Why have AMD APUs failed on the market?

[Enigmoid]

According to most watched streams on twitch.tv and to Steam statistics the most played games in the world are League of Legends, DOTA2, CS:GO, Hearthstone, TF2 or the FM series. Last year in US universities, all I see in dorms is students playing LoL / DOTA2. Well, it turns out that AMD's APUs are the perfect fit for these type of games while Intel's APUs are too weak on the GPU side.

Unfortunately many hardware review sites are having a hard time keeping up with the changing taste of today's gamers. They cater to the more upscale gamers who -can- and are willing to spend hundreds of dollars for their computers. There is an unintentional bias when they review APUs like Kaveri. To test the iGPU they used games like Bioshock Infinite, Metro Last Light, Tomb Raider or even Battlefield 4. It makes Kaveri looks really bad even though a gamer who is considering to buy Kaveri wont be able to afford those newer AAA titles anyways .

What they should have done instead is to test whether you can play Dota2, LoL, CS:GO on an acceptable fps. Games that people actually played, are playing and will be played for years to come. Moreover most gamers who play competitive online games dont care much about AA or being able to have maxed out quality. APUs give you the required fps without having to deal with the cost, the form factor, the hassle of installing, the noise and the heat of discrete GPU.

Dota 2 and Lol play fine on any recent integrated system.

This card is not faster than the 512 Core + 2133/2400MHz dual channel Kaveri. Also, the card is only 1GB when Kaveri can been setup with up to 2GB iGPU ram.
If you buy a Core i3 + this card you get at best the same performance as A10-7850K with 2133/2400MHz but with an extra cost, noise, heat etc. Also to note that this setup doesnt support Freesync and Mantle, both are available to Kaveri APUs.

edit: I dont even believe that the Core i3 + 730 1GB DDR5 (64bit memory) will be better than the much cheaper A10-7800 2x 2133MHz.

384 kepler cores + 40 GB/sec is easily faster than kaveri.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6993/intel-iris-pro-5200-graphics-review-core-i74950hq-tested/6

A10-7850k only adds about 10% onto the 6800k. Never really catches the 640, let alone the 640 with more bandwidth.

 

[AtenRa]

We are coming up on a year after Beema and Mullins were released, but you will not find one in that list. Not one. Hundreds and hundreds of Bay Trails available, but not a single Mullins or Beema.

Yes up until now people are saying that AMD APUs are not selling first because of lower CPU performance and because they are not price competitive because of large dies.
So why Beem/Mullins didnt sell when CPU performance both Single/MultiThread and especially the iGPU is faster than Bay Trail at almost the same die size and at a much cheaper 28nm planar process ??

 

[cbn]

Yes up until now people are saying that AMD APUs are not selling first because of lower CPU performance and because they are not price competitive because of large dies.
So why Beem/Mullins didnt sell when CPU performance both Single/MultiThread and especially the iGPU is faster than Bay Trail at almost the same die size and at a much cheaper 28nm planar process ??

AMD is selling those puma core APUs in desktops though.

P.S. I just wish AMD wouldn't downclock these cat cores so much.

 

[ShintaiDK]

There's a very big difference between selling APUs and selling their own consoles. You were proposing the latter, not the former.

AMDs issue isnt competing with Sony or MS. But rather their own discrete GPUs.

 

[NTMBK]

AMDs issue isnt competing with Sony or MS. But rather their own discrete GPUs.

If they don't go for these opportunities, someone else will! If they didn't make the console APUs, someone else would have- and they would now have, say, a Qualcomm or NVidia console to compete with instead of an AMD one. Or if they didn't make any APUs at all, and just made CPUs, guess what? Intel APUs would still be stealing market share from the low end GPUs.

Tim Cook said it pretty well:

In terms of cannibalization, I see cannibalization as a huge opportunity for us. One, our base philosophy is to never fear cannibalization. If we do, someone else will cannibalize it. We know that iPhone has cannibalized some iPod business, we know iPad will cannibalize some Mac, that doesn't worry us.

