AMD Earnings Call: $180M loss, new graphics poducts 2H 2015

durquavian said:
Actually this is also when they found out the Keplers were boosting which wasn't released in the original Benchmarks. The 680 was barely hanging on most of the time. And don't forget the 680 was completely compute gimped. The 7970 was the definitive king till the Titan, hands down.
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Boosting was mentioned that in the review. It was pretty well known, it was a main feature since Fermi GPU boost 1.0, 2.0, they were card features, nothing hidden there.

The 680 gtx wasn't made for compute it was made for gaming, there was and is no need for DP performance in gaming cards. The 7970 was AMD's first attempt to make a gaming/compute card that worked well all round, which they succeeded, but ran into the same issues as Fermi, too much silicon and burned too much energy.
 
razor1 said:
Boosting was mentioned that in the review. It was pretty well known, it was a main feature since Fermi GPU boost 1.0, 2.0, they were card features, nothing hidden there.

The 680 gtx wasn't made for compute it was made for gaming, there was and is no need for DP performance in gaming cards. The 7970 was AMD's first attempt to make a gaming/compute card that worked well all round, which they succeeded, but ran into the same issues as Fermi, too much silicon and burned too much energy.
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Also I noticed that was before AMDs beta 12 driver where the 7970 took the lead and held it till the Titan with relative ease. My original issue with your first post of the benchmarks were that you alluded to the 680 winning everywhere all the time and honestly it only won for 3 months if that. Its like some people can not admit that AMD held the lead for over a year. Funny part is that same 7970/280x is encroaching on the 780 (which it shouldn't be). Even after 3 years that GCN architecture is showing strength.
 
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Yeah, AMD wasn't expecting Nvidia to waltz right past them with the 680. In fact, that stupid card remained overpriced at $550 for far too long, which really hurt AMD's "value" proposition at the start of the 28nm generation.

So when it happened, AMD panicked and rushed-out the GHz Edition cards.

Suddenly a card with power consumption competitive with the GTX 680 and performance of the GTX 670, jumped up in power from 160 to 210w just to bump performance 10% to that of the GTX 680 :rolleyes:

If you're keeping track, that's a 10% performance increase for 30% more power, meaning AMD just massively oveervolted the chips to make things work, instead of relelasing an improved silicon rev. And the older cards quickly disappeared from the marketplace, meaning everyone got to experience this space heater.
 
I am glad that I purchase what works well and does not cost me an arm and a leg to do it. FX8350 at 4.4Ghz, XFX R9 290 unlocked to a 290x and 16GB of 1600 speed DDR3 ram. (FX8350: $180 in April, 2013, XFX R9 290: $400 in November, 2013, RAM: $55 in April 2014.) The system plays the games well up to 1440p and will do so for at least another 2 or 3 years.

Sorry but, I have more things to spend money on than $1000 computer upgrades. (5960x and Titan X would be the only upgrade worth bothering with since it would double the performance literally.) However, $2500 is more than I am willing to spend. (Not that I would not want to but it would not be good.) My R9 290 and FX 8350 are not drawing copious amounts of power and heat either. (My R9 290 is a reference based one.) Also, my system is not at all noisy even at full load since I have a Fractal Design Define R3 case and a NH-D15 Noctua cooler.

Therefore, one again, nothing on the NVidia side except for the Titan X would be worth getting. On the Intel side, a minimum of a 5820k would be useful but a 5960x would make a big difference. Anything less would be a waste of money.
 
I honestly dont think there is anything wrong with AMDs offering of current cards, 290x specifically. It almost has the same performance as a 980, give or take a few. Drivers are mature now so I dont know what all the whining is about. Heat issues are solved.

This forum and many other outlets all over the web is one of the reasons AMD is losing sales, including YouTube. Everyone is too hung up on having the latest and greatest RIGHT NOW. Phones, cars and etc, its getting silly at this point.
I dont think AMD is competing directly with Nvidia and Intel, not when their products cost 2 or 3 times as much. Majority of flack comes from 15 year old kids that think they know the industry without having one or the other brand, they just like to talk shit.
It has a lot to do with the customer base, were part of the problem.
 
Igroock said:
I honestly dont think there is anything wrong with AMDs offering of current cards, 290x specifically. It almost has the same performance as a 980, give or take a few. Drivers are mature now so I dont know what all the whining is about. Heat issues are solved.
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Except it doesn't have almost the same performance as a 980. It doesn't even have the same performance as a 780Ti... At least that card you can say has almost the same performance as a 980.

It's not a bad card, but it doesn't compete with what NVidia has out on the market now.
 
