pc gamer AMD's gaming graphics business looks like it's in terminal decline

[ENTERPRISE]

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For the first quarter of 2024, AMD said that its gaming revenues were down a massive 48% compared to the same period in 2023. While some of that fall reflects an inevitable cyclical downturn in revenues from games consoles—put simply, the consoles have been out for a while and sales are beginning to flag—AMD also conceded that "lower AMD Radeon GPU sales" were also to blame

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Interesting take. I must say that I can at least agree with RDNA 4 comments. I do believe that AMD are sticking to GDDR6 for RDNA 4 which is a clear cost saving measure but could also be seen as a lack of confidence in the GPU line to push for the use of newer technologies. 

 

Do I think AMD will leave the gaming segment, no. But I do believe they could just keep their focus on the midrange and leave high end/halo specifically for prosumer/machine learning.

 

 

 

[pio]

I'll just say this, my 7900XTX is a wonderful GPU.  I definitely have typical "brand new AMD" bugs, which I hate to admit being that I enjoy the card so much.  Their software is honestly pretty great too...........when it works.  My 6900XT doesn't have anywhere near the issues the 7900 has, so I know its a weird architecture bug of some kind I'm having.  It'd be a shame to see AMD drop out of the graphics business, they've been at it for decades.  I don't think they'll be leaving either.

They HAVE admitted recently (I think we have the article somewhere) that they were going to focus more on the midrange type cards.  They have also admitted recently to bringing back multi-GPU, to an extent.  I get the feeling they're going to release a midrange card, and use their crossfire knowledge and capabilities to make on PCB or maybe even on die multi GPU to make their higher end cards.  That's my guess.  Totally 100% my own opinion and guess on the situation.  Just seems like that might be the direction they're headed.

[GanjaSMK]

I still hold out hope that AMD has something that isn't/hasn't leaked that will solidify their (40 years?) of improvement. AMD really has come a long way compared to the competition with a softer start. But I know my hope is lofty. 

[UltraMega]

Consoles sales declining are a huge factor here, but it makes sense that AMD would be falling behind since their GPUs don't really have any AI specific feature. I suspect the 7000 series will be the last gen from AMD that lacks more dedicated hardware for stuff like AI or RT. Right now Nvidia can sell RTX GPUs to gamers and anyone looking to run some AI, but AMD isn't there yet. Once they are, I'm sure their gaming revenue will normalize somewhat. For now, this just points out what we already know; AI hardware is becoming more important and AMD is behind on integrating AI hardware into their GPUs. 

 

Nvidia's gaming revenue was flat last quarter. Seems reasonable to assume if AI wasn't propping up sales of RTX GPUs, Nvidia would also be seeing a decline.

 

There just isn't really enough compelling reasons to buy a new gaming GPU or console these days with so few big budget games of significant quality being released. Apparently Square Enix lost $200 million on the Suicide Squad game and that was after the Justice League game flopped. I guess they needed to be beat over the head with it until they realized people don't want games filled with more buzz words than quality content. So long as big dev studios are losing money by releasing games full of micro transactions and live service crap that no one asked for, the gaming market will suffer. Can't have a healthy gaming market without good games. 

 

Edited May 12 by UltraMega

[Kaz]

I dislike these clickbait headlines.  AMD has chosen to focus on the most lucrative segment of the market, which has traditionally been more of the entry level to mid range GPUs.  There's a real demand for graphics cards that preform well in the $500 range.  Let's not forget, 2023 was still riding the coat tails of the crypto mining boom.  2024 we are well into a recession, with everyone having raised prices and people are feeling it.

 

Nvidia is dominating due to AI and AMD would be wise to spend their R&D budget in developing the next revolutionary tech.  Power grids are the real AI limiting factor and they take far longer to build out and expand than anything else.  Designing more power efficient AI chips could easily challenge Nvidia's 2.25 Trillion dollar valuation. 

[GanjaSMK]

We're so power deficient at large scale it's almost unbelievable IMHO. I really, really hope that guy who has proven working thrust without propellant will receive enough initial funding to further research beyond the intended use case (escaping gravity/high-thrust-extremely-low-input). 

 

He even mentions (in somewhat obvious thoughtful nature) how this technology (and not completely understood fully) could breach many of our limiting factors in energy production. He alludes to other possibilities as well if the technology is applicable in specific states (loosely).   

 

It's like in another thread on UE5 update where improvement is made at software level allowing utilization of existing hardware. We don't need rapid improvement of physical technicality IMHO, we need better code/implementations. 

[ENTERPRISE]

21 hours ago, GanjaSMK said:

We're so power deficient at large scale it's almost unbelievable IMHO. I really, really hope that guy who has proven working thrust without propellant will receive enough initial funding to further research beyond the intended use case (escaping gravity/high-thrust-extremely-low-input). 

 

He even mentions (in somewhat obvious thoughtful nature) how this technology (and not completely understood fully) could breach many of our limiting factors in energy production. He alludes to other possibilities as well if the technology is applicable in specific states (loosely).   

 

It's like in another thread on UE5 update where improvement is made at software level allowing utilization of existing hardware. We don't need rapid improvement of physical technicality IMHO, we need better code/implementations. 

There is no doubt that well coded software that leverages hardware efficiently can be a massive game changer, no pun intended. 

[Andrew]

This is not surprising tbh, the sale of all luxury goods is in massive decline recently.

[Sir Beregond]

This isn't the first time AMD has tried just focusing on the "sweet spot" market. It's not a bad thing per se as that segment needs some love, but big picture it never pans out well for the consumer in the grand scheme of things. This is when Nvidia gets emboldened to further raise prices and cut corners because who is there to challenge them and promote price wars? And AMD has easily shown (at least on launch) that they will just slot into whatever pricing structure Nvidia creates.

 

We can pretend it's not a thing, but what happens at the high end / halo part of a product stack every gen absolutely influences the rest of the stack, consumer perception of a brand, etc.

 

To me this just screams more AMD falling behind because they don't want to pump resources into graphics to truly compete with Nvidia here. That's not good for anyone.