AMD Retreating from Enthusiast Graphics Segment with RDNA4?

[Slaughtahouse]

21 hours ago, Slaughtahouse said:

 

No, I don't believe we have the visibility unless we have a whistleblower here from AMD

 

*looks from side to side...*

 

Edit: I found some more "info" from their slide / deck @UltraMega

 

 

and from their "10-Q" link...

 

Quote

 

The Company’s four reportable segments are:

•the Data Center segment, which primarily includes server microprocessors (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs), data processing units (DPUs), Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and Adaptive System-on-Chip (SoC) products for data centers;

•the Client segment, which primarily includes CPUs, accelerated processing units (APUs) that integrate CPUs and GPUs, and chipsets for desktop and notebook personal computers;

•the Gaming segment, which primarily includes discrete GPUs, semi-custom SoC products and development services; and

•the Embedded segment, which primarily includes embedded CPUs and GPUs, APUs, FPGAs and Adaptive SoC products.

 

 

https://d1io3yog0oux5.cloudfront.net/_1c5716123238c600ef4e700df3da2d96/amd/db/778/6929/file/AMD+Q2'23+Earnings+Slides.pdf

https://ir.amd.com/sec-filings/content/0000002488-23-000139/0000002488-23-000139.pdf

 

 

[Sir Beregond]

So that's probably primarily console - which makes sense. Dedicated GPU silicon for 7nm last gen was like lowest on AMD's priority list.

Edited August 11, 2023 by Sir Beregond

[Slaughtahouse]

Just now, Sir Beregond said:

So that's probably primarily console.

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

The clarification is Gaming is in fact limited to graphics only (CPUs excluded). In my opinion, we don't have nearly enough info to indicate that poor graphics cards sales are the reason why AMD will forego a Navi 41 / enthusiast chip. Money typically drives decisions... There could be other reasons... but it doesn't seem clear to me why they would skip an enthusiast card. 

 

 

 

[Sir Beregond]

20 minutes ago, Slaughtahouse said:

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

The clarification is Gaming is in fact limited to graphics only (CPUs excluded). In my opinion, we don't have nearly enough info to indicate that poor graphics cards sales are the reason why AMD will forego a Navi 41 / enthusiast chip. Money typically drives decisions... There could be other reasons... but it doesn't seem clear to me why they would skip an enthusiast card. 

 

 

 

Well last I saw, Nvidia had something like 85% market share in the discrete GPU space. What AMD needs to do if they care at all about that space is figure out how to push marketshare gain. At this point they are going to be losing share to Intel Arc.

 

The problem with the Radeon arm is this - so what if they made a 600W GPU. Nvidia does and nobody gives a crap in the enthusiast space. How many 4090 owners on this site alone are running 660W BIOS, or 1kw BIOS on some of their Ampere products? So I fail to see that as a reason. Which leads me to my next point - marketing. AMD does a piss poor job of marketing Radeon and so the general consumer just gets the idea that AMD is playing catchup to Nvidia in feature parity in things like RT and DLSS. They are right. Which leads to my last point - pricing. AMD thinks they can just slot into Nvidia pricing and somehow that's supposed to excite the market that currently has 85% Nvidia cards. What would have excited the market was a 4090 killer at $999. Sure its lacking in DLSS and RT parity but its also $600 cheaper and beats it in raster. That would be cool. But no, AMD fails to do anything excited to push marketshare once again.

Edited August 10, 2023 by Sir Beregond

[Slaughtahouse]

I agree with all of those points. They’ve got problems to sort out and the last time I recall AMD being recommended over Nvidia in the enthusiast group was the 7970 Ghz edition vs. GTX 680.

 

Since the Titan era, it’s always felt like catch up. I hope they continue to push and I hope they’re successful with MCM designs. Scaling GPUs like Zen could make AMD GPUs exciting again.

[EHW Ai]

well said @Sir Beregond

[GanjaSMK]

I have no clue as to real numbers, BUT - if 1.6 billion in revenue and a generalized aspect of a 25% PC vs 28% (via random search results) in sales space; considering then the average console price over a 10 year period at roughly $475 vs the average of $300 over the same period for PC comparable performance (though I think as of acutely recent trailing much bigger price, no?); the numbers over time probably speak volumes. 

