AMD Confirms Retreat from the Enthusiast GPU Segment, to Focus on Gaining Market-Share

[Quells]

It would be funny and great AMD releases a mid range GPU that smacks down the 5090 at about 1/4 the price. Nvidia would then probably rather leave the market than cut prices by 75%.

But more seriously, the advantage of this tactic may to be put more pressure on developers to target lower end hardware for their game releases, although will need to grow market share to achieve that level of influence.

It doesn't seem you understand what's being said here. It wouldn't be funny because AMD isnt releasing anything close to a 5090 or even 4090. Their actually focusing on the 4050 4060 and 4070 and just having a better price point. With no developer support. The ppl who want budget builds rejoice but that's about it unfortunately

 

[chrcoluk]

It doesn't seem you understand what's being said here. It wouldn't be funny because AMD isnt releasing anything close to a 5090 or even 4090. Their actually focusing on the 4050 4060 and 4070 and just having a better price point. With no developer support. The ppl who want budget builds rejoice but that's about it unfortunately

It would be a mid range product and chip size but over perform to the level of a 5090, I didnt think anyone would need an explanation for that.

 

[RUSerious]

It would be a mid range product and chip size but over perform to the level of a 5090, I didn't think anyone would need an explanation for that.

No, I don't think so. That would require a huge increase in 'IPC' and/or frequency for the top Bin Navi 48 GPU. Basically, we are talking about a 7800XT class graphics card, but next gen (obvs). It's not going to hit RTX 5090 performance levels on this planet. It's not going to hit RTX 4090 performance levels either. The 4090 outperforms the 7800XT by 1.85x! That is a bridge too far.

 

[Godrilla]

No, I don't think so. That would require a huge increase in 'IPC' and/or frequency for the top Bin Navi 48 GPU. Basically, we are talking about a 7800XT class graphics card, but next gen (obvs). It's not going to hit RTX 5090 performance levels on this planet. It's not going to hit RTX 4090 performance levels either. The 4090 outperforms the 7800XT by 1.85x! That is a bridge too far.

1.9x raster delta the more gpu dependent we get. I believe the focus will be more on rt performance delta gains with rdna4. The more dedicated silicon that is dedicated to rt the less potential gains we will see in rasterization as well.

 

[chrcoluk]

No, I don't think so. That would require a huge increase in 'IPC' and/or frequency for the top Bin Navi 48 GPU. Basically, we are talking about a 7800XT class graphics card, but next gen (obvs). It's not going to hit RTX 5090 performance levels on this planet. It's not going to hit RTX 4090 performance levels either. The 4090 outperforms the 7800XT by 1.85x! That is a bridge too far.

Bear in mind I was joking, I dont actually think it will happen. But yeah thats what my joke meant.

 

[PassportBro]

I have just joined just to say I fully agree with the AMD company rep in the OP.

P.S.: I could not join the forum when I was in the Philippines on the grounds that (not exact quote) the forum Admins have disabled users with IPs from the Philippines from joining. Since this post will have to be approved by a Mod, they might as well relay this to the Admins in case this was done in error.

 

[ianmacd]

What even is the "enthusiast GPU segment"? Someone who buys a video card as a separate purchase from the rest of their computer?

 

[kapone32]

Wow. can AMD do anything right? After the tech media made the 2080TI a Unicorn it has been for AMD to equal or beat at half the price. I see people saying the 7800XT is not faster than a 6800XT well the 6800XT debuted at $1499 where I live and you can get 7800XTs for $699. The narrative makes purchasing AMD seem foolish but when you have Humble Choice and play more than what the narrative says you will find that Ray Tracing and the like are not focused on but butter smooth Gameplay. We call it Raster. I love it when people tell me how weak my 7900X3D is until I talk about Games that depend on CPU performance like City Builders, TW Battles, LMU larger grids. You know those little things that make Gaming what it is. Just for scope I got the LMU update. I had every car we have seen in WEC Hypercar and was in Gaming bliss. The Graphics are already so sharp at 4K and my VA has the vaunted darkness with 1000 Nits of brightness to make colours pop. I Love these modern LED screens we have today turn the contrast and saturation way up and adjust the brightness to your liking. Before we write them off let's keep in mind that their APUs are selling in non retial channels in a new format for PC. The 8700G makes a 5700G seem pointless for an APU in terms of performance but the price will make you fall off your chair. Once the Z2 chips are in the cycle the price will fall though.

