AMD to Launch Radeon R7 470 and R9 480 at Computex

[rruff]

Valve, with whopping >70% share is a monopoly.

I don't know anything about Valve, but monopoly is where the big money is. Happens all the time in software and the internet where it's easy to do if you are first to the game and make monopoly your goal. Even a shitty company can easily parlay an early dominance into eternal dominance and big $$$. Microsoft is a great example. Ebay. Facebook.

Remember when there were a bunch of different online auction sites and how cheap it was? Ebay was the worst one but they were first and always the biggest. Briefly there was a site where you could go to browse listings from all the auction sites at once. Great for consumers and competition. Ebay sicced their lawyers on it and got it shut down. Competition disappeared and fees went up by ~4x.

Anyway, this is way OT for this thread and has nothing to do with video cards....

 

[rtwjunkie]

gog.com, sadly, has no chances.

Just so you know, GOG has the next largest market share after Steam

 

[medi01]

Just so you know, GOG has the next largest market share after Steam

So that you know what you are talking about:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1207758

Valve is not a monopoly in such as defined.

Monopoly is defined in most legislations as "having dominant marketing position". Numbers, differ from country to country, most have it at "as low" as 50%, some at 30% of the market.

You just don't realize how silly "dictionary" approach to monopoly is.
There is a number of alternatives to google too.
Microsoft was never the only OS available.
Neither was Intel..

Anyhow, enough talking about semantics.

 

[Slizzo]

Valve has a majority market share of online digital distribution. They do not have a monopoly on sales per title on their store.

Take Call of Duty as an example. The pie chart above is a terrible example that was cherry picked to try to make your point.

 

[bug]

Monopoly is defined in most legislations as "having dominant marketing position". Numbers, differ from country to country, most have it at "as low" as 50%, some at 30% of the market.

You just don't realize how silly "dictionary" approach to monopoly is.
There is a number of alternatives to google too.
Microsoft was never the only OS available.
Neither was Intel..

Anyhow, enough talking about semantics.

Well, if you want to go there, monopoly is not even a bad thing in the eyes of the law. Only trying to abuse your position will get you in trouble. So whether Valve is a monopoly or not is irrelevant, as long as they don't fix prices.

 

[medi01]

Having another player in the market would be good, I can't imagine anyone would argue about that.
Yet that was exactly my point.

When company is a monopoly (has dominant market position) other legal things kick in (such as more likely checks for this and that, can't buy this and that etc). Sometimes it slips through the fingers, e.g. Google's "dont' have chrome?" should not be legal. (and so is amazon subsidizing Kindle)

And last but not least, no way 30% cut from the revenue going into Valve's pocket is justified. And, ya, so does Apple (among other wonderful things, such as charging 100$ per 16Gb of flash) and fuck them too.

 

[Frick]

Having another player in the market would be good, I can't imagine anyone would argue about that.
Yet that was exactly my point.

When company is a monopoly (has dominant market position) other legal things kick in (such as more likely checks for this and that, can't buy this and that etc). Sometimes it slips through the fingers, e.g. Google's "dont' have chrome?" should not be legal. (and so is amazon subsidizing Kindle)

And last but not least, no way 30% cut from the revenue going into Valve's pocket is justified. And, ya, so does Apple (among other wonderful things, such as charging 100$ per 16Gb of flash) and fuck them too.

What is "justified" to you, and how would it be regulated? What about stores selling smartphones at a 28% profit?

 

[rtwjunkie]

What is "justified" to you, and how would it be regulated? What about stores selling smartphones at a 28% profit?

You're wasting your breath. He's obviously not taken the most basic economics courses, not bothered to fill his head self-learning anything but anti-free market rubbish.

He's obviously never been in business either.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Thanks to everyone for de-railing this thread. And to the people that think 49% is not accurate enough for the term "nearly half", go jump of a cliff.

 

[medi01]

What is "justified" to you, and how would it be regulated?

It would not need to be regulated (besides crushing apparent cartel agreements) had there been competition.

What about stores selling smartphones at a 28% profit?

Laghable comparison. Do you have any idea of the complexity involved in storing and transporting stuff vs downloads? I am not even touching handling returns/oh it was scratched / h oh oh, just first step, store and deliver.

anti-free market rubbish.

You know, repeating some buzzword doesn't make your argument stronger.
You were saying Valve isn't a monopolist "because there are other sellers". I hope now you know that's not the case.
You were saying gog.com was whopping second to Valve on the market. I hope now you learned that it's whopping 1 copy sold on gog vs 30 copies sold on Steam FOR THE SAME game.

