AMD Launching Polaris 10 400 Series GPU June 1st At Computex. $299 (rumor)

[CSI_PC]

I can't see the logic in this if you followed the Nvidia hype train it said how many billions they invested into Pascal and suddenly AMD gets shafted by a low price strategy, I don't think so ...
Nvidia wants to dominate the high end and that is where they get the money , see how much grief they got for founder edition. If anything you would favour AMD to come out of this better then Nvidia and not by a small margin ....

Context, we are talking about clearing older stock.
AMD is shafting mostly their sales channel and to a lesser extent themselves if going with this approach.
I am not a fan of NVIDIAs pricing but it clearly shows how they are protecting the 980ti until it finally clears stock in distributors/retailers with the 1080 pricing.
If you cannot see the risk of a product being too cheap and its affect on other product lines, then you are seeing this more from a consumer perspective rather than business/product margins across all tiers affected and long term business implications (case in point trying to push 3xx at higher prices to get actual reasonable margins after they slashed the 2xx price range, it was a tough sell, this time it will be worst because they are doing this lower down in the tier.)
Cheers

 

[Yakk]

Both nvidia and AMD have been emptying their respective sales channels in preparing for a new generation. AMD has the added benefit of timing with the bundling of the Total War Warhammer game which just so happens to be bundled with whichever cards they choose. And that's on top of the small mining surge AMD has probably quite enjoyed. So for this one AMD & their AIB partners should be in great shape actually.

Then AMD can finally end manufacturing of their giant Hawaii chips in favor of a small Polaris. That also means AMD need a very good stock of Polaris chips to meet demand.

 

[Bahanime]

AMD needs to win back marketshare, that is their priority #1.

In fact, they made a BOLD claim that they will be the dominant graphics player on the PC in 3 years time (I had a good laugh when I saw it, but then thought about it and why not, it's possible). Look into their investor briefing PDF for this month.

AMD strongly believe Polaris is going to be a major marketshare winner. They have told their investors this and they way they will do it is by pricing excellent performing GPUs for mainstream prices.

Basically ~Fury X for $299 is the only way to take a large chunk of the market. Think 480X (~Fury X) $299, 480 (~Fury) $239 and 480 SE (~390X) $199.

If they are offering 390X performance for $299, that's not going to change the status quo, because the 390 is already so close to the 390X and it can be found for <$300 for awhile now. As much as we harp on about perf/w, the 390/X shows that its not important. Cool, quiet and lots of vram is more important along with performance & $. I don't think they will win major marketshare by offering 390X $299 for less power usage. That's just a custom 970 if you think about it.

Anyhow, I am optimistic, some would say overly, but I believe Raja Koduri when he says he's spiked (or rather, spiced) it to be a huge leap.

As for why $299? Because once you get above $300, there's a lot of resistance from buyers as previous market surveys have found. <$300 is still the sweetspot, tho the 970 managed to raise it to $329. But for AMD, they simply don't have the mindshare to fight with NV on equal pricing.

ie. if 480X ~ 1070, AMD has to charge less for it to sell well.

 

[Bahanime]

For relevance, this is NV's own market surveys from a few years ago.

^ This is the 960/380 territory. A great sweetspot. 480 or 480 SE territory right around here. The 380/X and 960 4GB shows it can go to around $249 as well.

^ $299 simply sells better, AMD would make a mistake to price "mainstream" Polaris 10 for above this mark.

 

[CSI_PC]

That chart is useful because it shows the % up to $199.
Now ask yourself what happens to the tiers in the $199 & $149 when a card with 390 type performance is at $249 for a new technology and that is its launch rrp?
There will be a domino effect cascading down that hits these lower priced and lower margin tiers as they also need adjusting in response to the new price for a 390 type performance mainstream card.
And also the implications this has when we can no longer expect future performance-efficiency jumps that going from 28nm to 16/14nm offer from future products; reports saying this will reduce greatly for next shrinkage.

The key from a business perspective is finding the balance to protect the different product tiers in context of ensuring reasonable margins while also being saleable and not end up in a financial mess, like AMD is in at the moment.
I guess comes down to what exactly are the margins on the Polaris products, and whether they can release a broad range of Polaris products in the different tiers at the same time.
Cheers

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

All performance tiers from $300 and below have stagnated since September 2014.
After the 970 came out, the 290X dropped to about $300. The 280X dropped to about $200. And today we have the 390 = 290X at $300, the 380X = 280X at $200. Aside from sales/rebates, MSRPs have not moved. I remember saying this... a year ago. And here we are again, nothing has changed.

