[Rumor, Tweaktown] AMD to launch next-gen Navi graphics cards at E3

[Yotsugi]

If anything I expect Ampere to double down on RT.

Memory requirements would go off the charts so no, not soon if ever.
It's gonna be very gradual and very limited adoption even with stuff being in consoles.

 

[Dribble]

There are definite 7nm supply issues, it's pretty good for AMD that Nvidia didn't go 7nm or they'd be even worse. For Nvidia, given the much larger number of cards they sell, not going 7nm was probably a smart move.

 

[Yotsugi]

There are definite 7nm supply issues

Nah, the wafers themselves are plentiful, AMD is just fulfilling better than expected Rome demand so Wall St. doesn't roast them the next ER.

For Nvidia, given the much larger number of cards they sell, not going 7nm was probably a smart move.

They just went for cheaper SS wafers and here we are.

 

[Thala]

With the consoles having HW RT, there's no going back now. If anything I expect Ampere to double down on RT.

Indeed, even doubling the RT units per TPC would not be a big hit on die size. But with Amdahls law in place, the speed-up would not be linear - as the RT units running in parallel with the shaders.
On the other hand we are not close to dimishing returns yet, so doubling RT units per TPC is certainly a good idea.

 

[soresu]

AMD is just fulfilling better than expected Rome demand

And Navi too, not to mention all the other 7nm capacity used by Apple, Qualcomm and Huawei.

 

[Yotsugi]

And Navi too, not to mention all the other 7nm capacity used by Apple, Qualcomm and Huawei.

I've already said muh wafers isn't a thing, there's enough for everyone.
AMD is just a but busy selling Rome.
Good for Q4 results if you ask me.

 

[soresu]

AMD is just a but busy selling Rome.

Are you implying a production capacity bottleneck at AMD itself?

Because if wafers from TSMC aren't the bottleneck, and demand is there (which is almost certainly is now), there really isn't another explanation....

 

[Glo.]

Are you implying a production capacity bottleneck at AMD itself?

Because if wafers from TSMC aren't the bottleneck, and demand is there (which is almost certainly is now), there really isn't another explanation....

Somebody has to buy wafers first. AMD does not have infinite pockets.

 

[soresu]

Somebody has to buy wafers first. AMD does not have infinite pockets.

I guess that is a bottleneck of its own.

 

[maddie]

Somebody has to buy wafers first. AMD does not have infinite pockets.

I'm fairly certain that getting funds for wafers is not the issue. It's not as if the world is short of either capital or satisfied with available yields.

 

[Mopetar]

With the consoles having HW RT, there's no going back now. If anything I expect Ampere to double down on RT.

The last time around consoles pushed VR as the next big thing, and before that we had motion controls. If it turns out to be a greater cost than the value it adds, it can and will be ditched. Look at how long something like DX 12 has taken to get the adoption that is has and tell me with a straight face everyone is going to rush to RT just because the capability is there.

How would that stop x86 vendors from giving away their GPUs for free?
OEMs like free stuff more than anything.

Customers demanding and paying for better GPUs for starters. It doesn't matter how inexpensive Intel makes their GPU if it sucks and consumers don't want to buy it. If a manufacturer won't sell me the product I want, I'll go find someone who will.

Companies dumping GPUs are going to run afoul of government regulations really damn quick. This also assumes they'd give them away for free to begin with which seems pretty unlikely. Companies are in business to make money, not give people free products.

 

[Yotsugi]

Customers demanding and paying for better GPUs for starters

Customers aren't allowed to talk, and real big GPUs are beyond niche.

If a manufacturer won't sell me the product I want, I'll go find someone who will.

Who cares if every OEM box ever offers only Xe™.
You're gonna take it either way.

Companies dumping GPUs are going to run afoul of government regulations really damn quick

GPUs getting sold at a loss/little profit is perfectly legal, I mean, every console cycle starts this way.

Companies are in business to make money, not give people free products.

Companies the size of Intel rarely have ambitions to enter new markets they weren't really present in before.
This isn't the first time Intel plays dirty either.

 

[soresu]

GPUs getting sold at a loss/little profit is perfectly legal, I mean, every console cycle starts this way.

I think that wasn't exactly true of XB1 and PS4, they used less than mid range perf GPU's and more or less off the shelf CPU parts, compared to the previous console generation they should have been quite profitable from the beginning at those prices.

With Nintendo it certainly isn't true, they have been extremely economical on hardware since Wii basically reused the generation before with increased clockspeeds and a new controller.

 

[Mopetar]

Customers aren't allowed to talk, and real big GPUs are beyond niche.
Who cares if every OEM box ever offers only Xe™.
You're gonna take it either way.

Maybe you will, but I certainly won't. The first company that starts giving consumers what they actually want is going to get a lot of free business because there are plenty of consumers like me.

Companies the size of Intel rarely have ambitions to enter new markets they weren't really present in before.
This isn't the first time Intel plays dirty either.

And shareholders don't like money pits that suck up dollars that could have been paid out as dividends. Intel has certainly attempted to get into new markets (all companies do) but they've also axed a lot of these attempts after they've failed to gain any traction. Turns out the consumers didn't want what Intel was pushing and wouldn't buy it, even when Intel might have been acting a little shady to get some extra business.

The only way this turns out even close to how you imagine in playing out is when a company has a monopoly that no one else can get around, probably because it's government enforced. Otherwise, companies that try to push products that customers don't want find their business disappearing to new entrants in the market that give consumers what they actually want instead of what the company wants.

If NVidia is gone from laptops in 3-4 years it's only because they have such an inferior product that no in the market wants to buy it, in much the same way that AMD vanished from the server CPU market for a time.

 

[Yotsugi]

Maybe you will, but I certainly won't

Who cares what you'll do.

