Graphics Industry Leaders Mike Rayfield and David Wang Join AMD

[I No]

You just don't want to understand what I am describing.

All of this happened after AMD had very competitive products and still couldn't get market share , people chose Nvidia long before Pascal arrived. Your complaints are a direct result of that. AMD simply does not have a insensitive anymore to go all out on consumer graphics knowing that it would still not be enough and it would not pay off in the end (as prove to happen before).



The blame lies 100% on those who have happily paid 700$ for what was a mid tier GPU. If people can't say no to getting ripped off even where there is no completion then , without questions , they are at fault too.

Erm... who said anything only about Pascal? Here's the deal. AMD had better products (and yes they still do as you said Polaris) Hawaii comes to mind those things were actually better than Kepler (still are). If you can't sell something that's better than what the competition has what can be the problem then? Hint: You have the marketing campaign of an unnamed thrift shop (this would translate as bad PR). If AMD doesn't have the "incentive" to actually be at least considered on all segments they might just well sell the heck out and let somebody that can handle this thing better (A.E. The only things that are stopping Intel right now to make GPUs are the patents from both nVidia and AMD that keep them on lock - the would have the resources to do something out of that hot pile of mess that used to be ATI, or Samsung maybe.

As for paying $700 for a GPU. Yep, myself included, not because I wanted to it was because I had wait for the competition to come up with something after a whole damn year and to my shock and awe, it was the same thing that was on already out on the market. This isn't a choice per say, and certainly isn't nVidia's fault for putting out a product to fit my needs. Don't mean to burst your bubble but if AMD's choice is not to compete in a segment is doing far worse damage to their market share than not being able to outsell the competition. The only thing people that bought into Pascal's high end are at fault is not being able to choose after a certain price-point due to lack of competition. It's not your or mine and any one else's fault that AMD refuses to leave a segment alone - It's not like AMD's on welfare and we have to support it. The current state of the market is there because nVidia had the right sales pitch and AMD didn't (look at the 960 which was sub 380/x performance which the latter ending up outsold ...in large numbers oh and the 960 was a bit more expensive as well - This is what good marketing can bring). Let's face it back in Hawaii days you would've at least gave those cards a look now you have what again? Oh and Hawaii sold (key word as in they actually sold something). Just my $0.02 on the matter.

The trend will continue as long as they have dominance. If they price a high end GPU at $5999.99 for the consumer market it won't sell much but it will sell. Somebody out there would buy it for the performance (hence why Titans which are a terrible price/perf buy... yet it's amazing they still sell). Basically if you want performance you pay for it (goes for both camps) and at this point AMD has nothing to hold against nVidia when it comes to high-end stuff let alone nVidia's budget for PR ... I won't even comment on R&D. And yes actually the competition can drive the price be it up or down. So... ehll yes it's on AMD for the MSRP values (right now ... erm... nevermind the pricing is a bad joke already - which at this point neither AMD or nVidia are at fault for) and for leaving so much leverage for nVidia to have on the high-end market.

 

[Prince Valiant]

The current state of the market is there because nVidia had the right sales pitch and AMD didn't (look at the 960 which was sub 380/x performance which the latter ending up outsold ...in large numbers oh and the 960 was a bit more expensive as well - This is what good marketing can bring). Let's face it back in Hawaii days you would've at least gave those cards a look now you have what again? Oh and Hawaii sold (key word as in they actually sold something). Just my $0.02 on the matter.

In other words, people choosing Nvidia over AMD for 'performance' at the time were morons.

 

[Casecutter]

I think both of these gentlemen are far more qualified than Raja.

Well, at least now you have a proper product management side that is shown what engineering is creating down the road and have the time to develop strategies and the markets with target PR, not how Raja was doing. He saw it as I/we've got this "better than sliced bread" from his engineering mind, but also believed "everyone's" got to love it cause "I" (Raja) believes. Raja just was spread thin engineer, executive, marketing and spiritual guru... and wasn't spectacular at any! The one smart thing Raja gave us and got right was cleaning up the old driver system.

