[Digital Trends] The end of the battle between AMD and Nvidia won’t be great for PC

[JeffMD]

AMD is currently not on the road to lead the high end market. However they are very competitive when it comes down to the budget gaming. AMD won't disappear any time soon, they are still getting boat loads of money for their ps4 and xbox one contracts. Some day they will start kicking their R&D into high gear.

 

[Kippa]

People keep saying that AMD need to beat the Titan X or get close to it. At a guess the majority of gfx card sales are going to be the mid range and low range gfx cards, not the high end ones. If AMD can make reasonable midrange and low end gfx cards then even though they might not have a Titan X killer, they might still be doing rather well.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Dude.. "AMD cried for years...". A Federal court found Intel GUILTY of anti trust business practices. So beyond your questionable terminology in saying a publicly traded company was "crying", their complaints were VALIDATED IN COURT.

Intel was the one that was miss stepping by choosing netburst as its strategy. Intel solved this and started performing much better. AMD continued to keep its R&D budget the same years later. You are overly simplifying the business environment and greatly exaggerating power use between AMD and nvidia cards.

AMD owned ATI when it was the efficient 5870 vs GTX 480, but thats not very convenient for you as it doesn't fit your overly simplified model.

I dont believe Intel was ever found "guilty" by a federal court of anything. Intel and AMD reached a settlement between the two parties.

 

[frozentundra123456]

People keep saying that AMD need to beat the Titan X or get close to it. At a guess the majority of gfx card sales are going to be the mid range and low range gfx cards, not the high end ones. If AMD can make reasonable midrange and low end gfx cards then even though they might not have a Titan X killer, they might still be doing rather well.

That is true, but the rumors I hear are all about a huge high end card with HBM, and a rebrand for a lot of the rest of the line. What AMD needs is a new line of cards competitive with Maxwell in price (i am pretty sure they will be) but also in performance per watt. Posters can denigrate efficiency all they want on these forums, but that is where the market is headed, and if AMD does not compete well in that area it will eventually come back to bite them.

 

[destrekor]

That is true, but the rumors I hear are all about a huge high end card with HBM, and a rebrand for a lot of the rest of the line. What AMD needs is a new line of cards competitive with Maxwell in price (i am pretty sure they will be) but also in performance per watt. Posters can denigrate efficiency all they want on these forums, but that is where the market is headed, and if AMD does not compete well in that area it will eventually come back to bite them.

Speaking of efficiency, I am very curious to see what Apple will go with for the Macbook Pro 15" Retina update. Currently they are still using the Geforce GTX 750M, which is rather ridiculous if you ask me.

They use the M295X in the latest iMac, but I don't know if that will translate to the laptops. On the desktop efficiency doesn't quite matter so long as they can keep it cool (and I guess Apple sort of failed in that regard, but that is not AMD's fault whatsoever - they knew the TDP and specs of the chip they were sourcing). But in laptops, they may settle for the 980M to help ensure they can push the battery life. That is a nice feature for sure, I enjoy that on my 15" MBPr w/750M: combine a healthy but efficient GPU with a good Iris Pro iGPU and manage switching well enough, and you can really help stretch battery life while also providing performance when necessary. I have yet to game on battery, or on the machine at all quite frankly, but I have dealt with Lightroom and Photoshop for some decent stretches of time.

The only reason they haven't released a refresh of the 15" lineup is due to the lack of quad-core Broadwell chips. Why they didn't update the MBA to Retina I don't understand, because the 12" MacBook is even less powerful than the MBA and the GPU is weaker IIRC, so the refreshed Air's could totally drive a Retina display if so equipped.

However, I digress. I'm really just curious to see if AMD can snag any more major part source contract wins, because they desperately need some big contracts to really help their bottom line.

 

[biostud]

With tech companies it seems like their worst competitor are often themselves. If they don't release products which are better than their old, then people are simply not going to buy them.

So if AMD got to the same position they have in CPU's nVidia would still need to come up with better products than their old models.