AMD missed an opportunity with the RX500 refresh...

[IllogicalGlory]

What makes it a stretch?

Do you find it likely that Vega is a 2.9x (1.7x)^2 leap in efficiency over Polaris? That's what Volta is going to be. I could believe AMD could have a Maxwell-like arch improvement, but that would only make their designs as efficient as Pascal.

 

[3DVagabond]

Prices will come down. These cards are made to be cheap.
But Its idiotic amd sets initial price so high they will have to lower it witin a few months.
They gladly trade tons of brand value for a slim margin advantage first 2 months to see margins colapse even after 6 months. Its so shortsighted its mindblowing.
Pissing in their pants to keep it warm.
We see the same for ryzen but to a far lesser degree. So you can do it even for excellent new and innovative products. I forecast that months ago. So predictable. Way to hurt your brand lesson 1. There should be laws against such business stupidity. Its not like the current management lack intelligence, energy and it have tons of technical competence but man its hard to see them act so shortsighted especially because they dont need cash. They are financially sound and safe now. There is no excuse.
I am sure their cfo knows nothing about marketing, brand and driving a business brand. Send him to scool and retail for a few weeks.
Its what happens in a company with solid engineering management coupled with narrowminded bean counters.
Zero business flair compared to eg Nvidia.

One have to wonder if the idea of quarterly earning reports is not hurting this world economy. Shortsighted economic decisions and meaningless bonus flourish in this environment. Get rid of that junk.

While I don't totally disagree with what you say, there's a lot of truth there, keep in mind you might not be 100% right before you call others idiotic.

AMD did virtually the same thing with the 390(X) and what you seem to be so certain about here, never happened. Keep in mind they have old product in the pipe that needs to be cleared. If they were to reduce the price of the 500 series right off of the bat that could hurt the suppliers who are holding stock. Or AMD would have to give a rebate or stock balance allowance.

And I'm missing out completely on, "We see the same for ryzen but to a far lesser degree." What has been there big error/mistake/corporate stupidity with Ryzen?

AdoredTV showed that Power Consumption on the 580 can be cut in half using new AMD Power saving technology. The downside to it is that it requires Profiles per game which are very limited right now.

He simply undervolted it and power consumption dropped considerably while performance rose. Somebody somewhere needs to be hung by their ***** for that situation.

 

[sandorski]

Do you find it likely that Vega is a 2.9x (1.7x)^2 leap in efficiency over Polaris? That's what Volta is going to be. I could believe AMD could have a Maxwell-like arch improvement, but that would only make their designs as efficient as Pascal.

Efficiency is only one aspect.

 

[IllogicalGlory]

Efficiency is only one aspect.

That is true, but efficiency sets the upper bound on performance as well. You can only push that power consumption so far. At equal power draw, the more efficient card is faster.

What aspects do you think it likely that Vega will be competitive/superior in? Value is a possibility, but that's more of a product question than an architecture one.

 

[sandorski]

That is true, but efficiency sets the upper bound on performance as well. You can only push that power consumption so far. At equal power draw, the more efficient card is faster.

What aspects do you think it likely that Vega will be competitive/superior in? Value is a possibility, but that's more of a product question than an architecture one.

Performance.

 

[krumme]

While I don't totally disagree with what you say, there's a lot of truth there, keep in mind you might not be 100% right before you call others idiotic.

AMD did virtually the same thing with the 390(X) and what you seem to be so certain about here, never happened. Keep in mind they have old product in the pipe that needs to be cleared. If they were to reduce the price of the 500 series right off of the bat that could hurt the suppliers who are holding stock. Or AMD would have to give a rebate or stock balance allowance.

And I'm missing out completely on, "We see the same for ryzen but to a far lesser degree." What has been there big error/mistake/corporate stupidity with Ryzen?

I am not saying they are idiots and they are not but that it is idiotic what they do because it hurts their business long term.

You want a stable price if you want to build brand.
Customers want predictability.
What you do not want is hurt your first movers.
Its acceptable and makes good sense to lower the price for total profit but if you do do it as nv labelling their cards as FE. Differentiate and package it different. Also like eg samsung with a s8 giving vr or sd card. Thats how its done. Simple.

