to focus, and provide you with an update on the AMD graphics strategy, so to be clear, we're not providing any major announcements today, we really brought you together, because this week we've seen some confusion, I think, in the markets, and we wanted to clear the air, and answer any questions you may have. So, to that end, we brought together some key AMD executives to support this call. On the line, we have Roy Taylor, vice president of worldwide component channel sales; we have Darren McPhee, director of worldwide graphics product marketing; and we have Devon Nekechuk and David Ballman, product managers from the graphics team. Our update will last just about five minutes, and then we plan to open up the call to your questions. There's no presentation, and no NDA, this is really your chance to have your questions addressed on AMD's GPU strategy for 2013, as well as for us to provide any insights on what we're seeing in the current marketplace. So with that, let me hand you over to Darren.
**Darren McPhee takes over**
"Thanks Christine, thanks everyone for joining. I'm going to just talk just a couple of points to build on what Christine was saying. The first place I want to start is talking about "Sea Islands," because that's something that there's been a lot of misconception, and maybe a little bit of confusion about what that is. "Sea Islands" is basically a codename for a series of products on our roadmap this year, for both notebook and desktop, and prioritized especially for our OEM business on the notebook side. When you saw us launch the 8000M in January of this year, it was part of the "Sea Islands" series of products, we'll be releasing other products this year, as part of that series. There was some perception that "Sea Islands" was desktop-only, but that's actually not the case. "Sea Islands" was very much about notebook and OEM design cycles, as well as some desktop parts."
"That said; let's talk about the first half of this year. The first half of this year, as of today, and going forward, for us and the channel, the 7000 series is very strong. We have performance leadership at every single price-point, we see that family continuing to gain momentum, and we have plans in the first half to actually add into that product family as well, with some new editions. We have right now what we think is the best promotion we, or anyone else, has ever done, with the "Never Settle Reloaded" bundle, and we're getting fantastic feedback from customers and partners on that, and that's really driving additional momentum for the 7000 series."
"We have the world's fastest graphics card with ASUS, when they launched the ARES II, a few weeks ago, and that gives us performance leadership, and 7990. So the first half for us, 7000 series is very strong, and we see it just doing nothing but better. As we go into the second half of this year, we are on track to continue to execute our graphics roadmap plan, and you'll see us starting to ship new products in the channel by the end of this year. Hopefully, that is a very quick summary of where things are, but hopefully that clears up things a bit, based on some of the coverage that was out there, in the past week or two. With that, we can open it up for some questions, Christine?"
**Christine takes over; coordinator opens up the participants' lines for questions**
Coordinator: "your first question comes from [journalist A], go ahead."
[journalist A]: "Hi guys, are you releasing a reference 7990 anytime soon? Obviously we've seen them from the partners, and that ARES card from ASUS, but AFAIK nothing from yourselves?"
Devon: "Yeah, we have a couple of partners that have launched HD 7990 SKUs, this includes VTX3D, it includes PowerColor, it includes ASUS, and I can't give you any specific details about what else is coming up, but we definitely do have more 7990 goodness for you guys, coming up in the next couple of months. We definitely are not sitting still there, but we're in a very good situation right now with the world's fastest graphics card, partnering with ASUS on that, and we'll continue to hammer on that drum, bringing really cool SKUs to gamers all over."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist B], go ahead."
[journalist B]: "Hi, I wanted to ask about the 8000M series, you said that this is the "Sea Islands" family, is that correct?"
Devon: "Yeah, that's correct, a kind of a subset-codename in the "Sea Islands" is "Solar System," for the 8000M series, that's another codename that you may have seen out there."
[journalist B]: "Okay, and what is basically the difference between the 7000 series and the 8000 series when it's called by a new codename, because I know there was a new chip released with 8300 and 8400, and the rest of the family was rebranded 7000 series?"
Devon: "For the parts that we've already announced for the 8000M series, there are new chip configurations; "Mars" is a new chip, that's also the equation to "Oland" on the desktop side, which we've announced as 8600 series for OEMs, but a roadmap name does not designate a specific set of IP (intellectual property), it's always been the case that we have mixed IP within a roadmap, sometimes there has been a tighter correlation to one single set of IP, other times there hasn't, so "Sea Islands" is a mix of different IPs."
[journalist B (sounding confused)]: Oh, okay, so that means there will be another, perhaps, some new chips under the "Sea Islands" family name but with newer technology than GCN (Graphics CoreNext micro-architecture)?"
Devon: "Yeah, well, we're not making any specific references at this point in time."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist C], go ahead."
[journalist C]: Hi, just to confirm, what you said means that Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition stays AMD's fastest single-GPU graphics card until the end of the year?"
Devon: "Yes."
