AMD post big loss in Q1 2015 | New graphic cards coming in H2 2015

[AtenRa]

During the 7800 & 7900 series battle vs Kepler, AMD did alright. They had ~40% marketshare for desktop dGPUs.

Prior to 970/980 release, AMD was clawing back to over 37% marketshare and on a trajectory of going higher, because the R290/X was very competitive versus 780/ti (funny how after Maxwell's launch, we're seeing the R290/X as faster than 780/ti even).

So if we look at the data, AMD is very competitive when they show up to a fight. Currently they are very late to the Maxwell battle and they are suffering for it.

By the time 390/X launch, so late, their desktop dGPU marketshare will probably be down to 15-18%.

Ultimately, 390/X needs to stomp on Titan X & 980ti for them to have a chance at regaining marketshare. But just don't discount them yet. History have shown buyers will swing either way based on products.

ps. The data also shows that when NV mess up, 6800/Ultra, Fermi, gamers were more loyal, they suffer some marketshare loss but not massively. This suggest NV leaning users have more loyalty than AMD leaning users. It makes sense because the typical AMD buyer is after bang for buck and not some esoteric or intangible quality, so if AMD bombs, their users leave them in droves.

I completely agree, especially with the bold.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Its also 50$+ more than 280X, 285 and so on(Newegg). But thats quickly forgotten.

Isn't a $200-ish dollar 280X still a better buy than a $200 GTX 960 overall?

 

[2is]

Isn't a $200-ish dollar 280X still a better buy than a $200 GTX 960 overall?

Yes it absolutely is, and the AMD guys around here are quick to point it out. Point here is, If the roles however were reversed as far as the cards are concerned (960 being better and slightly more expensive) they'd be saying that the extra cost is a lot for many people and that money can go elsewhere.

It's always been like that with fans. Either the extra money is justified because it's a better card, and if it's not a better card it's somehow still the better buy because it's saving you money.

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

Yes it absolutely is, and the AMD guys around here are quick to point it out. Point here is, If the roles however were reversed as far as the cards are concerned (960 being better and slightly more expensive) they'd be saying that the extra cost is a lot for many people and that money can go elsewhere.

It's always been like that with fans. Either the extra money is justified because it's a better card, and if it's not a better card it's somehow still the better buy because it's saving you money.

Haven't seen anybody here suggest that a card with worse perf per $ is the better buy here.

 

[Qwertilot]

Look, it isn't easy doing these comparisons

If you normalise for TDP/features etc the 280/X correspond to the 970/80, 270/x vs 960 etc. This is the 'high end'/'low end' stuff from earlier and more or less how they'd line up price wise if the underlying tech was at similar levels.

Of course that isn't the comparison being made because NV know they're ahead and are charging for it! If you normalise for price then at most points you end up with a comparison between a quieter, lower power NV card that is often a bit less powerful too.

Really, the 960 is (with the 750ti) off in its own market segment in terms of super quiet/low power graphics cards that can still do 1080p gaming at least OK. That's non trivial - and especially so in laptops etc - but AMD aren't playing there at all right now.

 

[xthetenth]

Yes it absolutely is, and the AMD guys around here are quick to point it out. Point here is, If the roles however were reversed as far as the cards are concerned (960 being better and slightly more expensive) they'd be saying that the extra cost is a lot for many people and that money can go elsewhere.

It's always been like that with fans. Either the extra money is justified because it's a better card, and if it's not a better card it's somehow still the better buy because it's saving you money.

If you started quoting the percent differences in performance, the recommendations on where to move in the pricing scale would make total sense.

It's price/performance not jumping to an arbitrary point on the price scale and building justifications after the fact.

Incidentally this explains the recent recommendations for the 290 over the 290X as well, where your theories fail.

 

[2is]

If you started quoting the percent differences in performance, the recommendations on where to move in the pricing scale would make total sense.

It's price/performance not jumping to an arbitrary point on the price scale and building justifications after the fact.

Incidentally this explains the recent recommendations for the 290 over the 290X as well, where your theories fail.

I never said they don't make sense, I actually said a 280x is a better buy than a 960 and went on to describe the mentality of the AMD fan. My "theory" has nothing to do with AMD vs another AMD card. Polish up your reply a bit and get back to me. Just look at the CPU forums where the AMD guys will recommend a, 8350 over an i5 when the cost is <$100 difference. When you factor in TCO over the course of their life it's even worse for the 8350. Increased power consumption coupled by a lower resale value, but people still say it's the better buy. Why? Because AMD.