That's just one problem the spin-off of RTG had; when at TSMC insider espionage, though having basically all their production at GloFo it's hard to up or juggle the product mix and output. The Rory years and that management/style had long term repercussion they just last year start to shed-off. They now have management and see some cash flow to reinforce the business units and this move shows such a strategy.

Oh yeah baby, the Wang is back! Hopefully this will result in some great stuff.

So when did Mr. Wang separate from AMD? It appears he left in like 2011 about the time the whole place started to show the big cracks in what the upper management had been doing. A guy that can read the "writing on the wall" is usually sufficient skilled at business. We have to give him some 3-4years to see what he can bring to run the engineering and design side.

 

[Totally]

How's that helping AMD's case at this point in time? Their GPUs are grabbed by miners (which once the whole crypto bubble bursts will corner the gray market -> 2014 all over again when AMD had enough stock but no one to sell to). Good PR would translate to "Poor Volta" and actually come up with something that smashes it ... not just hype, on the same note would be "Fury X - the overclocker's dream". Another good idea would be not to pit your products in slides against the competition when you cannot deliver. Those would be the points that AMD missed. Voting with my wallet, why sure, here's a scenario, up until Ryzen came out last year what were your options for a laptop or for a workstation? Also what were your choices before Vega came out (late and totally targeting a segment that has been left untouched and is already saturated by the 1080/1070) for higher resolution gameplay? Sure the money is in the mainstream but if you leave 1 segment unattended for a period of time those things will flood the market, basically for each 1070/1080 sold for a whole year for nVidia, AMD sold 0 and we have only ourselves to blame for this too? What?


Edit: missed your edit. Not really, some people want performance which cannot be delivered at this point. If people want to game at 4k they won't just stick to the underdog. At the end of the day you get what you pay for that's true but at this point would you take VEGA over the 1080 Ti just to support AMD?

You last question feeds right back into his statement that customers are morons and are the cause of this, If they want to game at 4k and neither can deliver does it matter which of the current available options is from the underdog? Only an idiot would believe so. I also remember the Kepler/Hawaii days, idiotic would be an understatement to describe gpu consumers on the whole. Regardless how well AMD cards performed they we're maligned due to the bad driver stigma even though both have equal amounts of issues with drivers. CUDA and its prosumer featureset was something was parroted constantly average joes even TPU is guilty of this as every review made during that era had CUDA and Physx support as a bullet point on the pros and cons section event tho the benefits we're non-existent for the end consumer. Fast forward to today has anything significant arrived for consumers? Yep, that's the sound of crickets. Which is kind of contrary to any good marketing by AMD, as long as Nvidia can bring out some exclusive gimmick regardless of any tangible benefit that then Nvidia consumer can latch onto and then propogate, Nvidia will be seen as having the better card.

 

[I No]

In other words, people choosing Nvidia over AMD for 'performance' at the time were morons.

It was an example of advertising and PR done right.

You last question feeds right back into his statement that customers are morons and are the cause of this, If they want to game at 4k and neither can deliver does it matter which of the current available options is from the underdog? Only an idiot would believe so. I also remember the Kepler/Hawaii days, idiotic would be an understatement to describe gpu consumers on the whole. Regardless how well AMD cards performed they we're maligned due to the bad driver stigma even though both have equal amounts of issues with drivers. CUDA and its prosumer featureset was something was parroted constantly average joes even TPU is guilty of this as every review made during that era had CUDA and Physx support as a bullet point on the pros and cons section event tho the benefits we're non-existent for the end consumer. Fast forward to today has anything significant arrived for consumers? Yep, that's the sound of crickets. Which is kind of contrary to any good marketing by AMD, as long as Nvidia can bring out some exclusive gimmick regardless of any tangible benefit that then Nvidia consumer can latch onto and then propogate, Nvidia will be seen as having the better card.