[journalist C]: "…and, if I may ask another question, how do you plan to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce Titan?"
**5 seconds' silence**
Devon: "Are you referring to the GK110?"
[journalist C]: "Yes."
**Roy Taylor interrupts**
Roy: "Basically from what we've seen so far, we don't think there's any conc…[stops short of saying "concern]…of course things could change, but early indications are, that this (GeForce Titan) is not something which was designed to be a graphics card."
[journalist C]: "Yeah, but performance-wise, it seems to be that it's going to be faster, based on the rumours that we're hearing, than 7970 GHz Edition, so actually you're competing with dual-GPU cards, so there's no competitor from your side, talking about single-GPU?"
Roy: **choppy audio** "I may appear so, however the [leaks?] that we've seen, and certainly from an article written on "Bright Side of News," would indicate that indeed so far, it will not be the fastest product around."
[journalist C]: "Okay, thank you."
**Coordinator reminds participants how they can ask questions**
**Brief silence**
**Christine speaks**
"While we're waiting for other questions, Roy, since you've recently joined AMD, it would be great to get your perspective on our current product stack, and what you're hearing in the markets, at the moment."
Roy: **speech is choppy and inaudible due to technical problems, Roy was joining the call over Skype.**
Christine: "[coordinator], have we received any other questions, or does anyone like to come back to Roy with any questions?"
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist D], go ahead."
[journalist D]: "Hi folks, I'm just wondering if it's just me, or was everybody having a bad line when Roy was speaking, it was very hard to understand some portions?"
Christine: "Sorry [journalist D], good point, I was catching most of it, so I thought it would be quite clear…"
Roy: "…you know what Christine? Can you just let everybody know that I'm on Skype, I'm gonna dial-in on my phone directly, gimme two minutes, and I'll repeat what I just said."
Christine: "Wonderful."
**Brief pause**
Christine: "So, while Roy is dialling back in, any questions for Darren, or Devon, or David?"
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist E], go ahead."
[journalist E]: "Hi, I'm just wondering what your feeling is towards the 7700 series and 7800 series, getting towards the second half of the year; whether or not it's going to be capable of frame-rates people are expecting from new games like Crysis 3."
Devon: "The products have great performance, and they have the feature-set, that are very aligned to, or perform very well with the latest set of games, especially with our DirectCompute capabilities, which new titles are leveraging more and more. We have the best compute architecture out there, at the moment, but additionally, as Darren mentioned, we are augmenting the 7000 series, and it's in that segment that precisely we'll see some additional product updates, so some good things coming up fairly soon."
Darren (addressing [journalist E]): "The key difference there, that I'd like you to help in making clear to gamers, is that keeping the 7000 series branding for the rest of the year is different from not introducing any new products. We definitely have more products up our sleeves that we will be launching. The perception out there that we don't have new product because the naming (7000 series) is not changing, is something I'd like you help to clear up."
[journalist E]: "Okay, thank you."
**Roy returns to the conference, this time over a proper phone, and repeats his statement**
Roy: "I'm really glad to be back, and to able to talk to the press again. On this call I recognize some old names, and some old friends, and it's good to be back. What I wanted to say to you all was that right now, as it stands, AMD has the fastest GPUs at every point in our stack. I don't think it feels like that, and I don't think that it's been widely reported in the press. I'd like to ask you (the press) to make that clear to your readers, and I'll tell you why that's good for you. The reason I think it's good for you is because in the good old days of the fight between NVIDIA and ATi, it created a lot of good fun press. It was exciting to wake up in the morning, grab a coffee, and read the latest instalment in the battle [someone reads TPU] , and so I'm here to tell you that that battle is back on! So let's have some fun with it! We have the fastest GPUs, and until we've clearly established our performance leadership, we don't necessarily start talking about new products, because first of all we need to make it clear that we already have the lead, and as Devon just mentioned, we have some new products coming, and having got the lead back, we don't intend to drop it. Even in the latest games, and the latest benchmarks, we're in the lead. Now, we have more games coming, that will continue to show that leadership. Unlike our competitor [NVIDIA], we have game bundles which are both exciting and fun. We have more of those coming, too. I also said that I'm personally going to be in Europe in a few weeks, Christine is organizing some meetings for me now, and if any of you would like to meet me one-to-one, and hear more about the coming battle, and how that would extend to Intel as well on the CPU side, I'd really enjoy the chance to meet old friends, and make new ones."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist F], go ahead."
[journalist F]: "Actually it's not on the little speech I'm afraid, but an earlier question that was answered, which stated that the 7970 would still be your most powerful single-GPU product until the end of the year, why is it so? Are there any technical reasons for that, because at that point you would have announced that part almost two years ago? Is it a technical issue, or is it simply because you don't feel the need to put something newer out there?"
