It's been very easy to become downbeat when it comes to AMD over the past couple of years. Observing their strategies, wondering whether it has the muscle to get back into contention with the might of Intel and Nvidia, which have evidently been dominant as of late.
In recent times AMD has made some very obtuse decisions. I wrote an article last year in which I suggested that if AMD went on the stated steps, they would be a force to be reckoned with in no time. However, they chose to take a very different approach...
Let’s begin with analyzing AMD’s performance in the GPU market and comparing with its arch-rival Nvidia. The past two years have been filled with rumors and speculation regarding AMD’s constantly degrading fortunes. There was a time when we thought Microsoft was actually going to acquire AMD, though I think we can quickly understand how this could have negative ramifications for the entire hardware industry.
Let’s take a look at last year. Below in the graph, I have compiled values of GAAP (Generaly Accepted Accounting Principles) earnings for AMD for last year. The blue line indicates the revenue while the red line indicates AMD's losses during that particular period.
And in comparison here we have AMD’s earning for 2014. Notice that the revenue never got below the Billion mark:
Taking a closer look at AMD’s released products in 2015 shows the Radeon R9 300 series arrived as well as the critically acclaimed R9 Nano and R9 Fury X. These were the supposed competitors to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 900 series. However, despite the 3.5 GB memory drama surrounding the GTX 970, it was the most popular card of the series to date and AMD still lacked the market power it needed to bounce back.
Back in 2014, the announcements from AMD included the reference variants of the Radeon R9 290X,which is one of AMD’s most successful cards to date. In April of that year AMD announced a dual solution card known as the R9-295X2, which outclassed the Titan Z in terms of pricing as well as performance. The card still packs quite a punch to this day. Meanwhile Nvidia had taken the curtains off the GTX 750 Ti, which offered the best price to performance ratio and was included in our GD Machine as well. Announcements from Nvidia in 2014 mainly included budget graphics cards and reference variants of high end models.
Overall AMD offered little competition to Nvidia in 2015, even in comparison to 2014, which was hardly a stellar year. I haven’t even begun to discuss Nvidia’s mobile GPU products, a sector which has been neglected by AMD for far too long. Their only focus in this area seems to be cut-price APUs.
So despite the poor performance of AMD in the last couple of years, can they finally become the force to be reckoned with again?
The only way is up
It’s been a few weeks since the launch of the $199 RX 480 and Nvidia also chimed in with their own budget level GTX 1060, which reportedly offers GTX 980 performance at just $249. Both are extremely impressive cards for the price. Market figures for the RX 480 are still a question mark but since its launch, the card has been marred by controversy. Only a couple of days after launch, there were reports of power draw issues in this card. While AMD issued a driver update shortly afterwards, dilemmas like this seriously dent the customer’s trust in an organization.
All that aside, judging solely on the basis of performance to price ratio then the conclusion still stands. RX 480 is a superb card for the price and despite the GTX 1060’s own cheap price tag, I would expect the RX 480 to perform slightly better in the market worldwide despite the price fluctuations. Jon’s prediction regarding the deceptive pricing of Nvidia cards could also play a good hand in bringing back AMD.
I would also like to give a special mention to the RX 470 and RX 460. The $149 and $99 pricing on these cards is also a very attractive offer. We are yet to see how they will perform but if the RX 470 can beat the GTX 950 by around 15%, basically offering the performance of R9 285, then this will be an ideal card for the average consumer, setting the bar for budget level gaming.
Similarly, the RX 460 will need to beat the GTX 750 Ti. Basically the performance of HD 7850 on the price tag of $99. We’ll see what AMD has planned when it launches these two cards, which is rumoured to be in August.
While the RX 480 has pretty much fulfilled everyone’s expectations (ignoring the global price fluctuations), the key thing that will bring AMD back is its flagship product. In this case it would be the RX 490 or RX Fury depending on how they name it. If the RX 490 can outclass the GTX 1080 by around 10% to 15% and with an ideal price tag of $550, then we can expect AMD to bounce right back into this market no problem. When it comes to the high-end it's not necessarily down to how much money is earned or how many units are sold, but rather public mind share. Have the best premium cards and customers are also more likely to pick up your budget cards.
But wait? 10% to 15% is a huge boost over the GTX 1080, why such a big figure?
Technically speaking the Radeon RX 490 or the flagship card will have to compete with two competitors at the same time. Nvidia always delays the release of the Titanium variant until the release of AMD’s flagship. The last pure competition in this area was during the R9 290X and GTX 780 Ti era. There was hype before the launch of R9 300 series but the news of them being re-brands killed customer anticipation.
