From ATI to AMD back to ATI? A Journey in Futility @ [H]

Samsung buying ATI IP and going after Nvidia? That would be some storm.
I was thinking more of Samsung manufacturing custom ARM GPU tech, but Samsung as an alternate buyer for RTG would really be something, wouldn't it?
 
I get the feeling from these articles you guys really are butt hurt over AMD. But at the same time, I'm going to be full sad panda if this is remotely true, cause I just bought into Freesync in a big way.
 
I get the feeling from these articles you guys really are butt hurt over AMD. But at the same time, I'm going to be full sad panda if this is remotely true, cause I just bought into Freesync in a big way.

There are far too many fine details they couldn't possibly know or even think to speculate for this all to just be "butt-hurt".
 
I'm an AMD fan. Lived through the golden ATi years and had a great time. I loved the AMD CPU's before Intel bested them. AMD seems to be one step behind lately. It's sad to see them falling like they are.

I doubt they are going to be much of a threat with anything if they are trying to deal with Intel again. :/
 
There are far too many fine details they couldn't possibly know or even think to speculate for this all to just be "butt-hurt".

Glad you finally see the light and are on the same page now, far from your 'the stock price is up AMD is on the rebound!' tirade from yesterday :)
 
I'm an AMD fan. Lived through the golden ATi years and had a great time. I loved the AMD CPU's before Intel bested them. AMD seems to be one step behind lately. It's sad to see them falling like they are.

I doubt they are going to be much of a threat with anything if they are trying to deal with Intel again. :/


I still hold out hope for Zen. Latest rumors were the clocks were better than expected, and it might actually go toe to toe with Skylake, instead of being relegated to compete with Maxwell like it previously was rumored.
 
I get the feeling from these articles you guys really are butt hurt over AMD. But at the same time, I'm going to be full sad panda if this is remotely true, cause I just bought into Freesync in a big way.
Sure, throwing away my credibility is how I "get back" at companies. You guys that say that kind of shit make me laugh. This happening to AMD only makes it worse for gamers and consumers....you know, the guys that read HardOCP and keep us in business?
 
For 1, I'd think this is possible because it is simply a graphics company going from one Chip maker to another. I think where you've have to worry about monopoly, is if AMD tried to sell its chip division to Intel, or its GPU division to NVidia. I see no reason why they'd block RTG being sold off to Intel - really its no different than AMD having them.
I doubt it would be that easy. Intel is still the dominant player in the Integrated Graphics world and the EU tends to take a much harsher look at Anti-trust things than the USA. I can see Intel possibly having a partnership with RTG but not buying them.
 
Damn Raja was THAT close to signing with Intel. AMD please sell ATI to Intel for the sake of everyone!!!
 
What? So people are buying up AMD stock right now because they want to see RTG go to Intel? That makes absolutely no sense at all. You been drinking? ...up 5.75% now.

No, they are buying stocks ahead of Computex, this is nothing new as stocks tends to go up before product announcement.
 
Great story Kyle, my take on this is that RTG simply feels like they cannot compete with nVidia with their current resources so they are redirecting themselves towards scenarios where they aren't going to have to compete head-to-head with nVidia on flagship performance anymore and instead focus on design wins where top end performance isn't the #1 priority but where their existing positioning acts as a barrier to entry for competition. This includes:
  • Consoles: They already have all the modern generation consoles locked up (as well as the rumored mid-cycle refreshes) and it seems like RTG won this deal at a good time (when fully custom hardware was on the way out and having a common hardware platform became a trend). It just isn't worth it to these console makers to have to switch up their hardware platforms on the mid cycle refreshes to GPUs from another vendor with different characteristics so RTG is safe.
  • Apple: Apple (for what reason I don't know) seems to be heavily favoring AMD GPUs lately. They used to pivot back-and-forth between nVidia and AMD between different refresh cycles but all rumors now (your article was not the first to hint at this) say that Apple is starting to favor RTG either exclusively or at least for the vast majority of parts. I don't know if this is because Apple wants more heavily custom stuff that nVidia wouldn't deliver or if nVidia wanted to stop having to support OSX or some other reason I can't see but that does seem to be the way things are going. Apple likes to have multiple suppliers that they can play against each other (they are the only company I know of that has ever dual-sourced a CPU at two fabs before on two very different processes) but given their stake in Imagination maybe there is something we aren't seeing yet that will complete the picture.
  • Intel: Your story about the Intel deal makes perfect sense. It's really telling how hard nVidia is to strike a deal with on custom stuff like this (not to mention the blind hatred between Intel and nVidia due to a number of factors but most notably their direct competition for ultra-high margin HPC accelerators) that Intel thought the easiest path forward was to try and strike a deal with an AMD subsidiary rather than an independent company with superior resources/tech. Anyway if RTG ends up inking this deal then it will be nearly impossible to dislodge them and I don't think nVidia will really try anyway.
This is really great reporting and it fit together several pieces of news that by themselves didn't make a whole lot of sense but when stitched together now are starting to paint a coherent picture. This is the kind of article that [H]ardOCP only does every couple of years but based on history you are always exactly on target and I know that you wouldn't go out on a limb publishing something this incendiary unless you had enormous supporting evidence.