Darren: "Definitely, I got a two-part answer for that one. We launched the 7970 in December of 2011, and then we followed up with the GHz Edition in July of 2012. So the GHz Edition has been out there for the better half of the year now, and that will continue to live on until the end of 2013. From a technical perspective, no, there's absolutely no technical reason; from a product perspective, we have the world's fastest GPU now, with the GHz Edition, and as Roy mentioned, the GK110 is coming, but is something NVIDIA is leveraging from a completely different space. It's a Tesla product, it's a workstation product, it really was never intended for the consumer market, and I think that way they're kinda shoe-horning that product into their GeForce stack. So, we took them by surprise by having the world's fastest GPU, and you see all these kinds of reactions from them right now, but we're very confident that the 7970 GHz Edition is the best GPU for enthusiast gamers out there. So this is purely for marketing performance reasons, nothing technical."
[journalist F]: "And just as a quick follow-up to Roy's point that, if there's such a battle between you guys and perhaps Intel, and if it's for marketing reasons and not technical, is there really a battle going on, or are consumers being left with the same product basically for two years?" [he meant how can AMD have a "battle" and a slow product cycle at the same time]
Roy: "Can I jump in on that? The recent sales success of our "Never Settle Reloaded" bundle shows us the appetite of consumers for that product [7970 GHz Edition] is wonderful. I know this is a European call, but Newegg.com in the USA were sold out. We're seeing record sales throughout Europe. So as measured by people spending money, I'd say that we're in pretty good shape."
Devon: "Also, some of the stuff coming out, as I mentioned, stuff like Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, those are real reasons for end-users to buy high-end GPUs right now. So if people didn't upgrade last year, and they're generally on an 18 to 24-month upgrade cycle, there are a lot of really good reasons to buy a 7970 GHz Edition."
Roy: "…and Darren touched on it earlier, that the simple fact is that the 7000 series is still ramping. We're still seeing higher sales, growing sales on the 7000 series, so yeah, there's an appetite in the channel for product stability, and we're seeing that it actually accelerates the sales. You can argue that the channel cycles previously were a bit too forced."
Darren: "The only thing that I want to throw in there too, is that one of the luxuries of being able to have a long lifecycle for these parts, is because of our games strategy, where we've been investing in all these titles, and you're seeing these huge AAA franchises working with AMD. We're optimizing for our architecture, and that's why a product like the 7970 GHz Edition still has such great performance, and such a healthy standing versus the competition. So that's a big part of our long term strategy, and that also adds in value to the customers who bought the same products last year, who will be getting the most out of the latest games."
Roy: "I think we've also improved the drivers incredibly too, so their experience has improved along the way."
[journalist F]: "Thank you."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist G], go ahead."
[journalist G]: "Hello everybody, you (Roy) said you would be coming to Europe, are you going to be at the Mobile World Congress, and second question is that there were some rumours that AMD would focus more on the chips for the PlayStation 4, and that's why you decided not to launch in January or February, the 8000 series?"
Roy: "Oh boy, let me answer this one! So first of all, I sadly won't be at the MWC…"
Christine (interrupting): "…we will actually have spokespeople at the MWC, but Roy won't be joining us this year, but I can check later if it makes sense for you to meet the folks coming over. Sorry Roy, please carry on."
Roy (continuing where he left off): "We can't comment on unannounced products and unannounced partnerships, but I can tell you that no decision that we're making has been any external factors. They're entirely influenced by our desire to make it clear that we have GPU leadership. Once that's done, then we're going to be back with you very, very soon."
[journalist G]: "Okay, thank you very much."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist H], go ahead."
[journalist H]: "While I'm really hear you in the price-performance side of the product, what about image and marketing? I mean, even if NVIDIA only pumps out a handful of GeForce Titans, they can still run around saying they have the fastest GPU for gamers, how are you going to compete with that?"
Darren: "Actually I'm happy that they're launching this, because it's a proof point that the ARES II will continue to be the world's fastest graphics card. From all the data that we have, they aren't going to be able to beat the ARES II."
Devon: "…and frankly from a marketing perspective, you know, we're tied up with all the latest AAA titles at the moment, so how can NVIDIA compete? They're launching GeForce Titan as a reaction to us being signed up with all the best game developers right now. Also as a marketing point, I assume everyone's seen the game bundles that NVIDIA has launched recently, right? I thank them for launching their game bundle, because it goes to show have great "Gaming Evolved" (developer program) has become. Just look at the titles in the "Never Settle Reloaded" bundle versus their "Free to Play" bundle, and you'll see which company is more serious about gaming for desktop and PC users."
