Is AMD (Radeon) Actually Screwed ft. Steve of Hardware Unboxed
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Date: 2024-06-13
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Comments and reviews: 20
opachki8325
The problems with AMD GPUs basically comes down to two big factors imho: The pricing they call up and also the drivers. 1: They gotta fix their drivers to the point where they are as good as nvidia drivers if not even better stability wise and keep it there. In combination with that they also need to fix their reputation regarding drivers. How Maybe have some more presentations on what they improved and how they did it Marketing's gonna figure out a way to make us lol anyways.
2: The prices are just too high as you said. They wanna charge nvidia prices without nvidia features and without nvidia performance. IF they actually wanna charge that much, have the product be better than your competition. FSR lacks quality and still is behind nvidia who actually made the right decision in regards to AI (DLSS) and RT.
Always remember: NVidia pricing is only this high because AMD lets nvidia price their cards this high. AMD also did this with Zen 3, it was priced significantly higher then Zen 2. Why Because Intel wasn't able to counter them.
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The problems with AMD GPUs basically comes down to two big factors imho: The pricing they call up and also the drivers. 1: They gotta fix their drivers to the point where they are as good as nvidia drivers if not even better stability wise and keep it there. In combination with that they also need to fix their reputation regarding drivers. How Maybe have some more presentations on what they improved and how they did it Marketing's gonna figure out a way to make us lol anyways.
2: The prices are just too high as you said. They wanna charge nvidia prices without nvidia features and without nvidia performance. IF they actually wanna charge that much, have the product be better than your competition. FSR lacks quality and still is behind nvidia who actually made the right decision in regards to AI (DLSS) and RT.
Always remember: NVidia pricing is only this high because AMD lets nvidia price their cards this high. AMD also did this with Zen 3, it was priced significantly higher then Zen 2. Why Because Intel wasn't able to counter them.
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CivBase
The mind share NVIDIA has in the graphics card market is insane. In most people's minds GPU might as well be synonymous with RTX. I switched to Radeon this generation and couldn't be happier, but I don't know anyone else making the switch. Most people I know don't even consider Radeon's offerings at all.
IMO the only way Radeon is going to get out of this mess is by outperforming NVIDIA across their entire product stack, being cheaper than NVIDIA across the entire product stack from launch, and by having the best performing halo-tier product even if it's wildly expensive. And they have to do all of that at the same time for at least two generations. NVIDIA is neglecting the gaming market currently, so now is the best time for that to happen, but I don't know if AMD can afford it.
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The mind share NVIDIA has in the graphics card market is insane. In most people's minds GPU might as well be synonymous with RTX. I switched to Radeon this generation and couldn't be happier, but I don't know anyone else making the switch. Most people I know don't even consider Radeon's offerings at all.
IMO the only way Radeon is going to get out of this mess is by outperforming NVIDIA across their entire product stack, being cheaper than NVIDIA across the entire product stack from launch, and by having the best performing halo-tier product even if it's wildly expensive. And they have to do all of that at the same time for at least two generations. NVIDIA is neglecting the gaming market currently, so now is the best time for that to happen, but I don't know if AMD can afford it.
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bmvhusky
Whole market is changing due to those 2 letters and it's moving at light speed. Yes, products, from Nvidia and AMD will increasingly be all about those 2 letters, with less emphasis on gaming. It's just how it's going to be going forward because that's where the money is going to be. Gaming focused products will not be the main war ground anymore. PC gaming will always be relevant for the near future, but cards will increasingly be about both gaming performance and (2 letters) performance. And I agree that we will probably see longer product cycles now and less versions of new generation GPUs from both. Nvidia is making so much money right now, they can do whatever the hell they want, and AMD will have to work hard to carve out its own niche.
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Whole market is changing due to those 2 letters and it's moving at light speed. Yes, products, from Nvidia and AMD will increasingly be all about those 2 letters, with less emphasis on gaming. It's just how it's going to be going forward because that's where the money is going to be. Gaming focused products will not be the main war ground anymore. PC gaming will always be relevant for the near future, but cards will increasingly be about both gaming performance and (2 letters) performance. And I agree that we will probably see longer product cycles now and less versions of new generation GPUs from both. Nvidia is making so much money right now, they can do whatever the hell they want, and AMD will have to work hard to carve out its own niche.
