AMD Exposes More Weakness At E3

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This article (registration required) is definitely recommended reading, especially for those of you that read our editorial late last month. It is disheartening to see AMD continue to flounder during E3, an annual event that is usually a time for hardware manufacturers to shine as they show off their latest and greatest hardware.


The low performance and price of AMD's Polaris chips indicates continuing process problems at Global Foundries.
 
The last thing they need at this point is a paper launch for Polaris, they're going to disappoint a lot of people if they don't have a good supply on June 29th.
 
I was astounded they were offering these half-assed GPUs, especially after the blockbuster announcement of HBM memory. How they didn't transition all of their GPUs to using HBM is confusing.

Secondly, the troubles will continue indefinitely until someone can clean house over there. That won't happen as long as they can't be bought by another firm or investment group. We always like to blame the guy at the top, but the dozens if not hundreds of entrenched incompetence masked as institutional knowledge is probably waist deep over there.
 
If they can deliver GTX 980 performance with the rx480 at a $229 price point I'll bite. From where I'm sitting, it just looks like they are trying to dominate the low/mid end at the expense of the high end. I guess time will tell....
 
Is it OK to be excited for the RX480?

Process reasons aside, it rumors to offer a good amount of performance at a good price. Many moons ago with the introduction of 28nm there was a definite price to play.

RX480 fits my budget and just might be the bang-for-the buck at the time.
 
Ehren8879 said:
Is it OK to be excited for the RX480?

Process reasons aside, it rumors to offer a good amount of performance at a good price. Many moons ago with the introduction of 28nm there was a definite price to play.

RX480 fits my budget and just might be the bang-for-the buck at the time.
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I would wait until reviews. So far we've seen it play "Ok, for the price" on AoTS. The buck has been confirmed, now we just need to see the bang.

Mind you I completely agree. Spending more than $200 on a video card is a ridiculous concept to most people. They may have a home run.
 
I am not sure "Exposes more weakness" is the appropriate way to put it. AMD has been hurting for a long time and I think they are doing the best they can to recover from the BullDozer disaster. They certainly need to make changes and keep pushing forward, but to say they are just now showing more "Weakness" is like saying "that building is going to burn down" as you are driving past the burnt shell of a building that burned down 2-3 years ago.

AMD has a lot of things they need to fix, but they are doing a lot of the right things to fix them. They are also making some very stupid PR mistakes by freezing out journalists such as Kyle and Brent. The Tech world would surely suck so much more if AMD is unable to get its shit together and we are stuck with only Intel and Nvidia. I think AMD's APU's and HSA are the future of the industry and once they get things together, they will be better off. They also need to get rid of people trying to break the company up as that would be the death nail of the company if they broke the graphics division up and sold it off.

We need AMD to succeed and they are doing better, but at the same time they have so much more to do. I do think the RX 4XX series is targeting the right audience at the right price. Perhaps they had greater aspirations and failed to meet them, but at least they recognized that and made adjustments rather than releasing a product in a segment it does not belong at a price that simply makes no sense (cough, Fury, cough).
 
I'm surprised [H] linked to an article on seeking alpha where majority of people posting are doing it for their own PERSONAL GAIN, many of these people have calls and puts in certain stocks and attempt to make a profit

END of the article they flat out disclose they own stock in Nvidia.....

Author is just a chump and can't write a slander piece for the life of him

AMD hired Nvidia former marketing director did it not?

"This is classic AMD marketing. It extols the virtues of Polaris in notebooks. AMD makes it seem as if the product is right around the corner. But there are no specifics. There's no model number. There's no launch date. There's not even a rough time frame for availability. This is true vaporware."



Neither of the cards that Lisa Su held up at E3 would be suitable for use in a modern thin and light notebook or 2-in-1. The RX 460 will have a starting price of about $100 and performance of the R7 360, according to expectations of AnandTech. But even the 460 will not have a low enough power consumption (expected to be about 75 W) to go into a notebook.

And now made up power consumption numbers and since when are dedicated graphics cards what you want in a thin notebook? Last time I checked 970M is what you want for a laptop and they don't come in ultra thins either
 
Go ahead and buy those Intel and NVidia parts you holding off on. AMD is out of the game for this round. Article loaded in my Firefox ;)
 
How do the new AMD GPUs compare with console GPUs? Are they laying a marker for the next round of consoles? Or are the RX 4x0 cards by-products of their new console GPUs?
 
shad0w4life said:
I'm surprised [H] linked to an article on seeking alpha where majority of people posting are doing it for their own PERSONAL GAIN, many of these people have calls and puts in certain stocks and attempt to make a profit

END of the article they flat out disclose they own stock in Nvidia.....
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Can't blame them. Who in the hell would own AMD at this point? They are circling the drain on all fronts. Hopefully they can turn it around.