Roy: "We should make it clear that NVIDIA is a good company, and we respect their attempted transition into being a smartphone company."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist G], go ahead."
[journalist G]: "Yeah, just a follow-up to that question, are we going to see this becoming a war of ISV relations, rather than electronics engineers or semiconductor engineers, because you mentioned that you guys have got most of the new AAA titles, and I assume by "got" you meant that you're working with them to optimize the games to GCN…I mean are we going to see advancements in performance rather with software optimizations than away from silicon?"
**some commotion among AMD speakers**
Darren: "Let me assure you that we're a Radeon company, we're still behind creating these products and bringing them to the market. That is not going away. In fact you'll see throughout our lineup, we're offering more and better "Radeon," so absolutely, not that we're moving away from that segment, but by winning in that segment, as Roy mentioned, we get more ability and focus to go out to the ISVs, and augment that product stack. We get more engineers to develop great drivers, and performance optimizations, as you've seen with Catalyst 12.11, and put engineers alongside developers to get more features and performance, to make the games run better on the product."
Devon: "Yeah I think you'll see some really exciting things coming out of the partnerships in the "Never Settle Reloaded" bundle. The Crysis 3 partnership is not just about that specific game, it's about the exciting things we're working on with Crytek that we'll be developing over the course of the first half of this year, Bioshock has already come out with some great press on how much they've invested on the PC side of the game with us, and Tomb Raider will ship with a new feature we've been working on with them. So it's about performance optimization, but also creating a great experience on the Radeon graphics, and kind of pushing industry forward in terms of new effects as well…"
Darren: "A criticism that has probably been levelled against the historical ATI and to a certain extant AMD, is that we're an engineering company first, without understanding the content side; but over the past five years, we got more serious on the content side, so our engineering focus is still a 100% there, but we're paying a lot more attention to the content side."
Roy: "Many of you know many of the leading celebrities and starts of the gaming world, and you'll know that these people are very independent-minded, you cannot push a games developer to use your product. He would use whatever one he thinks is best. I can tell you that developers are using Radeon, because it's the best GPU around, and they wouldn't use it for any other circumstances. And I can assure you that they are developing on Radeon. At this coming GDC (game developers' conference), for any of the European press that's visiting, we'll be able to make some introductions for you and set up some interviews, so you could hear that for yourselves, first-hand."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist A], go ahead."
[journalist A]: "Yeah, just one last question on Titan, and a fairly pointed question. Do you concede that in a couple of weeks' time, you probably won't have the single fastest GPU in graphics?"
Roy: "How can we possible concede to what actually hasn't been delivered?"
[journalist A]: "Obviously, you know a fair bit of what's going on, do you believe that in a couple of weeks you'll still have the fastest single GPU? Let's flip the question around."
Darren: "I think what matters for end users, is the graphics card. And that's what ASUS' ARES II delivers. I see absolutely no threat to the ARES II's market position right now…"
[journalist A] (interrupting): "…with all due respect, I'm not asking that question about the world's fastest graphics card. I'm asking about the world's fastest single-GPU graphics card?"
Roy: "I don't think we can comment until we've seen it. Based on what we know so far, I don' think that this (GeForce Titan) is a threat to our business."
Darren: "…and it's not like it's a surprise. You know, the GK110 has been known about for a long time. Our roadmap stayed, once we knew about it. We didn't need to react."
[journalist A]: "Okay, fair enough."
Roy: "…however writing about this is going to create lots of fun for you, and lots of readership."
***Coordinator runs out of questions from the participants, Darren reiterates the key points of AMD's position, the meeting concludes on a lighter/personal note between AMD and some of the journalists***
View at TechPowerUp Main Site
The crux of AMD's emergency meeting with the press was to bust some misconceptions spread in the press over the last couple of weeks, to tell them a Graham's Number of times that they still hold the fastest single GPU on the planet, which powers the fastest graphics card there is (ASUS ARES II). The most ironic part of AMD's emergency meeting with the press was the one in which they called GeForce Titan NVIDIA's emergency/knee-jerk reaction to AMD's getting cozy with game developers, and netting some of the biggest PC game launches of the season for its Never Settle Reloaded bundle.
Although we sat through the teleconference, it was only today that its audio recording was released to us. No text transcript of the recording exists on the web. AMD states that the content of the conference are not bound by an NDA or any other confidentiality agreement, and so we spent the last couple of hours transcripting the audio recording, including grammar correction, stammer correction, and ethical redaction, all on a war-footing. Find the transcript below, and attempt to read through the lines. You could draw several inferences, and laugh your rear vents out on some of the more weird/ironic parts. Please link back to this article if you're copy-pasting the text from below. We know exactly what we edited.
Transcript of the AMD Teleconference, held in the week of 11th February, 2013.