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rangersmith4652
From what I read and watch, a lot of gamers and creators avoid AMD GPUs because they've always heard AMD drivers are bad. They see decent price-to-performance, and maybe they don't focus on RT or DLSS. Maybe they even despise Nvidia deep in their hearts. But they buy Nvidia anyway because the bad AMD drivers myth scares them away. AMD needs to release each GPU with up-to-snuff drivers and be vocal about it. They should hold an event at which influencers can come and play the most popular games on the new GPUs with actual launch drivers that work flawlessly. With driver issues solved, AMD then needs to be 15-20% less expensive than Nvidia at every performance level -- at the time the MSRP is announced, not a few weeks or months later.
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From what I read and watch, a lot of gamers and creators avoid AMD GPUs because they've always heard AMD drivers are bad. They see decent price-to-performance, and maybe they don't focus on RT or DLSS. Maybe they even despise Nvidia deep in their hearts. But they buy Nvidia anyway because the bad AMD drivers myth scares them away. AMD needs to release each GPU with up-to-snuff drivers and be vocal about it. They should hold an event at which influencers can come and play the most popular games on the new GPUs with actual launch drivers that work flawlessly. With driver issues solved, AMD then needs to be 15-20% less expensive than Nvidia at every performance level -- at the time the MSRP is announced, not a few weeks or months later.
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JohnBCurtix
Really happy with my 7900XT I bought a few months ago, it is quite a lot more expensive in Europe than the USA unfortunately but so is NVIDIA. The thing I notice when a talking about my choice of hardware with friends is that people are genuinely surprised all the time about choosing an AMD GPU, there's still seem to be a lot of people thinking it's basically worse quality product or something like that. One reaction, from someone who's also experienced with tech, was good luck with the stability issues, my experience has been great so far...
Gaming on 3440x1440 is working great, I'm coming from a PC with an i5-4690K and GTX970 so it's quite the improvement. GTX970 is still working by the way... amazing card.
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Really happy with my 7900XT I bought a few months ago, it is quite a lot more expensive in Europe than the USA unfortunately but so is NVIDIA. The thing I notice when a talking about my choice of hardware with friends is that people are genuinely surprised all the time about choosing an AMD GPU, there's still seem to be a lot of people thinking it's basically worse quality product or something like that. One reaction, from someone who's also experienced with tech, was good luck with the stability issues, my experience has been great so far...
Gaming on 3440x1440 is working great, I'm coming from a PC with an i5-4690K and GTX970 so it's quite the improvement. GTX970 is still working by the way... amazing card.
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Tynted
Haven't watched the whole vid yet but I have to jump in and say right now that I strongly disagree with the statement that AMD needs to compete in the flagship end. That's like saying that Honda needs to also compete with Corvettes. No, they don't. AMD is well situated that they could make Honda quality products at a cheaper price than Nvidia and still make lots of money while being a good value. If they get their engineering together, they can come back in the future and compete later down the road.
I will say that AMD DOES need to compete at the 5080 tier. Anything lower than that and they'll have just too little of the market covered. But hey I'm just a random guy so also, what do I know Lol
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Haven't watched the whole vid yet but I have to jump in and say right now that I strongly disagree with the statement that AMD needs to compete in the flagship end. That's like saying that Honda needs to also compete with Corvettes. No, they don't. AMD is well situated that they could make Honda quality products at a cheaper price than Nvidia and still make lots of money while being a good value. If they get their engineering together, they can come back in the future and compete later down the road.
I will say that AMD DOES need to compete at the 5080 tier. Anything lower than that and they'll have just too little of the market covered. But hey I'm just a random guy so also, what do I know Lol
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shieldtablet942
There is someone on AMD who has replaced the sensible person that launched the R5 3600 at $200.