However, I think with the recent announcements about the new consoles might significantly reduce the volume of dedicated GPUs going forward. If they are going to upgrade the consoles on a regular cadence why bother with pc gpus? A lot of the market will be content with a console if it can stay in the midrange gaming pc range indefinitely. $5-600 for a new console or $3-400 for a new gpu every 2-3 years. I would personally choose the console and I'm sitting here with a $1k gpu. Valve thought they could do this with the steambox, but I would put my bet on MS and Sony because of legacy support baked in and 10's of millions of ps4/xbone owners.

So AMD might be playing the smart long game. Of course they might not last long enough to see gaming pcs and dedicated gpus relegated to only the ultra highend. I suspect it's coming though.
 
Seems to be a lot of hate for AMD right now, and I don't get it.

Yes I understand the enthusiast (this websites readership, for one) love the big numbers and raw performance of the top end chips, but I get what AMD is trying to do here with the aggressive pricing structure.

This is purely a placeholder release to try and gain the marketshare, and go all out for the Vega release.

Now, if Vega flops, then we can all say that AMD got it's tactics wrong and it could be a very damaging blow.

It's going to be an interesting 6-12 months, for sure!
 
I also guess / predict that AMD is making itself pretty for Microsoft so as to get bought. The Nokia experiment was just to see what the DOJ would do if they ventured into a 3rd party market.
 
The closest parallel to the RX 480 is the 4850, which saved AMD's graphics division after the disastrous HD 2800/2900 series and ho-hum 3800. It was the same scenario, NVidia had the performance halo with the GTX 260 and 280, but almost no one cared because they could buy a high-performing card for $200, while the 260 started at $450 and their $200 offerings were lacking in comparison. If the current rumors are true, however, the RX 470 has no precedent. I can't remember a time there has ever been a brand new, solid midrange card for $150.
 
Ashcutus said:
Seems to be a lot of hate for AMD right now, and I don't get it.

Yes I understand the enthusiast (this websites readership, for one) love the big numbers and raw performance of the top end chips, but I get what AMD is trying to do here with the aggressive pricing structure.

This is purely a placeholder release to try and gain the marketshare, and go all out for the Vega release.

Now, if Vega flops, then we can all say that AMD got it's tactics wrong and it could be a very damaging blow.

It's going to be an interesting 6-12 months, for sure!
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I've been hearing all of this for the last decade, and all of it has just slowed the sinking of their proverbial ship.
As sad as all of this is, there is no "hate" for AMD on here, only facts and observations being pointed out.

Also, "aggressive price structuring" is the only advantage, if you can even call it that, which AMD has at this point.
They are fighting for mass amounts of pennies and pesos, which is rarely a winning move, and could take decades to achieve anything.

AMD's worst move was when they purchased ATI back in '06, oh and not because the purchase itself was bad, but it was mainly due to the extreme cost that put them back.
Cost of the purchase aside, they could have pulled out of their debt years ago, but mismanagement and high turnover of key/critical employees is really what destroyed the company from within.

I know everyone thinks Intel is to blame for the OEM scandal back in the 2000s, but AMD has pulled some real crap with Intel back in the 1980s and 1990s, in which AMD was very much in the wrong, legally at least.
AMD isn't totally innocent, and they themselves have caused their own demise.

This is all coming from a person who has owned and heavily used AMD products, enthusiastically, for well over a decade.
When AMD's most die-hard fans are turning their backs on them, they are doing something seriously wrong.
 
DrLobotomy said:
I also guess / predict that AMD is making itself pretty for Microsoft so as to get bought. The Nokia experiment was just to see what the DOJ would do if they ventured into a 3rd party market.
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You may be on to something there. Microsoft can justify this with the need to compete against Samsung in the mobile space. And if Sony are not going to go to AMD for the PS5 they can also justify it for their XBox 2. And, with MS/AMD working the low CPU end, it wouldn't harm their relationship with Intel at the high end.

OTOH there's another cash-rich company out there that might be interested: Apple.
 
As long as the CEO and the head of the graphics division keep up the in fighting within AMD they will never get anywhere.The board of directors needs to get some guts and fire these two and hire someone to pull them out of this mess
 

Apparently this editor was invited to the June 21st conference call. His rhetoric is hardly unbiased, but signing an NDA for the meeting gives me some hope that there'll be additional information from this call.
 