I think now the time is right for AMD to finally stand up to Nvidia again. It’s been too long now. If it can keep the approach of adequate price to performance ratios with their upcoming products, AMD will certainly give Nvidia a run for its money. Furthermore, they have up until now turned a blind eye to the laptop gaming segment which is a seriously bad move on their part. Leaving Nvidia alone in that department has allowed them to not only increase prices but also introduce desktop GPUs to the mobile side. Polaris may bring the competition we all need.
What are your thoughts regarding AMD’s future in the GPU department? Do you think they can turn the tide upside down? Let us know in the comments!
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left AMD and went with a GTX1070 so voted no for personal reasons. the RX480 isn't all i hoped for especially seeing the GTX1060 match it price wise here.
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in many countries imagine AMD will stay the cheaper option so gain there but as a whole the RX series is not the wonder cards we all wanted, reviewers were
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struggling to push the cores past 1.4 while all pascals seem to hit 2.0, pretty plain to see NVIDIA has the better silicon
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and as for the RX490 if it is a 2 GPU card it has lost all interest to me, just left crossfire not going back developers don't try hard enough to make it good
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also if the RX490 is a 2 GPU config it is going to be hungry they already re mapped the power draw of the RX480 so 2 of them will obviously be a 300W+ card
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all the zen talk i have seen relates to the 8core 16thread config which im all for but if pricing nears INTELS 6+ core cpus it wont sell massively and INTELS 4
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core solutions will still remain competitive for that market, they are hardly breaking ground with there releases like we hoped
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obviously GPUs are different from CPUs but look what the GTX1080 does with 150w and what the RX480 does, have to question if there CPUs will be efficient enough
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the fact that polaris doesnt get close to 2Ghz doesnt mean its a bad chip. Its just a very different architecture. its like that by design.
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i guess the fact it is not any where near as efficient doesn't make it a bad chip either as it is by design
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you have to make a distinction somewhere and both show the AMD silicon is not as good as NVIDIAS
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I think you are misinterpreting my words :P. If the AMD card delivers the performance level I want, I dont care what clock it runs on. Pascal is definitely more power efficient, there is no arguing there. The thing it comes down to though is why do we care? We consumers, care only about the stuff that affect us. I am not interested on how the silicon works and why. What I care about is the performance I get and the price I pay. The performance of the AMD card is pretty damn good for the price you pay and the difference it makes in terms of power consumption is like 1 euro per year. The silicon is just as good. And it ends there. Thats what I mean :)
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it is just as good as it is still silicon i agree there but other than that NVIDIA have the better design shown by better 1% lows and faster frame times
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and many other variables. obviously it is up to the individual if the price is worth it but they are close price wise
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i don't even understand why you are commenting i said it is faster and more efficient and so better which it is. Anyone who can google can see that
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i never even said polaris was bad i said pascal is better you twisted my words in reply to confuse my point which is a fact btw!!
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I used to be a big ATI fan, and after a lot of disappointment on the AMD side, I've went with team Green. But nevertheless I still root for ATI and wait for the opportunity to come back. (yeah, they will forever be ATI to me)
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I'm trying to understand your argument... As a kid, my cousin had a desktop with a Pentium 4 HT, and a x800rx from Club3D... that was crazy stuff back then!! Couple years later, he built a more recent desktop and I kept that old stuff!! Man... with a CRT 1280x1024 native, I could run WoW 3.3.0 tweaked ultra!! But I think AMD improved a lot of stuff from ATI though...
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Yeah man, that rig still sounds sweet.
Sure, AMD did quite a few good things, but there have always been some slip-ups. And those re-brands of ancient architectures... Even today with the RX 480, not a big one, but still a smear on what could have been an epic comeback.
Still love them though.
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I don't know why people "hate" so much AMD tho...
Of course it isn't the best on market but at least it gives you a chance to have a decent hardware for a fair price!!
It happened the same to me!! Since I own a AMD card and despite of this being a 3 year old GPU, I can run whatever I please (not max ofc)!!!
AMD care about theyr stuff, while Nvidia is already "Killing" Kepler Architecture GPU's
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i think hate can be a form of elitism. some people have reasons outside hate to not buy particular brands but to not do so for hate alone is a real shame
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I have generally leaned towards NvIdia cards, not out of any sort of fanboy loyalty, but because I have found that as in most area's of life, generally you pay for what you get, now I am not bashing AMD cards, from my own personal experience I have just found NVidia cards to be more stable and reliable with less fuss, perhaps its just own personal luck, that and driver support...