**Conference coordinator welcomes participants, briefs on the technical format of the teleconference**
"...thank you for standing by, and welcome to the AMD graphics strategy update. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation, followed by a question & answer, at which time if you wish to ask a question, you need to press * and 1 on your telephone."
"…I would now like to hand over the conference to your speaker for the day, Chris Brown, please go ahead."
**Speaker for the day Christine Brown takes over, welcomes journalists, and makes opening remarks**
"Thank you [coordinator], good afternoon everyone, my name is Chris Brown, from AMD EMEA PR, and I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. We really appreciate your time. During our call today, we'd really like to focus, and provide you with an update on the AMD graphics strategy, so to be clear, we're not providing any major announcements today, we really brought you together, because this week we've seen some confusion, I think, in the markets, and we wanted to clear the air, and answer any questions you may have. So, to that end, we brought together some key AMD executives to support this call. On the line, we have Roy Taylor, vice president of worldwide component channel sales; we have Darren McPhee, director of worldwide graphics product marketing; and we have Devon Nekechuk and David Ballman, product managers from the graphics team. Our update will last just about five minutes, and then we plan to open up the call to your questions. There's no presentation, and no NDA, this is really your chance to have your questions addressed on AMD's GPU strategy for 2013, as well as for us to provide any insights on what we're seeing in the current marketplace. So with that, let me hand you over to Darren.
**Darren McPhee takes over**
"Thanks Christine, thanks everyone for joining. I'm going to just talk just a couple of points to build on what Christine was saying. The first place I want to start is talking about "Sea Islands," because that's something that there's been a lot of misconception, and maybe a little bit of confusion about what that is. "Sea Islands" is basically a codename for a series of products on our roadmap this year, for both notebook and desktop, and prioritized especially for our OEM business on the notebook side. When you saw us launch the 8000M in January of this year, it was part of the "Sea Islands" series of products, we'll be releasing other products this year, as part of that series. There was some perception that "Sea Islands" was desktop-only, but that's actually not the case. "Sea Islands" was very much about notebook and OEM design cycles, as well as some desktop parts."
"That said; let's talk about the first half of this year. The first half of this year, as of today, and going forward, for us and the channel, the 7000 series is very strong. We have performance leadership at every single price-point, we see that family continuing to gain momentum, and we have plans in the first half to actually add into that product family as well, with some new editions. We have right now what we think is the best promotion we, or anyone else, has ever done, with the "Never Settle Reloaded" bundle, and we're getting fantastic feedback from customers and partners on that, and that's really driving additional momentum for the 7000 series."
"We have the world's fastest graphics card with ASUS, when they launched the ARES II, a few weeks ago, and that gives us performance leadership, and 7990. So the first half for us, 7000 series is very strong, and we see it just doing nothing but better. As we go into the second half of this year, we are on track to continue to execute our graphics roadmap plan, and you'll see us starting to ship new products in the channel by the end of this year. Hopefully, that is a very quick summary of where things are, but hopefully that clears up things a bit, based on some of the coverage that was out there, in the past week or two. With that, we can open it up for some questions, Christine?"
**Christine takes over; coordinator opens up the participants' lines for questions**
Coordinator: "your first question comes from [journalist A], go ahead."
[journalist A]: "Hi guys, are you releasing a reference 7990 anytime soon? Obviously we've seen them from the partners, and that ARES card from ASUS, but AFAIK nothing from yourselves?"
Devon: "Yeah, we have a couple of partners that have launched HD 7990 SKUs, this includes VTX3D, it includes PowerColor, it includes ASUS, and I can't give you any specific details about what else is coming up, but we definitely do have more 7990 goodness for you guys, coming up in the next couple of months. We definitely are not sitting still there, but we're in a very good situation right now with the world's fastest graphics card, partnering with ASUS on that, and we'll continue to hammer on that drum, bringing really cool SKUs to gamers all over."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist B], go ahead."
[journalist B]: "Hi, I wanted to ask about the 8000M series, you said that this is the "Sea Islands" family, is that correct?"
Devon: "Yeah, that's correct, a kind of a subset-codename in the "Sea Islands" is "Solar System," for the 8000M series, that's another codename that you may have seen out there."
[journalist B]: "Okay, and what is basically the difference between the 7000 series and the 8000 series when it's called by a new codename, because I know there was a new chip released with 8300 and 8400, and the rest of the family was rebranded 7000 series?"
Devon: "For the parts that we've already announced for the 8000M series, there are new chip configurations; "Mars" is a new chip, that's also the equation to "Oland" on the desktop side, which we've announced as 8600 series for OEMs, but a roadmap name does not designate a specific set of IP (intellectual property), it's always been the case that we have mixed IP within a roadmap, sometimes there has been a tighter correlation to one single set of IP, other times there hasn't, so "Sea Islands" is a mix of different IPs."
