HW News - AMD Leaves High-End GPUs, EK Aftermath, Consumer Protection for Electronics
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Date: 2024-09-13
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Comments and reviews: 20
ReaperX7
I don't see the point of competing with Nvidia. The real market is the $300-600 GPU range where the majority of people will buy, rather the few and far between enthusiasts.
The 5700XT came out targeting the RTX 2060 and completely destroyed it in price to performance when it was hammering the RTX 2060 in price and blasting performance on par with a 2070 Super or 2080 original. This even made people say, Is the 2070/2080 even worth it when I can get a 5700XT at almost half the price that does the same job in traditional games and honestly, I was one of these people. I was looking to get the MOST out of my money.
People like GamersNexus did however unfairly criticize it for the lack of a DLSS competitor and lack of Ray Tracing support, but honestly, the market did the 5700XT justice, especially after the 20.8.x series drivers fixed many driver issues and later revisions rewrote the DirectX and OpenGL driver stacks to use the hardware more efficiently. FSR/RSR did eventually arrive and work very well as a free open source initiative against proprietary designs and software like DLSS.
To be fair, Intel hasn't targeted the high end either, and I honestly do NOT blame them. Nobody should have to pay for subpar hardware at premium prices which is what you get with Nvidia.
And BTW Steve, your review of the Powercolor Red Devil 5700XT was a bit too harsh and didn't have a follow up later when better drivers and stack rewrites came to the drivers. I still bought it for the build quality and it still has lasted to this day in my rig. I also think the lack of focus on free open source initiative projects like those sponsored by AMD and Intel via the GPUOpen project needs more attention. GPUOpen has brought out a lot of great things pushed by Intel and AMD collaborating heavily to promote better GPU features, drivers, firmware, and software development kits.
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I don't see the point of competing with Nvidia. The real market is the $300-600 GPU range where the majority of people will buy, rather the few and far between enthusiasts.
The 5700XT came out targeting the RTX 2060 and completely destroyed it in price to performance when it was hammering the RTX 2060 in price and blasting performance on par with a 2070 Super or 2080 original. This even made people say, Is the 2070/2080 even worth it when I can get a 5700XT at almost half the price that does the same job in traditional games and honestly, I was one of these people. I was looking to get the MOST out of my money.
People like GamersNexus did however unfairly criticize it for the lack of a DLSS competitor and lack of Ray Tracing support, but honestly, the market did the 5700XT justice, especially after the 20.8.x series drivers fixed many driver issues and later revisions rewrote the DirectX and OpenGL driver stacks to use the hardware more efficiently. FSR/RSR did eventually arrive and work very well as a free open source initiative against proprietary designs and software like DLSS.
To be fair, Intel hasn't targeted the high end either, and I honestly do NOT blame them. Nobody should have to pay for subpar hardware at premium prices which is what you get with Nvidia.
And BTW Steve, your review of the Powercolor Red Devil 5700XT was a bit too harsh and didn't have a follow up later when better drivers and stack rewrites came to the drivers. I still bought it for the build quality and it still has lasted to this day in my rig. I also think the lack of focus on free open source initiative projects like those sponsored by AMD and Intel via the GPUOpen project needs more attention. GPUOpen has brought out a lot of great things pushed by Intel and AMD collaborating heavily to promote better GPU features, drivers, firmware, and software development kits.
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LeGoooze
14:57 While it might seem like a sound strategy, focusing only on the mid to low tier of Graphics cards, where the market tends to be bigger, might proce difficult. Not only does AMD need to compete with Intel and Ngreedia, but also with themselves! We have seen this before when the 7000 series launched it usually made more sense to buy a similarly performant card from the 6000 series for cheaper or just buy something that performs better for around the same price. Unlike Ngreedia, AMD is not limiting their newest FSR versions/features to the new cards. While this is consumer friendly it also gives little incentive to choose the next generation, more so when the uplifting in RT performance was negligible. And the thing is, the low to mid rsnge market consumer tends to be very price conscious, so they will go for an older gen card if it means they will get more performance.
Tbh the only way I see AMD coming out on top of Nvidia is that they sell a 4080 equivalent card, with the same or better RT performance and better power efficiency for less that $500 USD in this next generation while still making good profit on each card.