How many additional sales can AMD count on in the <$300 tier when it has been idle for a year and a half? Polaris may not even provide an upgrade path for 290 owners, a $400 card that launched 2.5 years ago.

This is why I think it's funny, both AMD and Nvidia have clearly advocated for those tiers, especially the $200 price point as being the most profitable yet they are the most neglected. Polaris needs $299.99 and $199.99 bomb shells otherwise forget about it.

 

[schizo]

AMD's entire marketing message is "bringing VR to the mainstream". Assuming Polaris 10 offers 390-class performance, which is OVERWHELMINGLY likely, pricing it at the exact same $300 doesn't do that. So yeah, I do expect it at $249 or less.

Depending on how performance ends up, if the full P10 offers notably better than 390x performance, it could be the 480x at $299 and the the lower-binned P10 that ends up the 480 at <$299. That would make sense.

Offering identical performance at an unchanged price with less power consumption (which nobody gives a shit about on desktop platforms that plug into the wall) doesn't cut the mustard.

 

[shinotenshi]

for the record the chart doesn't say <$199 is the most profitable , it says there are the most sales there. most sales =\= most profit. more than likely the margins are smaller and thus the overall profit is most likely a lot less. AMD in the consoles are an excellent example of this, high volume but very tiny margins.

 

[Daniel_Chang]

What is LFC? Thanks

Looks like I need to keep it above 40fps then.

LFC allows frame doubling when you drop below the target fps range, essentially allowing FreeSync to continue working.

 

[THUMPer]

My local Frys has the Titan X on the shelf for $1499. A 980ti is still going for $689. Of course no one is buying those at that price. Everyone I saw looking at cards were looking at the 960 for $220. Ridiculous.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

Macau event totally confirmed:

 

[Bahanime]

All performance tiers from $300 and below have stagnated since September 2014.
After the 970 came out, the 290X dropped to about $300. The 280X dropped to about $200. And today we have the 390 = 290X at $300, the 380X = 280X at $200. Aside from sales/rebates, MSRPs have not moved. I remember saying this... a year ago. And here we are again, nothing has changed.

How many additional sales can AMD count on in the <$300 tier when it has been idle for a year and a half? Polaris may not even provide an upgrade path for 290 owners, a $400 card that launched 2.5 years ago.

This is why I think it's funny, both AMD and Nvidia have clearly advocated for those tiers, especially the $200 price point as being the most profitable yet they are the most neglected. Polaris needs $299.99 and $199.99 bomb shells otherwise forget about it.

Which is why if AMD wants a shot at reclaiming marketshare, they have to entice 290/X and 390/970 owners to upgrade.

These buyers don't like to spend much above $329 as we see.

AMD needs to bring high-end performance down to that segment. 980Ti and Fury X down to mainstream.

They can do it with the node and architecture, something not possible on 28nm and small GCN changes in 1.1 and 1.2.

 

[Bahanime]

My local Frys has the Titan X on the shelf for $1499. A 980ti is still going for $689. Of course no one is buying those at that price. Everyone I saw looking at cards were looking at the 960 for $220. Ridiculous.

Because the masses buy low-end and mainstream. Always have.

Do you think the majority of gamers have that much disposable income to get a new GPU like the $699 1080? Only a small %.

 

[razor1]

Because the masses buy low-end and mainstream. Always have.

Do you think the majority of gamers have that much disposable income to get a new GPU like the $699 1080? Only a small %.

Actually that's not entirely true

Add-in-Board report - Jon Peddie Research Publications

Depending on quarter that changes, and the quarter changes depends on what is launched at what time.

nV's goal with the 970 was to increase the performance segment % which they did successfully, and the 1070 is supposed to the same. So end result actually you get more margins and more money from the Performance bracket now then before.

The slides you showed are from that presentation where nV stated they wanted to grow the performance segment.

 

[Deleted member 93354]

I can't see the logic in this if you followed the Nvidia hype train it said how many billions they invested into Pascal and suddenly AMD gets shafted by a low price strategy, I don't think so ...
Nvidia wants to dominate the high end and that is where they get the money , see how much grief they got for founder edition. If anything you would favour AMD to come out of this better then Nvidia and not by a small margin ....