 

[gochi123]

guess because everyone opts for intel nowdays

 

[xthetenth]

I never said they don't make sense, I actually said a 280x is a better buy than a 960 and went on to describe the mentality of the AMD fan. My "theory" has nothing to do with AMD vs another AMD card. Polish up your reply a bit and get back to me. Just look at the CPU forums where the AMD guys will recommend a, 8350 over an i5 when the cost is <$100 difference. When you factor in TCO over the course of their life it's even worse for the 8350. Increased power consumption coupled by a lower resale value, but people still say it's the better buy. Why? Because AMD.

You're doing yourself a disservice by neglecting that the main people recommending AMD cards and processors are not in fact the same people. The price/performance crowd is with AMD cards but rarely with processors.

 

[2is]

You're doing yourself a disservice by neglecting that the main people recommending AMD cards and processors are not in fact the same people. The price/performance crowd is with AMD cards but rarely with processors.

It's the state of mind I'm commenting on, not specific people. In the CPU forum Intel is blamed, in the GPU forum nVidia is blamed... Oh, and consumers too of course.

 

[ocre]

Some people have higher ethical standards than others.

I know RL friends who boycott EA stuff due to their fiasco over the years, I personally boycott Ubisoft for overly restrictive DRM they employed a few years ago. Sure, they admitted it was a mistake & toned down draconian DRM, but the damage was done.

If GW is doing what has been publicly said by developers & even admitted to by NV reps, that is, GW exclusive devs are not allowed to share game optimizations with AMD until months after release (magical AMD performance official game patches!)... then to me, that's bordering on the ethical lines. Sure, its legitimate how they spend their money to buy devs, its their business strategy and it works great.

But can you imagine if the situation was reversed? If AMD had more cash to splurge, buying devs and locking them in, preventing devs from optimizing for NV GPUs? Would you be happy with that?

I wouldn't be. But I also see that AMD needs to play dirty to have a chance against a ruthless competitor like NV who is happily playing dirty all these years.

As I posted earlier, do gamers reward AMD for spending money on GE games (Alien Isolation, Civ BE, Ryse, Evolve) that run great on NV GPUs with working SLI on release?

It seems the close-source GW program reaps more rewards than AMD's open-approach GE. Surely you cannot deny this.

You are just making up stuff. None of that is true. You don't understand where performance comes from when AMD and nvidia work on a specific title. You don't understand how it is up to nvidia and AMD to put the extra effort in if they want the extra performance. You don't understand the pay off of driver optimization and maximizing performance with investments like rewriting shaders.

AMD is free to work with any developer they choose to. If nvidia invest more in these areas for performance, that has nothing to do with AMDs lack in performance

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

You're doing yourself a disservice by neglecting that the main people recommending AMD cards and processors are not in fact the same people. The price/performance crowd is with AMD cards but rarely with processors.

Agreed, this is the Video Cards and Graphics forum.

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

You are just making up stuff. None of that is true. You don't understand where performance comes from when AMD and nvidia work on a specific title. You don't understand how it is up to nvidia and AMD to put the extra effort in if they want the extra performance. You don't understand the pay off of driver optimization and maximizing performance with investments like rewriting shaders.

AMD is free to work with any developer they choose to. If nvidia invest more in these areas for performance, that has nothing to do with AMDs lack in performance

Is he? So it's just coincidence that GW titles take AMD a few weeks after release to get the drivers up to speed but no on other titles?

Let's not try to paint Nvidia in some angelic light here, the GW titles have always been an issue for gamers, be they run poorly on AMD hardware, or sometimes both.

 

[xthetenth]

You are just making up stuff. None of that is true. You don't understand where performance comes from when AMD and nvidia work on a specific title. You don't understand how it is up to nvidia and AMD to put the extra effort in if they want the extra performance. You don't understand the pay off of driver optimization and maximizing performance with investments like rewriting shaders.

AMD is free to work with any developer they choose to. If nvidia invest more in these areas for performance, that has nothing to do with AMDs lack in performance

The problem is AMD can't get access, and that's what sets GW apart from other things. Rather than making their stuff perform, half of it is about making AMD stuff perform worse by blocking AMD access to code and pushing them out of pre-launch optimization.

Seeing people encourage that by doing their best to excuse it and reward it with their purchasing makes me stop caring if PC gaming stays a thing.

 

[2is]

Sooooo In addition to blaming everything and everyone who doesn't buy AMD, now we have someone threatening to pack up his toys and go home if people keep buying nVidia.

 

[ocre]

Is he? So it's just coincidence that GW titles take AMD a few weeks after release to get the drivers up to speed but no on other titles?