Igroock said:
I honestly dont think there is anything wrong with AMDs offering of current cards, 290x specifically. It almost has the same performance as a 980, give or take a few. Drivers are mature now so I dont know what all the whining is about. Heat issues are solved.

This forum and many other outlets all over the web is one of the reasons AMD is losing sales, including YouTube. Everyone is too hung up on having the latest and greatest RIGHT NOW. Phones, cars and etc, its getting silly at this point.
I dont think AMD is competing directly with Nvidia and Intel, not when their products cost 2 or 3 times as much. Majority of flack comes from 15 year old kids that think they know the industry without having one or the other brand, they just like to talk shit.
It has a lot to do with the customer base, were part of the problem.
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You are pretty much correct. Especially when you get to 4k resolutions, only the Titan X can compete. The 980 is not worth 2 x the cost over the 290x at least for me. The Titan X, since it has 12GB of ram, is worth the $1000 asking price and would last at least 5 years or so. However, that is way beyond my budget since I could build a pretty decent machine for that much.
 
RamonGTP said:
Except it doesn't have almost the same performance as a 980. It doesn't even have the same performance as a 780Ti... At least that card you can say has almost the same performance as a 980.

It's not a bad card, but it doesn't compete with what NVidia has out on the market now.
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The only card that is out on the Market now that can legitimately beat the 290x is the Titan X. The 980 is only a few percentage points faster and definitely not worth the extra cost. Heck from what I can see, the Titan X blows the 980 out of the water at super high resolutions so at least the cost is justified there.
 
ManofGod said:
The only card that is out on the Market now that can legitimately beat the 290x is the Titan X. The 980 is only a few percentage points faster and definitely not worth the extra cost. Heck from what I can see, the Titan X blows the 980 out of the water at super high resolutions so at least the cost is justified there.
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If you look at the reviews, you'll see the 980 is faster in every game. Looks pretty legit to me.


I would certainly hope the Titan X is faster than the 980. It's suppose to be. Why does that surprise you?
 
Ok how about this 290X vs 980. We know that the 980 is better on avg and this link shows that but there is always more to the story:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1056?vs=1351

I found the delta percentages at the bottom of the list to be quite telling.

Also for fun looked at the same comparison for 7970(reg version so no one can cry about GHZ ed) and 680:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1032?vs=1348

There is no way one can state the 680 was better from that. Even the original remark of power usage flies out the window, they virtually tie.
 
Igroock said:
I honestly dont think there is anything wrong with AMDs offering of current cards, 290x specifically. It almost has the same performance as a 980, give or take a few. Drivers are mature now so I dont know what all the whining is about. Heat issues are solved.

This forum and many other outlets all over the web is one of the reasons AMD is losing sales, including YouTube. Everyone is too hung up on having the latest and greatest RIGHT NOW. Phones, cars and etc, its getting silly at this point.
I dont think AMD is competing directly with Nvidia and Intel, not when their products cost 2 or 3 times as much. Majority of flack comes from 15 year old kids that think they know the industry without having one or the other brand, they just like to talk shit.
It has a lot to do with the customer base, were part of the problem.
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It's hard to believe that AMD's problems are because of 15-year-olds posting on the Internet.

I know it's hard to accept but here is the plain truth: the CPU and GPU markets are mature markets and they are not very susceptible to fashion and fad like smartphones and women's clothes. The cream has risen to the top. It's not something that happened overnight and this is not just about Southern Islands vs. Kepler or anything like that.
 
RamonGTP said:
If you look at the reviews, you'll see the 980 is faster in every game. Looks pretty legit to me.


I would certainly hope the Titan X is faster than the 980. It's suppose to be. Why does that surprise you?
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Where did I say or imply that it surprises me? Also, the 980 being a few percentage points faster does not mean anything. It would be like a car in the 1/4 mile betting my Avenger V6 by 0.2 seconds. Yep, it is faster but not by that much.

Edit: I also forgot, with Direct X 12, Mantle and Vulken, my 290 will last just that much longer for me. Besides, I do not own a 4k monitor and VSR on my setup does not have 4k resolution as an option. However, it does have 1440p and 1800p which looks and plays great on my 1080p 27 inch monitor.
 
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RamonGTP said:
Except it doesn't have almost the same performance as a 980. It doesn't even have the same performance as a 780Ti... At least that card you can say has almost the same performance as a 980.