I wonder why the "bad driver stigma" existed in the first place... please... those things were dreadful. Not saying that nVidia did perfect but they did manage to do better than AMD. The whole point of the dialogue was mainly how PR can influence a product both good and bad. The whole thing spun off into a debate about the current gen of products from both sides. Gimmick or not it rakes in the money, and at the end of the day that's all that matters to every economic entity out there. PhysX and CUDA bring money in, HBM2 on consumer cards and Hardware Schedulers do not, just a thought.

 

[Nephilim666]

'Blockchain compute'... is that a new form of compute? *sigh*

Sorry I should have said mining-specific computation. But you clearly knew what I meant and chose the high road of politely helping me out with my terminology.

 

[Prince Valiant]

View attachment 96347

It was an example of advertising and PR done right.

I wonder why the "bad driver stigma" existed in the first place... please... those things were dreadful. Not saying that nVidia did perfect but they did manage to do better than AMD. The whole point of the dialogue was mainly how PR can influence a product both good and bad. The whole thing spun off into a debate about the current gen of products from both sides. Gimmick or not it rakes in the money, and at the end of the day that's all that matters to every economic entity out there. PhysX and CUDA bring money in, HBM2 on consumer cards and Hardware Schedulers do not, just a thought.

I wasn't arguing against the effectiveness of advertising. I was saying you're only reinforcing the point that people were dumb.

 

[Totally]

View attachment 96347
I wonder why the "bad driver stigma" existed in the first place... please... those things were dreadful. Not saying that nVidia did perfect but they did manage to do better than AMD. The whole point of the dialogue was mainly how PR can influence a product both good and bad. The whole thing spun off into a debate about the current gen of products from both sides. Gimmick or not it rakes in the money, and at the end of the day that's all that matters to every economic entity out there. PhysX and CUDA bring money in, HBM2 on consumer cards and Hardware Schedulers do not, just a thought.

Not saying they never made horrible drivers. Just saying it was old news from the ATI days and even more so today, there still some who hold AMD in contempt for this but keep it to themselves because people are lmore likely to call them out on their bs. Physx and CUDA only brought money in because Nvidia sold people a vision that didn't exist then and still doesn't now arguably. Yet people keep coming back after getting burned repeatedly. This where I have qualms with the company and its adherents where they can't wait to hold the competitions toes to the fire for the slightest slip but if it is green all is instantly forgiven with the exception of the few greedy lawyers waiting for the next class-action to come along.

 

[Vayra86]

Sorry I should have said mining-specific computation. But you clearly knew what I meant and chose the high road of politely helping me out with my terminology.

Same thing - its a non-existant form of compute that somehow people think can be classified as mining. It can't. So regardless of terminology, what you're saying is total nonsense.

 

[Vya Domus]

It was an example of advertising and PR done right.


I wonder why the "bad driver stigma" existed in the first place... please... those things were dreadful. Not saying that nVidia did perfect but they did manage to do better than AMD. The whole point of the dialogue was mainly how PR can influence a product both good and bad. The whole thing spun off into a debate about the current gen of products from both sides. Gimmick or not it rakes in the money, and at the end of the day that's all that matters to every economic entity out there. PhysX and CUDA bring money in, HBM2 on consumer cards and Hardware Schedulers do not, just a thought.

All I have to say is god forbid PR and marketing get to be the most important aspect of a successful product.

I honestly cannot understand how someone would think like this as a consumer , do you not realize this sort of mentality destroys the whole point competition ? I hope you are actually some sort of CMO at Nvidia because otherwise my god ... we don't even need mining , we can drive this market into the ground by ourselves. Well , we pretty much already did ...

 

[I No]

All I have to say is god forbid PR and marketing get to be the most important aspect of a successful product.

I honestly cannot understand how someone would think like this as a consumer. I hope you are actually some sort of CMO at Nvidia because otherwise my god ... we don't even need mining , we can drive this market into the ground by ourselves.