It is a well known fact most of the money comes from large sales of mid range products, not the high end stuff which is niche. However a true high end product is a halo which helps push sales of middle tier products. And AMD seems to forget this...even if they are competitively priced with speed that's approximately 3 years old now.


But if you already own a 970, 290, 390, 390X what's the point?

The polaris could possibly appearl to new people building on a budget. But target has been stagnant for a couple of years now in the mid tier due to 28nm limitations. Only new gamers will need to buy new mid range products. My 3 year old 7970 is still pretty darn good at 1080 and I see no reason to upgrade.

 

[Pieter3dnow]

It is a well known fact most of the money comes from large sales of mid range products, not the high end stuff which is niche. However a true high end product is a halo which helps push sales of middle tier products. And AMD seems to forget this...even if they are competitively priced with speed that's approximately 3 years old now.
But if you already own a 970, 290, 390, 390X what's the point?
The polaris could possibly appearl to new people building on a budget. But target has been stagnant for a couple of years now in the mid tier due to 28nm limitations. Only new gamers will need to buy new mid range products. My 3 year old 7970 is still pretty darn good at 1080 and I see no reason to upgrade.

There is little incentive to buy a Polaris card in the range you mentioned maybe if you want something that does not draw that much power or as a streamer the X.265 is also a bonus on top.
Nvidia has a firm grasp on the high end for several years now and I don't see any value there (for AMD with Polaris), they asked more money for the founder edition.

 

[Daniel_Chang]

Which is why if AMD wants a shot at reclaiming marketshare, they have to entice 290/X and 390/970 owners to upgrade.

These buyers don't like to spend much above $329 as we see.

AMD needs to bring high-end performance down to that segment. 980Ti and Fury X down to mainstream.

They can do it with the node and architecture, something not possible on 28nm and small GCN changes in 1.1 and 1.2.

970/390 owners, outside of this forum, aren't upgrading on an annual basis. The $300 segment is targeting 670/770/7870/280x owners. AMD needs to impress that crowd. No one is bringing 980ti performance to sub-$300 in 2016. That's not how this works.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

970/390 owners, outside of this forum, aren't upgrading on an annual basis. The $300 segment is targeting 670/770/7870/280x owners. AMD needs to impress that crowd. No one is bringing 980ti performance to sub-$300 in 2016. That's not how this works.

A lot of that userbase already upgraded... According to Steam (not the most precise source), there are nearly 4 times as many 970 owners as 770 owners.
28nm is very old, I don't know how long AMD expects people to wait around for new GPUs.

The 680 (770) and 7970 (280X) along with the rest of the 600-series and HD7000 series are now over 4 years old. That's a long time even for the most conservative GPU purchaser. A mid-range Polaris chip doesn't interest 290 or 780 owners and above, which gives Polaris extremely narrow appeal.

 

[harmattan]

A lot of that userbase already upgraded... According to Steam (not the most precise source), there are nearly 4 times as many 970 owners as 770 owners.
28nm is very old, I don't know how long AMD expects people to wait around for new GPUs.

The 680 (770) and 7970 (280X) along with the rest of the 600-series and HD7000 series are now over 4 years old. That's a long time even for the most conservative GPU purchaser. A mid-range Polaris chip doesn't interest 290 or 780 owners and above, which gives Polaris extremely narrow appeal.

Also, another consideration is word has gotten out now on the PS4 Neo which is likely deterring a group from moving over to PC gaming who might have been in the market for a mid-range GPU. AMD is indirectly competing with themselves here.

 

[Bowman15]

Also, another consideration is word has gotten out now on the PS4 Neo which is likely deterring a group from moving over to PC gaming who might have been in the market for a mid-range GPU. AMD is indirectly competing with themselves here.

yeah um....no

 

[NKD]

A lot of that userbase already upgraded... According to Steam (not the most precise source), there are nearly 4 times as many 970 owners as 770 owners.
28nm is very old, I don't know how long AMD expects people to wait around for new GPUs.

The 680 (770) and 7970 (280X) along with the rest of the 600-series and HD7000 series are now over 4 years old. That's a long time even for the most conservative GPU purchaser. A mid-range Polaris chip doesn't interest 290 or 780 owners and above, which gives Polaris extremely narrow appeal.

Don't think so. If they can deliver almost fury like performance for 300, thats a decent upgrade from any of those cards. Now if these cards have another 100-150mhz overclocking headroom. That's even better. You are looking at a killer performance there for 300.

 

[Chimpee]

Just out of curiousity, any news from AMD regarding discontinuing existing cards before release of Polaris 10.

