[Rumor - WCCFTech] AMD Arctic Islands 400 Series Set To Launch In Summer of 2016

[MrTeal]

All top tier cards for their prior naming scheme, and one prestige Fury. Instead they basically pulled a 58xx to 69xx name shift but added Fury to the stack. Just annoying if you ask.

Close, but not quite as bad. At least someone who upgraded from a 290X to a 390X got an extra 4GB of RAM for his few hundred dollars. Someone who upgraded from a 5870 to a 6870 was out more than just money.

 

[3DVagabond]

Close, but not quite as bad. At least someone who upgraded from a 290X to a 390X got an extra 4GB of RAM for his few hundred dollars. Someone who upgraded from a 5870 to a 6870 was out more than just money.

Anyone who did either of those things was misinformed. Neither is an upgrade for 99% and the 6870 was a downgrade.

 

[RussianSensation]

Close, but not quite as bad. At least someone who upgraded from a 290X to a 390X got an extra 4GB of RAM for his few hundred dollars. Someone who upgraded from a 5870 to a 6870 was out more than just money.

At least you got Asynchrous Compute hardware instead of a marketing slide that said it's a supported feature and real fast GDDR5 instead of marketing 4GB GDDR5. You also don't have to worry that once next gen comes out, that 290X/390X will be driver gimped.

A rose by any other name....

I don't think it matters at all. The people who wouldn't buy something because it's AMD would still buy nVidia, Intel, etc...

For real. If someone doesn't want to buy a videocard because they don't like the "brand name" or its SKU name, that tells a lot more about the consumer than the videocard itself. I guess it's better to sell mid-range cards as flagships by slapping flagship names on them. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, while I hug it at night, after dropping $550 on it. Oh my sweet mid-range beauty, with a flagship name. :wub:

AMD needs to adopt new advertising techniques for a younger generation of consumers.

1. "While 60 percent of respondents said they are often or always loyal to brands that they currently purchase, nearly half said the quality of the product is the most important attribute in a purchasing decision--more than twice that of price."

2. "75 percent reported that it is either fairly important or very important that a company gives back to society instead of just making a profit."

3. "A good customer experience and a “quality product” are the two most cited reasons for what influences Millennials to share information about a brand online. Sixty-two percent say that if a brand engages with them on social networks, they are more likely to become a loyal customer."

http://www.inc.com/vicky-castro/todays-millennial-consumers-may-be-picky-but-theyre-loyal-too.html

AMD needs to send the entire R9 400 product stack to all the top YouTubers, Twitch gamers, etc. and FreeSync monitors with all of those products. Then they can easily ask to create a $600, $1000, $1500, $2000 gaming rig with FreeSync and see what the competing solution costs to get a similar level of graphics quality and performance.

If AMD can convey that you can get a better quality experience (and naturally buying an AMD GPU + higher quality FreeSync monitor will be far more affordable at any price level than the competitor's solution), then the consumers won't care what R9 400 series is called. It just has to deliver the total experience.

 

[96Firebird]

If someone doesn't want to buy a videocard because they don't like the "brand name" or its SKU name, that tells a lot more about the consumer than the videocard itself. I guess it's better to sell mid-range cards as flagships by slapping flagship names on them. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, while I hug it at night, after dropping $550 on it. Oh my sweet mid-range beauty, with a flagship name. :wub:

This paragraph contradicts itself pretty bad...

 

[RussianSensation]

This paragraph contradicts itself pretty bad...

Nope, because you forgot how you can't just magically assign a flagship name and have mid-range performance for a flagship price. hat would be deceiving. Did AMD do that with R9 390/390X/Fury products? No. This doesn't apply to the Fury/Fury X. The point was if Fury X was called R9 390 or 390X or Zeus, it wouldn't have made a difference as to what the underlying product is. There is nothing deceiving about assigning a high-end nomenclature to a high-end card. That's what the Fury X. However, it is deceiving to call a mid-range card a flagship and then slap a $550+ price on it. It's deceiving to advertise 4GB of fast GDDR5 and have just 3.5GB of it and then never change the technical specs on the box.

Since AMD never tried to hide where the 390/390X and Fury are on their product stack, it's not deceiving to the informed consumer.

 

[railven]

This paragraph contradicts itself pretty bad...

Haha, pretty much. Long as the name is right, or maybe not. You decide.