Well congrats sir you made me laugh. Yet the point has flown past you at mach 2.8. In case you haven't paid attention all this time marketing and PR is what drives product sales, Apple's doing a very successful campaign on this by offering you 2 year old tech as "innovative". People that buy them aren't idiots either it just suits their needs.
4K gaming is your thing? Pay up then or don't it's that easy, no one will hold a gun to your head but don't pretend to "know" what the market thinks or what are the market's needs/wants it's not your wallet that takes the hit you should not pass judgment on something you have 0% control on if people are fine spending $700+ on a GPU for whatever reason it's their choice as much as it's yours not to buy it. In case you'll miss the point again, I'm not on board with the current pricing because, hell we all want performance for peanuts, but that doesn't mean everyone should share my opinion on this. You and I have jack-all to say as long as the demand exceeds the supply, if the market is fine with paying that much for something, deal with it.
If you don't know how to sell your product it won't sell easy as that. This isn't only a train of thought it's what's happening right now. Why do you think manufacturers send samples to reviewers? Out of the goodness of their hearts? It's "free" publicity. In case you ever want to sell something and be successful at it benchmarks and charts presented like your cat died won't help your case.
As a consumer the only thing I should be needed to worry about is which product to choose not to be forced into buying something because that segment just turned niche for somebody. Anything above that would be highly unrealistic. You think you would be able to shift the masses and change their opinion where somebody that could've done it has failed? Think again, it's a foolhardy errand, you and I don't get to decide for other people, only for ourselves.

 

[Vya Domus]

Yet the point has flown past you at mach 2.8.

Your point ? Which one ? That you totally dig marketing BS and that PR moves are all you care about ? Because that's all you wrote since the very beginning and you don't need a wall of text to tell us that once again.

If you wanted to say something else then I am afraid you failed 100% , as others have pointed out how throughout this thread.

 

[I No]

Your point ? Which one ? That you totally dig marketing BS and that PR moves are all you care about ? Because that's all you wrote since the very begin and you don't need a wall of text to tell us that once again.

Define "us" since you're the only one that seems to have a problem with me calling out AMD on those awesome business decisions - in case you forgot that's where it all started. And if your opinion is that I "dig marketing BS and that PR moves" you again missed the point of the whole conversation. I'm just trying to understand your train of thought since the whole defensive posture is uhmmmm ... confusing to say the least. How on god's green earth did you come up with the conclusion that I "dig marketing BS and PR"? It's just common sense that stuff like that sells your s**t not world of mouth (key word common sense). I'm just curious at this point what's your opinion on AMD not being able to sell their stuff even tho they had/have better performance ? Oh and you better come up with something better than "people are idiots".

 

[Vya Domus]

Define "us" since you're the only one that seems to have a problem with me calling out AMD on those awesome business decisions

No , the problem I have is that you seem 100% convinced that it's up to these companies to ensure we get competition and great products and it all pretty much relies on good marketing an PR and that consumers don't have any influence whatsoever. All of which is thoroughly wrong.

How on god's green earth did you come up with the conclusion that I "dig marketing BS and PR"?

That is literally all you said with every comment you posted , including this one as well. The fact that you fail to see that really isn't my problem and I wont continue pointing that out if you can't even see it for yourself (or refuse to do so).

Oh and you better come up with something better than "people are idiots".

That's literally all there is to it and again if you fail to see that it is not my problem. The very fact that you believe marketing is essential for these companies to succeed proves my point that people are in fact idiots and they deserve shitty overpriced products.

Look , I am not going to drag this on forever and say the same things over and over. Let's put an end to this.

 

[I No]

No , the problem I have is that you seem 100% convinced that it's up to these companies to ensure we get competition and great products and it all pretty much relies on good marketing an PR and that consumers don't have any influence whatsoever. All of which is thoroughly wrong.



That is literally all you said with every comment you posted , including this one as well. The fact that you fail to see that really isn't my problem and I wont continue pointing that out if you can't even see it for yourself (or refuse to do so).



That's literally all there is to it and again if you fail to see that it is not my problem. The very fact that you believe marketing is essential for these companies to succeed proves my point that people are in fact idiots and they deserve shitty overpriced products.

Look , I am not going to drag this on forever and say the same things over and over. Let's put an end to this.