Let's not try to paint Nvidia in some angelic light here, the GW titles have always been an issue for gamers, be they run poorly on AMD hardware, or sometimes both.

I am not trying to paint Nvidia anything. But there has been this ongoing effort to turn nvidia HBAO+ and TXAA into them completely rewriting entire games to "run poorly on AMD hardware"

This is completely made up and invented. AMD always tries to reduce anything Nvidia does with their own propaganda. Just look at freesync. The name is the ultimate example of their tactics.

Gameworks is HBAO+ and TXAA, etc. Added effects to games as nvidia tries to spice up the PC gaming market. These are added on to mostly console ports, added on to the game the developers release on PC. Some of these effects work on AMD cards but no one has to use them. They have to be turned on in the game. If you leave them off....... Boom, no gameworks in that game.

See if you think the performance of HBAO+ gives someone with an Nvidia card an "unfair" advantage, do not use it. Problem solved.

As for games running poorly on AMD hardware.......
This is crazy. Gameworks didnt do that. What about all the console ports that come out that have the 290x as fast as the 980? Is this because of AMD sabotaging? Heck no.
It is because AMD GCN hardware is in the consoles. And these games take advantage of it. Nvidia could invest a ton of cash in these games to rewrite shaders and major driver overhauls. Work with these developers for patches and eventually end up with some very huge gains in performance, but they dont. They put investments where nvidia thinks they make the most sense. And sometimes the work it would take is just not worth the money it would take. But you have to realize, there is always a way to get more performance, you just have to be willing to put the cash on it. And this is what nvidia does, on the games they think are the most important.

Dont look at it backwards. Nvidia investing in games to have the best performance they can. They are putting in extra effort for their user base. AMD twist this like they did gsync with their "freesync" campaign.

You have to realize by now...
Game engines naturally favor either nvidia HW or AMD HW. But this doesnt mean your just out of luck when an engine works better on you competitors HW, right out of the gate. Both Nvidia and AMD can work with developers and with their drivers, rewrite shaders and optimize the situation to end up with huge performance gains. If another game comes out on the same engine, a lot of the work is already done. Nvidia puts a lot of effort where they think it makes the most sense. And they have a lot of money to spend to try to extract performance. This doesnt make AMDs performance any worse than what it normally would be. It is just that nvidia worked to make their performance that much better.

So if i work hard to build a house that is huge, one that is so large it towers over all the others on my block. Are you gonna say that i made all the other houses smaller?

 

[Silverforce11]

You are just making up stuff. None of that is true.

If you accuse me of lying, you better have some proof.

My facts are solid, it's on the public record, from NV themselves:

"According to Nvidia, developers can, under certain licensing circumstances, gain access to (and optimize) the GameWorks code, but cannot share that code with AMD for optimization purposes."

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...surps-power-from-developers-end-users-and-amd

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...d-potentially-the-entire-pc-gaming-ecosystem/

Also it's funny that the NV mouthpiece has the balls to make such a false statement: "You don't need to see the code to optimize the game".. yeah. Certainly if the game code is obfuscated, it makes the job of optimizing much harder than it has to.

This is also true, because it happened:
"This change coincides with NVIDIA’s decision to remove all public Direct3D code samples from their site in favor of a ‘contact us for licensing’ page. AMD does not engage in, support, or condone such activities."

AMD's approach with GE: "Our work with game developers is founded concretely in open, sharable code, all of which we make available on our developer portal."

 

[utahraptor]

I have never purchased stock before, but I might purchase some AMD around the first week of May. I don't think it can go much lower without a bankruptcy and surely the new cards will make it go up.

 

[2is]

If you accuse me of lying, you better have some proof.

My facts are solid, it's on the public record, from NV themselves:

"According to Nvidia, developers can, under certain licensing circumstances, gain access to (and optimize) the GameWorks code, but cannot share that code with AMD for optimization purposes."

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...surps-power-from-developers-end-users-and-amd

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...d-potentially-the-entire-pc-gaming-ecosystem/

Also it's funny that the NV mouthpiece has the balls to make such a false statement: "You don't need to see the code to optimize the game".. yeah. Certainly if the game code is obfuscated, it makes the job of optimizing much harder than it has to.

This is also true, because it happened:
"This change coincides with NVIDIA’s decision to remove all public Direct3D code samples from their site in favor of a ‘contact us for licensing’ page. AMD does not engage in, support, or condone such activities."

AMD's approach with GE: "Our work with game developers is founded concretely in open, sharable code, all of which we make available on our developer portal."

