Go take a look at their revenue numbers. And remember HD 5870/5850 was price gouged by vendors. There was no mining back then. Demand by gamers drove it price up to $50-100 over MSRP.
EDIT: Actually AdoreTV covered this. I believe in the GPU War is over video. AMD with a good product stack was still making pennies.
My comparison for Fury/Fury X was only that when AMD put out a product that could rival NV's top product, they got backlash for pricing it too close to their competitor. The FineWine arguments seem to only matter when the cost of entry is cheaper. Again, HD 7970 @ $550, laughed at. HD 7970 GHz for $500 with 6 games - lord and savior. I had an HD 7970 Ghz back in February 2012.
I remember during my Pentium 4 days I was jelly of the $1,000 AMD CPUs. Again, these are corporations. The only reason AMD is in this situation is because for years they were marketing to budget buyers. Do you not remember the viral marketing tactic of "buy an X2/X3, unlock 3rd/4th core!" These were the people supporting AMD! When the price went up, good chunk abandoned AMD! You can toss me in that group. When I couldn't get a Fury X I just settled for the 980 Ti. Same price, what do I got to lose?
Adore like to exaggerate things when they suit his narrative. Nvidia is the bad guy.
It's okay for AMD to charge $550 for a 7970(351mm2 die) and $350(212mm2 die), but some how eludes that Nvidia should be charging $499 for 500-600mm2 dies and $300 for 314mm2.
http://quarterlyearnings.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1413673&highlight=
Their revenue numbers were not bad back then at all. They were still making 400+ million quarterly in revenue from the graphic division and making 50 million dollars or so in net profit. This is actually pretty good from a pure gaming company. What was more impressive was this was also almost all through direct to consumer sales, Oems did not use AMD very much because of driver support and branding and AMD had no acceptance in the mobile market(laptops) because their drivers were so bad. Look at Anands review for their laptops performance and they underperformed vs Nvidia for the last decade.
These numbers are close to what AMD graphic and consumer products did quarterly together until the release of ryzen.
This net profit is money left over after all expenses had been paid which includes things like R and D, cost of production and other things.
Take Nvidia's recent quarters and even with their gaming divisions doing 1.1 to 1.3 billion in revenue, with 800 -900 million dollars cost of good sold, 400 million dollars in R and D expense and 200 million on remaining staff, it not enough money to be a profitable company.
Meaning if Nvidia only had a gaming revenue(AMD's professional line just doesn't have any marketshare), even with their fantastic numbers, they might be making 50-100million after all expenses are covered and cost of production scaled down slightly along with a lower R and D expense. Nvidia has a much more expensive ship to run.
AMD has not been super profitable like Nvidia because they have not cultivated their professional market. Why Nvidia was able to sell such big dies for cheap in the past while still making money was their professional cards which shared the same dies as their flagship dies was generated 200+ million dollars in revenue without any additional R and D output. Because of their massive margins on professional products, the cost of production vs revenue creation is minimal. Also, because most of the expenses are covered by gaming revenue, this additional revenue on top of this translated into mostly profit. Without this segment, Nvidia would have been losing money selling such big dies for so little. Right now, nvidia is wildly profitable because they have 700-800 million in revenue coming from professional segments on top of their gaming revenue.
For what is primarily a gaming division and without a professional market, AMD's numbers were great. AMD because of their lower R and D expense and efficient expenditure, their graphic division was profitable even with a lower price on their products which enabled them to get a sale. High price does not mean more profit if this is offset by volume.
As far as Vega vs gtx 980 ti, Vega was objectively worse in terms of performance, efficiency, overclocking than a gtx 980 ti, particularly when you add AIB gtx 980 tis, while the cost was similar.
When you have worse, performance vs the competition, at similar cost while being the worse brand, of course your going to be outsold. Particularly with a scarlett letter of 4gb of memory attached to it. AMD has to be better than Nvidia to match their sales. That is the luxury of having the premium brand on the marketplace. If a Hyundai genesis was the same price as a lexus while having the same feature stack, which card you expect to sell better. The underdog has to try harder to get the same sale.
BTW, AMD only started bundling games for never settle in October of 2012.
https://www.engadget.com/2012/10/22/amd-never-settle-bundle-gives-radeon-hd-7000-buyers-free-games/
Similarly, the 7970 ghz edition didn't come out till june 2012. So I doubt you purchased a 7970 ghz edition in February of 2012 for 500 dollars.