 

[cageymaru]

Just out of curiousity, any news from AMD regarding discontinuing existing cards before release of Polaris 10.

They are quieter than mice. I like the new AMD PR machine. Maybe that new woman from Nvidia is making a difference.

 

[Yakk]

They are quieter than mice. I like the new AMD PR machine. Maybe that new woman from Nvidia is making a difference.

ROFL...

I can see her going "Will you guys just STFU already!"

But IMHO it probably has more to do with the new TRG leadership style versus the AMD old guard BS trumpets blaring.

Edit: also reminds me of when ATI kept Eyefinity6 under need to know only until is was surprise released. Would be nice to be pleasantly surprised again!

 

[harmattan]

yeah um....no

Absolutely there's a group of people, normally 20-25 year-olds who Sony is attempting to cater to with the Neo who would otherwise "ascend" to PC gaming, or who would move to the new Nintendo system next year. PS4 is long in the tooth (heck, it was long in the tooth upon release) and Sony on needs to hold those who are hardware enthusiastic, as it were, on their platform.

 

[crazycrave]

I really believe that we will see Hawaii at 14nm with a better front end and higher clocks at the same prices .. it would be the smart thing to do as it is still a sound chip and would be right there with the 1070/1080 if AMD can pull 2000Mhz out of it because DX 12 really likes Hawaii.

 

[primetime]

I really believe that we will see Hawaii at 14nm with a better front end and higher clocks at the same prices .. it would be the smart thing to do as it is still a sound chip and would be right there with the 1070/1080 if AMD can pull 2000Mhz out of it because DX 12 really likes Hawaii.

Dream all you want.....AMD is not getting anywhere near 2000Mhz anytime soon...Their cards are engineered totally different than nvidias, so that kind of clocks are not happening anytime soon. We be lucky to see Anything from them hitting over 1400MHZ this year.

 

[NKD]

I really believe that we will see Hawaii at 14nm with a better front end and higher clocks at the same prices .. it would be the smart thing to do as it is still a sound chip and would be right there with the 1070/1080 if AMD can pull 2000Mhz out of it because DX 12 really likes Hawaii.

AMD doesn't need 2000 out of it nor they will get it. IF AMD Is giving you fury perfromance with less shaders they have met their goal. You got 2306 shaders competing with fury. That is hell of an improvement. That tells you front end is much much more efficient. On the other hand nvidia went and did what was right for them. They hit the clock speeds and hit it big. If you bumped up the ti to same speeds you would get similar performance other than VR. So looks to me like AMD actually made significant changes to their architecture to make it more efficient.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

I really believe that we will see Hawaii at 14nm with a better front end and higher clocks at the same prices .. it would be the smart thing to do as it is still a sound chip and would be right there with the 1070/1080 if AMD can pull 2000Mhz out of it because DX 12 really likes Hawaii.

due to the way AMD's shaders/ALU's work i doubt you'll ever see gpu clocks that high from AMD unless they completely changed their base architecture. if we're lucky we might see an AMD GPU break 1400mhz at some point in the future.

 

[NKD]

due to the way AMD's shaders/ALU's work i doubt you'll ever see gpu clocks that high from AMD unless they completely changed their base architecture. if we're lucky we might see an AMD GPU break 1400mhz at some point in the future.

I think you are sort of wrong. You had 390 and 390x hovering around 1100-1200, seen plenty around 1150 as well. So I highly doubt if their base is 1266-1300 they won't get around 1400-1500 OC. So I think you are too skeptical, they will probably around those speeds already with this launch. They will probably max out there. Still behind nvidia but making it up with shader power like they always have.

 

[Bahanime]

Actually that's not entirely true

Add-in-Board report - Jon Peddie Research Publications

Depending on quarter that changes, and the quarter changes depends on what is launched at what time.

nV's goal with the 970 was to increase the performance segment % which they did successfully, and the 1070 is supposed to the same. So end result actually you get more margins and more money from the Performance bracket now then before.

The slides you showed are from that presentation where nV stated they wanted to grow the performance segment.

From your own chart, enthusiast GPU (high prices) generally sell very little compared to the rest.

There was a stream recently from an AIB where they were talking about shipment and the guy says only 15% of people buy GPUs above $300, out of that, 80% or so buy less than $450. So the >$450 market (FE $699) makes up 20% of 15%.

Now, profit wise, I don't know as I don't have the numbers. But it's assumed enthusiast class has a much higher margin.