 

It makes me wonder, NV does Sheild and goes deep and long on AI and a shite ton of backend, tackles average of 75% of PC market over same period while trying to dip services off of console and into *every space* (or medium I suppose)... 

 

SO

 

Hear me out, bold random guess... maybe AMD has a hidden trick up their sleeve.  Why leave it to Sony and Playstation alone when it can leverage similar assets to assert a... more appreciatively priced all-in-one product that delivers beyond relatively priced competition in multiple markets?  

 

I mean I'm kinda riding cloud nine cause you know, well, name. But yeah ... what if.. 

[UltraMega]

9 hours ago, Sir Beregond said:

Well last I saw, Nvidia had something like 85% market share in the discrete GPU space. What AMD needs to do if they care at all about that space is figure out how to push marketshare gain. At this point they are going to be losing share to Intel Arc.

 

The problem with the Radeon arm is this - so what if they made a 600W GPU. Nvidia does and nobody gives a crap in the enthusiast space. How many 4090 owners on this site alone are running 660W BIOS, or 1kw BIOS on some of their Ampere products? So I fail to see that as a reason. Which leads me to my next point - marketing. AMD does a piss poor job of marketing Radeon and so the general consumer just gets the idea that AMD is playing catchup to Nvidia in feature parity in things like RT and DLSS. They are right. Which leads to my last point - pricing. AMD thinks they can just slot into Nvidia pricing and somehow that's supposed to excite the market that currently has 85% Nvidia cards. What would have excited the market was a 4090 killer at $999. Sure its lacking in DLSS and RT parity but its also $600 cheaper and beats it in raster. That would be cool. But no, AMD fails to do anything excited to push marketshare once again.

Is there anyone here doing that? Even if there are, people on sites like this running bios mods are far from average users. The 4090 is a niche product compared to the overall market, and people happy to run 600w GPUs are and subset of a niche market. 

 

GPU prices have crept up a lot. It wasn't so long ago that a 1080Ti was seen as being over the top on pricing with its $700 MSRP. On some level it just makes sense that there is a limit to what AMD wants to charge for a GPU given what they can realistically offer. 

Edited August 11, 2023 by UltraMega

[EHW Ai]

Well we got massive inflation due to trillions in bullshit COVID bailouts of course prices went up.

[ENTERPRISE]

19 hours ago, Sir Beregond said:

Well last I saw, Nvidia had something like 85% market share in the discrete GPU space. What AMD needs to do if they care at all about that space is figure out how to push marketshare gain. At this point they are going to be losing share to Intel Arc.

 

The problem with the Radeon arm is this - so what if they made a 600W GPU. Nvidia does and nobody gives a crap in the enthusiast space. How many 4090 owners on this site alone are running 660W BIOS, or 1kw BIOS on some of their Ampere products? So I fail to see that as a reason. Which leads me to my next point - marketing. AMD does a piss poor job of marketing Radeon and so the general consumer just gets the idea that AMD is playing catchup to Nvidia in feature parity in things like RT and DLSS. They are right. Which leads to my last point - pricing. AMD thinks they can just slot into Nvidia pricing and somehow that's supposed to excite the market that currently has 85% Nvidia cards. What would have excited the market was a 4090 killer at $999. Sure its lacking in DLSS and RT parity but its also $600 cheaper and beats it in raster. That would be cool. But no, AMD fails to do anything excited to push marketshare once again.

 

I agree. Unfortunately AMD has a lacking feature set compared to Nvidia. The "Powered by CUDA" by Nvidia has always had AMD on the ropes. I have used lots of software that has had lackluster hardware acceleration when AMD is concerned. Case in point, at work we do 3D scanning and you cannot even use the hardware/software with an AMD GPU. It has to be Nvidia, now whether that is due to a technical limitation or smart partnerships with Nvidia I do not know, but either way Nvidia wins and AMD is seen as a less or non viable option. Solidworks is another instance, even though a Quadro based GPU, still benchmarks better with an Nvidia GPU. That being said Solidworks works closely with Nvidia on this, so not much of a surprise but again, AMD has another missed opportunity. Nvidia has massive penetration in the gaming sector and professional sector compared to AMD and that much is painfully obvious. I mean how often do you see the AMD logo on products/software compared to Nvidia ?

