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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

AMD is having some challenges at the moment.

In particular, the RDNA3 graphics card line launch has been a dud.

The Nvidia 4090 turned out to be far ahead of the AMD 7900XTX.

Then there turned out to be an overheating issue on the AMD cards.

And now it just looks like both Nvidia and AMD are price gouging GPU buyers instead of competing with each other. They are deliberately keeping prices high and creating artificial shortages of GPUs, because that's what kept prices high during covid/crypto mining.

I used to be really cheering for AMD as the underdog, but I guess its true that none of these companies are your friend, they're just there to shake you down.

AMD had a chance to really pull ahead of Nvidia by being "the good guy" and actually offering end users great value for money, but instead they've chosen to emulate Nvidia.

Substantial customer good will has been lost by AMD.

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Their graphics division has certainly been lacking vs Nvidia's cards, but are still far ahead of Intel's. Their desktop and server CPUs are crushing the market.

> They are deliberately keeping prices high and creating artificial shortages of GPUs

That's simply not true. Check out TechTechPotato's youtube channel for the explanation on this, but under-shipping isn't price fixing. They're just shipping less to distributors because there's less demand, allowing the distributors and retailers to keep a stable amount on hand.

> Their desktop and server CPUs are crushing the market.

Seeing plenty of people choose 13th gen over Zen 4, the platform pricing for Zen 4 just wasn't very attractive. AMD [had to] significantly cut prices across the lineup by 20-30 %.

Let’s not forget that 12th and 13th gen are actually good chips

Also worth remembering that for the vast majority of people, any performance differences between Intel and AMD are utterly and absolutely insignificant as to be completely meaningless.

Nobody needs two-digit CPU core counts and 5~6GHz clock speeds to do their emails, communicate on Skype/Discord/Teams/Slack/Zoom/whatever, browse Facebook and Twitter, watch Youtube, and even play some vidja gaemz. An i3 or even a god damn Celeron is perfectly fine.

So at that point, Intel's superior stability (read: less jank) wins out by a hair and otherwise nobody really cares because there's no practical difference. The vast majority of people will just buy whatever's cheaper or just happens to be on the display table that day.

I keep having similar thoughts, but the software industry has shown a remarkable capacity to squander available hardware resources.

One big reason that demand is low is that the current generation of GPUs are way too expensive, with top-end GPUs about twice what they used to cost a few years ago, very poor improvements in performance-per-$, and anythign below the top end offering even more dubious value for money especially on the AMD side. Originally those high prices were a result of high demand compared to supply, but the companies seem to have gotten greedy and decided they can permanently keep prices high and just throttle back supply to keep them there.

One big reson why the demand is low is because 1080ti or rx580 can still service 95% of gaming needs so what's the point of upgrading?

I’m consistently surprised just how good the RX580 really is. It can handle most games on medium at 1440p, but I tend to just chill on ultra at 1080p. Plus I play on TV, so the smaller resolution is actually better from where I’m sitting

RDNA2 (particularly, the narrower range from 6600 to 6800), is a huge step up in performance per watt. The lowest end one in there, 6600, is faster than a vega64 (which is much faster than rx580), yet uses less than half the power.

RDNA3's lower end chips, once they hit the market, are expected to further improve on this.

Most gamers won't upgrade to the current RDNA3 chips, because the current RDNA3 chips are top of the line, expensive, ~300w monsters.

Amen to that. The need for gamers to be on the hardware treadmill is no longer relevant. Five+ year old hardware can still run basically anything, albeit at reduced fidelity.

I keep eyeing a new build, but realistically, I know it’s just a vanity project because so few games will take full advantage of the better hardware. My favorite games in the past years could have run on ten year old hardware.

I think "service" is the key word here: I have an RX 580, and while it's kind of an incredible card in its longevity, it's really creaky at 1440p even with older games.

Performance per watt has really come a long way since GCN.

> The Nvidia 4090 turned out to be far ahead of the AMD 7900XTX.

7900XTX is on par or better than 4090 in alot of games, as well as some games favouring nvidia more than amd... (obviously not talking about Ray Tracing)

Coupled with a lower price...

I'm not quite sure what you're talking about since you're saying the oppisite is all reviews I've seen.

Maybe you're confusing the 4080 with the 4090?

You sure? 7900 is probably better value but the 4090 outperforms it by at least 20% in games.

It really depends on the games. Modern Warefare 2 for example, 7900xtx outperforms 4090 in every resolution. While in fortnite the 4090 outperforms the 7900xtx even more.

@ 4k gaming then 4090 on average is /much/ better than the 7900xtx, but looking at 1080/1440p that lead deminishes alot.

edit: At the end of the day tho its all too damn expensive now.

The lead diminishes at 1080p/1440p because games become more CPU bottlenecked than GPU.

>They are deliberately keeping prices high and creating artificial shortages of GPUs

you've seen evidence for this, or it's your opinion?

>AMD had a chance to really pull ahead of Nvidia

with a graphics card line that you just told us is far behind Nvidia's?

>you've seen evidence for this, or it's your opinion?

Probably alluding to the under-shipping of GPUs; stated by Lisa Su during the recent investor call[0]

[0]https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2023/02/01/ad...

> with a graphics card line that you just told us is far behind Nvidia's?

Cheap and good enough can absolutely be a way to win.

Yup.

If AMD actually competed on price then they'd be shifting the GPU market away from Nvidia.

They seem content however just be second best but making bank.

They had a chance to meet a much better price to performance but IMO nvidia showed that the market is willing to pay a premium for GPUs and both major players are exploiting that.

Nvidia relaunched the 4080 12gb as the 4070ti reducing the price by $100. There has to be one hell of a profit margin on the high end cards.

AMD said it themselves. They're "undershipping" to "reduce downstream inventory". [1]

The take from multiple[2][3][4] journalists on that call is they're trying to avoid a "supply glut" and maintain high prices.

[1] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4574091-advanced-micro-devi...

[2] https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-undershipping-chips-to-help-prop...

[3] https://gamerant.com/amd-undershipping-graphics-cards/

[4] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/342781-amd-ceo-says-it...

you put "supply glut" in scare quotes, but again, do you know that their motive is cynical?

they're talking to the public, i.e. investors, and they could easily be saying "our current sales figures are lower not because our product is not popular, but because there is currently a large inventory downstream to meet current demand. When that glut is cleared, expect our sales to resume."

if downstream sellers have sufficient inventory, the only way to induce them to buy more would be for AMD to drop prices. If AMD cards are in hot demand and selling out immediately, restricting supply would be artificially boosting prices. But if the downstream pipeline is full, it's not right to say that reduced demand from wholesalers while that glut clears is AMD artificially boosting prices.

> They are deliberately keeping prices high and creating artificial shortages of GPUs,

I'm not sure if you're referring to AMD "undershipping", but if you read how they use that word it's pretty clearly a bad thing. AMD has been shipping less (to retailers) than what they could, or would like to.

> The Nvidia 4090 turned out to be far ahead of the AMD 7900XTX.

I just don't get why most people care? It's 60% more expensive, too. Even the 7900XTX is ludicrous at $1000.

Give me a $400 card from this generation that competes with a $500 card from the previous generation, and I'll call it a win.

A $1600 card winning anything seems like an irrelevant battle. Is the volume / sales for those cards high enough to be the real focus, when cards like the GTX 1060 were the volume leaders by a long shot?

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