Unfortunately for everybody luxury products sell. One resson being the people who usually can afford this kind of items usually are not as restricted by the lulls of the Market. For them $400 to $800 more is not that much, they can spare it. And the other reason these products sell is because normal people go into debt just to have them, they want to have nice things from recognized brands and are willing to go into financial instability just to get them, to feel good about themselves and for bragging rights.
In my case I will wait and see how the generation develops. So far I don't need to update from my 6700 XT, it still plays anything I want flawlessly.
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14:57 While it might seem like a sound strategy, focusing only on the mid to low tier of Graphics cards, where the market tends to be bigger, might proce difficult. Not only does AMD need to compete with Intel and Ngreedia, but also with themselves! We have seen this before when the 7000 series launched it usually made more sense to buy a similarly performant card from the 6000 series for cheaper or just buy something that performs better for around the same price. Unlike Ngreedia, AMD is not limiting their newest FSR versions/features to the new cards. While this is consumer friendly it also gives little incentive to choose the next generation, more so when the uplifting in RT performance was negligible. And the thing is, the low to mid rsnge market consumer tends to be very price conscious, so they will go for an older gen card if it means they will get more performance.
Tbh the only way I see AMD coming out on top of Nvidia is that they sell a 4080 equivalent card, with the same or better RT performance and better power efficiency for less that $500 USD in this next generation while still making good profit on each card.
Unfortunately for everybody luxury products sell. One resson being the people who usually can afford this kind of items usually are not as restricted by the lulls of the Market. For them $400 to $800 more is not that much, they can spare it. And the other reason these products sell is because normal people go into debt just to have them, they want to have nice things from recognized brands and are willing to go into financial instability just to get them, to feel good about themselves and for bragging rights.
In my case I will wait and see how the generation develops. So far I don't need to update from my 6700 XT, it still plays anything I want flawlessly.
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kickfister
The RX 480/580 was a special card, and is one of the only GPUs AMD ever named intelligently. They focused on the midrange, but they didn't give it a midrange name (or a midrange VRAM pool!). It had all the hardware features it needed to have to be a good card for the time and was priced extremely well, and they were rewarded for it. It was THEIR halo product when it came out, and I think that was beneficial for consumer perception. I think AMD would be worse off by having a halo product that falls short, because that's the perception for the rest of the stack: falling short of the competition.
Modern AMD has different problems to face than the AMD of back then (they have a pretty severe hardware deficiency at the moment), but if they can come back with dedicated RT hardware, dedicated ML hardware, a good naming scheme and take the fight to nvidia in the midrange, they can absolutely have their moment again as a mid range darling.
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The RX 480/580 was a special card, and is one of the only GPUs AMD ever named intelligently. They focused on the midrange, but they didn't give it a midrange name (or a midrange VRAM pool!). It had all the hardware features it needed to have to be a good card for the time and was priced extremely well, and they were rewarded for it. It was THEIR halo product when it came out, and I think that was beneficial for consumer perception. I think AMD would be worse off by having a halo product that falls short, because that's the perception for the rest of the stack: falling short of the competition.
Modern AMD has different problems to face than the AMD of back then (they have a pretty severe hardware deficiency at the moment), but if they can come back with dedicated RT hardware, dedicated ML hardware, a good naming scheme and take the fight to nvidia in the midrange, they can absolutely have their moment again as a mid range darling.
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GameCookerUSRocks
While the AMD representative in the Tom's hardware interview was saying some logical things it sounded more like a lot of excuses as usual.
Market share is extremely important but also sending engineers out to go work with developers also is very effective.
Nvidia invested money and time where it matters. That is why they are on top. They weren't scared to take a risk.
And remember Nvidia was always the underdog in the graphical space even though that's what their specialty is.
But so was Radeon.
NVIDIA had to compete against two other PC/gpu companies and other outside GPU manufacturers.
I know there's a lot of nuance but I'm just trying to keep it simple.
AMD simply made a lot of bad decisions in the past and missed a lot of opportunities where they could have easily grabbed market share.
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While the AMD representative in the Tom's hardware interview was saying some logical things it sounded more like a lot of excuses as usual.