 

I have nothing against AMD and they do have good products at good price points but I go Nvidia every time...not because I like paying more, but at the end of the day Nvidia has a richer and more powerful feature set. Being a gamer and workstation user Nvidia is a must, going with AMD would (at least for my use cases) lead to buyers remorse. Furthermore, Nvidia is hot on it with Drivers with frequent releases which gives users additional choice. Last time I checked AMD drivers are less frequent. 

 

I cannot comment on how good AMD drivers are these days, I know they have supposed to have come a long way.

 

Some may disagree, but I see AMD as the guys to go to if you are looking for a good bang for buck and are mainly interested in rasterized performance. If that is all you care about, then AMD is your guy.

 

 

9 hours ago, UltraMega said:

Is there anyone here doing that? Even if there are, people on sites like this running bios mods are far from average users. The 4090 is a niche product compared to the overall market, and people happy to run 600w GPUs are and subset of a niche market. 

 

GPU prices have crept up a lot. It wasn't so long ago that a 1080Ti was seen as being over the top on pricing with its $700 MSRP. On some level it just makes sense that there is a limit to what AMD wants to charge for a GPU given what they can realistically offer. 

 

I have an 1000Watt XOC BIOS on my 3090 Not used it to its full potential but just wanted to point out there is at least one person here doing it lol.

[Sir Beregond]

10 hours ago, UltraMega said:

Is there anyone here doing that?

Yes. J7SC, Enterprise, Baastian, Neurotix are a few I am aware of running higher power bioses. I am sure there are others. Its really more common than you might think at that product tier.

 

11 minutes ago, ENTERPRISE said:

 

I agree. Unfortunately AMD has a lacking feature set compared to Nvidia. The "Powered by CUDA" by Nvidia has always had AMD on the ropes. I have used lots of software that has had lackluster hardware acceleration when AMD is concerned. Case in point, at work we do 3D scanning and you cannot even use the hardware/software with an AMD GPU. It has to be Nvidia, now whether that is due to a technical limitation or smart partnerships with Nvidia I do not know, but either way Nvidia wins and AMD is seen as a less or non viable option. Solidworks is another instance, even though a Quadro based GPU, still benchmarks better with an Nvidia GPU. That being said Solidworks works closely with Nvidia on this, so not much of a surprise but again, AMD has another missed opportunity. Nvidia has massive penetration in the gaming sector and professional sector compared to AMD and that much is painfully obvious. I mean how often do you see the AMD logo on products/software compared to Nvidia ?

 

I have nothing against AMD and they do have good products at good price points but I go Nvidia every time...not because I like paying more, but at the end of the day Nvidia has a richer and more powerful feature set. Being a gamer and workstation user Nvidia is a must, going with AMD would (at least for my use cases) lead to buyers remorse. Furthermore, Nvidia is hot on it with Drivers with frequent releases which gives users additional choice. Last time I checked AMD drivers are less frequent. 

 

I cannot comment on how good AMD drivers are these days, I know they have supposed to have come a long way.

 

Some may disagree, but I see AMD as the guys to go to if you are looking for a good bang for buck and are mainly interested in rasterized performance. If that is all you care about, then AMD is your guy.

 

 

 

I have an 1000Watt XOC BIOS on my 3090 Not used it to its full potential but just wanted to point out there is at least one person here doing it lol.

Yep, you've hit the nail on the head here, and this is why simply pricing AMD products into Nvidia's stack is a losing proposition. Its not just the raster performance level you have to compare, you're losing at pretty much all feature comparisons and obviously in RT as well just in gaming. You've brought up great points about workstation. And say what you want about RT, its clearly a big deal on the market at the enthusiast level.

 

Anyway, I want to see AMD succeed, I was an ATI Radeon guy in the early 2000's, I would never even consider Nvidia back then. This was also back when they were the ones pushing the envelope. Would love to see them recapture that sort of mindshare and commitment for innovation, but for whatever reason AMD or Radeon Technology Group or whoever seems hell bent on not doing anything right to get there.