He addressed that when he said GW is HBAO+ TXAA, etc. What you're quoting doesn't say that developers can't optimize for AMD hardware. It's saying developers can't share with AMD how to optimize GW specific features. There's a BIG difference between the way you're trying to spin what NVidia said, and what they actually said.

 

[Silverforce11]

He addressed that when he said GW is HBAO+ TXAA, etc. What you're quoting doesn't say that developers can't optimize for AMD hardware. It's saying developers can't share with AMD how to optimize GW specific features. There's a BIG difference between the way you're trying to spin what NVidia said, and what they actually said.

That's one quote from NV saying they don't let devs share GW optimizations with AMD.

There's plenty of quotes available from AMD saying that GW exclusive devs do not grant access to the game during development for them to optimize. Even various devs on twitter chimed in regarding to GW exclusivity. I guess it's what's referred to as a "buy-out".

There's also on the record, where Ubisoft & Batman devs refused to take AMD's offerings of game optimizations so that their games run better on AMD GPUs for release.

Now, it's probably just Ubi being Ubifail, but the trend with GW titles is that it runs very poorly on AMD for many months, or until whenever the developers decide to finally release an optimization patch because its clear their game was never optimized for AMD during its entire development. Why? You can connect the dots or choose to believe that NV is spending $ on GW to help ALL PC gamers...

It's clear NV wants to lock-out AMD in GW titles or they wouldn't do this:
"This change coincides with NVIDIA&#8217;s decision to remove all public Direct3D code samples from their site in favor of a &#8216;contact us for licensing&#8217; page. AMD does not engage in, support, or condone such activities."

Or obfuscate GameWorks source code so it can't be reverse engineered & optimized for easily. Something AMD's GE does NOT do.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Why *should* NVidia share gameworks code with AMD? Did AMD pay for the development? I just boggles my mind everytime these threads come up. NVidia would be stupid to share code for what they developed with AMD.

Now I am no fan of gameworks, and if NVidia forces devs to use gameworks and makes it impossible to bypass it to intentionally cripple AMD cards, that is another situation. But despite all the claims and counter claims, I don't think this has ever been proven, at least by an independent souce outside of AMD. So, despite the fact that there may be some reason to dislike gameworks, I have to say, AMD and their proponent's continually blaming everything but the products themselves, (both in cpus and dgpus) for their abysmal market share is getting old as well.

Just look at dgpus. You can say they are not a good value, but NVidia has brought out Maxwell 750Ti, 970 and 980, Titan X and looks like 980Ti, while during that time from AMD we have gotten a somewhat updated 285, and basically rebrands for everything else. And still waiting for 390X, and if the rumors of yield problems with HBM are vaild, probably very limited availability when it finally does come out.

 

[Silverforce11]

Why *should* NVidia share gameworks code with AMD? Did AMD pay for the development? I just boggles my mind everytime these threads come up. NVidia would be stupid to share code for what they developed with AMD.

My point isn't about whether NV should make GW open, its to show with public proof that GW is intended to give NV an advantage at the expense of AMD. It is meant to be closed. It's code is obfuscated on purpose to prevent AMD from optimizing. NV removed code for their features from the public domain, whereas AMD has presented everything they've done relating to GE in an open manner.

Nowhere did I say NV should freely share their GW code. I have said many times, NV is entitled to do whatever they want with their $. If they don't want AMD to be able to run GW titles well, so be it. All is fair in warfare.

Also, AMD is doing exactly that, doing stupid that is, by freely sharing their GE source code and presenting publicly on how to best optimize it at GDCs & other tech conferences. They are spending their $ to help NV optimize for GE titles. Not very clever at all given what NV is doing against them.

 

[RussianSensation]

He addressed that when he said GW is HBAO+ TXAA, etc. What you're quoting doesn't say that developers can't optimize for AMD hardware. It's saying developers can't share with AMD how to optimize GW specific features. There's a BIG difference between the way you're trying to spin what NVidia said, and what they actually said.

GW doesn't allow the developer itself to change the code in any way without NV's permission; and since the develover is also banned from sharing the code with AMD, neither the developer nor AMD can ever optimize GW's proprietary gamecode for AMD hardware, ever!

The end result is in all GW titles AMD is no longer in control of its own performance. While GameWorks doesn&#8217;t technically lock vendors into Nvidia solutions, a developer that wanted to support both companies equally would have to work with AMD and Nvidia from the beginning of the development cycle to create a vendor-specific code path. It&#8217;s impossible for AMD to provide a quick after-launch fix if some of the source-code in the game is vendor specific and AMD has no direct access to it.

