AMD Retreating from Enthusiast Graphics Segment with RDNA4?

[btarunr]

AMD is rumored to be withdrawing from the enthusiast graphics segment with its next RDNA4 graphics architecture. This means there won't be a successor to its "Navi 31" silicon that competes at the high-end with NVIDIA; but rather one that competes in the performance segment and below. It's possible AMD isn't able to justify the cost of developing high-end GPUs to push enough volumes over the product lifecycle. The company's "Navi 21" GPU benefited from the crypto-currency mining swell, but just like with NVIDIA, the company isn't able to push enough GPUs at the high-end.

With RDNA4, the company will focus on specific segments of the market that sell the most, which would be the x700-series and below. This generation will be essentially similar to the RX 5000 series powered by RDNA1, which did enough to stir things up in NVIDIA's lineup, and trigger the introduction of the RTX 20 SUPER series. The next generation could see RDNA4 square off against NVIDIA's next-generation, and hopefully, Intel's Arc "Battlemage" family.



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[damric]

Great. Stuff gonna get even more expensive...

 

[darakian]

Another read of this is that the high end radeon will be built from multiple smaller dies.

 

[AsRock]

Great. Stuff gonna get even more expensive...

It's what they should do as they do not sell enough, so make lower end 3-400$ and doing so they be able to get more out of each wafer.

And yes with nVidia favoring AI card which they make a tone more money on the prices seem like they are going go up as they will not be relaying on PC's. Which i bet AMD will try too.

Been a while since i looked they only have some thing like 10% market share these days.

 

[damric]

Another read of this is that the high end radeon will be built from multiple smaller dies.

I like that idea if it is feasible.

 

[Minus Infinity]

I like that idea if it is feasible.

Even if true that doesn't appear to be happening until RDNA5, so 3 years at least and I wouldn't bet on there ever being a RDNA5. AMD will struggle next year against Intel's Battlemage IMO and drop to third in a few years. They won't even bother trying to compete other than with APU's.

 

[Solaris17]

Even if true that doesn't appear to be happening until RDNA5, so 3 years at least and I wouldn't bet on there ever being a RDNA5. AMD will struggle next year against Intel's Battlemage IMO and drop to third in a few years. They won't even bother trying to compete other than with APU's.

I can see some of this. I dont think they will give up or even drop to third as far as market share, but unless they want to take or make a big price cut I think they will lose to Intel in the low end atleast and the midrange if not trading blows.

Nvidia will price themselves out of both tiers and hold the high end. Thats my hot take.

 

[VIPERSRT]

To keep competition a live I bought only AMD CPUs and AMD Radeion GPUs. without that we will still at 4cores and 8 threads CPUs for ever and you will not see any cheap GPU in the market

 

[Minus Infinity]

I can see some of this. I dont think they will give up or even drop to third as far as market share, but unless they want to take or make a big price cut I think they will lose to Intel in the low end atleast and the midrange if not trading blows.

Nvidia will price themselves out of both tiers and hold the high end. Thats my hot take.

Well Nivida feels they can do what they want. PC gpu's are a side-show now. They don't even need to release products. AMD insiders AMD doesn't even want to be number 1 even if possible. AMD has actually lost share to Intel despite it's woeful release of Alchemist, but they appear to have steadied the ship. If they can deliver on promises about Battlemage's performance targets and price is right I think they will eat a lot of AMD share. AMD will do well with APU's but Meteor Lake's iGPU should be decent and push it past Phoenix. Not sure about Arrow Lake's iGPU vs Sarlak though.

If AMD is going to have 7900's as their flagship against Nvidia's 5000 series and only offer 8600 or lower class RDNA4 they are in for a world of pain unless they can deliver huge upgrades over 7600 for similar money. Not bothering with a 7700/7800 replacement is very depressing if true unless RDNA5 is not a long time after RDNA4.

 

[Space Lynx]

Rumors that don't deserve my time, didn't read more than 3 words of the article.

It doesn't even matter if true, life goes on mates.

 

[ViperXTR]

Aside from 5700XT, also reminded me of the HD 3870 and HD 3850

 

[HisDivineOrder]

So AMD waits a year-ish to release their midrange product line only to, according to the rumors, create an entire generation of just midrange product line to come out next year to replace it?

 

[AusWolf]

This move worked with RDNA 1, I don't see why it couldn't work now.

 

[yannus1]

Even if true that doesn't appear to be happening until RDNA5, so 3 years at least and I wouldn't bet on there ever being a RDNA5. AMD will struggle next year against Intel's Battlemage IMO and drop to third in a few years. They won't even bother trying to compete other than with APU's.

I don't believe the rumour as it would be suicidal. APUs are their biggest sale as they are in Playstations and Xbox. Also, Gpus are calculating units that are necessary for super computers. Why would they sacrifice their main markets ? Also, if they lose the R&D for GPUs, then they lose their APUs as well. Intel is improving their GPU technology and they're going to integrate it in APUs as well. This type of rumour could aim at destabilizing AMD.

 

[fancucker]

I would rather have Intel and Nvidia duke it out. Sell the graphics division, AMD.

 

[tajoh111]

This is the most pragmatic move at the moment for AMD.

AMD has spread its resources too thin and AI is a more profitable market with higher growth. Nvidia data center revenue will probably be something like 7 billion dollars next quarter which is three times the size of the discrete graphic market at the moment. In a normal quarter without mining being a factor, the discrete gaming market is worth about 2-3 billion dollars.