 

[dogen1]

2. "75 percent reported that it is either fairly important or very important that a company gives back to society instead of just making a profit."

They sell products that people want and pay for. I hate this whole giving back to society crap. They're benefiting society already by producing useful items and increasing the overall amount of wealth.

 

[3DVagabond]

1. "While 60 percent of respondents said they are often or always loyal to brands that they currently purchase, nearly half said the quality of the product is the most important attribute in a purchasing decision--more than twice that of price."

BS. They are fooling themselves if they believe it.

2. "75 percent reported that it is either fairly important or very important that a company gives back to society instead of just making a profit."

BS. People buy for selfish reasons.


3. "A good customer experience and a “quality product” are the two most cited reasons for what influences Millennials to share information about a brand online. Sixty-two percent say that if a brand engages with them on social networks, they are more likely to become a loyal customer."

That is after they buy it. Nobody cares about CS until they need it.


http://www.inc.com/vicky-castro/todays-millennial-consumers-may-be-picky-but-theyre-loyal-too.html

AMD needs to send the entire R9 400 product stack to all the top YouTubers, Twitch gamers, etc. and FreeSync monitors with all of those products. Then they can easily ask to create a $600, $1000, $1500, $2000 gaming rig with FreeSync and see what the competing solution costs to get a similar level of graphics quality and performance.

If AMD can convey that you can get a better quality experience (and naturally buying an AMD GPU + higher quality FreeSync monitor will be far more affordable at any price level than the competitor's solution), then the consumers won't care what R9 400 series is called. It just has to deliver the total experience.

While there are no doubt people who buy for the reasons listed they want all of that and to not pay a nickle more. They want what is trendy. They buy what their favorite star buys. People are shallow as poo but like to think nobody else notices.

 

[railven]

Close, but not quite as bad. At least someone who upgraded from a 290X to a 390X got an extra 4GB of RAM for his few hundred dollars. Someone who upgraded from a 5870 to a 6870 was out more than just money.

My comment was solely focused on their naming decisions. Not what you were buying.

I just don't get why they added a new tier to begin with. Is this a one time thing? Will 400 series not have a "Fury" tier and 490X be considered the top card?

Went from 5870 as top, to 6970 as top, to 290X as top, to Fury X. WTH!?

 

[RussianSensation]

14nm LPP 100% confirmed for Arctic Islands, with a likely spit between GloFo and Samsung to reduce the chance of supply constraints and increase yields.

VRWorld:

"Couple of days ago, GlobalFoundries issued a press release stating that they ‘demonstrated silicon success on the first AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) products using GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ most advanced 14nm FinFET process technology.’

“FinFET technology is expected to play a critical foundational role across multiple AMD product lines, starting in 2016. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has worked tirelessly to reach this key milestone on its 14LPP process. We look forward to GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ continued progress towards full production readiness and expect to leverage the advanced 14LPP process technology across a broad set of our CPU, APU, and GPU products,” said Mark Papermaster, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Advanced Micro Devices.

According to our sources, the company focused and pushed with development of GlobalFoundries 14nm process from the get go. In January 2015, their 14nm process “was successfully qualified for volume production, while achieving yield targets on lead customer products.” Furthermore, “The performance-enhanced version of the technology (14LPP) was qualified in the third quarter of 2015, with the early ramp occurring in the fourth quarter of 2015 and full-scale production set for (early) 2016.”

14NM AMD GREENLAND TAPES OUT

In a recent conversation with Forbes, Raja Koduri, head of graphics spinoff Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) disclosed that “RTG will need to execute on their architectural designs and create brand new GPUs, something that Advanced Micro Devices has struggled with lately. He promised two brand new GPUs in 2016,” followed by their plan to “make Advanced Micro Devices more power and die size competitive. Thus, we have at least two GPUs coming from AMD, being mainstream (Baffin / Ellesmere) and high-end (Greenland) members of Arctic Island GPU family, as low-end is now integrated inside AMD’s APU (Accelerated Processing Units).”

AMD Goes “Made in America”

The ‘double down’ on GlobalFoundries resulted in AMD’s switch from TSMC to GlobalFoundries for its next-generation GPUs, which will utilize a more advanced process node than their main competitor. Also, AMD has a slight advantage with time zones, as GlobalFoundries developed and deployed then 14nm FinFET process in its Fab 8 facility in New York state, which is where AMD will produce all of the taped out parts.