 

[OSdevr]

Wonder where Radeon would be if AMD released the planned 2 GCD GPUs for the 7000 series.

 

[AusWolf]

What even is the "enthusiast GPU segment"? Someone who buys a video card as a separate purchase from the rest of their computer?

They usually define "enthusiast" as something irresponsibly expensive that lets you play at 4K max detail with all the bells and whistles. It's not the literal definition of the term "enthusiast", though, only marketing bullshit. To me, every person is an enthusiast who likes tinkering with computer hardware, regardless of its price or age.

Wow. can AMD do anything right? After the tech media made the 2080TI a Unicorn it has been for AMD to equal or beat at half the price. I see people saying the 7800XT is not faster than a 6800XT well the 6800XT debuted at $1499 where I live and you can get 7800XTs for $699. The narrative makes purchasing AMD seem foolish but when you have Humble Choice and play more than what the narrative says you will find that Ray Tracing and the like are not focused on but butter smooth Gameplay. We call it Raster. I love it when people tell me how weak my 7900X3D is until I talk about Games that depend on CPU performance like City Builders, TW Battles, LMU larger grids. You know those little things that make Gaming what it is. Just for scope I got the LMU update. I had every car we have seen in WEC Hypercar and was in Gaming bliss. The Graphics are already so sharp at 4K and my VA has the vaunted darkness with 1000 Nits of brightness to make colours pop. I Love these modern LED screens we have today turn the contrast and saturation way up and adjust the brightness to your liking. Before we write them off let's keep in mind that their APUs are selling in non retial channels in a new format for PC. The 8700G makes a 5700G seem pointless for an APU in terms of performance but the price will make you fall off your chair. Once the Z2 chips are in the cycle the price will fall though.

Speaking about the 7800 XT, sure, it wasn't much faster than the 6800 XT when it came out, but if you look at the most recent games, you'll see that it's even faster than the 6900 XT in some of them. The dual-issue shaders in RDNA 3 are a textbook example of the "AMD fine wine" experience.

 

[Wasteland]

What even is the "enthusiast GPU segment"? Someone who buys a video card as a separate purchase from the rest of their computer?

Someone willing to pay a huge price premium to achieve 10% better image quality in bad AAA games.

I'm not knocking anyone. It's fun to tinker with and talk about cutting edge hardware. I've succumbed to the urge myself. But looking around at the state of modern gaming, I find myself increasingly bemused by the impassioned arguments you see here and elsewhere. There are tens of thousands of older/indie games out there, available cheap and at the press of a button. Pretty much all of them can be played at reasonable quality with any mid-range GPU made in the last 6-7 years. Many of them are even fun. And yet we sit here wringing our hands over comparatively minor performance differences in every new, buggy, insipid, carbon-copy corporate garbage fire. Rinse and repeat.

Sure, the benchmarks and screenshots can look impressive, but once you've gotten past the rush of tweaking/benchmarking, are you really going to enjoy playing it? Probably not. Instead you'll do what I've done so many times in the past--shelve the game and return to your tech-enthusiast forum of choice to debate/dissect the flow of the protagonist's hair in scene #15 with FSR vs DLSS, or whatever. The truth is that the current gaming market is great, but only if you unplug from the FOMO treadmill. Fortunately or not, that step requires a hard look at the real value of newer hardware, each successive generation of which unlocks a smaller proportion of games than the last, and vastly diminished returns in terms of graphical fidelity, which more or less plateaued quite some time ago.

 

[kapone32]

They usually define "enthusiast" as something irresponsibly expensive that lets you play at 4K max detail with all the bells and whistles. It's not the literal definition of the term "enthusiast", though, only marketing bullshit. To me, every person is an enthusiast who likes tinkering with computer hardware, regardless of its price or age.


Speaking about the 7800 XT, sure, it wasn't much faster than the 6800 XT when it came out, but if you look at the most recent games, you'll see that it's even faster than the 6900 XT in some of them. The dual-issue shaders in RDNA 3 are a textbook example of the "AMD fine wine" experience.