Their iPhone 6 Plus has cannibalized iPad sales, and yet their company just saw record profits. If the market opportunity exists, someone will exploit it. It might as well be you, instead of your competitor.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Their iPhone 6 Plus has cannibalized iPad sales, and yet their company just saw record profits. If the market opportunity exists, someone will exploit it. It might as well be you, instead of your competitor.

This is true, but on a per-unit basis, gross profit for an iPhone 6 Plus blows away any iPad

But yes, I agree: better to cannibalize yourself than to let somebody else do it for you.

 

[frozentundra123456]

AMDs issue isnt competing with Sony or MS. But rather their own discrete GPUs.

Exactly. If the only PC gaming options were either an intel igp or an AMD apu, the AMD apu would be an obvious choice.

However, there are a wide range of other options available for the PC, and you have to work really, really hard to construct some kind of niche scenario in which an apu makes sense for gaming, or any other use for that matter, unless HSA catches on which it has not.

I know it is close to heresy on these forums to not DIY, but a couple of years ago I got an off the shelf system, and put in a HD7770. I have never once thought I should have gotten an APU. Even now, 2.5 years later, this relatively low end system will game better than any apu.

 

[ShintaiDK]

AMD isnt Apple.

Not to mention AMD sells silicon, Apple sells devices. And iPhones got a truckload higher margins than iPods.

 

[cbn]

AMDs issue isnt competing with Sony or MS. But rather their own discrete GPUs.

Competing against their own dGPUs is not the only way AMD products overlap.

There is also overlap with the desktop small cores and the big cores (in way that Intel does not suffer from). Then AM3+ also overlaps and competes with the top end of FM2+.

In contrast, Intel does not currently have this problem as their product lines have more distinct boundries. This I believe helps Intel clock and price their parts better than what AMD is forced to do.

 

[Madpacket]

I'm probably the minority here but all I've been buying for my customers have been custom ITX or Matx AMD APUS. I like simplicity and elegance with these builds and APU's allow me to achieve this as a better value than what Intel offers.

I think the real problem is the lack of awareness of the capabilities of these APU's. The A8-7600 matched up with cheap 2133 RAM and a solid SSD will perform well as a HTPC/Steam box or run as a very power efficient office PC that can still play some of the more demanding games.

 

[tynopik]

you have to work really, really hard to construct some kind of niche scenario in which an apu makes sense for gaming, or any other use for that matter

that's now, but let's say Zen makes AMD at least competitive with i5 systems in terms of cpu power and something like HBM with much greater bandwidth capability can be integrated directly on package and better process allows more graphics . . .

that's a lot of conditionals, but suddenly you have a single integrated package that performs decently and enables much cheaper systems as boards no longer require all the traces to support memory

that could be very attractive

 

[NTMBK]

AMD isnt Apple.

Not to mention AMD sells silicon, Apple sells devices. And iPhones got a truckload higher margins than iPods.

AMD definitely isn't Apple, just a quick look at their Q4 results will make that pretty clear :awe:

But the point still stands- if they hadn't done it, someone else would. Intel would steal their lunch on APUs (even more than they already are doing!), and NVidia/Qualcomm/Intel/Imagination would be powering the consoles. Their GPUs would still be competing with those products, but they would just be made by someone else.

 

[mrmt]

But the point still stands- if they hadn't done it, someone else would. Intel would steal their lunch on APUs (even more than they already are doing!), and NVidia/Qualcomm/Intel/Imagination would be powering the consoles. Their GPUs would still be competing with those products, but they would just be made by someone else.

The issue isn't cannibalization per se. If a company can sell a more profitable product in lieu of another product of its mix then it's a win for this company. Even if the product is not as profitable, higher volume might get better profits. Cannibalization might actually be a very good thing.

In AMD's case the issue wasn't cannibalization, but switching a slightly profitable product with a descent competitive position (bottom end dGPU) for an unprofitable product with a very poor competitive position (APU). AMD basically threw away a profitable business to chase a money-losing business.