It's not a bad card, but it doesn't compete with what NVidia has out on the market now.
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Look at many reviews today at higher resolutions, 290x card shine. 970/980 cards are always a few frames ahead but not by many, not when you consider the price. You simply cant compare a $300 card to a card that costs $500+, not when its performance is slightly ahead.
Its all about higher resolutions these days, which the 290x is on par with considering its price.
 
jwcalla said:
It's hard to believe that AMD's problems are because of 15-year-olds posting on the Internet.

I know it's hard to accept but here is the plain truth: the CPU and GPU markets are mature markets and they are not very susceptible to fashion and fad like smartphones and women's clothes. The cream has risen to the top. It's not something that happened overnight and this is not just about Southern Islands vs. Kepler or anything like that.
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That is not what I said. I am talking about majority of comments that piss on one brand or the other. Its a 15 year old behavior of name calling, mom jokes and threats. I am saying that some people take that BS into account when looking into reviews to see what they should buy. Which is sad.

Sorry but your comment about mature products is not entirely correct. The minute a product is released the community wants more, just because. Titan X for example, everyone talked about it and the next day they want a 980 TI or Kepler architecture cards. People upgrade just to have it, hardware PC community is notorious for that. Its the same as teenagers buying the latest iphone to show off to their friends, just because.

Point is, its impossible to please people. 780 cards over to 980 wasnt a big jump, other than energy savings, yet people shit on 290x cards like they came out 4 years ago and need a refresh badly. Its the same people that will never even buy an AMD product, they just want to talk.
 
Igroock said:
Look at many reviews today at higher resolutions, 290x card shine. 970/980 cards are always a few frames ahead but not by many, not when you consider the price. You simply cant compare a $300 card to a card that costs $500+, not when its performance is slightly ahead.
Its all about higher resolutions these days, which the 290x is on par with considering its price.
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Not everyone buys based on price/performance. It seems like a few group of people always resort to that single metric as the holy grail of metrics.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review/10

Plenty of high resolutions to pick from there. Neither are providing ideal performance at 4K with high quality settings, but often times those extra few frames that put the 980 "slightly ahead" is the difference between an enjoyable an unenjoyable experience since you're right at that threshold of fluidity at those settings.
 
durquavian said:
Ok how about this 290X vs 980. We know that the 980 is better on avg and this link shows that but there is always more to the story:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1056?vs=1351

I found the delta percentages at the bottom of the list to be quite telling.

Also for fun looked at the same comparison for 7970(reg version so no one can cry about GHZ ed) and 680:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1032?vs=1348

There is no way one can state the 680 was better from that. Even the original remark of power usage flies out the window, they virtually tie.
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the 980 is better on average its better period.

In one game the x290 is faster Company of Heroes 2 at one setting and only faster by .4 FPS.

Delta frames are interesting but I think drivers play a large part in that, which the 980 drivers at the time of the benches are fairly new.

Now the 680 gtx and 7970 comparison, interesting but we are looking at very high resolutions and AA and AF, which have more affect on a 2 gb card vs a 3 gb card and you can see there is a much higher fall off rate for the the 680 gtx 2 gb, that is to be expected, and again stated this a few times.
 
razor1 said:
the 980 is better on average its better period.

In one game the x290 is faster Company of Heroes 2 at one setting and only faster by .4 FPS.

Delta frames are interesting but I think drivers play a large part in that, which the 980 drivers at the time of the benches are fairly new.

Now the 680 gtx and 7970 comparison, interesting but we are looking at very high resolutions and AA and AF, which have more affect on a 2 gb card vs a 3 gb card and you can see there is a much higher fall off rate for the the 680 gtx 2 gb, that is to be expected, and again stated this a few times.
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Better is a subjective term. Yes its better, but it costs $200 more. To a lot of people that jump in price vs. performance benefit is unrealistic. To an enthusiast its nothing, considering some people will spend $200-$300 for a 10% boost in speed.

In many review sites the 290x is put up against the 980 and Titan X simply because its the highest card AMD offers with a single chip. Does that mean AMD is directly competing with the 980/X? No it doesnt.
 
The reason the 290x almost always loses purchases here over the 980 for 4k gaming is:

1. SLI is a better bet than CFX. And when you're pushing 4k, it's mandatory that you have a working profile.

2. 980 has HDMI 2.0, which is a necessity for high quality gaming on 4k TVs.

Bot of these are corner cases, but then we are talking about top-end cards here, so it's fitting.
 
The fact that the 290x and 980 are in the same sentence is amazing. One is a $300+ card, the other is a $500+ card.
 
Talonz said:
The fact that the 290x and 980 are in the same sentence is amazing. One is a $300+ card, the other is a $500+ card.
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And yet still nvidia is pulling away with marketshare.

