[GameGPU] Q1 2015 GPU Market share

[5150Joker]

Lots of wishful thinking in this thread. NVidia brings out a very powerful card at a very competitive price and this is somehow a plus for AMD because it means they have some magical card waiting to be launched that caused nVidia to panic and bring out the 980Ti.
Okay........ if you say so. I dont always agree with RS, but in this case he is spot on. AMD needs a top to bottom linep of new and more efficient cards, brought out in a timely manner, not a bunch of rebrands of rebrands, along with one halo top end card. AMD's gpu strategy is eerily similar to their cpu strategy: keep selling old, inefficient technology at a cheaper price. We all know how that worked out in the cpu market.

As far as APUs replacing dgpus, that may be the ultimate strategy, but apparently that has been delayed at least until 2017. It still just blows my mind that after all the money spent to acquire ATI, and all the years of pushing "the future is fusion" the only zen product to come out in 2016 will have no igp.

AMD is on it's last legs as far as competing in the dgpu market. They might continue to survive for a while longer with custom SoC + APUs but the rest of their projects will lead to nowhere. The company will never recover against NVIDIA in marketshare, that ship has sailed long ago. I just recently had 3 friends build new PCs, 2 of whom were using AMD GPUs + CPU. I got all of them to switch to an Intel + NVIDIA combo with one guy who will be grabbing 2 x 980 TI next week, one got a 980 and the third a 970 and all are extremely happy with their choice. To keep it somewhat fair, I did mention the release of Fiji with HBM + AIO and none were interested.

Finally, the talk of "NVIDIA must be panicked" is nonsense. NVIDIA has a game plan and they are executing flawlessly on schedule. They released Titan X 2.5 months ago, was that also a panic release? Now they pre-empted AMD by releasing the 980 Ti as a slap in their face. Fiji on AIO MIGHT outpace a 980 Ti at stock speeds but what about 980 Ti custom boards? They'll probably end up being faster than Fiji and of course, AMD will be limited to 4 GB VRAM and they'll have to spin that in a positive light somehow and probably will fail at doing it.

 

[exar333]

Source

Fermi and Kepler owners must be upgrading to Maxwell in droves and HD5000-7000 series owners are tired of waiting! With 980Ti out, many HD5870/6970/7970/R9 290X owners will finally give in!

AMD is in serious trouble now. Their market share is reaching extremely dangerous levels whereupon NV's dominance of the market gives them even more leverage to control prices (which is bad for us gamers) and influence game development with GameWorks. All of that will make it that much harder for AMD to recover which could mean we are slowly moving to a monopoly position, similar to Intel vs. AMD in the CPU space.

With all the focus on Fiji Fury, I am starting to wonder if AMD has really lost focus of how important the mobile dGPU market segment is in the overall GPU industry. They keep putting all their eggs into the desktop basket which has shaped their GPU development into the wrong direction. With NV's bottom-up approach, their smallest units that make up the GPUs are very power efficient and thus NV can scale their graphics to various market segments. AMD's top-to-bottom approach to GPU building seems outdated in 2015.

NV has announced mobile G-Sync and it shouldn't be too long before 965M/970M/980M get refreshed with higher clocked parts come 2H of 2015. Without AMD having a strong mobile dGPU lineup for R9 300 series, they are soon going to drop < 20% market share if they have nothing to compete in the mobile dGPU segment until Pascal in 2H of 2016. I am one of the strong proponents that AMD should have focused a lot more on the mobile dGPUs, a faster growing market segment than desktop cards. Even if Fiji is competitive, it will do little to stop the bleeding considering NV's mobile dGPU stack is basically uncontested and besides Apple throwing a bone to AMD, no one is really interested in using AMD's mobile GPU chips in their laptops.

Good post.

NV's pre-emptive 980Ti launch, as good as Fiji may be, will likely now steal a lot of purchases before Fiji ever sees the light of day.

NV preyed on AMDs unwillingness to preview their tech (again) and simply released a slightly cut-down Titan X at a 35% discount. Those waiting for a card providing considerable performance over their 7970s or 780Tis now will be buying these before AMDs next product is out...