Edited August 11, 2023 by Sir Beregond

[Mr. Fox]

I ran a 2000W vBIOS on my shunt modded 2080 Ti FTW3 HOF killer, ran 1000W vBIOS on my 3090 K|NGP|N and currently run a 10000W vBIOS on my 4090 Suprim. I plan to volt and shunt mod the 4090. I shunt modded my 3060 Ti and my last turdbook. Since nobody actually produces enthusiast graphics cards, you need to do this for yourself. And, expect to have interference because of control freak roadblocks along the way. It is harder than ever to own what you buy because the people selling the stuff want to own you. PC enthusiasts are a dying breed and the console jockeys are content to put up with whatever hand they are dealt. But, for $500 you can't expect anything special.  For $2000 you should, and it for damned sure better be.

 

I think there is a good chance my next GPU may be the top end ARC offering. Unless AMD pulls an unexpected magic rabbit from their top hat, they've got nothing that genuinely interests me. I am not expecting that they will, and it seems like they don't intend to try. If they want to turn the tide they should get rid of pencil-necked executive losers like Lisa Su and Frank Azor and replace them with people that are enthusiasts and understand enthusiasts.

 

Edited August 11, 2023 by Mr. Fox

[Sir Beregond]

10 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

If they want to turn the tide they should get rid of pencil-necked executive losers like Lisa Su and Frank Azor and replace them with people that are enthusiasts and understand enthusiasts.

 

This is where I think dedicated gaming graphics don't really matter in the grand scheme of things to them. The enthusiast in me who is hoping to learn volt and shunt modding totally agrees with you. Business wise, Lisa Su really turned that company around. So naturally you know how that's going to go.

[UltraMega]

Wait so is anyone actually running a 4090 with a custom bios? I know lots of people use custom bioses in general, but is anyone doing it on a 4090 here? 

[Sir Beregond]

1 hour ago, UltraMega said:

Wait so is anyone actually running a 4090 with a custom bios? I know lots of people use custom bioses in general, but is anyone doing it on a 4090 here? 

I think everyone on this site who has a 4090 is running a custom BIOS.

[The Pook]

Do the 4090s + XOC BIOSes have the same VRAM/DP issues as the 3080/3090s? 

 

I could tolerate switching to HDMI but I don't want to deal with my VRAM running at max clocks 24/7 

[UltraMega]

31 minutes ago, Sir Beregond said:

I think everyone on this site who has a 4090 is running a custom BIOS.

Interesting. I guess it makes sense that people who want the best really want the best. 600w+ on a GPU seems crazy to me, but I guess it's not far off from what people used to do with SLI. Still, I think 4090 buyers are a pretty small percentage of the market. It has 0.64% of the market on Steam's hardware survey. 

 

Back to the topic at hand, if AMD had released a 600w 4090 competitor, presumably people would want to mod that as well and with 600w being the starting point...

 

Maybe in time there will be a lot more 4090 buyers but ultimately if AMD just thinks it's too small of an audience to target when they don't have a great showing for it, it doesn't seem like they'll be missing much. 

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

The question that the Steam market survey doesn't answer is how many people seldom play games that own 4090. From what I can tell it doesn't appear they've had any trouble selling them in spite of their idiotic pricing.

 

A 4090 isn't needed for a quality gaming experience though. People who care more about gaming than anything else shouldn't feel compelled to spend that much money on a graphics card, especially if they are gaming at 1080p. There's no point in it  when a 3060 TI, 3070, or 6900 XT will deliver a satisfactory experience. Unless you're cranking up the game settings to nax on a 4K screen you just don't need it. Might want it, but needing is a different story.

 

I love my 4090, but the price of it sucked and reflected poor value. For 3090 and 3090 Ti owners, 4090 is the only option that offers a respectable performance upgrade in current generation. Anything less (4080 or 7900 XTX) isn't really an upgrade, but more like a frivolous waste of money for something that offers little or nothing.

 

 

Edited August 11, 2023 by Mr. Fox

[UltraMega]

42 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

The question that the Steam market survey doesn't answer is how many people seldom play games that own 4090. From what I can tell it doesn't appear they've had any trouble selling them in spite of their idiotic pricing.

 

A 4090 isn't needed for a quality gaming experience though. People who care more about gaming than anything else shouldn't feel compelled to spend that much money on a graphics card, especially if they are gaming at 1080p. There's no point in it  when a 3060 TI, 3070, or 6900 XT will deliver a satisfactory experience. Unless you're cranking up the game settings to nax on a 4K screen you just don't need it. Might want it, but needing is a different story.