And here is some news for it: hardly any modern AAA game gets on gog.com. It's mostly old rubbish and some indies.

Well, if you want to go there, monopoly is not even a bad thing in the eyes of the law. Only trying to abuse your position will get you in trouble.

It is clearly a bad thing (lack of competition leads to slower progress, but indeed one doesn't get punished just for being a monopolist. Well. Mostly.

Interesting read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

 

[Frick]

Laghable comparison. Do you have any idea of the complexity involved in storing and transporting stuff vs downloads? I am not even touching handling returns/oh it was scratched / h oh oh, just first step, store and deliver.

Is it more or less complex than maintaining all the servers, keeping track on money transactions and refunds not to mention all the legal crap they have to deal with?

 

[rtwjunkie]

You were saying gog.com was whopping second to Valve on the market. I hope now you learned that it's whopping 1 copy sold on gog vs 30 copies sold on Steam FOR THE SAME game.

You speak nonsense, and everyone here who knows GOG is laughing at you. You are out of your league with zero knowledge. As @Slizzo had to point out to you, you cherry-picked one game that is primarily a console title. We're not talking one game. We're talking percentage of PC digital market.

Steam is not a monopoly. But you go ahead and believe that it is. Keep in mind, I dislike Steam, so I certainly have no dog in the hunt. Once you get educated on a whole host of issues I will resume discussions with you.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Monopoly:
- Microsoft, with Windows D3D crap for games
- Intel, with ridiculously overpriced CPUs, since AMD is a laughable competitor, so they are jacking up prices as much as they want
- Apple, - monopoly by user's (vanity) choice -arguable
- AMD and nVIDIA for 3D graphics - we all know how prices were when Matrox, S3, 3Dfx, PowerVR, Rendition, ATI, etc were in the market...

NOT Monopoly:
- Valve, because there are a lot of other stores out there. Not monopoly since Valve (per my knowledge) doesn't force publishers to use ONLY their shop. Also is one of the cheapest stores out there so as Apple, it can be considered Monopoly by user's choice, but...maybe not

 

[BiggieShady]

Nice list, I like lists

- Microsoft, with Windows D3D crap for games

This would be monopoly if AMD and Nvidia were sabotaging OpenGL performance on purpose in drivers to push the use of DirectX. On can argue that throwing money solely on option A sabotages option B.
It would be nice though if court could rule that AMD and Nvidia have to implement full up to date OpenGL support in Linux, and charge all that to Microsoft, for fair game

- Intel, with ridiculously overpriced CPUs, since AMD is a laughable competitor, so they are jacking up prices as much as they want

They always manage to cover R&D costs, turn a substantial profit and do massive layoffs for good measure. We overpay the CPUs while being happy with the performance considering the alternative. Existence of hope from AMD makes this non-monopoly by a slim margin, but still very unbalanced duopoly. The problem for us, if the Zen is competitive, it'll be sold at intel's prices (amd going to price war with intel may not be feasible financially for amd, and intel dropping amd prices may gain amd bigger market slice ... for intel it's best to not rock the boat, for amd it's best to sell Zen at tad below intel's prices)

- Apple, - monopoly by user's (vanity) choice -arguable

This is a monopoly implemented in software helping to sell hardware and apps. Step two monopoly if you will, you have to do a step one first - buy an iDevice, after you are ready to help push their monopoly train.

- AMD and nVIDIA for 3D graphics - we all know how prices were when Matrox, S3, 3Dfx, PowerVR, Rendition, ATI, etc were in the market...

This is temporarily unhealthy duopoly, GPUs are changed every couple of years, so market shares can change quite quickly with the right architecture.

 

[medi01]

Is it more or less complex than maintaining all the servers, keeping track on money transactions and refunds not to mention all the legal crap they have to deal with?

Good Lord.
You are talking to a fucking enterprise architect.
Online shop selling phones doesn't need to keep track of money transactions, or doesn't need to maintain servers? Does it have less legal crap? Jeez.
Warehouse related processes is such a tough cookie, if you aren't a Ph.D. corresponding department won't even consider your application. It's damn expensive, it can be damaged, broken, scratched, lost in delivery, be (or not be) faulty out of the box, customer might be a lying fucker.

Damn Apple is taking the same 30% cut, that alone should speak volues about how fat is that cut.

because there are a lot of other stores out there.