Market share is extremely important but also sending engineers out to go work with developers also is very effective.
Nvidia invested money and time where it matters. That is why they are on top. They weren't scared to take a risk.
And remember Nvidia was always the underdog in the graphical space even though that's what their specialty is.
But so was Radeon.
NVIDIA had to compete against two other PC/gpu companies and other outside GPU manufacturers.
I know there's a lot of nuance but I'm just trying to keep it simple.
AMD simply made a lot of bad decisions in the past and missed a lot of opportunities where they could have easily grabbed market share.
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jamesmcd71
To be 100% honest, the 4090 is a massive waste of money unless you are one of a very few who can use it.
I have been running a 7800xt for over a year when I came across an opretunity to get a new 4090 for a very good price.
The difference between the 2 in most games is minimal. I went from 125 fps in DCS to 145. Other than looking at the number, you wouldn't know the difference. Until you get into a multiplayer server. Then, for some reason, the 4090 will stutter from time to time. I can't figure out why. The only good thing I can see is that the 4090 never gets hot. I can fly for hours nonstop, and the 4090 never gets above 70c. When the 7800xt will get in the 80s, sometimes upper 80s. While AMD says this is normal, I personally don't like it.
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To be 100% honest, the 4090 is a massive waste of money unless you are one of a very few who can use it.
I have been running a 7800xt for over a year when I came across an opretunity to get a new 4090 for a very good price.
The difference between the 2 in most games is minimal. I went from 125 fps in DCS to 145. Other than looking at the number, you wouldn't know the difference. Until you get into a multiplayer server. Then, for some reason, the 4090 will stutter from time to time. I can't figure out why. The only good thing I can see is that the 4090 never gets hot. I can fly for hours nonstop, and the 4090 never gets above 70c. When the 7800xt will get in the 80s, sometimes upper 80s. While AMD says this is normal, I personally don't like it.
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MisterRorschach90
I honestly don’t know what convinced nvidia and amd that normal people wanted to spend professional workstation prices for their gaming graphics cards. Every year it just kept going up and up. Going from the highest end costing 400-500 bucks to literally over 3 grand for the best versions of the highest end. It’s obvious they are realizing they’ve made a mistake because you can literally buy brand new gaming laptops with a brand new i9 32gb of ddr5 2 tb of gen 4 nvme and a freaking 4090 for 2500 bucks. Literally what the cards are sold for in the store. They probably had to reduce all their prices because people weren’t willing to spend it. Especially not on something like looks like cheap plastic rather than a high end product.
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I honestly don’t know what convinced nvidia and amd that normal people wanted to spend professional workstation prices for their gaming graphics cards. Every year it just kept going up and up. Going from the highest end costing 400-500 bucks to literally over 3 grand for the best versions of the highest end. It’s obvious they are realizing they’ve made a mistake because you can literally buy brand new gaming laptops with a brand new i9 32gb of ddr5 2 tb of gen 4 nvme and a freaking 4090 for 2500 bucks. Literally what the cards are sold for in the store. They probably had to reduce all their prices because people weren’t willing to spend it. Especially not on something like looks like cheap plastic rather than a high end product.
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BigBear--
AMD announcing they won't be trying to make a halo top-tier GPU is saddening and not confidence inspiring. Thing is usually you make a halo product and the tech and design knowledge trickles down into the lower tier products, letting you know they're all good. But if you don't have a top-tier GPU, it means you don't have the quality tech to be able to scale up performance...and that the lower to mid tier stuff is just weak sauce. So who wants to buy into that Even if it's just fine, who wants to buy into that loser mentality mind set At least when they take a shot at the top, even if they don't reach it, they at least tried, and you can root for the underdog. But this loser mentality BS...is going to backfire big time.
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AMD announcing they won't be trying to make a halo top-tier GPU is saddening and not confidence inspiring. Thing is usually you make a halo product and the tech and design knowledge trickles down into the lower tier products, letting you know they're all good. But if you don't have a top-tier GPU, it means you don't have the quality tech to be able to scale up performance...and that the lower to mid tier stuff is just weak sauce. So who wants to buy into that Even if it's just fine, who wants to buy into that loser mentality mind set At least when they take a shot at the top, even if they don't reach it, they at least tried, and you can root for the underdog. But this loser mentality BS...is going to backfire big time.