[journalist B (sounding confused)]: Oh, okay, so that means there will be another, perhaps, some new chips under the "Sea Islands" family name but with newer technology than GCN (Graphics CoreNext micro-architecture)?"
Devon: "Yeah, well, we're not making any specific references at this point in time."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist C], go ahead."
[journalist C]: Hi, just to confirm, what you said means that Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition stays AMD's fastest single-GPU graphics card until the end of the year?"
Devon: "Yes."
[journalist C]: "…and, if I may ask another question, how do you plan to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce Titan?"
**5 seconds' silence**
Devon: "Are you referring to the GK110?"
[journalist C]: "Yes."
**Roy Taylor interrupts**
Roy: "Basically from what we've seen so far, we don't think there's any conc…[stops short of saying "concern]…of course things could change, but early indications are, that this (GeForce Titan) is not something which was designed to be a graphics card."
[journalist C]: "Yeah, but performance-wise, it seems to be that it's going to be faster, based on the rumours that we're hearing, than 7970 GHz Edition, so actually you're competing with dual-GPU cards, so there's no competitor from your side, talking about single-GPU?"
Roy: **choppy audio** "I may appear so, however the [leaks?] that we've seen, and certainly from an article written on "Bright Side of News," would indicate that indeed so far, it will not be the fastest product around."
[journalist C]: "Okay, thank you."
**Coordinator reminds participants how they can ask questions**
**Brief silence**
**Christine speaks**
"While we're waiting for other questions, Roy, since you've recently joined AMD, it would be great to get your perspective on our current product stack, and what you're hearing in the markets, at the moment."
Roy: **speech is choppy and inaudible due to technical problems, Roy was joining the call over Skype.**
Christine: "[coordinator], have we received any other questions, or does anyone like to come back to Roy with any questions?"
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist D], go ahead."
[journalist D]: "Hi folks, I'm just wondering if it's just me, or was everybody having a bad line when Roy was speaking, it was very hard to understand some portions?"
Christine: "Sorry [journalist D], good point, I was catching most of it, so I thought it would be quite clear…"
Roy: "…you know what Christine? Can you just let everybody know that I'm on Skype, I'm gonna dial-in on my phone directly, gimme two minutes, and I'll repeat what I just said."
Christine: "Wonderful."
**Brief pause**
Christine: "So, while Roy is dialling back in, any questions for Darren, or Devon, or David?"
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist E], go ahead."
[journalist E]: "Hi, I'm just wondering what your feeling is towards the 7700 series and 7800 series, getting towards the second half of the year; whether or not it's going to be capable of frame-rates people are expecting from new games like Crysis 3."
Devon: "The products have great performance, and they have the feature-set, that are very aligned to, or perform very well with the latest set of games, especially with our DirectCompute capabilities, which new titles are leveraging more and more. We have the best compute architecture out there, at the moment, but additionally, as Darren mentioned, we are augmenting the 7000 series, and it's in that segment that precisely we'll see some additional product updates, so some good things coming up fairly soon."
Darren (addressing [journalist E]): "The key difference there, that I'd like you to help in making clear to gamers, is that keeping the 7000 series branding for the rest of the year is different from not introducing any new products. We definitely have more products up our sleeves that we will be launching. The perception out there that we don't have new product because the naming (7000 series) is not changing, is something I'd like you help to clear up."
[journalist E]: "Okay, thank you."
**Roy returns to the conference, this time over a proper phone, and repeats his statement**
Roy: "I'm really glad to be back, and to able to talk to the press again. On this call I recognize some old names, and some old friends, and it's good to be back. What I wanted to say to you all was that right now, as it stands, AMD has the fastest GPUs at every point in our stack. I don't think it feels like that, and I don't think that it's been widely reported in the press. I'd like to ask you (the press) to make that clear to your readers, and I'll tell you why that's good for you. The reason I think it's good for you is because in the good old days of the fight between NVIDIA and ATi, it created a lot of good fun press. It was exciting to wake up in the morning, grab a coffee, and read the latest instalment in the battle [someone reads TPU] , and so I'm here to tell you that that battle is back on! So let's have some fun with it! We have the fastest GPUs, and until we've clearly established our performance leadership, we don't necessarily start talking about new products, because first of all we need to make it clear that we already have the lead, and as Devon just mentioned, we have some new products coming, and having got the lead back, we don't intend to drop it. Even in the latest games, and the latest benchmarks, we're in the lead. Now, we have more games coming, that will continue to show that leadership. Unlike our competitor [NVIDIA], we have game bundles which are both exciting and fun. We have more of those coming, too. I also said that I'm personally going to be in Europe in a few weeks, Christine is organizing some meetings for me now, and if any of you would like to meet me one-to-one, and hear more about the coming battle, and how that would extend to Intel as well on the CPU side, I'd really enjoy the chance to meet old friends, and make new ones."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist F], go ahead."