Those that think [H] is just making this up for page clicks need to apply the principle of parsimony here. Which seems more likely:
  • Kyle wrote this based on shaky evidence (or worse totally made this up) to drive a temporary spike in clicks while destroying the journalistic credibility of [H] possibly never to recover.
  • Kyle agonized over publishing this information because he knew that it would hamper their ability to work with AMD in the future but after being cut out of the Polaris launch because they didn't want anyone but friendly journalists (a practice we've seen AMD do before on the Phenom and R600 launches) and he felt like it was important to share the context.
Sure I think if AMD hadn't cut [H] out they might not have published such an incendiary piece (this does not make them sellouts or hypocrites--journalists have to balance the cost of releasing information and antagonizing their future reporting capability vs the probative value of that information and its something journalists in ALL fields have to contend with) but [H] is still going to pay a big cost for publishing this that simply isn't going to be equal to a temporary page click spike.

Moreover Kyle and [H]ardOCP have proven over the years that they have integrity and you can't just wave that away. I've been in the tech community a long time and Kyle is one of the top three or four journalists in the field whom I've come to absolute respect and trust because he ISN'T a fanboy of any specific vendor and his reporting has always been about serving the enthusiast community first even if it might make it harder for them in the future to get access. This is a seriously commendable attitude and one that needs to be encouraged.
 
3) This would be a good idea. Surprised that NVidia hasn't done this actually.

Oh, but they did with the original xbox and nvidia screwed microcrap so bad that they run to AMD and never looked back, ironic, given the microcrap invented the concept of evil.

Same for apple, they have avoided nvidia as much as they can.

If AMD dies and nobody pick up the slot (looking at you PowerVR), we will be paying up the nose for a vid card.
 
Well, entry level cards will start at 500 under nvidia regime.

We are really fucked.
I don't buy this argument for a second. The graphics market is very segmented and there are very specific price tiers that NVidia needs to accomodate. If they raise the price of cards that currently go for $100-200 into the $500 range they will lose sales, monopoly or not. They might slow their development cycle without a significant competitor but I wouldn't actually expect them to make major adjustments to the pricing tiers (since that would create a beachhead for new competitors).
 
Intel cares about turning Si into cash, this is why they finally gave up on Atom, they realized it was never going to be a cash cow. GPUs have not really been good at that, at least compared to CPUs and other ICs. Their desktop CPU numbers are down but they still rake in the cash from server CPUs. Everyone loves to talk about ARM in servers but so far they keep buying Intel for their datacenters. AMD doesn't even get mentioned at Intel these days.

Intel could use AMD's GPU tech, but only if they managed to buy them for cheap and not screw up the merge. We may not enjoy it as there is a good chance they'd kill consumer cards (low ROI) and just use the tech for integrated GFX and server GPU compute cards.

I'd love to see AMD have a decent GPU and CPU agian, but I just don't see it happening without some huge change. Even then it would take another 3-4 years to fix and get new products out.
 