For those saying AMD's top-tier product doesn't matter, what else will they be selling? AMD is already practically giving-away the 290 and no one seems to care. What do we expect to change in 1-2 months when that is re-released as the 390? People already seem to prefer a slower, more expensive 960...

 

[Silverforce11]

Good post.

NV's pre-emptive 980Ti launch, as good as Fiji may be, will likely now steal a lot of purchases before Fiji ever sees the light of day.

It already have. I talked to a buddy in distribution in Asia/Oceania, 980Ti = cannot be produced & shipped fast enough to meet demand.

That is also the intention of the 980Ti. If AMD wasn't imminent in causing a stir (aka bringing the competition back!), NV would never obsolete Titan X so quickly.

AMD's stack is ready for launch, retailers here I know of already have it in stock for two weeks. Their waiting game to clear excess Tahiti/Hawaii SKU is going to come back and bite them for all the lost sales to NV's 980Ti.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Good post.

NV's pre-emptive 980Ti launch, as good as Fiji may be, will likely now steal a lot of purchases before Fiji ever sees the light of day.

NV preyed on AMDs unwillingness to preview their tech (again) and simply released a slightly cut-down Titan X at a 35% discount. Those waiting for a card providing considerable performance over their 7970s or 780Tis now will be buying these before AMDs next product is out...

For those saying AMD's top-tier product doesn't matter, what else will they be selling? AMD is already practically giving-away the 290 and no one seems to care. What do we expect to change in 1-2 months when that is re-released as the 390? People already seem to prefer a slower, more expensive 960...

Damn AMD better release Fiji this week or at least have review samples out, and it better smash 980 Ti for the rumored price.

 

[dacostafilipe]

NV preyed on AMDs unwillingness to preview their tech (again) and simply released a slightly cut-down Titan X at a 35% discount. Those waiting for a card providing considerable performance over their 7970s or 780Tis now will be buying these before AMDs next product is out...

nVidia also did a release masterpiece here.

You start with a new product (970/980) that's slightly faster then the old gen. Most people don't see the point on upgrading to those. Then you release an overpriced product (TitanX) that still sells a lot because of the impressive performance, the Halo product. Finally you release a still expensive product (980ti) but that looks like a bargain compared to the overpriced product.

Kudos to the management! :thumbsup:

 

[tg2708]

Does not look good at all, pissing me off actually. AMD is treading over treacherous waters now and probably still heading in that direction. The thing or my view is if nvidia keeps churning out new gpu's at a much faster basis people won't care about AMD's card being a bit faster they will see the newer cards as subjectively better and want it right away. AMD has not released anything new for awhile allowing nvidia to steal those that have been waiting for the former's next move. I equally want both company to survive but judging by the market share results AMD's chance of bouncing back is nil at his point.

Their is also the case of gameworks, if nvidia keeps injecting AAA games with it proprietary code etc., the supposed lead an AMD card might have is again nil because the game is biased towards a certain architecture or company. Also snagging most triple A games would be a huge for either company because their consumers will most likely favor them if their anticipated game is very well supported.

AMD needs to act quickly and not just bring a supposedly stronger GPU.

 

[tential]

Does not look good at all, pissing me off actually. AMD is treading over treacherous waters now and probably still heading in that direction. The thing or my view is if nvidia keeps churning out new gpu's at a much faster basis people won't care about AMD's card being a bit faster they will see the newer cards as subjectively better and want it right away. AMD has not released anything new for awhile allowing nvidia to steal those that have been waiting for the former's next move. I equally want both company to survive but judging by the market share results AMD's chance of bouncing back is null in a meaningful way.

Their is also the case of gameworks, if nvidia keeps injecting AAA games with it proprietary code etc., the supposed lead an AMD card might have is again null because the game is biased towards a certain architecture or company. Also snagging most triple A games would be a huge for either company because their consumers will most likely favor them if their anticipated game is very well supported.

AMD needs to act quickly and not just brng a supposedly stronger GPU.

If we keep getting proprietary code in games that locks us into 1 GPU manufacturer, I'll quit PC gaming. Not a necessity and I'm not trying to get gouged every other year on GPU releases.