 

[Bahanime]

The 970 is very popular, but even according to Steam (which hasn't tracked 300 series well or some models at all), it's still a small share, there's a ton of gamers on old GPUs, going back to VLIW and Fermi days.

 

[razor1]

From your own chart, enthusiast GPU (high prices) generally sell very little compared to the rest.

There was a stream recently from an AIB where they were talking about shipment and the guy says only 15% of people buy GPUs above $300, out of that, 80% or so buy less than $450. So the >$450 market (FE $699) makes up 20% of 15%.

Now, profit wise, I don't know as I don't have the numbers. But it's assumed enthusiast class has a much higher margin.

Not the enthusiast market (enthusiast market is the 980ti and TitanX, even that grew a little too in a quarter but then leveled back down though), the performance market, and which AIB, cause AIB numbers can be very different from each AIB partner, its easy to see this too, just look up on NewEgg popular sales, EVGA's 970's outsell pretty much all other cards combined from EVGA.

 

[N4CR]

I wonder who has more inventory on the shelves and in ware houses? AMD or Nvidia products? This could get nasty for Nvidia with all their old hardware gathering dust even when prices are reduced to nothing.

That's a very good point. I usually see walls of nvidia stuff from 610s to 980s or so sitting around at usual crappier pc shops. Lots of older cards too usually, weird lower midrange stragglers or RMA refurbs they can't get rid of. Usually less than 20-30% is AMD at most, mostly newer products, 370, 380 etc. Nvidia gets far more space for advertising at the stores too, so makes sense.

 

[N4CR]

If they can do furyx or close performance for 300 bucks, I'm in for two of them for a budget 4k setup without the furyx vram bullshit. That's 240 bucks less than a similar performing 1070sli because you need the fancy double sli led bridge, plus the $100-300 less on a free sync screen. If that's what happens, then that's most of a Vega setup I've just saved not going Nvidia for effectively the same experience...

That'll be a quick, cheap, easily resold setup AAA performance setup, until vega comes through with a 290x to hold me over for a month or two. I want 40"+ 4k before I touch No Mans Sky and Doom.

With Nvidia going for marketing clocks like Intel did, that to me shows we're in for another Athlon XP/64 vs P4 era again. GHz marketing will loose to benchmarks here though, if the marketing is right, especially so in GPUs. Most people have never bothered marketing/looking at frequency specs for the last 4 years , as they have barely changed.
You don't see them on the front of the box. Maybe memory related but that's it. because 1GHz or 2GHz doesn't sound fast these days next to AMD or Intel CPUs. Even Joe bloggs can see that on the invoice for their prebuild.

 

[harmattan]

I highly doubt we're looking at an Athlon vs Pentium situation again. Pascal neither runs hot, nor is it inefficient, and AMD is likely not delivery any save-the-world miracles in this regard with Polaris. What we are likely looking at is another 3870 vs 8800 GTX where efficiency scaling was about the same between chips, but AMD went for a mid range win.

 

[Pieter3dnow]

2 different cards in 2 different brackets. I'm sure there was something going on with AMD that made Nvidia jump a little.

Turns out that AMD is just not releasing a card in the same price bracket nor performance bracket as the Nvidia flagship. The clocks on Nvidia founder edition cards are just a stunt they don't tell the whole story ....

 

[Quix]

If the 480x is similar to a 390x but lower power then $299 would certainly be reaching. If it can come in just under the GTX 1070 peformance wise then the price makes sense. AMD has gotten really greedy recently so I wouldn't be surprised if their new cards are priced just as badly as Nvidia's.

 

[Deleted member 93354]

If they can do furyx or close performance for 300 bucks, I'm in for two of them for a budget 4k setup without the furyx vram bullshit. That's 240 bucks less than a similar performing 1070sli because you need the fancy double sli led bridge, plus the $100-300 less on a free sync screen. If that's what happens, then that's most of a Vega setup I've just saved not going Nvidia for effectively the same experience...

.

Except you forget AMD's Crossfire setup is usually pretty damn poorly supported in drivers minus a couple games....

 

[Creig]

If the 480x is similar to a 390x but lower power then $299 would certainly be reaching. If it can come in just under the GTX 1070 peformance wise then the price makes sense. AMD has gotten really greedy recently so I wouldn't be surprised if their new cards are priced just as badly as Nvidia's.

At least they haven't stooped to coming out with a Flounder Edition card yet.