For the first time since 2002, and the spin-off of its Austin factory, AMD will have a “Made in United States” or as AMD likes to put, “Diffused in United States” markings on its chips. All future 14nm processors are expected to carry “Diffused in United States” marking."

After almost reaching transistor/FLOP parity with Fiji (8.9 billion transistors, 8.6 TFLOPS), Greenland is expected to go pass that mark. We expect to see an 15+ billion transistor part (first 10+ billion monolithic chip in the world), connected to 16 and 32GB HBM2 memory, in single and dual-GPU configuration. The board design comes from what the company learned delivering revolutionary R9 Nano and the upcoming R9 Fury X2 (codenamed Gemini).

Internal GPU Architecture

In terms of internal architecture, we’re dealing with a new beast. While Fiji was a refined Hawaii GPU, offering improvement efficiency of the old units and HBM memory, Greenland offers new micro-architecture, and should not be considered a member of GCN (Graphics Core Next) family by default. Unlike current lineup of GCN 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 chips, Arctic Islands is either ‘GCN 2.0’, or a new marketing name is on the way. After all, in 2016, GCN naming will be five years old, and feature ‘only’ three iterations (depending on do you consider Bonaire XT / Fiji XT the same brethren, or Fiji being named GCN 1.3).

Compute

Our sources repeatedly said that AMD learned a great deal in developing both HBM memory and GDDR5X (memory for more affordable graphics cards), and that their goal is to ‘knock the ball out of park’ when it comes to offering superior compute capabilities (AMD GPUs perform double-precision operations at half the clock, just like AMD and Intel x86 processors). We are not in liberty of disclosing the targeted raw performance of the part – as it is too early to say, given that ‘speed binning’ is not taking place yet. But even if the company hits significant thermal/yield issues, it should have no problem beating Intel’s Knights Landing by a factor of two.

"AMD Fiji achieves 8.6 TFLOPS Single Precision, and locks the Double Precision to 1/16 rate – something which professional parts have unlocked. In case of unlocked Fiji, you would have 4.3 TFLOPS of double precision. With Greenland, AMD plans to offer professional products for the servers and workstations, with a completely new lineup."

"Do bear in mind that AMD Greenland is intended to hook up to a new Server chip, codenamed Zeppelin. This is a multi-chip module (MCM) server (and hopefully workstation/high-end desktop) processor which will bring support for DDR4-3200 memory, targeting memory bandwidth exceeding 100GB/s, communicating with the Greenland GPU through a faster bus than what PCI Express can give, with its paltry 16GB/s bi-directional bandwidth."

December 2015 Update:

"According to HotHardware, Samsung is set to produce of 14nm chips for AMD, starting next year. This news comes as a bit of a surprise. AMD currently produces all its chips through one company, namely GlobalFoundries. In a nutshell, AMD now keeps all of their chip production with one single company – not a good business model in any situation. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) also used to build chips for AMD. But after yield and supply woes were constantly happening, it forced AMD to look elsewhere for help, and right now it’s looking in the direction of Samsung.

The idea is to have at least two semiconductor facilities producing chips for AMD. Right now, with only one production company and the possible problems arising from such an arrangement, AMD is hard pressed to find another company that is able to produce chips for their new lineup alongside high yield and perfectly executed supply chain as well. It is important for AMD for their two new chips, namely “Greenland” GPUs and “Zen” CPUs that are coming out soon, to be produced as efficiently, quickly and without hassle.

AMD currently has all its chips in one basket, so to speak, that basket being GlobalFoundries. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) also used to build chips for AMD, though yield and supply woes forced AMD to look elsewhere for help, and right now it’s looking in the direction of Samsung. Both new chips will be made as 14nm semiconductors, including all the production woes that come with this production configuration as well."

 

[Ma_Deuce]

I just don't get why they added a new tier to begin with. Is this a one time thing? Will 400 series not have a "Fury" tier and 490X be considered the top card?

Went from 5870 as top, to 6970 as top, to 290X as top, to Fury X. WTH!?

I tried, but I just can't see a reason to whine about the naming scheme.

 

[sandorski]

My comment was solely focused on their naming decisions. Not what you were buying.

I just don't get why they added a new tier to begin with. Is this a one time thing? Will 400 series not have a "Fury" tier and 490X be considered the top card?

Went from 5870 as top, to 6970 as top, to 290X as top, to Fury X. WTH!?