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I understand price to performance ratio is important, however if I have to replace the card more frequently, and spend more time getting it running and fussing with it, it can negate the cheaper price point, not saying this is what AMD is doing, I just hope that in the race for cheap cards both companies maintain a level of craftsmanship and integrity in their products, otherwise we all lose...
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No doubt that Nvidia make very good GPU's attending performance and build quality!! But lets be fair... Most games are nvidia optimized... This move from Nvidia is way to dirty... With no offense
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That's right. And also,an AMD optimized game works good on nVidia too while nVidia optimized game works bad on AMD
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One example: The Witcher 3...
I can Tweak Ultra (only Foliage Visibility Range is Medium and No Hairworks) and achieve 33+FPS Average, while hairworks On, some miserable 16FPS... My CPU is a huge bottleneck I know, I know, but still doing well in 2016 for me, no need to upgrade :D
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indeed. it doesnt have to do with nvidia or AMD optimisation. My 7950 could do much better than that on those same settings. And your 280X is significantly stronger. The C2Q is costing you 15-20 fps in these scenarios. Still sure its doing fine in 2016? :P
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I can Max Dark Souls 3 , play Total War Attila, AC Sindycate with High settings!! FPS Average is always between 30-40FPS tho... if I can play a game with High, Tweaked Ultra or even Ultra settings with 30FPSMin I'm in :D
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haha, indeed it can still offer playable performance then. Just a bit of a shame for that little beast, 280X :P. but... I understand.... we cant always upgrade when we want..
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Well you got the point... As you said, its a shame having this R9 without withdraw the full power of it, but to have a new CPU, i'll have to put some cash to upgrade (CPU + MOBO, preferently a recent architecture) and right know I'm a bit of low budget
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Lol, RX 470 beats GTX 950 by only 15%? What the hell? Even GTX 960 is more powerful, RX 470 is at least more powerful than R9 380x, it has the same specs, but 24% higher clock.
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That's what I was thinking when I saw that... the 470 isn't stripped down by that much... it shouldn't be very far at all in performance from the 480... maybe 10%.
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It's a SuperClocked R9 380x with better power efficience.
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And much cheaper.... if you happen to live in the US.... I hope it releases at a decent price in other countries as well.
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Some benchmarks: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4tfovg/new_rx470_and_rx460_dx12_benches_vs_rx480gtx/
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very cool, the 470 may end up being the best price/performance card AMD has ever released to date..... I expect the 480 to pull away a bit more in other games... but I really don't think the difference will be much higher than 10% on average... they only cut out around 300 cores, and in AMDs camp that's nothing!
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They cut only 12,5% of cores, we can expect as lower performance as this. In this link I post I guy said RX 480 has some VRAM, thermal and power bottleneck, we'll will only know after a custom RX 480 release.
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and GCN 4.0 which is much better than GCN 1.2
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I have such huge respect for AMD. They've gone a long way. I LOVE the improvements they've done and i'm proud of them. 2016 and 2017 is their year. I can feel it.
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I'm with you pal!! I'm not a fanboy, but proud of AMD :D Cheers
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AMD failed miserably in India. their cards are overpriced. gtx 1060 is much cheaper than rx 480(430$). am afraid nobody will touch their gpus here. huge opportu
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huge opportunity missed, nvidia has always dominated here in India with a population of over a billion.
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is the GTX 1060 out there in india?
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no but its Indian price is announced (350$), nvidia always had better pricing compared to AMD.
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Yes, because of taxes, etc. In my country prices aren't any better, we just can't do anything about it. One RX 480 4g is 350$ +, compared to GTX 970, which is 360$. Just accept it.
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i hoped for buying a Rx480 but when the price of the reference card was announced i had had to change my dissesion to buy a gtx 970 instead
as it cost over 28k and gtx 970 cost under 25k with better non reference cooler
damn the tax):-(
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Here RX 480 is over $415, while GTX 970 is between $370 (reference) and $450 (custom). My only reason to me don' t buy NVIDIA is the DirectX 12/Vulkan performance.
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I certainly hope so... things need to improve for us gamers, we need better and more choices :D
I won't be getting any gfx cards at least till end of 2017 when i assume Vega should be out or maybe 2018 when Navi arrives. What i'm interested is cards that are in 250-300 euro price range with HBM2 memory.
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I really wont to switch to amd again but Amd has to fix their pricing outside of the U.S,Not to mention it almost impossible to find any AMD GPUS
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I think this is a huge issue in certain countries and is a big problem for amd. But then their response is "aint our problem" and "nothing we can do about it".