That is not me I bought a 7900XT and it blew my 6800XT out of the water. Thing is that I also bought a 7600XT and funnily enough that felt as fast as the 6800XT in some Games so I understand AMD's fine wine just fine. My nephew and cousin have Gaming PCs and I gifted them 6800XTs. Since then with their 1440P 165hz screens they have no interest in upgrading. My Nephew had a 3060 and my cousin had a 2070. AMD software is that good and is a reason to get Radeon. Especially if you use an AMD CPU. If you notice on TPU it is always the same people that bash AMD. Most of them have not used AMD in years. The kicker though is that people do not rag on Nvidia for gentrifying GPUs. The tech media was no help as they made the 3090 and 4090 seem like the cat's meow. Remember when they did the 3D Mark competition with Dual 3090s among the biggest Youtubers? I also love the 90% marketshare in a world where the Chinese Govt is buying 4090s and thanks to Jensen 4090Ds. Of course my argument hold water as I saw TW 3 Kingdoms become the most popular game on Steam that I understood the China effect.

I love Gaming and AMD has rewarded me with discernable performance improvements. I checked my M2 and realized that the pads I was using were too thick so I replaced them and the screw was able to go into the hole. The price I paid for my entire PC(CPU, GPU, MB) is still less than a 4090 but I love storage as my first PC was a TRS80. It was striking watching the PC world podcast with Tom's Hardware at CES (Ii think) and Adam talking to the head of the site and talking about options vs the 4090. When he mentioned the 7900XT and saw Adam's face he had to remind him that the 7900XT is 7% slower than the 7900XTX so it is fine for 4K. I have seen that even some TPU staff love to rag on AMD like Intel or Nvidia even though those Companies are not paragons on the community are as open to the PC community with AMD. Just look at Linux support 4 years ago.

Now the truth and the narrative are so messed up that AMD has to focus on Ray Tracing even though they have caught and passed Nvidia on raster below the 4090. What sucks is that 100% of Games depend on raster but only AAA focus on Ray Tracing. I love when they bash FSR for being open.

 

[AusWolf]

That is not me I bought a 7900XT and it blew my 6800XT out of the water. Thing is that I also bought a 7600XT and funnily enough that felt as fast as the 6800XT in some Games so I understand AMD's fine wine just fine. My nephew and cousin have Gaming PCs and I gifted them 6800XTs. Since then with their 1440P 165hz screens they have no interest in upgrading. My Nephew had a 3060 and my cousin had a 2070. AMD software is that good and is a reason to get Radeon. Especially if you use an AMD CPU. If you notice on TPU it is always the same people that bash AMD. Most of them have not used AMD in years. The kicker though is that people do not rag on Nvidia for gentrifying GPUs. The tech media was no help as they made the 3090 and 4090 seem like the cat's meow. Remember when they did the 3D Mark competition with Dual 3090s among the biggest Youtubers? I also love the 90% marketshare in a world where the Chinese Govt is buying 4090s and thanks to Jensen 4090Ds. Of course my argument hold water as I saw TW 3 Kingdoms become the most popular game on Steam that I understood the China effect.

The differences people argue about are most of the time nothing. I also have a 7600 as a spare card, and if I had to do a blind test between it and my 6750 XT, I wouldn't see anything most of the time. Sure, my FPS would probably be slightly lower in most games, but I wouldn't notice it without some diagnostics on screen.

Now the truth and the narrative are so messed up that AMD has to focus on Ray Tracing even though they have caught and passed Nvidia on raster below the 4090. What sucks is that 100% of Games depend on raster but only AAA focus on Ray Tracing. I love when they bash FSR for being open.

People bash stuff because people live on sensation. Let's be honest, the GPU industry is quite boring at the moment. Pretty much all modern cards can game at reasonable resolutions, so with nothing blowing your mind out of the water, what do people do? They create their own sensations. They buy a 4K monitor and expect fluent gameplay even though 1440p still looks great. They watch reviews on Youtube, reviews that shit on the card that's underperforming by 2% compared to the competition. They read marketing material about how awesome RT is and believe it without seeing it first-hand. Then they join online forums to justify their expensive, but often pointless purchases by bashing the other camp. "Oh, how great my 4090 is because look, look, there's your card just under it by 17 percent, mwahaha! I'm the king on the garbage pile now!"