AMD needs to do something vastly different. This wasn't just one or two quarters in the making; their current situation accumulated from long-term conditions.

I don't even know what the answer is. I'm just saying the obvious which is that nvidia and Intel are outperforming AMD while at the same time commanding higher prices. This can't be explained away as merely exuberant fanboyism.
 
Talonz said:
The fact that the 290x and 980 are in the same sentence is amazing. One is a $300+ card, the other is a $500+ card.
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Same reason they compare a FX-8350 vs a i7-4770, flagship to flagship. It's only AMD's fault that all of their flagship products are in different price and performance brackets than their competitors.
 
Igroock said:
Better is a subjective term. Yes its better, but it costs $200 more. To a lot of people that jump in price vs. performance benefit is unrealistic. To an enthusiast its nothing, considering some people will spend $200-$300 for a 10% boost in speed.

In many review sites the 290x is put up against the 980 and Titan X simply because its the highest card AMD offers with a single chip. Does that mean AMD is directly competing with the 980/X? No it doesnt.
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Well we weren't talking about price before, but yeah the 290 is not in the same league as 980 and that's why you are seeing such a huge price difference, oh btw 10% performance difference interesting that review says around 15% + outside of that one game.....

AMD can't compete right now, and its not just about performance, its performance, features and power.
 
And what if AMD had not lowered the prices of the 290 and 290X? according to Talonz Logic would make it comparable and able to compete with the GTX 980 and 970? . would people buy a +500$ 290X today?... those prices on 290(X)s aren't there because AMD its the father of the budget gaming, its because they are forced to sell more in the hard way: lowering the prices..
 
Araxie said:
And what if AMD had not lowered the prices of the 290 and 290X? according to Talonz Logic would make it comparable and able to compete with the GTX 980 and 970? . would people buy a +500$ 290X today?... those prices on 290(X)s aren't there because AMD its the father of the budget gaming, its because they are forced to sell more in the hard way: lowering the prices..
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This is what your post would sound like, had it occurred in October 2013:

And what if Nvidia had not lowered the prices of the 770 and 780? according to Talonz Logic would make it comparable and able to compete with the 290 and 290X? . would people buy a +650$ 780 and +400$ 770 today?... those prices on 770/780's aren't there because Nvidia its the father of the budget gaming, its because they are forced to sell more in the hard way: lowering the prices..
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TaintedSquirrel said:
This is what your post would sound like, had it occurred in October 2013:
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exactly =) I was one of those who said the same when nvidia lowered the prices of the 780.. in fact my 780 was bought before those prices cut and i knew it was necessary because of the hard pressure of the 290X. did you remember? the Titan Killer as was known that card? the "titan like performance for 500$ less"?..

but im certainly tired of those guys who appear to think the 290X always costed 350$.. they also tend to forget the mining craze which in part skyrocketed the prices of AMD cards are also the guilty of the lower AMD market share because when those guys decided to drop off their mining farm they flooded the market of cheap used 290X and lot people who are actually using 290X are due that reason..
 
I don't see how miners buying as many expensive 290X's at launch then dumping them for cheap later would negatively affect AMDs market share. If anything it should have increased it.
 
-Dragon- said:
I don't see how miners buying as many expensive 290X's at launch then dumping them for cheap later would negatively affect AMDs market share. If anything it should have increased it.
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cards were out of stock everywhere for months, when the end user don't see any card in stock what can he do?. and when they were in stock it was with uber inflated cost, so what can he do? buy the competence card... most of the mining cards never returned to the market I know few guys with 200+ cards lying around getting dusty, or sending it to family in other countries with cheap electricity to start mining there.. that's how affect the market share =)..
 
Araxie said:
cards were out of stock everywhere for months, when the end user don't see any card in stock what can he do?. and when they were in stock it was with uber inflated cost, so what can he do? buy the competitors card.
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Interesting that you would point this out. During the mining craze of winter 2013, I needed to RMA a 7950. MSI had no replacements, so they refunded my money instead. My intentions were to buy a 280x, but as you said, they were either out of stock or grossly inflated. I had no choice but to buy the competing GTX 770.

I wonder how many other potential AMD GPU buyers were in similar situations during the scrypt mining craze.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Nvidia has MFAA
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MFAA is old AMD's temporal antialiasing, from circa 2004. It even has the same limitations @vsync and just shutting off if your performance dropped from a certain high number. Honestly.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ati,802-8.html

from ATI's X800 series in 2004.