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maamiimii
AMD's strategy will only work if they're willing to actually be competitive on price again. Like an actual deal for a card now and not just card at the same price as Nvidia but Ooooo it's got more RAM!. Does that impact performance Absolutely! Does it or the other offerings from AMD do enough to make paying within $100 of a same tier Nvidia card (at launch at least) and going w/o the support that Nvidia cards get worth it Absolutely not. Like if the 7900 XT and XTX were around $550 and $650 they'd start choking nvidia's hold on the mid tier/high mid tier cards with no issue whatsoever imo! Hopefully that'll be what the new gen's price to performance will be!
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AMD's strategy will only work if they're willing to actually be competitive on price again. Like an actual deal for a card now and not just card at the same price as Nvidia but Ooooo it's got more RAM!. Does that impact performance Absolutely! Does it or the other offerings from AMD do enough to make paying within $100 of a same tier Nvidia card (at launch at least) and going w/o the support that Nvidia cards get worth it Absolutely not. Like if the 7900 XT and XTX were around $550 and $650 they'd start choking nvidia's hold on the mid tier/high mid tier cards with no issue whatsoever imo! Hopefully that'll be what the new gen's price to performance will be!
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amcdonald7479
Radeon just made them selfs the same as pre RDNA. They where seen as the poor mans eye sore in a pc. Get ready for people to be embarrassed they own radeons in the next 2 years if they really just admitted defeat. More market share :D Itl be like how the cool kids in america wont buy android cause your perceived to be poor if you dont have an apple :D The guy who made that decision needs fired :D Ive had a 5700xt and now a 6800 and I will not be buying 8000 series specially cause of this announcement . I will purchase a nvidia 5000 series 100% now. market share LOLOL. Perception of your company is everything in the tech world. What a total clown :D
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Radeon just made them selfs the same as pre RDNA. They where seen as the poor mans eye sore in a pc. Get ready for people to be embarrassed they own radeons in the next 2 years if they really just admitted defeat. More market share :D Itl be like how the cool kids in america wont buy android cause your perceived to be poor if you dont have an apple :D The guy who made that decision needs fired :D Ive had a 5700xt and now a 6800 and I will not be buying 8000 series specially cause of this announcement . I will purchase a nvidia 5000 series 100% now. market share LOLOL. Perception of your company is everything in the tech world. What a total clown :D
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AzwraithPL
As someone who has a high end AMD GPU I'd just like to ask Jack if he's thought about perhaps investing in a QA department for his buggy-ass software. Last year I had to wait 8 months for a driver that didn't crash my computer randomly in low end games, and this year I've been stuck on a driver version from April because everything after it has been completely unstable. Even as someone who was satisfied with the hardware performance I got at the price I paid I absolutely would not recommend anyone buy an AMD GPU and will be going back to Nvidia as soon as I'm able to get approval on a mortgage for my house to buy 5000/6000 series card...
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As someone who has a high end AMD GPU I'd just like to ask Jack if he's thought about perhaps investing in a QA department for his buggy-ass software. Last year I had to wait 8 months for a driver that didn't crash my computer randomly in low end games, and this year I've been stuck on a driver version from April because everything after it has been completely unstable. Even as someone who was satisfied with the hardware performance I got at the price I paid I absolutely would not recommend anyone buy an AMD GPU and will be going back to Nvidia as soon as I'm able to get approval on a mortgage for my house to buy 5000/6000 series card...
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thomaswiley666
I remember Anandtech was a high school kid running his site out of his bedroom in NC. I know he never wanted to have Anandtech run his life, but it did help him get into college and his first job. I was one of the earliest forum members and the people on it helped me with my hardware questions. And Anand and some others were local and we had a few meetups. But I dropped it a long time ago because the reporting grew stale and I was helping and answering (for free) a ton more questions than I asked. Basically, I was unpaid help so I dropped it.
EDIT: Damn, I didn't know y'all (GN) are in Cary.