Thank you very much for skipping conversations that happened before you decided to make your highly valuable contribution to this thread.
In some places, reading, before responding might even be considered a good tone.
In those places "having an alternative" might be enough for something to not be considered a monopoly.

Had you bothered reading previous comments, you might have discovered that most legislations talk about "having dominant influence on the market".

Yet, even if you didn't know that, and if you didn't read that, your argument is flawed. By your own terms Microsoft and its "d3d crap" isn't a monopoly, since there are alternatives (OpenGL, Vulkan).

And "Not monopoly, because of some (free at will) policy" - simply laughable, sorry.


And just a reminder, people, you are arguing vs "It would be better to have a strong alternative to Valve's Steam" ffs.

 

[Vayra86]

They are actually making entire lineup of brand new GPU's? Has hell frozen over? I bet you entire R9-400 series will be just a die shrink of a R9-300 series and the R9 Fury 2 will be a die shrink of a Fiji. They are doing the rebranding shit for too long to all of a sudden entirely drop it now.



I'd rather have double the performance at the power draw of a R9-390, no the other way around... People buy graphic cards to play games at high framerate, not to "save electricity". What a weird backwards logic.

AMD has already announced that the full Polaris line up will consist of new GPU's. And yes that includes the whole range top to bottom. Which is about time, too.

Edit: reading the last pages now... wtf happened? How is an AMD launch topic about Valve and monopoly? And... why so serious?

 

[medi01]

AMD has already announced that the full Polaris line up will consist of new GPU's. And yes that includes the whole range top to bottom.

Actually, 470 and below are listed as re-brand (wccftech)

I don't quite get why Polaris 10 is also an "M" chip.

 

[Vayra86]

Actually, 470 and below are listed as re-brand (wccftech)

View attachment 73988

I don't quite get why Polaris 10 is also an "M" chip.

Why oh why.... And me neither. However, this is wccftech.

 

[Prima.Vera]

By your own terms Microsoft and its "d3d crap" isn't a monopoly, since there are alternatives (OpenGL, Vulkan).

Oh but it is. Please tell me in % currently how many games have other renders except D3D? Not talking about non-Windows devices (tablets, phones, Linux OSes, etc).
At least with online store there is always the alternative. Buy the physical box.
With games for D3D or consoles? I want to play Halo too, unfortunately MS has the monopoly on the xbone, so it can only be played if you own that shitty box. Same with almost all AAA titles EXCLUSIVELY(other pompous word for monopoly) for consoles/Win.

 

[bug]

Actually, 470 and below are listed as re-brand (wccftech)

View attachment 73988

I don't quite get why Polaris 10 is also an "M" chip.

It would be so lame if AMD mixed 14 and 28nm... Basically, if you wouldn't spend top-dollar, you'd be getting tech that's 4-5 years old.

 

[rruff]

Actually, 470 and below are listed as re-brand (wccftech)
I don't quite get why Polaris 10 is also an "M" chip.

I think it's great that there will at least be some new mobile GPUs from AMD! A Polaris 11 is supposed to be > GTX 950 on the desktop which means it's roughly equivalent to a 970m in performance. Polaris 10 will be about like the 980m. Nvidia used hacked versions of the GTX 750 Ti to fill the mobile range from the 930m all the way to the 960m. I suppose AMD could do something similar, but they are a small company and probably don't have the resources to produce a bunch of new SKUs. Maybe they will eventually cover the low end with APUs?

I thought this was interesting: "The AMD Polaris 11 GPU however is said to be aimed at the notebook market. The chip is said to have wattage under 50W so it makes sense to include this in laptops as its efficiency and performance stats will prove great but this also means that we may or may not see a desktop graphics card based on Polaris 11 for a while or one at all. Right now, according to the official statement from AMD, Polaris 11 seems to be a mobility focused GPU." http://wccftech.com/amd-polaris-10-desktop-polaris-11-notebook-gpu/

I guess it makes sense that a desktop P11 will launch later since rumors say Nvidia won't launch GTX 1060 until late in the year.

 

[P-40E]

Why is something in my head telling me it's more 7000 series re-brands for the fourth time in a row, but on a smaller die? I hope I am wrong. I really want AMD to kick some ass!

 

[rruff]

Why is something in my head telling me it's more 7000 series re-brands for the fourth time in a row, but on a smaller die? I hope I am wrong. I really want AMD to kick some ass!

If you are looking at the chart linked above, those are mobile chips. Polaris 11 will be mobile 480 and desktop 470. The lower end mobile cards will be rebrands, but I doubt anyone will be buying those if they know what they are getting.