[journalist F]: "Actually it's not on the little speech I'm afraid, but an earlier question that was answered, which stated that the 7970 would still be your most powerful single-GPU product until the end of the year, why is it so? Are there any technical reasons for that, because at that point you would have announced that part almost two years ago? Is it a technical issue, or is it simply because you don't feel the need to put something newer out there?"
Darren: "Definitely, I got a two-part answer for that one. We launched the 7970 in December of 2011, and then we followed up with the GHz Edition in July of 2012. So the GHz Edition has been out there for the better half of the year now, and that will continue to live on until the end of 2013. From a technical perspective, no, there's absolutely no technical reason; from a product perspective, we have the world's fastest GPU now, with the GHz Edition, and as Roy mentioned, the GK110 is coming, but is something NVIDIA is leveraging from a completely different space. It's a Tesla product, it's a workstation product, it really was never intended for the consumer market, and I think that way they're kinda shoe-horning that product into their GeForce stack. So, we took them by surprise by having the world's fastest GPU, and you see all these kinds of reactions from them right now, but we're very confident that the 7970 GHz Edition is the best GPU for enthusiast gamers out there. So this is purely for marketing performance reasons, nothing technical."
[journalist F]: "And just as a quick follow-up to Roy's point that, if there's such a battle between you guys and perhaps Intel, and if it's for marketing reasons and not technical, is there really a battle going on, or are consumers being left with the same product basically for two years?" [he meant how can AMD have a "battle" and a slow product cycle at the same time]
Roy: "Can I jump in on that? The recent sales success of our "Never Settle Reloaded" bundle shows us the appetite of consumers for that product [7970 GHz Edition] is wonderful. I know this is a European call, but Newegg.com in the USA were sold out. We're seeing record sales throughout Europe. So as measured by people spending money, I'd say that we're in pretty good shape."
Devon: "Also, some of the stuff coming out, as I mentioned, stuff like Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, those are real reasons for end-users to buy high-end GPUs right now. So if people didn't upgrade last year, and they're generally on an 18 to 24-month upgrade cycle, there are a lot of really good reasons to buy a 7970 GHz Edition."
Roy: "…and Darren touched on it earlier, that the simple fact is that the 7000 series is still ramping. We're still seeing higher sales, growing sales on the 7000 series, so yeah, there's an appetite in the channel for product stability, and we're seeing that it actually accelerates the sales. You can argue that the channel cycles previously were a bit too forced."
Darren: "The only thing that I want to throw in there too, is that one of the luxuries of being able to have a long lifecycle for these parts, is because of our games strategy, where we've been investing in all these titles, and you're seeing these huge AAA franchises working with AMD. We're optimizing for our architecture, and that's why a product like the 7970 GHz Edition still has such great performance, and such a healthy standing versus the competition. So that's a big part of our long term strategy, and that also adds in value to the customers who bought the same products last year, who will be getting the most out of the latest games."
Roy: "I think we've also improved the drivers incredibly too, so their experience has improved along the way."
[journalist F]: "Thank you."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist G], go ahead."
[journalist G]: "Hello everybody, you (Roy) said you would be coming to Europe, are you going to be at the Mobile World Congress, and second question is that there were some rumours that AMD would focus more on the chips for the PlayStation 4, and that's why you decided not to launch in January or February, the 8000 series?"
Roy: "Oh boy, let me answer this one! So first of all, I sadly won't be at the MWC…"
Christine (interrupting): "…we will actually have spokespeople at the MWC, but Roy won't be joining us this year, but I can check later if it makes sense for you to meet the folks coming over. Sorry Roy, please carry on."
Roy (continuing where he left off): "We can't comment on unannounced products and unannounced partnerships, but I can tell you that no decision that we're making has been any external factors. They're entirely influenced by our desire to make it clear that we have GPU leadership. Once that's done, then we're going to be back with you very, very soon."
[journalist G]: "Okay, thank you very much."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist H], go ahead."
[journalist H]: "While I'm really hear you in the price-performance side of the product, what about image and marketing? I mean, even if NVIDIA only pumps out a handful of GeForce Titans, they can still run around saying they have the fastest GPU for gamers, how are you going to compete with that?"
Darren: "Actually I'm happy that they're launching this, because it's a proof point that the ARES II will continue to be the world's fastest graphics card. From all the data that we have, they aren't going to be able to beat the ARES II."