The Fury series are significantly different, introducing a new Memory Technology, and I suspect AMD knew they couldn't produce the volumes that the 390 series would normally ship at. Performance was also focused on 4k, Fury's 1080p/1440p performance would have made it a poor fit as a 390. AMD really wanted to make people take note of the Fury and see it as a glimpse to the future, especially in regards to HBM.

It was a Marketing decision and IMO a good one. All the baggage accumulated from previous gens didn't overshadow Fury. Fury was presented in such a way that it would be judged on its' own merits.

 

[96Firebird]

I really hope Fab 8 is going to finally going to start fabbing production chips.

 

[RussianSensation]

It was a Marketing decision and IMO a good one. All the baggage accumulated from previous gens didn't overshadow Fury. Fury was presented in such a way that it would be judged on its' own merits.

For me, the 6 big issues for Fury were (in no particular order):

1) 1080p DX11 driver overhead, although I'd question why anyone would care to buy a $650 GPU to play modern AAA console ports at 1080p when a $280 R9 390 (or competing product) is just as sufficient in this targeted space. For 1080p gaming, might as well buy a $280-300 R9 390 and then another $280-300 card in 2 years rather than buying a Fury X. Still, the very thought that you pay $650 for a card that shines at 1440p and above ensures that 1080p gamers will buy the competitor every time. That means Fury X was too expensive for 1080p and not fast enough for the price at that resolution. While I would imagine that most 1080p gamers wouldn't even be looking at this class of card, those that did would not buy the Fury X. With 2016 and beyond, AMD needs to keep focusing on DX11 drivers and yet have enough resources to allocate programmers on DX12 drivers. Big challenge.

2) The second major issue is lack of overclocking headroom. Stock vs. stock, Fury X is very competitive a 1440p and is actually faster at 4K. But when the competing card has 20-25% overclocking headroom, that's another tier of GPU performance. Unfortunately for AMD, there is a double standard in the GPU industry where if the competitor overclocks much better, it matters a great deal while if AMD overclocks well, it's largely ignored. But it's the reality AMD has to deal with and for R9 400 they need to up the clocks as far as possible OR allow AIBs to offer much higher factory pre-overclocked cards. This is one area where 14nm LPP could show great benefits over 28nm TSMC on which Fury X was manufactured.

3) Lack of HDMI 2.0 support. For a larger part of Fury X's intended target market -> 4K, this was a gross oversight. It's hard to measure how much this mattered but I presume every consumer with a 4K HDTV went with the competition due to lack of DP-to-HDMI 2.0 adapters for most of 2015. Even if Fury X were 10-15% faster, the lack of HDMI 2.0 connectivity would have ensured that 100% of the sales for 4K HDTVs went to the competitor. This area will be completely addressed with R9 400 due to DP1.3 and HDMI 2.0a that will support HDR.

4) Launching after your competitor and yet offering inferior price/performance. This is self-explanatory and it doesn't look good for brand image. If you launch later, it's better to bring something new to the table, whether it's superior price/performance OR more performance. For a brand like AMD, they cannot afford to just match the competition when they launch late. This is something AMD needs to pay close attention to especially if they plan to launch R9 400 series only in 2H of 2016, assuming launching behind their competitor.

5) Lack after-market air coolers. Had Fury X launched with air coolers, the terrible QA/QC of earlier AIO CLC pump samples wouldn't have smeared the entire Fury X line-up since the consumer would have had alternatives to AIO CLC. Also, since not everyone feels safe about using an AIO CLC in their rig, providing more options is important. Furthermore, the mandatory inclusion of AIO CLC and lack of non-reference PCB designs implied two crucial limitations:

(i) It made SKU differentiation impossible for AMD's AIBs. This was a devastating strategy since the competitor's AIBs could do whatever they wanted --> Design a cheaper PCB and lower price? Check. Design a better PCB+components and get higher overclocks? Check. Lots of options that AMD didn't give to the Fury X.

(ii) AIO CLC means it's not possible to have 0dBA operation for <60C as many flagship cards can have. As a result, AMD forced the consumer to make the choice between a quieter card at load but louder card in 2D/light 3D gaming applications. Again, offering after-market air cooling designs would have addressed both types of consumers.

For R9 400 series and Fury X competitor, AMD needs to be more flexible in offering a reference AIO CLC solution if they so desire but also giving the option of an after-market air cooled designs and doing so as close as possible to reference card's launch date.