Here is an excerpt from another article

"There were a couple of caveats to consider before temporal anti-aliasing would work. First, V-sync had to be enabled at 60 Hz or more. Secondly, if the frame rate dropped below 60 FPS, temporal anti-aliasing was disabled.

The concept is simple, but AMD representatives say that it was tricky to get it to work with new games, and the limitations make it less attractive than new anti-aliasing methods. Because of this, temporal anti-aliasing was removed from Radeon drivers some time ago."


EDIT TO ADD:

AMD has also contributed with Mantle's code, and they were the ones that pioneered Forward Plus rendering which is actually something really nice (ask the MS fellas who did Forza Horizon what do they think of that rendering method, a great compromise of speed and quality).
 
Araxie said:
exactly =) I was one of those who said the same when nvidia lowered the prices of the 780.. in fact my 780 was bought before those prices cut and i knew it was necessary because of the hard pressure of the 290X. did you remember? the Titan Killer as was known that card? the "titan like performance for 500$ less"?..

but im certainly tired of those guys who appear to think the 290X always costed 350$.. they also tend to forget the mining craze which in part skyrocketed the prices of AMD cards are also the guilty of the lower AMD market share because when those guys decided to drop off their mining farm they flooded the market of cheap used 290X and lot people who are actually using 290X are due that reason..
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I have not seen anyone claim that they thought the 290x was always $350 except you. What you appear to hate is your own interpretation of events. However, what I remember is folks gripping about the fact that the 7970 was $550 at release although the cost was easily justified. Those who would not bat an eye at $700 NVidia cards were gripping because the 7970 did not come out at $350 or so.

Folks around here tend to be extremely biased regardless of reality. Truth is, if I had bought the 7970 at release, I would probably still be using it or only just now be considering replacing it. (It was that good.) Do not forget, the only reason the 970 and 980 are at the prices they are now is because of AMD, nothing more, nothing less.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
For me? Trssaa that doesn't come at a massive performance hit and Sgssaa compatibility are the big two
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Also the ability to enhance in game MSAA is handy. Some games just give options like low and high (that are buggy... High is 2x and low is off in SWTOR for example with GTX 970) so it makes life easy.
 
Araxie said:
cards were out of stock everywhere for months, when the end user don't see any card in stock what can he do?. and when they were in stock it was with uber inflated cost, so what can he do? buy the competence card... most of the mining cards never returned to the market I know few guys with 200+ cards lying around getting dusty, or sending it to family in other countries with cheap electricity to start mining there.. that's how affect the market share =)..
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"Market share is the percentage of a market (defined in terms of either units or revenue) accounted for by a specific entity."

Youre confused. That is not how the market works. First of all cards were never out of stock, and if they were it was only for a short period of time. Websites selling AMD cards were the ones that jacked up the price when they saw the opportunity for demand, you cant blame AMD for that. If people just all of a sudden bought a ton of Nvidia cards the same would follow. Retailers are the ones to blame for price gouging, and demand. Its simple market economics.

Retailers see an opportunity due to demand so the price goes up. Amazon has been doing that for all their products, which is why there is a lot of price fluctuation on their website depending on demand.

If anything, AMD's market share sky rocketed during the mining season, not declined as you so put it.

What hurt AMD was not having their partners on board with aftermarket coolers. Aftermarket coolers didnt show up for months after the initial launch, so people had to put up with horrible reference coolers that were noisy and hot. This is the reason why the 3xx launch is delayed, AMD will release their partner coolers right off the bat to avoid making the same mistake during the R9 launch.
 
The guys with 200+ cards laying around getting dusty are the ones that did AMD the biggest favor. They could have dumped them on the used market for pennies on the dollar just to make some money back and basically stole a few hundred new card sales. The idea of someone buying hundreds of AMD GPUs and hurting their market share is preposterous.
 
Whenever people talk about the 290x all I can think about is this quiet vs uber mode video.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u5YJsMaT_AE

I think for AMD to get back market share the 390x has to be an all around solid reference card. They seem to be taking the right steps but the AIO (I personally love the idea) might throw some people since people are afraid of new/different.
 
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Dayaks said:
Whenever people talk about the 290x all I can think about is this quiet vs uber mode video.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u5YJsMaT_AE

I think for AMD to get back market share the 390x has to be an all around solid reference card. They seem to be taking the right steps but the AIO (I personally love the idea) might throw some people since people are afraid of new/different.
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If they had launched the 390x a few months ago and it was faster than a 980 that would have been something. Launching in July or later with a new process node on the horizon will do very little to help AMD's current situation.

NVIDIA will have a 980ti and possibly some price cuts to hold AMD down until Pascal launches.
 
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