 

[SirPauly]

First they undercut AMD"s 79xx family, while defeating them in virtually every important metric and first to launch virtually became meaningless --- AMD started to gain a little momentum in the summer of 2014, Kepler showing kinks in their armor with newer game releases and GCN gaining some performance ground and share -- then nVidia releases the 980, with the 970 at a very attractive price-point and virtually stopped GCN's momentum in its tracks and replaced with dramatic share loss.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Yea, I dont necessarily buy the "nVidia rushed out 980Ti because Fiji is going to be so fantastic" line of reasoning. That is one explanation, and *may* be true. However, your reasoning also makes sense. Sell a lot of Titan (which is always the overpriced Halo product), and then when the early adopters have spent their money, cut the price and sell a lot more, all before AMD gets a competitive product out. Now the fact that Fiji is coming most likely did affect the pricing of 980Ti, but I dont think we can assume that the price/release date necessarily means Fiji will be a killer product.

 

[shady28]

Doom and glooming.. how expected from you.

So, you care to share with us the benchmarks for Fiji?

Fiji's existence / non-existence and ultimate performance doesn't even matter much at this point.

On this forum back in early March people were saying wait until mid April to make purchase decisions because we were expecting AMD to launch the R9 370/380/390/390X by then.

And now? It's June. It's time to call it what it is.


As stated back in March :

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37264859&postcount=23

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware

"A developer can strategically announce a product that is in the early stages of development, or before development begins, to gain competitive advantage over other developers.[25] In addition to the "vaporware" label, this is also called "ambush marketing", and "fear, uncertainty and doubt" (FUD) by the press.[23]

Maybe if AMD had gotten their Full Tonga parts tweaked / clocked up and into mid-range retail cards along with Fiji at the high end, there would be something to talk about regarding AMD. But they haven't, so right now AMD is basically irrelevant. This is where reality (Nvidia) trumps vaporware, FUD, and marketing gimmicks (AMD).

 

[Silverforce11]

Fiji's existence / non-existence and ultimate performance doesn't even matter much at this point.

Yes, apparently because the world will end in a few months. Nothing AMD does will ever matter. /s

 

[frozentundra123456]

If we keep getting proprietary code in games that locks us into 1 GPU manufacturer, I'll quit PC gaming. Not a necessity and I'm not trying to get gouged every other year on GPU releases.

You are certainly free to boycott PC gaming if you wish, but it seems you are "cutting off your nose to spite your face" as the saying goes. Simply keep the gpu that you have or buy AMD and use lower settings. I am still playing on a HD7770, and have been able to play every game that I want to play, although I definitely struggle with DA:I and Witcher 3. There are also plenty of older/indie games that dont require the latest, greatest hardware.

Personally, though, I have a lot of other things in my life to be concerned with that are a lot more important to me than gameworks, so I simply buy the games I want to play and dont worry about it, just like I bought games that supported mantle when it was AMD exclusive.

 

[SirPauly]

I really believe the differentiation is based on engineering resources and investments into R&D from a hardware/software perspective. nVidia dramatically improved performance/watt and has a top-to-bottom line based on Maxwell -- all doing this with out the need of a node change, exotic cooling, or cutting edge memory needs.

 

[shady28]

Yes, apparently because the world will end in a few months. Nothing AMD does will ever matter. /s

I guess my meaning flew right over your head. /s

High end cards like 295X2 / 980Ti / Titan make up only a few % of the market.

AMD has nothing to compete against the other 97% of the desktop market, not to mention mobile.

This is why the overpriced 960 is cleaning up vs AMD. At its current growth rate, in 3 months the 960 alone will have more market share than AMDs entire R9 200 series according to steam :

March / April / Change

AMD Radeon R9 200 Series- 0.95% 0.94% -0.01%

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 0.32% 0.56% +0.24%

So yes, at this point in time AMD is irrelevant in the GPU space.

 

[Silverforce11]

This is why the overpriced 960 is cleaning up vs AMD. At its current growth rate, in 3 months the 960 alone will have more market share than AMDs entire R9 200 series according to steam.