6) 4GB of HBM1 vs. 6GB of GDDR5. It looks really bad after HBM1 was over-hyped to deliver next gen memory technology breakthrough but you not only get worse performance than the competition but you also has 50% less VRAM. Considering the competitor's customers are more loyal to begin with, delivering less in this area would have ensured that even if Fury X matched the competition in all key metrics, it would have ultimately lost based on the perception about VRAM capacity alone.

With HBM2 allowing scaling up to 32GB of VRAM, this issue should be finally addressed. For mainstream chips, they could use GDDR5X and 8GB.

-----------

 

[railven]

I tried, but I just can't see a reason to whine about the naming scheme.

Gotta love these forums. Can't have a discussion expressing one's opinion, even more so if it's critical, otherwise it's whining.

Oh well, not that it matters. Helps pass the time

The Fury series are significantly different, introducing a new Memory Technology, and I suspect AMD knew they couldn't produce the volumes that the 390 series would normally ship at. Performance was also focused on 4k, Fury's 1080p/1440p performance would have made it a poor fit as a 390. AMD really wanted to make people take note of the Fury and see it as a glimpse to the future, especially in regards to HBM.

Volume is more reason to keep the Fury name exclusive to one product. It creates supply/demand. Instead we saw a lot of people not even bother with Fury X and go with Fury because of supply and also noise issues.

You already watered the "Fury" name by introducing a cheaper alternative. That was my primary complaint. Titan wouldn't be as "prestige" if there was a "Titan Le" sold next to it. (Note, the people that would ultimately buy these products aren't buying in performance / cost ratios, they aren't the market I originally though AMD would want to cater with a product to chase Titan. I assumed they'd be trying to fleece their loyal followers as equally as Nvidia seems to do theirs).

And Fury (Fiji Pro - ~$500) loses a lot of it's luster when it's only 13% faster than R9 390X (Granada ~$390). EDIT: That's @ 4K, it get's even worse if you look at 1440p or 1080p.

It was a Marketing decision and IMO a good one. All the baggage accumulated from previous gens didn't overshadow Fury. Fury was presented in such a way that it would be judged on its' own merits.

I think AMD got things done a little backwards. Sure, the 290/290X issues didn't overshadow Fury nor did they overshadow 390/390X, but 390/390X were surprisingly well received that I'd argue they overshadowed Fury/Fury X. I don't see Fury or Fury X getting recommending that often if at all.

 

[tential]

A rose by any other name....

I don't think it matters at all. The people who wouldn't buy something because it's AMD would still buy nVidia, Intel, etc...

Nope. Rebranding has worked MANY times in the past. Hello Buy.com turning into Raktuen.com.

Stop making excuses for AMD. The reason AMD is in the position they are in is because they fail at the general tenants of running a business. Great, they can design hardware. Everything else though, I'd rather entrust it to a group of college kids than AMD staff.

When I see AMD involvement I immediately think "Late", "Waiting", "Price/Performance"

When I think Gameworks I think "Shoddy", "Broken Game", "Do not Purchase".

Rebranding in consumer eyes work wonders... just because you follow GPU news daily doesn't mean the average consumer does. Moving AMD to RTG, and removing the bad connotation AMD has from it's HORRENDOUS CPU division, which to MANY people including a coworker I sjut talked to, he said he was considering a GTX 970, and when I asked about AMD he said "Their CPUs are horrible, I can't imagine their GPUs are much better."

Great that you can let products stand on their own merit. Many Consumers use performance of other SKU/products in a company product lineup to determine the performance of other products/SKUs in a product lineup.

Short version, people don't buy AMD because AMD makes MASSIVE mistakes. Not because "omg, Nvidia will win no matter what there is nothing AMD can do and life is unfair!"

No, AMD simply is horrible at running a business.

 

[tential]

My comment was solely focused on their naming decisions. Not what you were buying.

I just don't get why they added a new tier to begin with. Is this a one time thing? Will 400 series not have a "Fury" tier and 490X be considered the top card?

Went from 5870 as top, to 6970 as top, to 290X as top, to Fury X. WTH!?

Of all people I wouldn't expect you to need this explained to them.

Nvidia has a Titan halo product.
AMD needed a product that would sell in that niche as well.

Fury X = Titan X
Fury = 980Ti.

That was what was SUPPOSED to happen.

It just happened to be that the 980Ti/Titan X were just far better than Fury X/Fury.