This kind of maneuver ultimately hurts developers in the guise of helping them. Even if the developers at Ubisoft or WB Montreal wanted to help AMD improve its performance, they can&#8217;t share the code. If Nvidia decides to stop supporting older GPUs in a future release, game developers won&#8217;t be able to implement their own solutions without starting from scratch and building a new version of the library from the ground up. This subtle point can explain why Kepler GPUs show very poor performance in many titles where Maxwell shows an unusual performance advantage. Developers who rely on GW may discover that their games run unexplainably poorly on AMD hardware with no insight into why because they can't share the code with AMD and thus it makes it impossible for a developer who is connected to the GW's program to alter this GW's code to speed up performance on AMD hardware.

Nvidia&#8217;s GameWorks program is conceptually similar to what Intel pulled on AMD 8-10 years back. In that situation, Intel&#8217;s compilers refused to optimize code for AMD processors, even though AMD had paid Intel for the right to implement SSE, SSE2, and SSE3. The compiler would search for a CPU string rather than just the ability to execute the vectorized code, and if it detected AuthenticAMD instead of GenuineIntel, it refused to use the most advantageous optimizations. The situation here is different, in that we&#8217;re discussing third-party libraries and not the fundamental tools used to build executables, but the end result is similar.

Thus far you provided no valid counter-arguments to dispute how GWs blocking access to the source code doesn't hurt AMD directly. If AMD pulled the same tactic, it would basically guarantee that one would need to have both AMD and NV GPUs for optimal gaming performance, or would have to get a way faster NV card to compensate for the massive performance penalty in AMD's locked source code. I personally think if AMD's GE were to follow NV's GW, we would actually need to have an AMD and an NV card for optimal performance across a wide variety of titles - an absurd concept! How would you feel if in every single GE titles, SLI wouldn't work for 3-6 months until AMD gave the developer the go ahead to release a patch for working SLI? You'd still buy those games for $50? How would you feel if AMD was 10X the size of NV and just bought out 99% of all AAA developers and inserted proprietary closed game source code optimized specifically for AMD cards? That's fair competition?!

Also, AMD is doing exactly that, doing stupid that is, by freely sharing their GE source code and presenting publicly on how to best optimize it at GDCs & other tech conferences. They are spending their $ to help NV optimize for GE titles. Not very clever at all given what NV is doing against them.

That's because PC gaming/software development has been open source. How far would we get in PC hardware and software if from day 1, everyone just made everything proprietary? The solution lies in the developers but for marketing $, they'll bend over and do whatever is asked. What this means is there is little integrity left in PC game development for many studios. Why? Because if a major developer is willingly accepting vendor specific locked source-code that can never be altered or optimized without that vendor's permission, this developer is knowingly favouring all consumers that have products from this very vendor, and thus ignoring everyone else in the market who is gaming a videocard from a competing vendor (i.e., AMD, Matrox, Intel, etc.).

Let's hypothetically imagine we had 6 GPU makers in the market and NV had 50% market share, while everyone else had 10% a piece. By virtue of the developer accepting proprietary source code optimized specifically for NV's hardware, the developer would be consciously and willingly sacrificing the performance of the game for the remaining 50% of the market comprised of the other 5 GPU makers. If you are the developer, how do you accept such an insanely biased business decision if you have any sort of business ethics and actually care about your consumers? If you are willingly favouring 1 type of consumer over the other, knowing that the outcome of your choices will result in exactly a favourable situation for one part of the market only, you are a biased gaming developer.

If 100% of the source code in the game can be shared with anyone, the developer is fully cleared of bias because now the optimization rests with the 3rd party GPU maker(s). In this case, not only does GWs hurts AMD, it also hurts everyone with an Intel GPU/APU because Intel can't optimize GW's source code either. Now just imagine if Intel threw hundreds of millions of dollars and made almost all source code in AAA games proprietary!? :hmm: I am curious how many of the gamers defending GW/thinking there is nothing wrong with this are proponents of Apple's proprietary business practices. I would bet, a large fraction.

 

[2is]

Counter argument? There's been plenty you just don't see it. Hardly surprising considering that according to you, all of AMD's woes are attributed to every company that competes with them. Oh, and everyone who doesn't buy their products too.

 

[Silverforce11]

@RS
NV isn't going to change their approach since it works for them, all time record marketshare, great revenue/margins.

So the problem is there, the solution (NV being open source with GW) won't occur. What would you do in AMD's shoes to respond to GW? Nothing and business as usual = AMD dead & burried in dGPU business.