Agreed. We'll just agree to disagree

 

[Vayra86]

All I have to say is god forbid PR and marketing get to be the most important aspect of a successful product.

I honestly cannot understand how someone would think like this as a consumer , do you not realize this sort of mentality destroys the whole point competition ? I hope you are actually some sort of CMO at Nvidia because otherwise my god ... we don't even need mining , we can drive this market into the ground by ourselves. Well , we pretty much already did ...

Others have pointed it out already, but all you really need to do to realize where AMD falls short, is to read back forum topics and news post comments anywhere. YOU may not be this kind of person, but a vast majority of people (and I would daresay, even you and I are influenced by it, even if by a tiny degree) are susceptible to psychological tricks. PR, marketing, advertising, is 100% playing people psychology. I mean, the very reason you find yourself 'defending' a company is the ultimate proof that what they're doing, is actually working on all of us.

I think a great comparison between Nvidia and AMD in terms of marketing, is the similarity of these two versus Apple and Microsoft. Bear with me here:
> obviously, Nvidia is Apple, AMD is MS: Nvidia manages to hit the right note for its advertising, tone of voice, and offers a pretty strong focus on 'user experience' (GFExperience even has it in the name) and unifying all of its designs, up to the choice of Font and its color, the way its powerpoint slides are presented, hell, even the CEO's leather jacket is probably part of the 'experience'. Even in product portfolio, the similarity exists: a focused, narrow product stack that is used for a wide variety of things. Both companies picked their strengths and expanded upon it, and it alone.

> Then there is AMD/MS: advertising goes all of the place, is infrequent, irregular, and characterised by a lack of focus, structure, or one 'message', and quite a few of the ads tend to make you frown or are completely out of place. In addition, this company prides itself on making product that's 'good at everything' - jack of all trades master of none style, even the product portfolios match here, hell they even sometimes sprout the same ideas at a similar time (DX12/Mantle). Also, both companies are well known for 'turning everything around' quite frequently: MS tried its hand at mobile, hardware itself, gaming, etc. and now pushes hard on Cloud; AMD similarly has restructured the lot multiple times. Both companies also have a broad focus: they prefer covering more different markets rather than fully focusing on one.

Nvidia has found a precisely similar way of maximizing profit as Apple: make your product the halo product, keep perfecting it, keep playing the 'experience' cards right, and keep pushing the bleeding edge, or at the very least tell the world that's what you're doing. Today it is Nvidia who is first to omit or allow AIBs to omit DVI-outs, similar to Apple phasing out 3.5mm jacks or pushing new I/O interfaces. It is Nvidia as the first to announce 32-bit will be a thing of the past, the list really is endless. AMD however, ever since they acquired ATI, has been going at this with a similar goal, but forgot to adjust the company so everything could support that goal: lack of R&D, lack of focus, re-utilizing tech in a different product (APU, great example, very much so even today), but still trying for that similar goal. Its the reason we got Vega in its current state. Its the reason we had Fury with HBM. Its the reason AMD had to rebrand multiple times in the past couple generations. Something had to give.


And then there's the bottom line for us as customers. For me personally: I just buy whatever looks like the best product at my budget. And honestly... AMD doesn't have it, and when they did have it (HD7950, 7970) their driver model was sub-par which scared me off bigtime, performance was a bit all over the place for quite a few games and updates were quite scarce. After that, on GPU what have they really released that was objectively better in every way? Zip. Nvidia was always running cooler, pushing similar FPS, at similar cost, with more frequent driver updates, better SLI support (this has changed now), better stability in-game and also better frame pacing. Nvidia was also first with a bunch of tech, a very notable one being used widely today called TXAA (TAA). PhysX, Gsync, MFAA, Fast Sync... all those little bits DO count for something. One may or may not agree on the specifics of each of these technologies or how they were acquired, but the fact remains that when you buy an Nvidia card, it does have all of this. With AMD, sure, you'll probably get a 'something similar' ... 'at some point in the future'. They are always responding, following... the leader.