Want amd to do well, but an attitude like this is for companies that deserve to go bankrupt. Pretty harsh words but true nonetheless
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It is not AMD, Intel, or Nvidia who is at fault for this....
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It's really not...... still though I do think all three of them could shave some off their price AND improve sales worldwide by setting up wharehouses in problem countries... and taking the import and tax burdens off the end customer.
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Just to clarify, the problem I'm referring to is when the difference in amd prices is more than nvidia's, which in some cases could be quite material. For example, US consumers might see an obvious price/performance win for amd, but it could be the opposite in another country.
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And my real issue is how they responded to the complaints. We can leave it to another argument whether something can or cannot be done about the problem. But dismissing it like that is extremely unprofessional. You give a boilerplate "we'll look into it" at the very least.
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If they shaved off price to compensate, I guarantee who ever is responsible for the price gouging would just take up the slack. It's pretty much out of their hands unless they threaten to not ship any out or either flood the market imo.
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I ponder if one of the contributing issues is related to the attempts to control hardware tech outside the US. Look at things like the DPL. I get NBD parts orders delayed occasionally because a customer is on this list mistakenly.
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@Ggreazy.... I'm pretty sure the majority of the price markups are due to taxes and import fees being passed by retailers onto end customers..... if say AMD had a wharehouse in the affected country and sold direct to the retailer there, the retailer could avoid these fees, and not pass them onto the customer. in theory
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i have nvidia but all my gpus before this are amd gpus,go amd :)
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''Meanwhile Nvidia had taken the curtains off the GTX 750 Ti, which offered the best price to performance ratio and was included in our GD Machine as well.''
No,it never offered best price to performance ratio.
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Nvidia never had price-performance ratio in the past but ATI didn't had a proper hardware, that's why Nvidia's market was sky-rocketing. But now things have changed. ATI is, yes going good but nothing can be said in such competitive market.
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Catching up is one thing... catching them other, and from that they are few light years far away unfortunately... Nvidia made the difference so big that whatever AMD does, releases, or develope... Nvidia is and will be 10 steps ahead, and everyone knows it is true. I wont even bother to discuss this fact.
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I do NOT see how Nvidia is ahead compared to AMD right now.... AMD has much, much, mich better performance/price, 210-220euro for a RX 480 and 850 euro for a gtx 1080, while 2x RX 480s are as good as or +/- 5-10% depending on the game's optimization and you can buy 4x RX 480s for the price of 1x gtx 1080.... AMD is power efficient as well, after the fix a friend told me that his RX 480 consumes 138-147 Watts, online reviews report a 150-151W power consumption. AMD's driver support has been nothing but great, their architecture is objectively better than Nvidia's in terms of raw computing performance and it has AC engines for Dx12 and have had them since 2011, how is Nvidia ahead?
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Nvidia has much more loyal fanboys. It matters a lot, especially in the first month after a new GPU gets released. There are many people who think AMD GPU's consume so much power to make a difference in electricity bill and some games/visual effects run better on Nvidia GPU's because Nvidia GPU's are simply stronger.
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well, bad mentality I would say. Also lack of knowledge or at the very least education and information.
People should stop caring about the brand name and just buy the best performance/price THAT GETs the JOB DONE.
I do NOT buy Nivida because they cost 50-60% more in my country as of the gtx 1000 series and before that they costed 30-50% more with the gtx 900 series, while AMD cards only cost 15-30% more like they always have. Would you buy a gtx 1080 for 850 euro/940 US dollars, or a RX 480 for 210-220 euro/225-240$?. Why is this? IDK, nobody seems to have an answer...
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Also poor market from AMD, Nvidia and Intel can sell you ice-cream on the south pole, while AMD can't sell you a porsche for 100$ with thier marketing.
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Both points are right but Intel offers much better performance than AMD to justify aggressive marketing. On the other hand Nvidia just hypes hypes and hypes.
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well Zen will be competition that's for sure, hell even the fx piledriver(fx 83xx, 63xx, 43xx) where OK competition to ivy-bridge, but then AMD hasn't released anything that is NOT an APU since.... I even got an fx 6300 over an i5 3570k and I had to chose from both and I do NOT regret it to this day as my CPU still kicks ass in games, while i can multi-task like a machine.
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Please tell me, how much is the RX 480 8GB in Bulgaria? With taxes ofc?
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the 8GB? well it's a gimmick but sure... 275-300 euro with taxes and everything for the 8gb RX 480 from power color with their aftermarket cooler and sapphire with their aftermarket cooler respectively(NOT released, but I buy from the destributor, so I can see info, before I they are released, cuz my mom works at a PC store), so it's about 10-20% more expensive than MSRP.
