Did AMD fail to take marketshare with their latest gpus?

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tybert7

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I ask because I remember the 290 price point being so low precisely to entice people away from nvidia. I don't have total market data, but look at this sales ranking page from amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/284822/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_e_1_4_last


And it still looks like nvidia cards are totally dominating the sales charts. More people seem to gravitate towards the 780 than the 290s. Part of the slower uptake might be due to the mining glut and shift from sales to ebay/craigslist, but did they actually gain ground or lose it?


You can get a custom cooled 290 card for below 400 dollars, and the 780 still outsells it for 100+ more... Is there anything they can do to close the gap? Or did they gain ground and we just can't see it?
 
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I believe AMD still has a lingering brand recognition and marketing problem. People tend to buy brands they're familiar with, and NVIDIA has held an upper hand in the market for so long that they've essentially established a lock on a large number of their customers.

I also believe it would serve AMD well to offer premium coolers across the 280/290 range. I doubt that's anywhere near enough to help turn things around for them, but it could be a wise move now that GPU mining has died down somewhat.
 
AMD could release a card that matches the 780 Ti for $3.50 and Nvidia would still have more marketshare.
 
As already said, they have an image problem. Even with the 290 launch there was the unavoidable stock cooler for the first two months, and then they had issues with retail cards not matching the performance of review samples.

There was also the problem with miners buying all stock and jacking the prices up for 6 months after release. Thus made no friends for them in the gaming community.
 
tybert7 said:
I ask because I remember the 290 price point being so low precisely to entice people away from nvidia. I don't have total market data, but look at this sales ranking page from amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/284822/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_e_1_4_last


And it still looks like nvidia cards are totally dominating the sales charts. More people seem to gravitate towards the 780 than the 290s. Part of the slower uptake might be due to the mining glut and shift from sales to ebay/craigslist, but did they actually gain ground or lose it?


You can get a custom cooled 290 card for below 400 dollars, and the 780 still outsells it for 100+ more... Is there anything they can do to close the gap? Or did they gain ground and we just can't see it?
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The truth is the only advantage was price. Factor in heat and poor drivers, most people pony up for nvidia if they can afford to.
 
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Running out of gpus to sell didn't help, also AMD needs more effective Marketing both at the games and professional levels.

That's about it, the rest is pretty good actually.
 
I thoroughly enjoyed my R9 290X sli. I still have a good taste in my mouth from socket 462 days. Ive never stopped holding a candle for Amd/Ati products.
 
The amazon link is pretty useless. But if you look at steam stats it appears that the OP is correct they didn't take gaming market share.

For me, I didn't buy any since the 7950. Main reasons were first and foremost the GPUs were way over priced due to miners. Second drivers are still a weak point for AMD. Third but of least concern was heat.

As to other comments, what is the point in marketing if you have no GPUs to sell? The bigger problem is AMD was not able to meet demand when their product was hot. We have no idea what will happen with the mining economy but if it drops then expect thousands of GPUs to pour out onto the market. It doesn't matter to AMD if they sell to gamers or miners as long as they sell. They are still taking market share, its just not gaming market share. And honestly both NVidia and AMD would probably much rather be in those markets where profit margins can be higher.
 
They didn't take gaming marketshare because the miners bought all the cards... good lord. My sense is that AMD is loving this. I wouldn't be surprised if the next wave of AMD GPUs have blower coolers that work.
I just switched from Nvidia to AMD and let me tell you something, AMD drivers are fine, that's a fallacy. I played musical GPUs with the 2 780s and the 1 290x I have switching them back and forth since I needed to reflash the GeForce cards to get them ready for sale today, didn't even have a single problem. Catalyst Control Center said "this GPU isn't supported" and that was it. After I put my 290x back in when everything was finished, I figured the machine would explode. It's fine.
 
AMD driver hatred is such bullshit now days. Absolute bullshit. I've been using both (amd and nvidia) for so long now and they both provide the exact same thing. Sure each will have their own quirks from time to time, but to say one is so vastly superior is bullshit.

It's a decade old band wagon that Nvidia fan boys won't let die.
 
I don't know what rock some folks are living under. AMD sold so many dammed cards to miners in the last few years it's not even funny.

market share indeed
 
Yakk said:
Running out of gpus to sell didn't help, also AMD needs more effective Marketing both at the games and professional levels.

That's about it, the rest is pretty good actually.
Click to expand...

BINGO!!!
 