Otherwise, if I'm getting a "halo" product, I wouldn't get a 490x vs Titan X. I'd just get the Titan X Pascal. Just like Nvidia created a new line with Titan. AMD needed a competitor chip.

They just got destroyed in the performance.

I think AMD did it better with their lineup of Fury X, Fury, and Nano.

Just hte performance wasn't there.

Don't be surprised to see Nvidia next round do a
Titan X Pascal
1080Ti
Eco 1080Ti

To match AMD.

I think AMD did it very well with their naming scheme. The performance was a joke, which really screwed them afterwards.

 

[Piroko]

(ii) AIO CLC means it's not possible to have 0dBA operation for <60C as many flagship cards can have. As a result, AMD forced the consumer to make the choice between a quieter card at load but louder card in 2D/light 3D gaming applications. Again, offering after-market air cooling designs would have addressed both types of consumers.

Actually, when I had my fury x and played a bit with my system setup, I was able to set it up to an astonishinly low noise level. To be precise, I was able to let every single fan shut down apart from the fan on the fury X cooler (which had a very decent noise @ idle level) and the case temperatures were remarkably low.
That is something I am not willing to do with any open air card, and in fact my current setup is two case fans in the front, one in the back @ 25% PWM. If I were to let them shut off completely it would take around 15 minutes for the case to be heat soaked to the point where the GPU fans would kick on despite the system being idle.

current setup is a 4690k, hd380 (got a great deal for an open box card) in a fractal design dampened case (define r3? can't remember)

Your other points are very valid though.

 

[tential]

I think an AIO flagship option from AMD as the reference GPU is smart. I believe that's the best way to win the"benchmark" war as well. But letting AIBs give you designs is just FREE money. Because there were people who wanted Fury X, but didn't want an AIO.

AMD can't afford to make these types of mistakes.

 

[railven]

Of all people I wouldn't expect you to need this explained to them.

Nvidia has a Titan halo product.
AMD needed a product that would sell in that niche as well.

Fury X = Titan X
Fury = 980Ti.

That was what was SUPPOSED to happen.

It just happened to be that the 980Ti/Titan X were just far better than Fury X/Fury.

Otherwise, if I'm getting a "halo" product, I wouldn't get a 490x vs Titan X. I'd just get the Titan X Pascal. Just like Nvidia created a new line with Titan. AMD needed a competitor chip.

They just got destroyed in the performance.

I think AMD did it better with their lineup of Fury X, Fury, and Nano.

Just hte performance wasn't there.

Don't be surprised to see Nvidia next round do a
Titan X Pascal
1080Ti
Eco 1080Ti

To match AMD.

I think AMD did it very well with their naming scheme. The performance was a joke, which really screwed them afterwards.

The competitor already had something similar to AMD, but what they didn't do is bastardize their Titan name. (GK110 == GTX 780 /GTX 780 Ti/Titan later refreshed as Titan Black)

There was always just one current Titan to buy (minus the laughable Dual), which is what I thought AMD wanted.

These products wouldn't be sold as a cost / performance, it would be sold to select few buyers who wanted the prestige of the name/product.

Example:
Fury X (Fiji XT with ALC) == $800 (still cheaper than Titan X)
390X (Fiji Pro with air cooler) == $550 (still cheaper than GTX 980 Ti)

And you have only one halo product fighting for a price point most consumers won't care about (ie the performance difference from 980 Ti to Titan X would be similar 390X to Fury X, and so would the cost). It would just be a fringe product for fringe buyers which would funnel more buyers to the step below.

Instead we see Fury X getting discounted and will soon be <$560 after rebates while Titan X still demands it's >$1000 price tag, regardless of how many 980 Ti's sit on the shelves.

 

[3DVagabond]

Nope. Rebranding has worked MANY times in the past. Hello Buy.com turning into Raktuen.com.

Stop making excuses for AMD. The reason AMD is in the position they are in is because they fail at the general tenants of running a business. Great, they can design hardware. Everything else though, I'd rather entrust it to a group of college kids than AMD staff.

When I see AMD involvement I immediately think "Late", "Waiting", "Price/Performance"

When I think Gameworks I think "Shoddy", "Broken Game", "Do not Purchase".