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Well, its not really a gimmick, but nevermind. Historically, nVidia has always been more expensive at a similar performance level, but it doesnt seem to be the case with the RX 480 and the GTX 1060, here in Serbia the price is almost the same, which does not bode well for the RX 480, considering it's noticeably slower.
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Aaaand now all AMD boys back into their cave... see you next season!! :)
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I think they will reclaim a lot of the market, most-likely reach 30% by the beginning of next year, especially if nvidia continues to linger around.
I want them to continue on their "small die" strategy like they are doing now and were doing back in the hd4000-6000 days, this way they do NOT have to compensate for low-yield big die gpus by increasing the prices of their lower-end GPUs and can serve 80-95% of the market with really awesome performance/price GPUs. I'm still bummed that they lied about the power efficiency with polaris, it's more like 2.0x and NOT 2.8x
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well they said polaris is that efficient not rx 480 there are more things in the gpu 2.0x is still good
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I personally think that AMD took over the cost efficiency market, while Nvidia is comfortably controling the high-end area. I think that AMD going for price-performance development is the correct decision, as I doubt that its new flagship will compete well against the 1070 and 1080.
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yes, but the high-end area, a.k.a gtx 1070 and 1080 area is only 8-12% of the market.
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I hope they come in this year strong!
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I have high hopes that this year will be the year of AMD, both in the CPU and the GPU market, and for that matter in the console market.... let's not forget, they are the sole manufacturer of console CPUs and GPUs, No competition in that market whatsoever.... 3rd party 480s are gonna dominate, just watch! xD
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Even with the the R 300 series AMD could have done better. The cards werent bad, check the benchmarks and you will see them right up there neck to neck with the gtx 900 series. The issue was that they took so long to release them after the gtx 970 and 980 that everybody and their moms bought a 970 :P. I definitely believe that AMD will grab a significantly bigger market this year. And indeed as shah mentioned their renewed presence in the laptop market with the polaris cards will help too.
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That's the main problem with AMDs sales. They come up with new GPUs to compete with nVidia's high-end offerings but it takes them several months to do so. A ton of people don't want to wait that much so they go with nVidia because they want the newest stuff
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high-end GPUs are only 8-12% of the market.
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That's true but they have a much larger profit margin.
Would you - as a company - rather sell 10GPU's for $250 which cost you $200 to produce a piece or 3 GPU's for $700 that cost you $450?
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Psychoman the thing is that when a person that doesn't know very much about the PC hardware sees that nVidia has the best GPUs available they will most likely think ''Oh man,they have the best GPU on the market,their GPUs must be the best in middle tier!''
And I know it sounds stupid because people who are reading this are on Game Debate site and generally know something about GPUs but that's how a person that isn't so much into PC hardware thinks.
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Also there's the sheep mentality.Since nVidia's marketing is absolutely superior to AMD's marketing,a lot of stupid people tend to think they must be better because of what they are saying. And there's a lot of stupid people with a lot of money in the world. Then that same stupid guy that got an Nvidia card because it looked better goes on the internet and spits at AMD about the standard things like ''AMD eats wayyy to much power. You need an hydroelectric power plant to run that thing'' or ''AMD's drivers are the worst!'' .Other stupid people see that and they jump on a bandwagon,get nVidia and spit on AMD. And repeat the process
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with vulkan bringing huge improvements with cards as old as rx 280 in doom, I think it's fair to say AMD is really becoming a force to be reckoned with in the gpu war
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Who seriously thinks RX 490 will be better than GTX 1080?
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I don't think the 490 would be aimed at the 1080 honestly.... it would likely be aimed at the 1070..... whereas the 490x would be aimed at the 1080.... and honestly... noone really knows what these two cards will be.... will they be dual GPU Polaris?(unlikely in my opinion).... or will they be the next architecture?
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I do NOT, I think it will be 10-15% slower or even up to 20% slower than the gtx 1080, but super cheaper at the same time.
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I heard that the rx 490 will be a dual gpu combining 2x480 is it too ?
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Those are the rumors...... though I'm kinda skeptical about that.
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well I hope that the RX 490 is a dual RX 480 as I do NOT want AMD(and Nvidia as well, but too late for that) to have big die GPUs. Big die chips cost a lot due to low yields and high failure rate and even rise the prices of cheaper GPUs to compensate even further.
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I sure hope so.
We (the consumers) need strong competitors, or else our wallets suffer.