This new person has no idea of how to price things or how the market works. So this person sees the 3600X at $205, $45 below launch price. What to do, what to do Rebrand!
Launch a barely improved 3600XT, price it at $250 and stop producing older parts. That will surely improve prices!
No, this is not how it works. I assume this person is pricing GPUs, doing no market research whatsoever. I think the last good GPU AMD priced well was the 5600XT. Well, the 7800XT may be another, everything else is trading hopefully a small extra profit for bad reviews.
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There is someone on AMD who has replaced the sensible person that launched the R5 3600 at $200.
This new person has no idea of how to price things or how the market works. So this person sees the 3600X at $205, $45 below launch price. What to do, what to do Rebrand!
Launch a barely improved 3600XT, price it at $250 and stop producing older parts. That will surely improve prices!
No, this is not how it works. I assume this person is pricing GPUs, doing no market research whatsoever. I think the last good GPU AMD priced well was the 5600XT. Well, the 7800XT may be another, everything else is trading hopefully a small extra profit for bad reviews.
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lxndrlbr
Could Radeon be pre-launched at their 7900xtx $999 price for fanboys and money-is-no-object people, but have a public availability price at $700 a couple of months later: reviewers would judge the product/price proposition based on the public price for the general public yet would also have a technical analysis for the first group, and AMD would still get their maximum margin possible and even raise interest and marketing hipe for their pre-release
Their pre-release price and GA price would be public from the start. The point is that people who buy $999 Radeon would buy it even if they knew that a couple of months later the price would drop to $700.
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Could Radeon be pre-launched at their 7900xtx $999 price for fanboys and money-is-no-object people, but have a public availability price at $700 a couple of months later: reviewers would judge the product/price proposition based on the public price for the general public yet would also have a technical analysis for the first group, and AMD would still get their maximum margin possible and even raise interest and marketing hipe for their pre-release
Their pre-release price and GA price would be public from the start. The point is that people who buy $999 Radeon would buy it even if they knew that a couple of months later the price would drop to $700.
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jamesb2877
Well Steve the only way to answer your question was to ask our A.I. Overlords.
AI Is AMD Radeon Actually Screwed
--The answer.
Yes, it is safe to say that AMD's Radeon graphics cards have been in
trouble for several years now as they have not delivered the promised
performance improvements compared to their previous generations. While
some reports suggest that the Radeon Vega line of graphics cards may have
a better future with improvements to their performance, it remains to be
seen whether those improvements will ever materialize or if AMD will
eventually have to rethink its approach to developing these products.
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Well Steve the only way to answer your question was to ask our A.I. Overlords.
AI Is AMD Radeon Actually Screwed
--The answer.
Yes, it is safe to say that AMD's Radeon graphics cards have been in
trouble for several years now as they have not delivered the promised
performance improvements compared to their previous generations. While
some reports suggest that the Radeon Vega line of graphics cards may have
a better future with improvements to their performance, it remains to be
seen whether those improvements will ever materialize or if AMD will
eventually have to rethink its approach to developing these products.
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MAKER_GURU
I kept trying to give AMD graphics a chance, and I kept getting drivers that didn't work with SolidWorks. ATI gaming drivers worked, AMD workstation drivers work, but AMD gaming drivers do not. Seems like they are intentionally making defects in their drivers to upsell me, and that isn't going to work as long as nVidia is making good drivers for gaming cards. To be fair, I have not bothered looking at AMD since early 2019 because the discount-rack 1080 I bought is still doing all I need...maybe they finally stopped doing this Seems unlikely given the pricing strategy that also seems to forget that nVidia exists.
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I kept trying to give AMD graphics a chance, and I kept getting drivers that didn't work with SolidWorks. ATI gaming drivers worked, AMD workstation drivers work, but AMD gaming drivers do not. Seems like they are intentionally making defects in their drivers to upsell me, and that isn't going to work as long as nVidia is making good drivers for gaming cards. To be fair, I have not bothered looking at AMD since early 2019 because the discount-rack 1080 I bought is still doing all I need...maybe they finally stopped doing this Seems unlikely given the pricing strategy that also seems to forget that nVidia exists.