AMD's bottom-feeding status.
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This guy keeps yapping about this and somehow the rest gets lost. He does not claim that AMD can't sell the RX 480 he also can't explain why the RX 480 is a bad product.
He might have a point about Global Foundries but then again in the history of AMD when did GF ever save the day ?
I can hold this generic talk and claim disaster as well ....
The most puzzling thing is that author (Mark Hibben) claims that the Scorpio is the exact date and time when all the problems at GF are fixed, now that is a rather retarded statement
 
shad0w4life said:
I'm surprised [H] linked to an article on seeking alpha where majority of people posting are doing it for their own PERSONAL GAIN, many of these people have calls and puts in certain stocks and attempt to make a profit

END of the article they flat out disclose they own stock in Nvidia.....
Click to expand...

That's what I hinted at and got blasted for defaming the author. Really, stock market journalism only plays down one side or the other. It provides no more insight to what we already know. Yeah, AMD is hurting, maybe it IS a flop, maybe a smokescreen, who knows until it releases.

All I know is that these cards should definitely be releasing on the 29th because I can see things.... :)
 
Quix said:
The last thing they need at this point is a paper launch for Polaris, they're going to disappoint a lot of people if they don't have a good supply on June 29th.
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Well I think AMD paper launch of rx 480 was just an attempt to put the wild fire that pascal launch created, AMD had to do it. Yea if they don't have enough cards for launch and it don't perform to the claims (come on really its AMD claims on most AMD favored game ever).

WangChung said:
I was astounded they were offering these half-assed GPUs, especially after the blockbuster announcement of HBM memory. How they didn't transition all of their GPUs to using HBM is confusing.

Secondly, the troubles will continue indefinitely until someone can clean house over there. That won't happen as long as they can't be bought by another firm or investment group. We always like to blame the guy at the top, but the dozens if not hundreds of entrenched incompetence masked as institutional knowledge is probably waist deep over there.
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Only memory option they would have ATM is HBM1 which is limited to 4gb. Now for for lower cards could only put 4gb on them and be fine problem though is cost of it for probably slim performance boost. HBM2 is well not even in full scale production yet. Oter problem with using either one is cost's and costs vs performance gain just isn't there.
 
Seeking Alpha posts many opinion articles similar to this one - some good, some bad - from various writers. Search AMD and you find these last few articles:
Notice how Mark is quite pessimistic while others aren't? Not saying he's wrong, but again, these are opinions (as Mark points out at his article's end).
 
This seems like an all-time low for [H].

Linking on main page to an article written by someone that doesn't seem to have any real idea about hardware and simply makes up stuff... Mobile part info isn't even funny.
 
shockwave85 said:
Seeking Alpha posts many opinion articles similar to this one - some good, some bad - from various writers. Search AMD and you find these last few articles:
Notice how Mark is quite pessimistic while others aren't? Not saying he's wrong, but again, these are opinions (as Mark points out at his article's end).
Click to expand...

Seeking Alpha is essentially the most biased opinion source out there. People Long or Short stocks, then write opinions to support their stock positions.
 
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DrLobotomy said:
Go ahead and buy those Intel and NVidia parts you holding off on. AMD is out of the game for this round. Article loaded in my Firefox ;)
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Did the Google Auto-Fill tell you? :)

When I enter in AMD, google continues with "struggling". lol
 
While posting this among all the positive stuff being posted about AMD makes this kinda sound like butthurtness from not being invited, I gotta admit that the last showing of AMD with PC Gamer, where they showed the RX470 and RX460, was an absolute shitshow, and they burned alot of the good vibes they made with the RX480 announcement.
 
I read both Lau and Moyen's columns:

1) Lau didn't even get the GTX 970 price correct and of course at the end of his optimistic column:
Disclosure: I am/we are long AMD.
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2) Comically Lau also states that Polaris has 'launched.' Sure, where are those products in retail?

3) Moyen's columns is more balanced, but he talks about Polaris mobile (and references mobile GPU marketshare numbers).
He makes a leap on this estimation, but that's what analysts are supposed to do after all:

But if we guesstimate that Apple will pay an average price of $40 and then multiply it by 8 million units, AMD can possibly gain $320 million/year.
Consistently getting $320 million every year from Apple is an important tailwind for AMD.
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Moyen is long in NVDA, AAPL, INTC.


LMT MFA said:
While posting this among all the positive stuff being posted about AMD makes this kinda sound like butthurtness from not being invited, I gotta admit that the last showing of AMD with PC Gamer, where they showed the RX470 and RX460, was an absolute shitshow, and they burned alot of the good vibes they made with the RX480 announcement.
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Yeah big mistake by AMD to hype the PC Gamer show ... and then show nothing compelling.
 
MirekCz said:
This seems like an all-time low for [H].

Linking on main page to an article written by someone that doesn't seem to have any real idea about hardware and simply makes up stuff... Mobile part info isn't even funny.
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I second this. And linking to an article that requires registration on a web page in order to even read the article? Come on!!!! :mad:

Is [H] turning into a page that I will, at some point down the road, not want to visit anymore? I sure hope not.
 