It's just like iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S aficionados looking down on others with cheap Android phones, despite the fact that they just scroll Facebook on them all day and night like the rest of us peasants.

Or like people bashing me for running my RAM at JEDEC standard 4800 MHz to save 10 W and 5 °C on the CPU because running it at EXPO 6000 MHz would gain literally zero perceptible extra performance.

 

[Bronan]

I agree that AMD should no longer follow the same route.
As players like me want a well performing gaming system [ self bulld ]
But without massive power usage and still has very good performance in games
And even though i have serious issues with my current AMD build (probably memory kit related)
But i am happy with the insane performance it gives me in games
With 3dmark benchmarks this little red AMD devil stunned me also with fps sometimes far over 400
Not that i care much about benchmarks ( i gave in to a friend who wanted to see if my system scored higher than his pc almost same but with newer 7700 xt (lol) ) result i beat his system in every way possible
When 3dmark worked i was stunned again to see my little red devil was in the top 100 for my cpu
That was unbelievable to me first time ever in between mid/heavy overclocked systems with a simple installed system
Nowadays one person is claiming all spots with the same system but that is 3dmark
Anyway my system is a simple pc in a nice white case with wooden top
Running on W10
Cpu: 7800X3D no OC allowed by me
Gpu: Asus TUF RX 6800 gaming oc (clocked at base speeds so again no oc allowed)
Mobo: Asus proart x670e creator wifi 10 Gb lan in use ( needed for mass storage / 10 G card with 2x 800 Gb buffered synology toy )
I use it also to look at my backupped movie disks from the nas (i own all of them on DVD/BR disks)
Memory 32 Gb set g.skill 6000 << to me seems the culpritt of my problems
Boot : WD black SN850X 2 TB
Game store : Lexar NM790 4 TB
big storage : usb c case with toshiba hdwr21c, 12 TB disk for mass storage and backups ( can reach up to 400 mb with proper usb-c high speed port
So nothing fancy anymore with the high price machines as this little devil made me open my eyes about AMD
They make products which simply work and am pretty darn fast with much less power usage
So GOOD JOB [ AMD ]

 

[Super XP]

Well, clearly it's not their highest priority anymore. Efficiency for AMD, and all profitable companies, is about the $$s. They will be focusing on iGPUs for the laptop CPUs - those have higher margins. On discrete, they've said they are aiming for 'mainstream' market. AMD is probably going to target lower cost silicon designs so they can get slightly higher margins in the performance ranges they want to compete in. That will provide them with a better cost structure after RDNA5 under UDNA6, etc. I hope that there will be the equivalent of 7800XT performance range as their top product - but we will see. UDNA will be focused first on CDNA silicon, just as Ryzen CCDs are designed for EPYC server needs first.

Huynh, has to demonstrate maximum enthusiasm for a DIY site like TH, it would be marketing suicide not to. We will see what the reality is.

AMD is going to re-enter the high end GPU market with RDNA5 according to what I've read months back, as RDNA4 didn't have what it takes.

 

[RUSerious]

AMD is going to re-enter the high end GPU market with RDNA5 according to what I've read months back, as RDNA4 didn't have what it takes.

I read the same rumor. From the interview in the OP, it appears that AMD will not revisit the high end until sometime in the UDNA timeline. I believe that too many resources were taken off out of the consumer graphics group to complete a high end design for RDNA5. UDNA's primary focus will be AI/HPC silicon, especially over the next 5 years by recent comments from Lisa Su.

 

[kapone32]

I read the same rumor. From the interview in the OP, it appears that AMD will not revisit the high end until sometime in the UDNA timeline. I believe that too many resources were taken off out of the consumer graphics group to complete a high end design for RDNA5. UDNA's primary focus will be AI/HPC silicon, especially over the next 5 years by recent comments from Lisa Su.

Especially since AMD already has a 32GB monster in that space. This gives them ample time to develop it. What AMD wants for me is a return to Polaris days. Maybe we will see once a gain a compelling card for decent prices. We will see what distributors have to say though.