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I remember Anandtech was a high school kid running his site out of his bedroom in NC. I know he never wanted to have Anandtech run his life, but it did help him get into college and his first job. I was one of the earliest forum members and the people on it helped me with my hardware questions. And Anand and some others were local and we had a few meetups. But I dropped it a long time ago because the reporting grew stale and I was helping and answering (for free) a ton more questions than I asked. Basically, I was unpaid help so I dropped it.
EDIT: Damn, I didn't know y'all (GN) are in Cary.
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therealshadow99
I was part of the PC hardware reporting/reviewing 'scene' back in late 90's early 2000's... Back when things were far more diverse with Intel, AMD, Centaur, Cyrix, Centaur, PowerPC, etc. Anandtech and Tom's Hardware had been places I would regularly look at, but that ended when it became clear they 'adjusted' reviews to help Intel and were paid to do it. I never regained my trust in them after that, even when I stopped being part of the scene myself. So in a way it's sad to see them go, but also I'm not entirely sad about it with the scummy practices they were involved in way back in the day.
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I was part of the PC hardware reporting/reviewing 'scene' back in late 90's early 2000's... Back when things were far more diverse with Intel, AMD, Centaur, Cyrix, Centaur, PowerPC, etc. Anandtech and Tom's Hardware had been places I would regularly look at, but that ended when it became clear they 'adjusted' reviews to help Intel and were paid to do it. I never regained my trust in them after that, even when I stopped being part of the scene myself. So in a way it's sad to see them go, but also I'm not entirely sad about it with the scummy practices they were involved in way back in the day.
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xavierjiang7112
If AMD can concentrate on making actually performant, competent embedded, low form factor or other GPUs for more modest/small form factor/price/power sensitive use cases, perhaps it would work out, where their rasterization and generic performance would excel.
They used to be included in almost every prebuild in existence. Now the same prebuilds feature Quadros, rather than Radeon Pros.
Sure modern integrated is competent, but its better to have a big, 50W chip dedicated to graphics on a card, rather than a 15W side product shoved alongside.
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If AMD can concentrate on making actually performant, competent embedded, low form factor or other GPUs for more modest/small form factor/price/power sensitive use cases, perhaps it would work out, where their rasterization and generic performance would excel.
They used to be included in almost every prebuild in existence. Now the same prebuilds feature Quadros, rather than Radeon Pros.
Sure modern integrated is competent, but its better to have a big, 50W chip dedicated to graphics on a card, rather than a 15W side product shoved alongside.
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AlienInSider
Because of AnandTech, I started learning English back in the day to better understand computers, their hardware, guidelines, eventually. Here in Bulgaria this media is not well known for several reasons, but the main one is the ugly jargon we have when communicating with each other and the difference of almost 90% abroad.
In fact, his site taught me to defend myself from profanity, from cursing, from toxicity...
This will be a great loss for everyone and because a slightly different assessment of events was seen during your generation and his.
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Because of AnandTech, I started learning English back in the day to better understand computers, their hardware, guidelines, eventually. Here in Bulgaria this media is not well known for several reasons, but the main one is the ugly jargon we have when communicating with each other and the difference of almost 90% abroad.
In fact, his site taught me to defend myself from profanity, from cursing, from toxicity...
This will be a great loss for everyone and because a slightly different assessment of events was seen during your generation and his.
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CatTechSupport
High end GPU's are more or less pointless unless you are doing very certain tasks, so things like a standard RX7700 or and RX7600 priced below 400 USD is something they can make bank off by prioritizing price to performance and pushing the performance as far at the lowest cost to the consumer. THIS HOW YOU MAKE MONEY WITH RISING INFLATION AND NIVIDA IS SHOOTING THEMSELVS IN THE FOOT!
Do the same with the CPU market and if AMD can push the price of a CPU and GPU combined to below 600 dollars and AMD could just start pulling in the money.
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High end GPU's are more or less pointless unless you are doing very certain tasks, so things like a standard RX7700 or and RX7600 priced below 400 USD is something they can make bank off by prioritizing price to performance and pushing the performance as far at the lowest cost to the consumer. THIS HOW YOU MAKE MONEY WITH RISING INFLATION AND NIVIDA IS SHOOTING THEMSELVS IN THE FOOT!