King Icewind said:
It's a decade old band wagon that Nvidia fan boys won't let die.
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Yeah not really. I had so many issues with my 6850, gaming wise it did fine, I actually never had issues with games and drivers. BUT there were always other odd issues like a secondary monitor not working when coming out sleep (and this behavior changing with different drivers) or newest set of drivers causing bsod and rolling back fixed it. When you have constant issues like that and then switch to nvidia and its smooth sailing it no long becomes this old band wagon that you speak of. Linux support being subpar as well.
 
jmilcher said:
The truth is the only advantage was price. Factor in heat and poor drivers, most people pony up for nvidia if they can afford to.
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This. Additionally I would mention the lack of software features such as shadow play, txaa, physx, etc (which aren't all available in every game but rock when they are) and that evga doesn't make amd cards (their service alone is worth a premium to many).

As for market share nvidia outsells in discrete gpu cards a 2 to 1 ratio over amd. You can also find interesting stats like the late release 780 ti having more share in the steam survey than the r9 290 and 290x combined despite being more expensive and launching later. That alone should show that people are going nvidia despite price, and at that point you have to look at what amd is doing wrong. Most gamers I talk to regard amd as the budget/cheap option and never consider them other than price, which makes a pretty clear picture.
 
King Icewind said:
AMD driver hatred is such bullshit now days. Absolute bullshit. I've been using both (amd and nvidia) for so long now and they both provide the exact same thing. Sure each will have their own quirks from time to time, but to say one is so vastly superior is bullshit.

It's a decade old band wagon that Nvidia fan boys won't let die.
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So very untrue. The market stats for discrete GPU's also bears out amd driver woes. Nvidia has less issues on the whole that are severe, while amd tends to have many and they tend to be more severe in general. Now there are obviously exceptions in small numbers over the years like Nvidia's botched fan setting on one specific version, but overall they're really solid and have minor annoyances at worst while amd drivers are bug ridden and take a lot of hassle to fix the issues that often arise. Add in missing features that Nvidia has like gf experience for profiles, shadow play, physx, txaa, etc and you get the idea...

My last amd card was a 7970 which I got rid of in short order due to drivers and a noisy cooler plus high pricing, right as the cheaper and faster gtx 680 was incoming. I had owned prior amd cards over the last 15 years back even when they were ati, but they've never been anything but a headache in actuality.

jojo69 said:
I don't know what rock some folks are living under. AMD sold so many dammed cards to miners in the last few years it's not even funny.

market share indeed
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They ran out of cards, this has been touched on in news articles. They simply had a low supply so selling out didn't matter much profitability wise or share wise.
 
they ran out of cards because people, quite literally, filled warehouses with, and pointed many many tons of HVAC at them
 
King Icewind said:
AMD driver hatred is such bullshit now days. Absolute bullshit. I've been using both (amd and nvidia) for so long now and they both provide the exact same thing. Sure each will have their own quirks from time to time, but to say one is so vastly superior is bullshit.

It's a decade old band wagon that Nvidia fan boys won't let die.
Click to expand...

I currently use both and would disagree about it being a decade old problem. I had HDMI audio issues with a 7950 JUST before I purchased a 770 to replace it. I still have the 7950. My experience has been pretty much if all you do is game on a single monitor on windows then even intels graphics drivers are fine. But as things get more complicated, more monitors, linux, different configurations such as HTPCs that power desktops and TVs at different times and so on that is where AMD drivers have disappointed me and caused problems not worth dealing with.

Do both makers have problems in their drivers? Yes of course. But it has been my experience operated 5+ computers in my house for nearly a decade and being the primary tech support for a small group at work and a large immediate family that NVidia is a little more trouble free.

If you told me the latest drivers are great I couldn't argue with you because I don't own a 2XX AMD gpu, but saying its a decade old obsolete myth, I can't agree with that.
 
jojo69 said:
they ran out of cards because people, quite literally, filled warehouses with, and pointed many many tons of HVAC at them
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Uh, yes, and they had too few of them in the first place, so their market share didn't budge. A handful of big miners bought out their meager supply, this is not anything to brag about for having too few cards for a demand spike. Google is your friend here... But the bottom line is amd dropped the ball having far too few cards in the market stream. Nvidia for example had people buying 6 packs of the 750ti but they didn't run into any supply constraints, for mining.
 
jojo69 said:
they ran out of cards because people, quite literally, filled warehouses with, and pointed many many tons of HVAC at them
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So what its still a sale? When they saw the demand they should have pulled out the stops and ramped up production or had a provision in place to be able to do that. Or they should have jacked the prices up to make a bunch of money so they could eventually reinvest that money into the company and give gamers something better down the line.
 
do we have actual hard data on production numbers?

just because cards never made it to gamers does not mean they were not manufactured and sold
 
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I tried to love AMD. I started out in the ATi camp, mostly due to their SFF partners. However, after trying again and again to put with CCC (and trying just about everything, even full OS reinstalls every couple of months), I fully gave a bit after the GTX580 came out. I still dabble here and there for AMD HTPC setups, but even that arena, a longtime AMD strength, is no longer lead by AMD.