So yes, at this point in time AMD is irrelevant in the GPU space.

So let's revisit this in 3 months time and see whether your prediction is true or not, shall we?

 

[exar333]

Yea, I dont necessarily buy the "nVidia rushed out 980Ti because Fiji is going to be so fantastic" line of reasoning. That is one explanation, and *may* be true. However, your reasoning also makes sense. Sell a lot of Titan (which is always the overpriced Halo product), and then when the early adopters have spent their money, cut the price and sell a lot more, all before AMD gets a competitive product out. Now the fact that Fiji is coming most likely did affect the pricing of 980Ti, but I dont think we can assume that the price/release date necessarily means Fiji will be a killer product.

This very well may be true.

We all knew that a '908Ti' was in the works for 2015, the question was 'when'. NV probably was already stockpiling these chips and working with AIBs since the start of the year, when the Titan X was announced. 2Q/3Q was probably the target, and that was all the more better when AMD announced delays due to their glut of product in the market. This all came together well for NV, and they probably didn't have to work too hard to get a 6/1 launch date.

The current NV product stack looks pretty solid too (from a pricing standpoint) with one exception, the 980:

-Titan X - $999
-980Ti - $649
-980 - $500
-970 - $329
-960 - $200

I would argue the 980 was already over-priced before the 980 launch, and at $50 less, it's almost a worse option than before. This feels like a 'temporary' price-cut so that NV can leverage some people continuing to buy the 980 if the 980Ti is OOS at some etailers, just for the extra margin. Anyone picking-up a $500 980 is crazy IMHO. Either get a 970 or a 980Ti. The 980 is now a non-starter in my opinion.

BUT - it feels like the 980 will not stay at this price long. I sense a price cut for the 970 to $299 and the 980 to maybe $449 after AMD launches their 3xx series. They have some latitude here, but I do think the current prices are adjusted only for the 980Ti and NOT yet for AMD's upcoming SKUs.

Just my $0.02 and pure speculation, but reasonable.

 

[shady28]

So let's revisit this in 3 months time and see whether your prediction is true or not, shall we?

Sure. So the July stats for GTX 960 should be higher than the stats for R9 200 series.

The fact we are comparing a single Nvidia GPU SKU to the use of the entire current AMD R9 lineup should be telling, but whatever.

 

[Genx87]

Have we ever had confirmation from AMD about a new card being released this year? I seem to remember the 1st qtr conference call AMD said they were not releasing any new GPU parts this year.

 

[Spanners]

nVidia also did a release masterpiece here.

You start with a new product (970/980) that's slightly faster then the old gen. Most people don't see the point on upgrading to those. Then you release an overpriced product (TitanX) that still sells a lot because of the impressive performance, the Halo product. Finally you release a still expensive product (980ti) but that looks like a bargain compared to the overpriced product.

Kudos to the management! :thumbsup:

Yup, they know how to play the game, Titan X as the premium decoy pricing so the taglines for reviews are "Titan X performance for $650".

 

[Udgnim]

Have we ever had confirmation from AMD about a new card being released this year? I seem to remember the 1st qtr conference call AMD said they were not releasing any new GPU parts this year.

AMD CEO said this during Q1 2015 earnings call

"So as I look forward, we're launching Carrizo on the APU side and we're also launching some graphics products in the second half of this year."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/307...arnings-call-transcript?page=4&p=qanda&l=last

 

[SteveGrabowski]

BUT - it feels like the 980 will not stay at this price long. I sense a price cut for the 970 to $299 and the 980 to maybe $449 after AMD launches their 3xx series. They have some latitude here, but I do think the current prices are adjusted only for the 980Ti and NOT yet for AMD's upcoming SKUs.

I really don't see any reason to drop the 970 to $299. What does AMD have that can force a price cut? $200 Tonga and $240 Hawaii isn't doing it now, so why will it when AMD just crosses out the 2 on the box and changes it to a 3 in their model numbers this month? I agree the 980 at $500 makes no sense when the 970 offers almost the same performance at $329 and the 980 Ti offers far superior performance at $649.