Do the same with the CPU market and if AMD can push the price of a CPU and GPU combined to below 600 dollars and AMD could just start pulling in the money.
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BananasananaB
I switched from a driver plagued reference A750 to a brand new 170 dollar Dell branded 6700XT a couple of months ago. It has been a night and day difference in enjoyment with my PC. The video card just works. I don't even think about it anymore as the videocard doesn't get in the way. There were always bugs and workaround with the A750. I am not very optimistic about Battlemage being fully cooked, considering how long the Arc series has been available and it's still having big bugs here and there. AMD should have room to thrive.
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I switched from a driver plagued reference A750 to a brand new 170 dollar Dell branded 6700XT a couple of months ago. It has been a night and day difference in enjoyment with my PC. The video card just works. I don't even think about it anymore as the videocard doesn't get in the way. There were always bugs and workaround with the A750. I am not very optimistic about Battlemage being fully cooked, considering how long the Arc series has been available and it's still having big bugs here and there. AMD should have room to thrive.
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coolcat23
10:50 I don't want AMD to be the company that only people who can afford Porsches and Ferraris can buy. First, this is a false dichotomy. Offering high-end expensive products, does not mean one cannot offer average products with great prices at the same time. On the contrary. Second, he is not even making the point he is trying to make because he talks about people buying AMD, the company, rather than buying AMDs products. What an embarrassment of a senior vice president.
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10:50 I don't want AMD to be the company that only people who can afford Porsches and Ferraris can buy. First, this is a false dichotomy. Offering high-end expensive products, does not mean one cannot offer average products with great prices at the same time. On the contrary. Second, he is not even making the point he is trying to make because he talks about people buying AMD, the company, rather than buying AMDs products. What an embarrassment of a senior vice president.
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boroboro7642
As a sub from Slovenia, this is just sad. As a PC enthusiast i heard of the company, it just blew my mind that it is a Slovenian company, honestly didnt know that, but the truth is i never owned a water cooling solution or a extreme one for that matter. I wish they resolve the issues, its bad situation for employees and it throws bad light on my country. Didnt watch the EK video yet, but damn, you are a damn good journalist for getting all this info.
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As a sub from Slovenia, this is just sad. As a PC enthusiast i heard of the company, it just blew my mind that it is a Slovenian company, honestly didnt know that, but the truth is i never owned a water cooling solution or a extreme one for that matter. I wish they resolve the issues, its bad situation for employees and it throws bad light on my country. Didnt watch the EK video yet, but damn, you are a damn good journalist for getting all this info.
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Ninjutsu2K
The AMD situation sounds like to me something like this...
Advisor: Ma'am, we don't have access to the alien technology Nvidia based their CUDA on. It's been nearly a decade, and we still can't compete with something so advanced.
CEO: sighs It's time to face reality. We can't even begin to imagine how to create something like CUDA ourselves. The RTX 4090 was the final blow. Let's move onwe need to abandon the high-end graphics card market.
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The AMD situation sounds like to me something like this...
Advisor: Ma'am, we don't have access to the alien technology Nvidia based their CUDA on. It's been nearly a decade, and we still can't compete with something so advanced.
CEO: sighs It's time to face reality. We can't even begin to imagine how to create something like CUDA ourselves. The RTX 4090 was the final blow. Let's move onwe need to abandon the high-end graphics card market.
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razorsz195
If AMD focuses on giving solid entry and mid range performance on their GPUs, people could moreso justify the more expensive platform upgrade aswell, introducing an all AMD ecosystem, sacrificing some performance now where overtime they can enjoy AM5's promised long lifespan as we have seen with AM4 and provide the simple less tech savvy upgrades of slotting in RAM, SSDs, GPUs etc into prebuilts for example. We need that 3300X/5500XT punch again.
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If AMD focuses on giving solid entry and mid range performance on their GPUs, people could moreso justify the more expensive platform upgrade aswell, introducing an all AMD ecosystem, sacrificing some performance now where overtime they can enjoy AM5's promised long lifespan as we have seen with AM4 and provide the simple less tech savvy upgrades of slotting in RAM, SSDs, GPUs etc into prebuilts for example. We need that 3300X/5500XT punch again.
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