I like AMD as a company, and I've liked their older ATi products even more, but after buying an AMD GPU equipped laptop (as a replacement for an early nVidia Optimus laptop), I didn't have the same bias for AMD as I used to. When it came time to replace that laptop, anything AMD equipped was off my list. When it came time to replace my HD5870 CF setup, anything AMD was off my list (CF compatibility woes meant I spent more time running one just HD5870 instead of CrossFire).

So, for the time being, I'll stick with NVidia. They haven't failed me, yet.
 
GoldenTiger said:
You can also find interesting stats like the late release 780 ti having more share in the steam survey than the r9 290 and 290x combined despite being more expensive and launching later.
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Actually, Steam claims more 780ti cards were sold than the entire R9 200 series. LOL

It also claims that 0.00% of 290 series cards were sold to steam gamers.


http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/directx/?sort=name

Sounds believable..........

Seriously, how long before this topic gets locked? LOL.
 
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GoldenTiger said:
Nvidia for example had people buying 6 packs of the 750ti but they didn't run into any supply constraints, for mining.
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Did you seriously just compare the 750 Ti's mining popularity with AMD's cards?
I just can't handle this thread right now.

This guy is trying to sell 1,500 various R9 GPU's
"AMD should have kept up with demand", that's the joke of the century right there.

We have people ON THIS FORUM running 100+ GPU mining rigs (or they were).
 
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TaintedSquirrel said:
Did you seriously just compare the 750 Ti's mining popularity with AMD's cards?
I just can't handle this thread right now.
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The thread is serving it's purpose. To troll AMD.

TaintedSquirrel said:
This guy is trying to sell 1,500 various R9 GPU's
"AMD should have kept up with demand", that's the joke of the century right there.

We have people ON THIS FORUM running 100+ GPU mining rigs (or they were).
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They should have just printed more like the government does when it needs more money. They just need to call their suppliers and let them know that next week they need 10X the allocated supply of everything. PCB's, capacitors, coils, mem modules, mosfets, packaging, etc..., etc..., etc... Come on, don't you know that it's just that simple? :D
 
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heflys20 said:
Actually, Steam claims more 780ti cards were sold than the entire R9 200 series. LOL

It also claims that 0.00% of 290 series cards were sold to steam gamers.


http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/directx/?sort=name

Sounds believable..........

Seriously, how long before this topic gets locked? LOL.
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It is probably lumping them into the category R9 200 series.

Relayer said:
The thread is serving it's purpose. To troll AMD.



They should have just printed more like the government does when it needs more money. They just need to call their suppliers and let them know that next week they need 10X the allocated supply of everything. PCB's, capacitors, coils, mem modules, mosfets, packaging, etc..., etc..., etc... Come on, don't you know that it's just that simple? :D
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As said there are other options, such as raising the price and yes raising the price would have been that simple. AMD could have just increased profit heavily and used that for any one of a number of uses. Such as paying down their debt, or securing more capacity, or simply holding on to it until supply stabilized then using it to advertise. Heck hire a couple more driver engineers. Instead it seems most of the profit went into the hands of scalpers who burned it up at strip clubs. Ultimately it is up to AMD to do the best thing long term to get themselves out of the mess they are in. And that is what they have largely failed to do for half a decade or more now leaving them in a constant state of financial stress.

In addition it has been a while now a very long while in which they have had to ramp up production. Everyone has to know that now days you need to work in flexibility in production to take advantage of good times. AMD didn't do that. The sad thing is they probably will gain market share if bitcoin crashes hard enough. Unfortunately for them it will probably also gut their sales when 10s of thousands of used mining cards come on to the market.
 
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Relayer said:
The thread is serving it's purpose. To troll AMD.
Click to expand...

One of these topics appear every month or so (if I recall). LOL.