The Fragile said:
What a garbage article. You just lost some street cred, guys.
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It was a garbage article. It was filled with vitriol and biased wording, unfounded supposition, and poor choices in wording.

That doesn't escape the fact the situation at AMD isn't looking too pretty, garbage article or not. No one can escape that conclusion.
 
Your website is not going to get GPU nor CPU review samples.
 
WangChung said:
I was astounded they were offering these half-assed GPUs, especially after the blockbuster announcement of HBM memory. How they didn't transition all of their GPUs to using HBM is confusing.

Secondly, the troubles will continue indefinitely until someone can clean house over there. That won't happen as long as they can't be bought by another firm or investment group. We always like to blame the guy at the top, but the dozens if not hundreds of entrenched incompetence masked as institutional knowledge is probably waist deep over there.
Click to expand...

This is most likely the issue
 
I can't wait to see a 1266 MHz $200 R480x get within 20% or less of a 1070. All these so called predictions will fall flat on their faces. Personally I think AMD knows what it's doing and will hit their target market this time around. I may not get one but it would be great for some of my friends and those just entering the PC gaming market. IMO nvidia has gone too far with it's absurdly priced gpus and they've become out of reach for many gamers.
 
WangChung said:
I was astounded they were offering these half-assed GPUs, especially after the blockbuster announcement of HBM memory. How they didn't transition all of their GPUs to using HBM is confusing.

Secondly, the troubles will continue indefinitely until someone can clean house over there. That won't happen as long as they can't be bought by another firm or investment group. We always like to blame the guy at the top, but the dozens if not hundreds of entrenched incompetence masked as institutional knowledge is probably waist deep over there.
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Half-assed GPUs? If they can deliver, the power/price point of these cards is great. Maybe not for someone who wants 4K gaming, but the vast majority of gamers are at 1440p or less and these are allegedly delivering 680ti speeds for something like 250 bucks. I may decide to go with Nvidia, since I've got a 5k monitor, but I may just go AMD, because Nvidia can't natively drive 5k, so something that does 1440p is good enough.

Again, most buyers are never going to spend 300 for a GPU, much less 700 or a grand (or more if you do SLI).
 
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Snowdog said:
Seeking Alpha is essentially the most biased opinion source out there. People Long or Short stocks, then write opinions to support their stock positions.
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As a rule, i find that enthusiasts are ahead of the investors on most things tech, though sometimes we're too far ahead. I think a lot of us in the aughts thought that AMD was going to become a major threat to Intel given the quality of the Athlons and especially the A64 chips, but Intel was able to hold AMD off long enough to get the Core 2 out and it was all downhill from there.

Unless they've got benchmarks that show the new GPUs aren't as good as advertised (certainly a possibility), that AMD will take months to get product in the channels or that Nvidia is price matching the 680s to these, these sure look like winners to me. I'm not a GPU enthusiast...just buy them every few years and I get whatever seems like the best bang for the buck (though efficiency is also important to me, since I don't need the extra heat in my office).
 
AMD seems to be doing OK to me. They have design wins for the upcoming consoles and are going to release some great mid range cards, plus a high end one later this year. If Zen is as good as they claim it is that should help as well. So much hate for AMD on this forum it's actually quite laughable.
 
Bowman15 said:
AMD seems to be doing OK to me. They have design wins for the upcoming consoles and are going to release some great mid range cards, plus a high end one later this year. If Zen is as good as they claim it is that should help as well. So much hate for AMD on this forum it's actually quite laughable.
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Maybe because AMD has done pretty much fuck all for the past few years?

You say they're going to release some great mid range cards. They're definitely priced well, but you don't know if they're really that great since anyone who can prove they have the things is currently under NDA anyway so we don't actually know how they perform aside from AMD's marketing benchmarks(and nvidias were just as bad).

Maybe we'll get a high end AMD card later this year, maybe.

Yes, your comment about zen is spot on! If it's as good as they claim it'll help. Notice the difference between your statement about their CPU and your statement about their videocards when you don't really have anything to make assertions like you did for those cards? Anyone could just as easily claim that as being a fanboy. When AMD actually has something to show to justify the hype that people are trying to build around them, it'll make sense. Until then, they deserve to be criticized for a multitude of reasons, simply because they haven't proven anything yet. If the marketshare, performance, pricing, etc. between AMD and nvidia were reversed, the same would still apply except to nvidia. Hard facts are good, marketing hype is worthless.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
It was a garbage article. It was filled with vitriol and biased wording, unfounded supposition, and poor choices in wording.

That doesn't escape the fact the situation at AMD isn't looking too pretty, garbage article or not. No one can escape that conclusion.
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There are a lot of garbage articles in SeekingAlpha for AMD regardless whether it is pro or con.
 
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