I don't buy this argument for a second. The graphics market is very segmented and there are very specific price tiers that NVidia needs to accomodate. If they raise the price of cards that currently go for $100-200 into the $500 range they will lose sales, monopoly or not. They might slow their development cycle without a significant competitor but I wouldn't actually expect them to make major adjustments to the pricing tiers (since that would create a beachhead for new competitors).

Exactly. There will always be cards for every budget.
 
Look I love the [H], I've got their logo as my wallpaper often, I link to their reviews on other sites and know for a fact they're not biased and remember when they hammered Nvidia when Fermi came out going so far as to recommend not buying them!

That said, this does come off as butt hurt. AMD's products are lacking recently no doubt but this is the 2nd opinion piece this week shitting on AMD. Not to mention Front Page stories everytime a cook in the AMD cafeteria quits. Or a Front Page story and AMD death watch thread when they dropped their earnings forecast a while back but nothing when Intel did the exact same thing a few weeks prior.

Again, I'm not fanboying here which I know it looks like especially with my sig but these constant negative opinion pieces are making [H] look petty.

This is still the best tech site and forum online and it's Kyle's honesty and "FU if you don't like it" attitude that's made it that way. Honestly I think if he just came out and said yeah, AMD has pissed him off and every week from here on out is going to post a video of his dog taking a dump on an AMD product, that would go over better. It's obvious he's pissed and denying it and acting like this is simply objective journalism is what people could take issue with.
 
Exactly. There will always be cards for every budget.

Yeah, they always fail to realize Nvidia will still have to compete with itself, and will still need to be bringing money in from new sales. You do that by making new products people want to buy at prices people want to buy them at. This mythical 'entry level GPU for $500' beast would not do that, and is nothing but fanboi fear mongering.
 
OMG SOO MUCH BIAS!!!!!! LOLOL

Anyway 1 thing I will say. I thought it was a mistake when they combined the CPU and GPU department way back when AMD bought ATI.

But...yea makes ya wonder why there have hardly been any leaks.....huh
 
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So you wrote an entire article on how a 232mm² GPU running at the clock speeds to match the power of a 314mm² GPU, would run hotter, and how a 232mm² GPU would be cheaper than a 314mm² GPU? Who are your sources? They should be given an award for being masters of the obvious.
 
As someone who works in tech PR, I'm surprised and disappointed that they blacklisted you guys. I think you've been more than fair to AMD -- hell, I remember Nvidia fan boys getting fired up calling you bias back when the 4870/4850 line was crushing it. Maybe I missed some scathing editorial (this one will definitely put a nail in the coffen), but I'd defend a site like HardOCP for its fairness to my clients any day.
 
That said, this does come off as butt hurt. AMD's products are lacking recently no doubt but this is the 2nd opinion piece this week shitting on AMD. Not to mention Front Page stories everytime a cook in the AMD cafeteria quits. Or a Front Page story and AMD death watch thread when they dropped their earnings forecast a while back but nothing when Intel did the exact same thing a few weeks prior.
Well they did shit all over nvidia on the front page for the whole 1080 launch debacle and as far as the intel earnings forecast drop it's a matter degrees. If intel makes less money than they expect then, well, they make a little less money, but they still make money. If AMD misses a forecast then that means they LOSE more money than they expected, and their "time to die" clock moves up a few months.
 
That was hardly a tirade and you are still an asshole.

There there.

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This is terrible. If RTG goes to Intel, Nvidia won't have any competition. It'll be a one horse race.

Not necessarily because if RTG sets up a cross licensing deal with generous funding from Intel, it would put nvidia in a really difficult position. If RTG tech is integrated into new Intel CPUs that would be huge and devastating for nvidia as the IGP performance would probably start chipping away at the midrange segment.

Additionally, Intel has publicly stated that they are redoubling their efforts to focus on pc growth areas and specifically mentioned pc gaming so this deal makes perfect sense. If Intel one day starts building RTG licensed AIB that reach high end performance using their foundries, well nvidia could see significant revenue decline.