It is probably lumping them into the category R9 200 series.
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Yes, according to Steam, seven cards (290, 290x, 280x, 280, 270, 295x and 270x) all sold less than the $700+ 780 TI to Steam users.
 
Some things to consider -

The report out of Taiwan were that AMD cut orders to suppliers (wafer orders from TSMC for example) prior to the release of the new R9 290/290x line.

Mining demand primarily affected the demand for the retail market for desktop cards in certain markets (predominantly NA). You need to consider there is a global retail market. There is also the OEM market. There is also the mobile (laptop market).

With the above in mind Amazon.com data is also somewhat limited. Keep in mind also EVGA's extremely strong brand presence in the US. I actually wonder if it might be beneficial for AMD to somehow partner with someone to create an EVGA equivalent for certain markets.

There is actual more concrete market data out as well regarding market share.

Regarding increasing supplies to meet demand there is another aspect to consider with this as well. We don't know what contractual obligations AMD has with other parties. Even if they had supplies it may not be so simple as diverting it to the markets with mining demand.

Regarding Nvidia and supply issues look back at GK110. GK110 was delayed for the consumer gaming market. It was available for the professional market (and prosumer market) earlier than it was for gamers as the GTX 780. Nvidia's reported revenue (or volume?) for Tesla parts I believe grew more than 100% compared to Fermi.
 
rudy said:
It is probably lumping them into the category R9 200 series.



As said there are other options, such as raising the price and yes raising the price would have been that simple. AMD could have just increased profit heavily and used that for any one of a number of uses. Such as paying down their debt, or securing more capacity, or simply holding on to it until supply stabilized then using it to advertise. Heck hire a couple more driver engineers. Instead it seems most of the profit went into the hands of scalpers who burned it up at strip clubs. Ultimately it is up to AMD to do the best thing long term to get themselves out of the mess they are in. And that is what they have largely failed to do for half a decade or more now leaving them in a constant state of financial stress.

In addition it has been a while now a very long while in which they have had to ramp up production. Everyone has to know that now days you need to work in flexibility in production to take advantage of good times. AMD didn't do that. The sad thing is they probably will gain market share if bitcoin crashes hard enough. Unfortunately for them it will probably also gut their sales when 10s of thousands of used mining cards come on to the market.
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I'm really sorry. I'm not trying to be rude, but you just don't have any idea what the feasibility of what you are suggesting is. Ask someone who deals with sourcing extremely large quantities of raw components from multiple suppliers, in multiple countries, having them shipped to a central location somewhere on the planet for assembly, boxing, distribution to several sub vendors that you have contracts with regarding pricing, quantities, etc... and on and on until it finally reaches consumer's hands all over the globe. You can't simply buy more or gouge on price, and suggesting that you can shows you don't understand the logistics nor the economics of the business (or any other business on a similar scale). The only one with that sort of flexibility is the retailer to the public because they don't have any signed agreements before hand on how many they'll buy and at what price. Everyone else in the supply chain does.
 
If the 780 ti really has sold more than all variants of the r9 290s series, that tells me some combination of the following two things are true.

- A certain chunk of the gaming population ignores pricing and buys whatever the fastest single gpu card happens to be. (usually held by nvidia, even that hot bloated, brute forced fermi card - they built an actualy "canyonero" gpu to get it to the top, just barely, but that was enough)

- Tribe and familiarity and brand loyalty. These effects go both ways, but if one gpu brand got a larger chunk of the gaming population early on, those effects likely persist.


I did a poll on another forum asking what kind of gpus people owned over the years, and there were surprisingly few switch hitters, most people had a large portion of their cards in one brands camp or another, nvidia or ati/amd were clearly dominant in peoples history. I think I'll create another one.
 
tybert7 said:
If the 780 ti really has sold more than all variants of the r9 290s series, that tells me some combination of the following two things are true.

- A certain chunk of the gaming population ignores pricing and buys whatever the fastest single gpu card happens to be. (usually held by nvidia, even that hot bloated, brute forced fermi card - they built an actualy "canyonero" gpu to get it to the top, just barely, but that was enough)

- Tribe and familiarity and brand loyalty. These effects go both ways, but if one gpu brand got a larger chunk of the gaming population early on, those effects likely persist.


I did a poll on another forum asking what kind of gpus people owned over the years, and there were surprisingly few switch hitters, most people had a large portion of their cards in one brands camp or another, nvidia or ati/amd were clearly dominant in peoples history. I think I'll create another one.
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Good post, for sure... also just to note the Steam survey lumps all R9 200 series cards together under the "R9 200 Series" instead of using the R9 290 entry for those cards.