I dont think it matter for amd ryzen first movers price is down 10% - after 6 years waiting. But its absolutely not the impression you want for a good brand.
Imagine toyota did the same. They do a facelift similar to a gfx rebrand and use the situation to lower the price if needed. As amd could have done.
Its easily planned and happens all the time. And certainly for polaris getting rid od old stock is easily planned. And btw who destroy their brand to get rid of old stock? Excactly the stupid beancounter thinking. Excuse me but its bookkeeper level. Its a wrong mariage between a bookkeeper and a Raja. Lol.

All this takes to do better is small amounts of cash amd has and then only competence. Its not a matter of objective product capability planning wahtever.

There is not two ways about it. Amd is simply bad at this. Its simply because building and protecting a brand is not at top of their mind.

 

[3DVagabond]

I am not saying they are idiots and they are not but that it is idiotic what they do because it hurts their business long term.

You want a stable price if you want to build brand.
Customers want predictability.
What you do not want is hurt your first movers.
Its acceptable and makes good sense to lower the price for total profit but if you do do it as nv labelling their cards as FE. Differentiate and package it different. Also like eg samsung with a s8 giving vr or sd card. Thats how its done. Simple.

I dont think it matter for amd ryzen first movers price is down 10% - after 6 years waiting. But its absolutely not the impression you want for a good brand.
Imagine toyota did the same. They do a facelift similar to a gfx rebrand and use the situation to lower the price if needed. As amd could have done.
Its easily planned and happens all the time. And certainly for polaris getting rid od old stock is easily planned. And btw who destroy their brand to get rid of old stock? Excactly the stupid beancounter thinking. Excuse me but its bookkeeper level. Its a wrong mariage between a bookkeeper and a Raja. Lol.

All this takes to do better is small amounts of cash amd has and then only competence. Its not a matter of objective product capability planning wahtever.

There is not two ways about it. Amd is simply bad at this. Its simply because building and protecting a brand is not at top of their mind.

You say you aren't calling them idiots and then go into a very condescending rant about how they don't know what they are doing.

AMD already doesn't have a high end product to sell. That's the high profit range. They really can't afford to erode their ASP any further.

 

[misuspita]

What you do not want is hurt your first movers.

Now please use this phrase in the context of nVidia 1080 -> Titan X -> 1080ti -> Titan Xp and see how it works

 

[poofyhairguy]

I have no trouble accepting it, and I'm not contradicting that. My thinking is that there is no reason to rebrand the RX 480.

Sure there is. The 480 had PR problems out the gate with throttling and the six pin issue.

In many ways the 5xx generation is the same thing the 390(x) cards were for Hawaii. The reference 290s and 480s sucked, and so we get 390s and 580s with no reference designs so every card reviewed is factory OCed and has no power problems.

Also you have to consider that the Polaris when it launched was leaky GlobalFoundries garbage. It is obvious that the quality of the 580 silicon is better and that should be reflected with new cards. What Nvidia did by having some 1060s have much faster ram was the wrong move from a marketing perspective. Those cards should have been 1160s.

Personally what I learned from all this is I don't want first gen Ryzen. I want the quality second gen Ryzen silicon- the 580s of Ryzen if you will. I bet the second generation silicon will OC to over 4GHz easily.

 

[crisium]

I certainly agree the naming should have moved down a tier.

I'd also liked to have seen a new, very efficient design. A 1792SP Polaris 10 running at lower frequencies, for example. Something like that at around 1.0 to 1.1GHz would look very efficient, still likely edge out the 1050 Ti (not as efficient though) but also garner a a good overclocking reputation.

 

[EliteRetard]

I certainly agree the naming should have moved down a tier.

I'd also liked to have seen a new, very efficient design. A 1792SP Polaris 10 running at lower frequencies, for example. Something like that at around 1.0 to 1.1GHz would look very efficient, still likely edge out the 1050 Ti (not as efficient though) but also garner a a good overclocking reputation.