Wall of text but yeah this is my view on these companies and their culture / marketing differences. I can only hope that the new duo at AMD can bring back the focus but it may well take a couple years for them to recover from what have been horrible years for AMD GPUs. Market share and profit margins don't lie.

In other words, people choosing Nvidia over AMD for 'performance' at the time were morons.

Quite correct for a vast majority of people in terms of buying decisions; so if your marketing department doesn't understand that and play on that, its pretty horrible and that IS what happens, it does contribute to AMD's crappy position in the market. Even the consoles: full of AMD hardware... are they using that in their marketing? Barely. AMD is way too honest and clinical in its outings, the best they can do in terms of enthusiasm is 'fantastic' and 'great advancements', followed by powerpoint slides full of technical terminology 90% of its viewers doesn't understand.

 

[Vya Domus]

I mean, the very reason you find yourself 'defending' a company is the ultimate proof that what they're doing, is actually working on all of us.

If you really do believe that , why am sitting here with an Nvidia card ? How come I , the one allegedly defending this company hasn't fallen for their marketing ? Well it's because it has nothing to do with that , I do not negate the fact that marketing has a role or that AMD didn't do a good job at it. I am not their CMO and no one here is , I don't know what they need to do from this point of view nor do I care.

I simply find it astonishing that someone would go out of their way to call out a company for their inability to trick people with PR and marketing. I mean why would you care and how would that annoy you ? I feel like we have reached the epitome of consumerism. In this context why even bother with anything when everyone's perception is so skewed.

I can only hope that the new duo at AMD can bring back the focus but it may well take a couple years for them to recover from what have been horrible years for AMD GPUs.

Meh , I don't , or rather I don't really care. Historically AMD always proved to be very well suited for survival under pretty difficult times. What will be very entertaining to watch though is what will people do in the meantime. From what I can see everyone is already starting to feel a bit uneasy thinking about what will come , these discussions are proof of that.

 

[Vayra86]

Meh , I don't , or rather I don't really care. Historically AMD always proved to be very well suited for survival under pretty difficult times. What will be very entertaining to watch though is what will people do in the meantime. From what I can see everyone is already starting to feel a bit uneasy thinking about what will come , these discussions are proof of that.

Oh no, I don't feel uneasy at all, I really do fancy more money allegedly going towards RTG and new leadership being announced is positive. But all I care about in the end, are results.

Another thing about marketing - keep in mind that all of it is a form of trickery. If you would know what the real motivation behind a certain type of ad or strategy is, you'd probably be surprised. Most of it is of psychological nature, its not so much trickery as in misleading, but trickery with how our mind works; take for example Nvidia's upselling strategy with the FE's and EVGA's trade-up programme. I miss those incentives or moves on the AMD side apart from the odd game bundle which is just giving stuff away instead of making people spend more - let's not go into that awesome FreeSync deal they had during Vega launch

 

[haxzion]

I really don't understand the hate towards AMD,even if you are an Intel/Nvidia fanboy, as a consumer you just need the competition.If it wasn't for the Ryzen lineup we would still have 4core I7s and 2core i3s.
What is wrong with you people?

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

I hope for a GPU with massively gimped blockchain compute capabilities that can still game.

Most GPUs ability is already gimped or in Nvidia geforce switched off, yet they mine just fine on game required circuits.
I pray for more better paid jobs so the skint of the world can afford a Titan V to game on and stop their sissy like bitching but im likely SOL too.

Now on topic , Good news gpu shipers 1/2 (depending a captain but two??

 

[Fluffmeister]

Sounds like AMD is going to go the same way, giving consumers everything for 400 bucks isn't good business after all.

Q: Does that mean that there is room in the future for GPU bifurcation, between a gaming focus and a compute focus?

Dr Lisa Su: I think there is. You will see us move on this, and we’re very committed to gaming so that’s not going to change, but you will see us do some more purpose-built products for the compute side of things.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1231...n-exclusive-interview-with-dr-lisa-su-amd-ceo