 

I love my 4090, but the price of it sucked and reflected poor value. For 3090 and 3090 Ti owners, 4090 is the only option that offers a respectable performance upgrade in current generation. Anything less (4080 or 7900 XTX) isn't really an upgrade, but more like a frivolous waste of money for something that offers little or nothing.

 

 

I know the Steam survey leaves out a lot of potential 4090 owners, but I still would bet it's one of the slowest moving cards on the market. The only card that I would think sells less is the 4080 simply because it's a terrible value. I bet every GeForce 3000 card and every AMD RDNA2/3 card that isn't an entry level card like the 3050 or 6400 sells more than the 4090 does. 

[Sir Beregond]

34 minutes ago, UltraMega said:

I know the Steam survey leaves out a lot of potential 4090 owners, but I still would bet it's one of the slowest moving cards on the market. The only card that I would think sells less is the 4080 simply because it's a terrible value. I bet every GeForce 3000 card and every AMD RDNA2/3 card that isn't an entry level card like the 3050 or 6400 sells more than the 4090 does. 

I get not everyone has a local brick and mortar selling 4090s but here they are constantly moving stock. 4080s, not so much. It's slowed down now, but 4090s have no problem selling.

[UltraMega]

39 minutes ago, Sir Beregond said:

I get not everyone has a local brick and mortar selling 4090s but here they are constantly moving stock. 4080s, not so much. It's slowed down now, but 4090s have no problem selling.

Where are you getting this information? Is Nvidia posting sales figures? 

[Mr. Fox]

Nvidia Maintains Dominance as Sales of Graphics Cards Hit All-Time Low in 2022 | Tom's Hardware

WWW.TOMSHARDWARE.COM

---

Sales of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090s impress amid decline of total available market.

 

Gamers do not need flagship GPUs to game, and most games can run fine on GPUs that are 2 or 3 generations old. And, there are lots of gamers, some are just kids, that cannot afford to spend more than $1,000 on a GPU. I think that is probably what the Steam survey reflects. I believe it is an accurate reflection of Steam users, but probably not an accurate reflection of GPU sales overall. I spend more time benching my 4090 than I do gaming on it. I spend more time gaming on my weaker GPUs than I do benching them. 

Edited August 12, 2023 by Mr. Fox

[EHW Ai]

9 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

I am not expecting that they will, and it seems like they don't intend to try. If they want to turn the tide they should get rid of pencil-necked executive losers like Lisa Su and Frank Azor and replace them with people that are enthusiasts and understand enthusiasts.

 

 

 

Can you imagine if AMD announced enthusiast-tier GPU's to compete with Nvidia at the top end and added Vince and Biso Biso + Cens and others to get them to do it right.

 

That would make me buy AMD GPUs again and its been ages.

[UltraMega]

I think there is a technical factor being missed in this discussion. 

 

I'm not technical enough to say I fully understand this, but I have seen a lot of info from people who are, and as I understand it, Nvidia actually made comments to the same effect before AMD, they just phrased it differently. 

 

Nvidia makes monolithic GPUs while AMD has moved to chiplets. As I understand it, there is sort of a hard limit on how big a monolithic GPU can be, and Nvidia is close to hitting that limit. They have said they face challenges with their monolithic design going forward from where they are now. Monolithic GPUs are more efficient, but they have a limit on how large they can get relative to their node. Chiplets are the way around this issue, but they come with a power cost as it's less efficient to move data around on chiplets vs a monolithic GPU. 

Both companies are facing similar challenges as GPUs get so big and nodes get so small that the physics starts to become an overwhelming obstacle. 

[Sir Beregond]

5 hours ago, UltraMega said:

Where are you getting this information? Is Nvidia posting sales figures? 

I watch the stock numbers for my local Micro Center regularly. My store keeps them pretty accurate on their site for each card model. Its slowed down now because I think anyone in the market for a $1600+ GPU bought one by now, but until it hit that point, the 4090s were selling like hot cakes here while the lower tier Nvidia cards were sitting or moving much slower.

Edited August 12, 2023 by Sir Beregond