HBM is an inflection point for the video card business (and maybe the entire PC industry) and AMD is leading the charge. Its a feather in their cap. Whether they made the right decision short term is moot; what matters is the long term and there I think they hit a homerun.
I'm shocked tbh how much AMD'S competitive position improved with HBM. Big morale boost for the Red Team. I think even if the BoD said no (they probably haven't a clue what is HBM other than they're cutting some big cheques to Hynix), they'd still go ahead with HBM top to bottom somehow - its the soul of a new machine.
The best is yet to come. I think mobile gaming and desktop cards under $150 will be rejuvenated by HBM. Does the industry ever need it.
You act like nVidia cant do the same. But they can and will when the time is right.
The problem still exist and it shows, AMD jumped on the HBM wagon way too soon. At the end of the day, HBM was nothing more than an expensive bandaid for the lack of a new efficient GCN uarch. And when nVidia does the same, we are back to before. Not just in the high end, but in the entire range.
No mobile, no professional segment, just a tiny highend section where AMD may sell how many cards again?
Just look at the steam survey for reference.
What AMD did was to make a dejavou of the native quadcore. Look look, we are first....
AMD just released a 32GB Hawaii card for the same reason.