 

[plonk420]

Hopefully this results in another absolute banger, like the 5870, RX480, or 5700XT (some issues not withstanding) that sells like hotcakes and not only gains market share but lifts AMD's image in the GPU market. There is an absolute killing to be made in the sub $500 USD arena if they can market and execute well.

i've been reminiscing for the last few years over the AMAZING HD5870 i got launch week. probably could have used it longer had i gotten the 2GB VRAM Eyefinity version

 

[wolf]

i've been reminiscing for the last few years over the AMAZING HD5870 i got launch week. probably could have used it longer had i gotten the 2GB VRAM Eyefinity version

I did the same, bought the batmobile 5870 1G at launch, banger of a card. Then some months later added a 5850 in Crossfire because they allowed mixing and it worked extremely well. I do hope they can recreate that kind of magic as they've done multiple times in the past, healthy performance and VRAM for a killer price.

 

[kapone32]

I did the same, bought the batmobile 5870 1G at launch, banger of a card. Then some months later added a 5850 in Crossfire because they allowed mixing and it worked extremely well. I do hope they can recreate that kind of magic as they've done multiple times in the past, healthy performance and VRAM for a killer price.

There was nothing wrong with Crossfire, especially during the Polaris days. That was a good time to be into GPUs. They were still around $180 Canadian for a really good card. There is nothing of scale to match that in price today. I wonder what the World would be like if that had continued.

 

[wolf]

There was nothing wrong with Crossfire, especially during the Polaris days. That was a good time to be into GPUs. They were still around $180 Canadian for a really good card. There is nothing of scale to match that in price today. I wonder what the World would be like if that had continued.

I've had a great time with Crossfire in the past, and SLI tbh but there's just something inherently awesome about multi gpu setups. My biggest gripe with Crossfire (and this is by far), is when I did it with reference cards, my room sounded like an airport tarmac

 

[kapone32]

I've had a great time with Crossfire in the past, and SLI tbh but there's just something inherently awesome about multi gpu setups. My biggest gripe with Crossfire (and this is by far), is when I did it with reference cards, my room sounded like an airport tarmac

Reference cards were cheaper but all had blower fans at that time right? When I had a Raven02 I used a reference 7950XT for that reason.

 

[SRS]

This appears to be a symptom of inadequate competition.

Regardless of arguments about intent, there is a collusive element involved when a company that has the means to compete chooses to relinquish a product space to a competitor that will undoubedtly raise prices, a move that enriches the relinquisher — as prices are increased from top to bottom (and vice-versa).

Put simply: It's in AMD's interest to maintain the "Polaris + consoles forever" strategy, as long as it can allocate the production volume and other investments that would go toward higher-end consumer products (i.e. consumer GPUs like the 4080 and 4090) toward other products that are at least equally profitable. It's in AMD's interest not just because there is potential to increase margin by using finite resources for product production that has more profitability (i.e. enterprise). It's in AMD's further interest when Nvidia can artificially increase pricing for consumer products that AMD continues to offer. By not competiting with products like the 4090, AMD gives Nvidia the ability to artificially increase pricing, which trickles down the entire stack. This has the beneficial (for AMD) side effect of increasing the relevance/competitiveness of consoles, in addition to enabling AMD to increase its margin for its "midrange" stand-alone GPUs.

Setting aside likely fruitless arguments about the kindness of corporations (they're unkind by definition, unless you're a shareholder, CEO, etc. — as, by design, they are non-living entities that relentlessly ruthlessly conspire to obtain as much profit as possible, which means providing as little value to consumers as they can get away with), the problem here is duopoly. Monopoly, duopoly, and similar examples of inadequate competition result in shenanigans that artificially increase pricing and slow innovation. Someone argued that the additional income helps a corporation have more R&D money. That's true but only to a point. It does not solve the defects of inadequate competition. The less competition, the less pressure to invest in R&D and — especially — to give consumers the fruits of that R&D expeditiously and affordably.

Intel has not done a good job, as yet, of trying to break the duopolistic situation. What is needed is additional competition at the high end of the consumer GPU market. A corporation needs to challenge Nvidia at the 4090 level (and, soon, the 5090 level). Only when pricing is less artificially inflated at the higher end (including the 4080 level), will pricing become fairer throughout the stack.