Devon: "…and frankly from a marketing perspective, you know, we're tied up with all the latest AAA titles at the moment, so how can NVIDIA compete? They're launching GeForce Titan as a reaction to us being signed up with all the best game developers right now. Also as a marketing point, I assume everyone's seen the game bundles that NVIDIA has launched recently, right? I thank them for launching their game bundle, because it goes to show have great "Gaming Evolved" (developer program) has become. Just look at the titles in the "Never Settle Reloaded" bundle versus their "Free to Play" bundle, and you'll see which company is more serious about gaming for desktop and PC users."
Roy: "We should make it clear that NVIDIA is a good company, and we respect their attempted transition into being a smartphone company."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist G], go ahead."
[journalist G]: "Yeah, just a follow-up to that question, are we going to see this becoming a war of ISV relations, rather than electronics engineers or semiconductor engineers, because you mentioned that you guys have got most of the new AAA titles, and I assume by "got" you meant that you're working with them to optimize the games to GCN…I mean are we going to see advancements in performance rather with software optimizations than away from silicon?"
**some commotion among AMD speakers**
Darren: "Let me assure you that we're a Radeon company, we're still behind creating these products and bringing them to the market. That is not going away. In fact you'll see throughout our lineup, we're offering more and better "Radeon," so absolutely, not that we're moving away from that segment, but by winning in that segment, as Roy mentioned, we get more ability and focus to go out to the ISVs, and augment that product stack. We get more engineers to develop great drivers, and performance optimizations, as you've seen with Catalyst 12.11, and put engineers alongside developers to get more features and performance, to make the games run better on the product."
Devon: "Yeah I think you'll see some really exciting things coming out of the partnerships in the "Never Settle Reloaded" bundle. The Crysis 3 partnership is not just about that specific game, it's about the exciting things we're working on with Crytek that we'll be developing over the course of the first half of this year, Bioshock has already come out with some great press on how much they've invested on the PC side of the game with us, and Tomb Raider will ship with a new feature we've been working on with them. So it's about performance optimization, but also creating a great experience on the Radeon graphics, and kind of pushing industry forward in terms of new effects as well…"
Darren: "A criticism that has probably been levelled against the historical ATI and to a certain extant AMD, is that we're an engineering company first, without understanding the content side; but over the past five years, we got more serious on the content side, so our engineering focus is still a 100% there, but we're paying a lot more attention to the content side."
Roy: "Many of you know many of the leading celebrities and starts of the gaming world, and you'll know that these people are very independent-minded, you cannot push a games developer to use your product. He would use whatever one he thinks is best. I can tell you that developers are using Radeon, because it's the best GPU around, and they wouldn't use it for any other circumstances. And I can assure you that they are developing on Radeon. At this coming GDC (game developers' conference), for any of the European press that's visiting, we'll be able to make some introductions for you and set up some interviews, so you could hear that for yourselves, first-hand."
Coordinator: "your next question comes from [journalist A], go ahead."
[journalist A]: "Yeah, just one last question on Titan, and a fairly pointed question. Do you concede that in a couple of weeks' time, you probably won't have the single fastest GPU in graphics?"
Roy: "How can we possible concede to what actually hasn't been delivered?"
[journalist A]: "Obviously, you know a fair bit of what's going on, do you believe that in a couple of weeks you'll still have the fastest single GPU? Let's flip the question around."
Darren: "I think what matters for end users, is the graphics card. And that's what ASUS' ARES II delivers. I see absolutely no threat to the ARES II's market position right now…"
[journalist A] (interrupting): "…with all due respect, I'm not asking that question about the world's fastest graphics card. I'm asking about the world's fastest single-GPU graphics card?"
Roy: "I don't think we can comment until we've seen it. Based on what we know so far, I don' think that this (GeForce Titan) is a threat to our business."
Darren: "…and it's not like it's a surprise. You know, the GK110 has been known about for a long time. Our roadmap stayed, once we knew about it. We didn't need to react."
[journalist A]: "Okay, fair enough."
Roy: "…however writing about this is going to create lots of fun for you, and lots of readership."
***Coordinator runs out of questions from the participants, Darren reiterates the key points of AMD's position, the meeting concludes on a lighter/personal note between AMD and some of the journalists***
View at TechPowerUp Main Site
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was he dancing while speaking?!!!
talks about having the best single gpu card (even though reviews say the green camp has that crown) and ofc the best graphics card with the asus ares. Also they talk about how they have game developers in their pockets optimizing games for their graphics cards (like they optimized benchmarks to get better scores?). You know the usual.
![[502]](https://tpucdn.com/forums/data/avatars/l/128/128414.jpg?1384765397){kind=avatar}
on this one.