With AI and datacenter being atleast twice the value as the gaming market with better margins, it is just the smarter move.

The discrete graphics card is toxic at the moment. Gamers want prices to stay the same even if costs are going up.

With probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 million dollars being generated in revenue from discrete cards, it's not enough to pay for R and D for AMD. AMD overestimated their brand and somehow thought they could keep similar marketshare with the same prices as Nvidia. This failed spectacularly and with 15% marketshare, it's a poor division. Consoles are the only thing making AMD money in the gaming segment and even here, it is a low margin product that is only profitable due to no R and D to recoup and the volume. AMD needs a good mainstream card that is also a good laptop GPU since sales of laptops are generally more stable than desktops. High end is too much of a gamble.

 

[ARF]

This move worked with RDNA 1, I don't see why it couldn't work now.

I don't think "it worked". How many people do you know (or think) have that mid-range RX 5700 XT?

I would rather have Intel and Nvidia duke it out. Sell the graphics division, AMD.

I think it would be much better if AMD sells the whole of it altogether. The agony must come to an end some day.

 

[Chaitanya]

It's what they should do as they do not sell enough, so make lower end 3-400$ and doing so they be able to get more out of each wafer.

And yes with nVidia favoring AI card which they make a tone more money on the prices seem like they are going go up as they will not be relaying on PC's. Which i bet AMD will try too.

Been a while since i looked they only have some thing like 10% market share these days.

Also with many corporations now targetting consumer GPUs as they have same machine learning hardware and high end enterprise stuff and its significantly cheaper than enterprise hardware wont be surprised to find high end GPUs being bled dry from supply chains in future. So for AMD and nVidia is mining days have returned.

This is the most pragmatic move at the moment for AMD.

AMD has spread its resources too thin and AI is a more profitable market with higher growth. Nvidia data center revenue will probably be something like 7 billion dollars next quarter which is three times the size of the discrete graphic market at the moment. In a normal quarter without mining being a factor, the discrete gaming market is worth about 2-3 billion dollars.

With AI and datacenter being atleast twice the value as the gaming market with better margins, it is just the smarter move.

The discrete graphics card is toxic at the moment. Gamers want prices to stay the same even if costs are going up.

With probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 million dollars being generated in revenue from discrete cards, it's not enough to pay for R and D for AMD. AMD overestimated their brand and somehow thought they could keep similar marketshare with the same prices as Nvidia. This failed spectacularly and with 15% marketshare, it's a poor division. Consoles are the only thing making AMD money in the gaming segment and even here, it is a low margin product that is only profitable due to no R and D to recoup and the volume. AMD needs a good mainstream card that is also a good laptop GPU since sales of laptops are generally more stable than desktops. High end is too much of a gamble.

didnt some company get a loan by putting their machine learning hardware as collateral so even financial instituions are happy to provide money against that harware.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

There might not be top tier chip, but there may be top tier SKU with multiple lower tier chips connected by Infinity Fabric.

 

[trsttte]

Another read of this is that the high end radeon will be built from multiple smaller dies.

Was the recipe for Ryzen and Epyc and has worked wonders. It was already expected for navi 31 to be divided up but it ended up only being secondary bits, maybe they were able to divide the main GCD as well now

AMD will struggle next year against Intel's Battlemage IMO and drop to third in a few years

That's a BIG statement, intel is far from having any kind of foothold on dedicated graphics and they really blundered their entry to the market, they'll have a long road ahead until they're a serious contender. The only shorcut intel could and will probably take is to use anti competitive deals to push their ships into more laptops where AMD has consistently had problems even selling their CPU's while having a much better product no less, but that is also turning with Intel cpus not delivering the goods generation after generation.

I would rather have Intel and Nvidia duke it out. Sell the graphics division, AMD.

Lol, that's stupid. They gain millions with consoles and with datacenters from the gpu division, that makes 0 sense.

 

[ARF]

Mindfactory actually reports that the top high-end GPUs are the bestsellers.
Which just stands as a proof how bad decision this is again for AMD.

Bestsellers: 1. XFX Radeon RX 6950 XT Speedster MERC BLACK 2. MSI Geforce RTX 4070 GAMING X TRIO 3. MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti GAMING X TRIO

https://twitter.com/x/status/1657362688148643842

AMD Radeon Maintains Ten Week Long GPU Sales Lead Over NVIDIA GeForce In Germany

Gamers in Germany are purchasing more AMD Radeon graphics cards than NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs based on stats from retailer Mindfactory.

wccftech.com

 

[Ruru]

Reminds me of Polaris.

Aside from 5700XT, also reminded me of the HD 3870 and HD 3850

38x0 wasn't that far from 8800 GT(S) and they had 3870X2 as the flagship. Though multi-GPU is dead and buried so no X2 this time.

 

[nguyen]

Current situation is pretty dire for Radeon, I can see stores in my country no longer re-stocking Radeon, popular retailers in Singapore have more Quadro models than they have Radeon GPUs.

I guess the market for high-ends Radeon is so niche that retailers in Asia don't bother restocking Radeon at all.

 

[beedoo]

Great! No need for me to look at AMD cards anymore. No need to think or compare; just buy Nvidia I guess.

 

[DemonicRyzen666]

Though multi-GPU is dead and buried so no X2 this time.

No, it isn't. It's about the same it was when DX11 first got started up. It's 2.2% mGPU games total currently. The total number of DX12 games is around only 10% of what the total for DX11 games that are out. Also half of those games in DX12 support some type of raytracing, where as all games in DX11 supported tessellation.