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ChaosphereIX
I like AMD processors. They work well, I like my 7600. But their GPUs have burned me 3 times over the years. Never again. I kept giving them a chance, and each time I wasted my time and money. My hard earned money cannot keep going towards broken architecture and broken hardware. My latest XFX 7600 could not keep cool (over 100c) even undervolted while playing games. Replaced with a 3060...does not even break 70deg. Sorry AMD, you will never get my money again for your GPUS. Keep it up on the CPU side though, Ryzen is killing it.
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I like AMD processors. They work well, I like my 7600. But their GPUs have burned me 3 times over the years. Never again. I kept giving them a chance, and each time I wasted my time and money. My hard earned money cannot keep going towards broken architecture and broken hardware. My latest XFX 7600 could not keep cool (over 100c) even undervolted while playing games. Replaced with a 3060...does not even break 70deg. Sorry AMD, you will never get my money again for your GPUS. Keep it up on the CPU side though, Ryzen is killing it.
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chaddesrosiers1107
No one says OH no Toyota is totally done for cause they don't sell a high performance sports car. The masses will never accept their mass market offerings. I mean does anyone really care if Nvidia is all alone at the $3k price point Let them have it.... the market isn't going to support 2 players at that price point. In the mid range you can argue X or Y factors to swing to company A or B. At 3k your going to buy the card that is 1% faster one way or the other. AMD is wise to not bother with that market segment.
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No one says OH no Toyota is totally done for cause they don't sell a high performance sports car. The masses will never accept their mass market offerings. I mean does anyone really care if Nvidia is all alone at the $3k price point Let them have it.... the market isn't going to support 2 players at that price point. In the mid range you can argue X or Y factors to swing to company A or B. At 3k your going to buy the card that is 1% faster one way or the other. AMD is wise to not bother with that market segment.
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burrfoottopknot
It is a matter of AMD and Nvidia collluding to maintain the status quo (the current state of things) with pricing and expectations and AMD have bent over and said yes to team green and dont want to compete.
If AMD competed on market share percentage and lowered prices on release they could gain traction, the higher the market share the more credence AMD would have in the GPU sector. Thus finacial loong term gain instead of priroitizinng of year to year return on investmet for shareholders / investors.
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It is a matter of AMD and Nvidia collluding to maintain the status quo (the current state of things) with pricing and expectations and AMD have bent over and said yes to team green and dont want to compete.
If AMD competed on market share percentage and lowered prices on release they could gain traction, the higher the market share the more credence AMD would have in the GPU sector. Thus finacial loong term gain instead of priroitizinng of year to year return on investmet for shareholders / investors.
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offspringfan89
We can't blame AMD for not investing in RTG, it doesn't make sense when you only have a 12% market share of low margin products.
Trying to catch up with Nvidia in features would require massive investment in R&D without guaranteed return, and aggressive pricing would pulverise margins. Charging $50 less than Nvidia GPUs and not investing in features/software is much less risky and more lucrative.
Anyways, it's always a treat to watch a discussion between American and Australian Steves!
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We can't blame AMD for not investing in RTG, it doesn't make sense when you only have a 12% market share of low margin products.
Trying to catch up with Nvidia in features would require massive investment in R&D without guaranteed return, and aggressive pricing would pulverise margins. Charging $50 less than Nvidia GPUs and not investing in features/software is much less risky and more lucrative.
Anyways, it's always a treat to watch a discussion between American and Australian Steves!
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porkkanaraaste6692
Radeon absolutely is, and will be as long as the drivers are what they still are; very inconsistent, stuttery mess. You also need to wait for an eternity until AMD fixes some of the most glaring issues. That's what made me switch back to nVidia. Life is just easier with an RTX GPU. Drivers aren't perfect, but damn near close. I haven't had issues, but others have mentioned - but oh boy, is the situation worse with Radeons! Not even a laughing matter anymore, they are so bad.