I addressed that with my suggestion to cut down the 470/570 a bit more (28-30CU's), and reduce the name to the 560. Also dropping the MSRP a tad to $149 for 4GB. Though I don't agree with dropping the clocks...perhaps in a low power model (that are half height or single slot versions?)
Again I feel that by widening the gap between the full Polaris 10 and the cut version it would convince more people to go for the full fat (and more profit) version in the newly named 570 (same config and price as current 580). Also, the x70 cards have already hit a pretty steady $125 and under price...so cutting the card down more (and including more harvested units), calling it a 560, and moving the MSRP to $149 wouldn't hurt AMD at all in this segment.

 

[krumme]

Now please use this phrase in the context of nVidia 1080 -> Titan X -> 1080ti -> Titan Xp and see how it works

Yes. Nv uses new names and perhaps slight changes to the basically same product.
Ofcource its a ripoff. The point is they make an alteration of product and naming when doing it to give users an "excuse" if you will.
Take FE pricing as a prime example.
Nv dont slash prices because it hurts brand unless its near catastrophe like 280x.
Brand is an imaginary thing. Its not objective. But when you have it not only can you take more for the same product - as you can define what is important - but you buyers will invent all sort of excuses themselves to buy the product.
Its crazy valuable. And it takes time and what amd misses most - its takes by far the biggest investment- to get there.
It doesnt come by itself.
Lost sales. Write off old stock 100%. Lost margins. Late ttm. Whatever it takes to build. Its heavy investments.

 

[ConsoleLover]

I don't see the audience for a low consumption, but garbage at performance GPU. I mean everyone I know, everyone I've met, every single gamer wants faster performance, over pretty much anything. Other things are a consideration, but fall way by the side when compared to performance.

Now in low end systems designed for video consumption and maybe very light gaming, having low consumption card at a cheap price is important, but we are talking about a specific niche market and looking at prices up to $100 at most.

If AMD did do a really consumption friendly card, lets call it RX 580 ECO operating at say max boost of 1100, default clock of 1000, same costs, same design, the only difference the clock and consumption, I bet you less than 0.5% will buy the ECO version over the much faster normal 580.

And again ultimately you can downclock and downvolt your 580 yourself and have it be more efficient, but significantly slower.

 

[Headfoot]

The market understands changing from 4xx to 5xx, or any other left-most number increment to mean a large generational change. This is the way it has been for a very long time in video cards. Minor changes typically get left-most number changes or a modified suffix. For example, GTX to GT. Or XT versus XTX. Or X vs. no X.

This rebrand is outright misleading per anyone's understanding of GPU terminology for the last nearly 20 years. These cards aren't 5xx. They are 4x5 or 4x0 X cards. It's extremely disappointing that AMD has decided to do this. It makes financial sense to mislead people but it certainly doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies for AMD.

 

[ConsoleLover]

The market understands changing from 4xx to 5xx, or any other left-most number increment to mean a large generational change. This is the way it has been for a very long time in video cards. Minor changes typically get left-most number changes or a modified suffix. For example, GTX to GT. Or XT versus XTX. Or X vs. no X.

This rebrand is outright misleading per anyone's understanding of GPU terminology for the last nearly 20 years. These cards aren't 5xx. They are 4x5 or 4x0 X cards. It's extremely disappointing that AMD has decided to do this. It makes financial sense to mislead people but it certainly doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies for AMD.

LOL. You must have been living under a rock for those 20 years, because both Nvidia and AMD/ATI have a long history of rebrands, with step up in numbers names.

 

[Headfoot]

LOL. You must have been living under a rock for those 20 years, because both Nvidia and AMD/ATI have a long history of rebrands, with step up in numbers names.

Because it was done before doesn't make it right to do (two wrongs don't make a right). Logical fallacy. Next.

 

[sm625]

Why? Because the RX470 4GB has been/is pretty much a $125 (or less) card already...

Do you know of any that are currently $125? I thought all those sales were done weeks ago.