The first company that starts giving consumers what they actually want is going to get a lot of free business because there are plenty of consumers like me.

You're a part of little obnoxious minority.
The majority consumer wants cheap and good enough GPUs inside every laptop/prebuilt/whatever possible, and Intel (oh, and AMD too) will give them that.

shareholders don't like money pits that suck up dollars that could have been paid out as dividends

Intel shareholders just *adore* TAM expansion, see them being happy about Intel buying Altera and Nervana and that NoC company.

If NVidia is gone from laptops in 3-4 years it's only because they have such an inferior product that no in the market wants to buy it

They'll just get deplatformed.

much the same way that AMD vanished from the server CPU market for a time

AMD willingly exited server market before Naples.
Also comparing server and client OEM-based bling is woefully incorrect.

 

[JujuFish]

With Nintendo it certainly isn't true, they have been extremely economical on hardware since Wii basically reused the generation before with increased clockspeeds and a new controller.

Ironic you say that, since Nintendo is the last to actually sell a console at a loss, with the WiiU (not counting Black Friday sales).

 

[amrnuke]

It doesn't matter how inexpensive Intel makes their GPU if it sucks and consumers don't want to buy it. If a manufacturer won't sell me the product I want, I'll go find someone who will.

Companies dumping GPUs are going to run afoul of government regulations really damn quick. This also assumes they'd give them away for free to begin with which seems pretty unlikely. Companies are in business to make money, not give people free products.

If Intel makes a "good enough" GPU and prices it well, it won't matter. They'll pull a lot of buyers away from the low end of AMD and Nvidia's market quickly, especially with OEM deals. Don't underestimate the subversiveness of large corporations to get their way. Nvidia and AMD are little fish to Intel. Intel will dump GPUs if they want to, not if the government lets them. Period.

(As an aside, if the government really cared about anti-competitive practices, it would have shown by now. But the re-merger of the baby Bells back into another giant AT&T, and the merger of Bell Atlantic and NYNEX into Verizon, shows that in reality, AT&T just wasn't paying politicians enough back in 1984.

I mean, just in the media industry:

Comcast owns NBC, Universal Pictures, Dreamworks, etc.
Disney owns ABC, ESPN, Nat Geo, 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm, Pixar
AT&T owns HBO, TBS, TNT, CNN, Warner Bros Pictures, DC Comics, DirecTV
Fox owns, well, Fox stuff, except 20th Century Fox
CBS owns Showtime, Viacom, MTV, Nick, Paramount, Comedy Central
Sony-BMG merger

Add in Dow-DuPont, Heinz-Kraft, Charter-Time Warner Cable, Bristol-Myers Squib-Celgene, CVS-Aetna, Cigna-ExpressScripts, etc - and it's clear that there is no anti-monopolistic regulation. Intel will do as they please, because they put their money where the regulations are formed and enforced.)

 

[soresu]

If NVidia is gone from laptops in 3-4 years it's only because they have such an inferior product that no in the market wants to buy it, in much the same way that AMD vanished from the server CPU market for a time.

It will never happen, their PR fu is maximum, it cannot be beaten!

 

[soresu]

Ironic you say that, since Nintendo is the last to actually sell a console at a loss, with the WiiU (not counting Black Friday sales).

That was due to Nintendo pushing the boat out too far on hardware re-use (ie taking the piss out of customers), and in my opinion they conned people into thinking it had a major CPU upgrade when they mentioned Watson (basically implying it was a POWER7 derivative).

It was a solid GPU upgrade over Wii, but far surpassed by the soon to come PS4/XB1 GPU's, and used an arch that couldn't even manage DX11 graphics if I remember correctly.

It also had a relatively weak CPU, largely inferior to Jaguar by some degree (several when you factor core counts too).

It came out only a year before PS4 and XB1, when anticipation for these 2 were at ridiculously high levels due to the previous gen lasting too long, and their pricing was reasonable too at launch.

Taking all that aside, their 3DS and Switch consoles have been fairly profitable though?

Let's face it, they've been basically uncontested in handheld sales all along.

 

[Yotsugi]

Taking all that aside, their 3DS and Switch consoles have been fairly profitable though?

They're handhelds.
When was the last time Nintendo handhelds flopped?

 

[soresu]

They're handhelds.
When was the last time Nintendo handhelds flopped?

Switch is both a handheld and a TV console, however weak its hardware is in relative terms to competitors in the latter market.

To be honest, I'm not sure how much of Nin's handhelds not flopping has to do with the incompetence of competition in that sector.

PSP did fairly well (I owned 2 generations of it), but PSV was just sad.

Admittedly by the end I was mainly using my PSP for a book reader before my eyesight went tits up, it was a great little thing once you jail broke it.

Any serious competitor needs a range of 1st party and loyal 3rd party casual games to compete against Nin's army, which at this point is probably impossible given it keeps expanding with new generations.

 

[Yotsugi]

Any serious competitor needs a range of 1st party and loyal 3rd party casual games to compete against Nin's army

Aka it's pointless, handhelds is a mature and saturated market.

 

[soresu]

Aka it's pointless, handhelds is a mature and saturated market.

Pretty much yeah, back in the days of PSP it may have been possible, now it's just lost to Nintendo unless they take a serious fall for some reason (I don't think it likely to be clear).

 

[Yotsugi]

Pretty much yeah, back in the days of PSP it may have been possible, now it's just lost to Nintendo unless they take a serious fall for some reason (I don't think it likely to be clear).

Phones also mean that handheld TAM is static.

 

[soresu]

Phones also mean that handheld TAM is static.

I remember awhile ago Nintendo were making big moves towards serious efforts on mobile with their first party game line up, they clearly reined it in and then some since then.