All accounted for every Radeon R9 series card combined (including non-290 variants) show a 0.40% (four tenths of one percent) share in the Steam survey.

The GTX 780 Ti alone garnered 0.42% and that's a single card variant that is very expensive and was released late in this cycle.

The GTX 780 alone grabbed 0.82% on the survey.

And yeah definitely seems many people stay brand-loyal, I personally have not and have switched many times throughout the years but the nVidia cards have always worked better for me so I keep coming back to them. My card history has gone something like... Voodoo 3 3000 (PCI), Voodoo 5 5500 (AGP), Geforce 3 ti 200, Geforce 4 ti 4200, Geforce 8800GTX--->8800GT SLI, Radeon 4870---->4850 crossfire--->back to gtx 280 due to not working well, Radeon 5870---->back to GTX 480 then 470 SLI, Radeon 7970 ref at launch---->changed out for GTX 680 SLI, then finally went to 670 SLI for less and a GTX 780 single now.

As you can see I've given both brands a lot of tries, but the recurring problems keep forcing me back to nVidia which is a shame because AMD's pricing is very good on a raw hardware basis, all else aside.
 
GoldenTiger said:
This. Additionally I would mention the lack of software features such as shadow play, txaa, physx, etc (which aren't all available in every game but rock when they are) and that evga doesn't make amd cards (their service alone is worth a premium to many).
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You're listing proprietary gimmicks as "features"? LOL! The only thing that matters is standardized features, of which both Nvidia and AMD support.

I mean PhysX? REALLY? Cmon.
 
Getting back to the OP post it seems AMD is to busy wasting resources on Android, mobile and low power cpu's. They need to get back to their roots. Yes, I know mobile is the future, but sadly probably not for AMD. That market is already extremely crowded and low margin the way it is. Plus, and I hate to admit this but their drivers have been going down hill ever since the big lay offs and readjustments. Went from monthly release to whenever they feel like it the same way as Nvidia. They need to figure out who the fuck they are and get there quick before its too late.
 
pcjunkie said:
Getting back to the OP post it seems AMD is to busy wasting resources on Android, mobile and low power cpu's. They need to get back to their roots. .
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They need to attempt to compete with Intel (with its massive R&D) again, who flat out dominates them?

If the 780 ti really has sold more than all variants of the r9 290s series, that tells me some combination of the following two things are true.
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R9 200 series. Steam says the $700 780 TI outsold the whole R9 series in all their gaming markets. Seems people believe it. LOL.
 
heflys20 said:
They need to attempt to compete with Intel (with its massive R&D) again, who flat out dominates them?



R9 200 series. Steam says the $700 780 TI outsold the whole R9 series in all their gaming markets. Seems people believe it. LOL.
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:D Yeah, I remember a lot of people on here getting a 780 simply because they could not get a 290 or the price was so inflated it was not worth it.
 
heflys20 said:
They need to attempt to compete with Intel (with its massive R&D) again, who flat out dominates them?



R9 200 series. Steam says the $700 780 TI outsold the whole R9 series in all their gaming markets. Seems people believe it. LOL.
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I hate to break it to you but they have been dominated in pretty much every market they try...so what should they do in your expert opinion. :)

They were at least competitive until that Bulldozer bullshit...
 
heflys20 said:
R9 200 series. Steam says the $700 780 TI outsold the whole R9 series in all their gaming markets. Seems people believe it. LOL.
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I can't say that I'm completely surprised since it seems like the 200 Series was consistently out of stock everywhere, extremely high-priced and every time stock was replenished it was gone within an hour.

In other words, I don't think any games were ever played on those cards. (yet)
 
I hate to break it to you but they have been dominated in pretty much every market they try...so what should they do in your expert opinion. :)
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I'm asking you that. LOL. Since, in your "expert opinion" their current path is knuckle-headed. BTW, their GPU division has netted them some vague profit(mostly recently).

They were at least competitive until that Bulldozer bullshit..
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How so? Perhaps in performance (for a short time), but sales? There's also the first Phenom disaster.

I can't say that I'm completely surprised since it seems like the 200 Series was consistently out of stock everywhere, extremely high-priced and every time stock was replenished it was gone within an hour.
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That requires me to believe that almost (or about) 0.09% of Steam gamers bought each card in the R9 series, and that consumers were willing to pay substantially/equivalent for the 780 TI to beat those numbers.

Personally, I don't buy it.
 
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