Seems to me this isn't about egos as much as it is a way for Koduri to protect what's left of the GPU engineering talent by divorcing them from AMD's core CPU business and failed mid tier management. At least that way they have a chance to become competitive again on a much wider landscape and given the resources they need or someone else like Intel utilizes their IP. The fact that AMD GPUs have been competitive up until now with a fraction of NVIDIA's budget says it all.

As others have said, this deal if remotely true, could signal a significant shift in the way AMD/RTG does business in general. Seems they are content with licensing out their core IP much the same way ARM does. That may net them less money long term and keep them small much like ARM but at least their books may finally shift from being in the red constantly to black. If you examine what they've done with consoles, Apple, the Chinese deal and now Intel, it all comes together. I don't see this necessarily as a Koduri/Su clash but rather them being on the same page. It may have taken a few internal fights to get there but that wouldn't be out of the ordinary for any business or profession.
 
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It has taken more than a decade for [H]ardOCP to build up the credibility it has and credibility in journalism is one of those things that is incredibly hard to build up but extremely easy to flush down the toilet and when that happens it is often unintentional (excitement about wanting to "get the big story" to your readers can sometimes cloud even the most stalwart journalist into making a mistake). You can argue that maybe Kyle did that here (I would strongly disagree with you but you could make that argument) but anyone who thinks that he would intentionally flush his credibility that he built up over the last decade and a half is in the realm of conspiracy theory levels of stupidity. There is simply no good reason for him to do that and plenty of very very good reasons for him not to.
 
Ouch - that sucks if it really turns out that way. Maybe the first really "writing on the wall" was when they showed off that special FuryX in crossfire setup using an Intel processor? Something like that (I don't believe that was to ever hit the market too?). Sad days indeed. I liked 3DFX back in the day too.

If Intel does get RTG then I hope they keep making dedicated GPU's to compete against NV - if not... then I hope somebody else does. ugh.

Have to wait a long while I think until Zen comes out before making a choice :( hopefully I'll still have one.
 
How is this for speculation? Amd sells the RTG to intel and then "buys" nvidia (like Kmart after bankruptcy bought Sears.) All of a sudden Amd has money for R&D and nvidia has the x86 license. Amd exists in name only per the agreement with Intel and nvidia management takes over.
 
By going back to ATi, its saves them, they don't need to worry about the AMD bonds that are about to mature. The only reason AMD is in the situation they are in right now is because of their CPU division. I don't see this being bad at all, if anything it gives the RTG the ability to continue on even if AMD fails.

Also Intel buying RTG, most likely won't happen, they have no need for the division, what they would like is the license, which they have to replace nV's current license actually i don't even think they use nV's license anyways for really pushing graphics technology.

The part of Raja thinking of going to Intel, I'm pretty sure that is true as I have heard about this before, I was genuinely surprised to hear AMD made him the head of the RTG, but I was thinking it was good move on their part, it could have been politics.
 
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Not satisfied having burned the AMD bridge, Kyle drops a nuke on the ashes. The internet feedback on this article is going to be interesting.....

As far as AMD's future, one only need watch their stock performance for the remainder of the year.
 
As someone who works in tech PR, I'm surprised and disappointed that they blacklisted you guys. I think you've been more than fair to AMD -- hell, I remember Nvidia fan boys getting fired up calling you bias back when the 4870/4850 line was crushing it. Maybe I missed some scathing editorial (this one will definitely put a nail in the coffen), but I'd defend a site like HardOCP for its fairness to my clients any day.

I don't think they were blacklisted--I'm sure that if next week AMD released a product that didn't need to be heavily spun in order to be looked upon favorably then they would absolutely source it to [H] and give them access. This isn't personal--AMD needs outlets like [H]ardOCP more than [H]ardOCP needs AMD (since they can always buy hardware should they need to so the worst case is that their reviews are published a few days later than everyone else) because AMD needs to reach the very community that reads sites like this in the first place in order to get sales. The fact that they are going for friendly journalists is a bad sign because it means that they don't feel confident that their product can stand up to impartial analysis and AMD has a history of doing this when their product launches are really troubled (Tunis as Kyle mentioned as well as Tahoe on the Phenom side).
 
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