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Radeon absolutely is, and will be as long as the drivers are what they still are; very inconsistent, stuttery mess. You also need to wait for an eternity until AMD fixes some of the most glaring issues. That's what made me switch back to nVidia. Life is just easier with an RTX GPU. Drivers aren't perfect, but damn near close. I haven't had issues, but others have mentioned - but oh boy, is the situation worse with Radeons! Not even a laughing matter anymore, they are so bad.
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gamersnexus
What went wrong this time with AMD is that they moved all their products up a stack. If they didnt try doing this everything would have been oriced about right. The xtx shiukd always have been the 7900xt, the 7900xt should have been the 7800xt and so on. If they had dine this they would have been selling bucket koads of GPUs and they coukd sell at rrp for longer. They tried to be cheeky like nvidia was and it bit then in the bum, and the gen on gen performance was almost stagnant.
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What went wrong this time with AMD is that they moved all their products up a stack. If they didnt try doing this everything would have been oriced about right. The xtx shiukd always have been the 7900xt, the 7900xt should have been the 7800xt and so on. If they had dine this they would have been selling bucket koads of GPUs and they coukd sell at rrp for longer. They tried to be cheeky like nvidia was and it bit then in the bum, and the gen on gen performance was almost stagnant.
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TacticalTushie
Had a 6900xt loved it. Got a 7900xtx. It's trash. The drivers are awful. I have replaced 100% of hardware trying to stop crashing. Installing driver only instead of the adrenalin software mostly fixes it. Replacing the second xtx with a 4090 actually fixed it. I gave them another chance and the company notorious for bad drivers has bad drivers again. surprised Pikachu
Maybe intel will catch up and compete. Amd can get bent.
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Had a 6900xt loved it. Got a 7900xtx. It's trash. The drivers are awful. I have replaced 100% of hardware trying to stop crashing. Installing driver only instead of the adrenalin software mostly fixes it. Replacing the second xtx with a 4090 actually fixed it. I gave them another chance and the company notorious for bad drivers has bad drivers again. surprised Pikachu
Maybe intel will catch up and compete. Amd can get bent.
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gamersnexus
We will find out this holiday which of the companies is screwed. I have a feeling there will be some really good competitive deals to clear out some inventory before they release the newer stuff. I'm not a fanboy towards any of them. Their CPUs are close enough in strength. Whichever one wins by a few percentage points doesn't really matter for an average guy like me. Just get me a good deal for around $1200 and I'm in.
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We will find out this holiday which of the companies is screwed. I have a feeling there will be some really good competitive deals to clear out some inventory before they release the newer stuff. I'm not a fanboy towards any of them. Their CPUs are close enough in strength. Whichever one wins by a few percentage points doesn't really matter for an average guy like me. Just get me a good deal for around $1200 and I'm in.
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hectorj.romanp.
Yes, they are. The problem is that there is not a good open standard for Ray Tracing and Path Tracing, developers lean to RTX that is proprietary . It's sad but nVidia competitors will always be behind in respect to RT/PT (raw) performance. AMD is in a conundrum with their GPUs because with higher prices they are not competitive and with lower prices they are not profitable so that branch will implode anyway.
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Yes, they are. The problem is that there is not a good open standard for Ray Tracing and Path Tracing, developers lean to RTX that is proprietary . It's sad but nVidia competitors will always be behind in respect to RT/PT (raw) performance. AMD is in a conundrum with their GPUs because with higher prices they are not competitive and with lower prices they are not profitable so that branch will implode anyway.
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samov497
Taking price out of the equation, I've been really happy with a used 5700xt and new 7900GRE that I've purchased. The only instability issues I've had with AMD cards were when I was going outside of manufacturer spec and trying to achieve some aggressive overclocks/undervolts or not updating drivers for months on end. Overall they have been rock solid and exist alongside Nvidia cards in my home and friend's setups.
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Taking price out of the equation, I've been really happy with a used 5700xt and new 7900GRE that I've purchased. The only instability issues I've had with AMD cards were when I was going outside of manufacturer spec and trying to achieve some aggressive overclocks/undervolts or not updating drivers for months on end. Overall they have been rock solid and exist alongside Nvidia cards in my home and friend's setups.
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