 

[exar333]

I really don't see any reason to drop the 970 to $299. What does AMD have that can force a price cut? $200 Tonga and $240 Hawaii isn't doing it now, so why will it when AMD just crosses out the 2 on the box and changes it to a 3 in their model numbers this month? I agree the 980 at $500 makes no sense when the 970 offers almost the same performance at $329 and the 980 Ti offers far superior performance at $649.

Too many rumors on the AMD side, but if AMD has a souped-up Hawaii for ~$300, I could see NV adjusting this down slightly.

 

[shady28]

I really don't see any reason to drop the 970 to $299. What does AMD have that can force a price cut? $200 Tonga and $240 Hawaii isn't doing it now, so why will it when AMD just crosses out the 2 on the box and changes it to a 3 in their model numbers this month? I agree the 980 at $500 makes no sense when the 970 offers almost the same performance at $329 and the 980 Ti offers far superior performance at $649.

This is exactly what I'm seeing.

All recent news/leaks indicate that the entire AMD R9 3xx lineup will be nothing more than re-brands with more VRAM. Even Fiji is no longer expected to be a mainstream high end card, but rather a Titan X type card.

The only cards of any interest whatsoever seem to be the R9 380 / 380X, which are expected to be Tonga Pro and Tonga XT cards.

The rest is all just perception manipulation. Rebranded old chips with more VRAM, and one super high-end card (Fiji) for the < 0.1% that buy such things.

The 980 which you would think would be quite popular, has 0.77% on steam. The Titan(s) don't even register. The top 3 dGPUs are the 760, 660, and 970 - and all 3 of those cards individually have 3-5x the share of the 980. Very few are paying more than $350 for a dGPU.

http://wccftech.com/gigabyte-radeon...s-pictured-r9-380-features-4-gb-gddr5-memory/

 

[Azix]

Core problem is how they look to consumers. They were careless to have a bad stock cooler on the 290/290x and one that does not look good. Nvidia puts out these silver good looking coolers that even if loud and if the GPU is slower, seem legit. You can look at the cooler one way and say it looks beastly, but most of the time it looks so so. They need to address that and make the cards look more desirable if they are selling reference coolers.

Second is just changing how people see them and this likely comes down to reviewers and answering the pessimistic people who post repeatedly on forums saying AMD sucks. The people like those here already claiming facts about the fiji for example.

It'll take years maybe because people are so jaded against AMD. woo some oems, invade review sites and forums with hard facts etc. Make sure that the cards look good at a glance, challenge the claims of being too hot and power hungry.

 

[exar333]

This is exactly what I'm seeing.

All recent news/leaks indicate that the entire AMD R9 3xx lineup will be nothing more than re-brands with more VRAM. Even Fiji is no longer expected to be a mainstream high end card, but rather a Titan X type card.

The only cards of any interest whatsoever seem to be the R9 380 / 380X, which are expected to be Tonga Pro and Tonga XT cards.

The rest is all just perception manipulation. Rebranded old chips with more VRAM, and one super high-end card (Fiji) for the < 0.1% that buy such things.

The 980 which you would think would be quite popular, has 0.77% on steam. The Titan(s) don't even register. The top 3 dGPUs are the 760, 660, and 970 - and all 3 of those cards individually have 3-5x the share of the 980. Very few are paying more than $350 for a dGPU.

http://wccftech.com/gigabyte-radeon...s-pictured-r9-380-features-4-gb-gddr5-memory/

True.

What's amazing to me is that the GTX 960 has more than half the representation of the whole R9 290 series after just a few months...the 960 will definitely be close to the top of this by the end of the year.

I think NV kept the 970 and 980 (only slightly adjusted) where they are to be able to tweak pricing later. When the Batman/TW3 bundles expire (end of July?) its possible they tweak these down a bit if AMD is very aggressive with their re-brand pricing.

A tweaked 290x + 8GB + base clock bump is a pretty solid competitor to the 970. NV could push the 970 down to $299 (only a 10% cut) to keep sales up. I definitely don't see the 960 going anywhere though. That is pretty much the 'base' offering for all custom builds right now and BY FAR the biggest individual seller for any cards < $250.