Rebranding in consumer eyes work wonders... just because you follow GPU news daily doesn't mean the average consumer does. Moving AMD to RTG, and removing the bad connotation AMD has from it's HORRENDOUS CPU division, which to MANY people including a coworker I sjut talked to, he said he was considering a GTX 970, and when I asked about AMD he said "Their CPUs are horrible, I can't imagine their GPUs are much better."

Great that you can let products stand on their own merit. Many Consumers use performance of other SKU/products in a company product lineup to determine the performance of other products/SKUs in a product lineup.

Short version, people don't buy AMD because AMD makes MASSIVE mistakes. Not because "omg, Nvidia will win no matter what there is nothing AMD can do and life is unfair!"

No, AMD simply is horrible at running a business.

Nowhere in my statement did I make an excuse for why people feel the way that they do.

The 7970 was a better GPU than the 680/770. More bandwidth. Better compute performance. Look at Hawaii. It's very competitive with GM104. It uses more power but offers greater bandwidth and compute performance in return too. It should have eaten Kepler's lunch, which was it's contemporary, but didn't even really compete. It just barely hanged on. Why? AMD sucks at selling stuff. I know this. You know this. Most everyone here knows this.

I don't think a name change will all of a sudden make them figure out where they go wrong.

 

[tential]

Nowhere in my statement did I make an excuse for why people feel the way that they do.

The 7970 was a better GPU than the 680/770. More bandwidth. Better compute performance. Look at Hawaii. It's very competitive with GM104. It uses more power but offers greater bandwidth and compute performance in return too. It should have eaten Kepler's lunch, which was it's contemporary, but didn't even really compete. It just barely hanged on. Why? AMD sucks at selling stuff. I know this. You know this. Most everyone here knows this.

I don't think a name change will all of a sudden make them figure out where they go wrong.

Hawaii was a a horrendous launch that had 0 chance of success. The fact that you don't understand that as well as the peeple at amd is exactly why the company has little chance at success continuing in this manner.

 

[3DVagabond]

Hawaii was a a horrendous launch that had 0 chance of success. The fact that you don't understand that as well as the peeple at amd is exactly why the company has little chance at success continuing in this manner.

When did I say it was a good launch and why are you so rude?

 

[tential]

When did I say it was a good launch and why are you so rude?

Look at Hawaii. It's very competitive with GM104. It uses more power but offers greater bandwidth and compute performance in return too. It should have eaten Kepler's lunch, which was it's contemporary, but didn't even really compete.

No, it should NOT have eaten Kepler's lunch. It got torn apart by Kepler. As it should have.

Hawaii launched with too high prices from miners, no aftermarket coolers, high heat, high sound, etc. It was BAD.

Kepler was an OBVIOUS good alternative.

People bought Kepler.

Then, AMD fixed the issues with Hawaii.

People owned Kepler.

It's clear as day why Hawaii failed. Like I said, it's this type of continued behavior at AMD not understanding how the market works which will continue to lead to the company struggling to have a successful GPU cycle.

There's another 2 pages I can write on why Hawaii failed vs Kepler, but I don't want to clutter the page.

You can't have decent hardware at launch, then wait to fully utilize that hardware. The market will NOT stand for it. People don't work that way for marketing. Until people understand that at AMD, they'll continue to fail, and until people who are AMD fans realize it, they'll continue to be bewildered as to why AMD bleeds money.

 

[Techhog]

No, it should NOT have eaten Kepler's lunch. It got torn apart by Kepler. As it should have.

Hawaii launched with too high prices from miners, no aftermarket coolers, high heat, high sound, etc. It was BAD.

Kepler was an OBVIOUS good alternative.

People bought Kepler.

Then, AMD fixed the issues with Hawaii.

People owned Kepler.

It's clear as day why Hawaii failed. Like I said, it's this type of continued behavior at AMD not understanding how the market works which will continue to lead to the company struggling to have a successful GPU cycle.

There's another 2 pages I can write on why Hawaii failed vs Kepler, but I don't want to clutter the page.

You can't have decent hardware at launch, then wait to fully utilize that hardware. The market will NOT stand for it. People don't work that way for marketing. Until people understand that at AMD, they'll continue to fail, and until people who are AMD fans realize it, they'll continue to be bewildered as to why AMD bleeds money.

And then when AMD decided not to take any chances with Fiji, they were mocked for using a watercooler. AMD certainly did screw up the Hawaii launch, but I'm not convinced that brand loyalty wasn't a major factor (though I do acknowledge that the Fiji cards are all terrible in the first place).