 

[NTMBK]

The issue isn't cannibalization per se. If a company can sell a more profitable product in lieu of another product of its mix then it's a win for this company. Even if the product is not as profitable, higher volume might get better profits. Cannibalization might actually be a very good thing.

In AMD's case the issue wasn't cannibalization, but switching a slightly profitable product with a descent competitive position (bottom end dGPU) for an unprofitable product with a very poor competitive position (APU). AMD basically threw away a profitable business to chase a money-losing business.

But AMD didn't throw away the low end GPU business? They brought out the new Oland GPU to address the lowest end, and kept producing the old HD6450 (with a new name) for the "my PC is the speed of a potato" market.

 

[mrmt]

But AMD didn't throw away the low end GPU business? They brought out the new Oland GPU to address the lowest end, and kept producing the old HD6450 (with a new name) for the "my PC is the speed of a potato" market.

They did, that's the main reason their dGPU market share dropped. HD6450 isn't nowhere near Kepler SKUs Nvidia has for the bottom market in terms of efficiency, which hurts them on the mobile market. On the desktop market Nvidia has a full range of Kepler SKUs for the bottom market, while AMD has... HD6450.

To replace sales of low end dGPUs for APU, especially on the mobile market, was the company's strategy, as admitted by AMD CFO Devinder Kumar. Its failure was also admitted by the same person.

 

[NTMBK]

They did, that's the main reason their dGPU market share dropped. HD6450 isn't nowhere near Kepler SKUs Nvidia has for the bottom market in terms of efficiency, which hurts them on the mobile market. On the desktop market Nvidia has a full range of Kepler SKUs for the bottom market, while AMD has... HD6450.

To replace sales of low end dGPUs for APU, especially on the mobile market, was the company's strategy, as admitted by AMD CFO Devinder Kumar. Its failure was also admitted by the same person.

Oh come on, the 6450 is so low power that it is passively cooled- what more do you need from it, efficiency wise? If you want more performance, go buy one of the Oland GPUs. It's 28nm, GCN. You can get one of them for £36 from Amazon if you want to suck it up and use DDR3; GDDR5 versions will cost you a whopping £4 more. Just for comparison the cheapest Geforce card you can buy, the GT720, is also £35. AMD is covering the low end just fine.

 

[cbn]

Comparing current Core i3 OEM desktop prices to A8 and A10 in this post to Core i3 vs. A8/A10 desktop prices over a year ago in this post we are looking at anywhere from a $70 premium to a $100 premium for a A8 desktop compared to a Core i3.

With that mentioned, keep in mind the Core i3s usually came with 4GB RAM and the APUs had either 6GB or 8GB RAM.

Still $70 to $100 is/was a very large price premium for a desktop with a AMD A8 APU processor that costs less than a Core i3 processor does in DIY retail.

I figure some of this price premium must be from the AMD desktops having less volume to spread around certain fixed costs (documentation, support, designing motherboard, etc) but I am not sure if that is the whole story. Maybe AMD just can't lower the price of the processor any lower?

However, I just have to imagine folks want better cpus at lower prices instead of the extra iGPU.

Therefore I wonder how realistically low AMD could start selling quad cores and hexcore if they instead focused on a very small iGPU? Maybe hex big core small iGPU APU in the high Pentium price range and quad big core small iGPU APU in high celeron price range eventually?

 

[mrmt]

Oh come on, the 6450 is so low power that it is passively cooled- what more do you need from it, efficiency wise? If you want more performance, go buy one of the Oland GPUs. It's 28nm, GCN. You can get one of them for £36 from Amazon if you want to suck it up and use DDR3; GDDR5 versions will cost you a whopping £4 more. Just for comparison the cheapest Geforce card you can buy, the GT720, is also £35. AMD is covering the low end just fine.

Then why their share crashed?

 

[NTMBK]

Then why their share crashed?

Because AMD switchable graphics is a disaster. NVidia's Optimus is significantly better and works well with Intel APUs.

 

[monstercameron]

Because AMD switchable graphics is a disaster. NVidia's Optimus is significantly better and works well with Intel APUs.

how is it disaster?

 

[NTMBK]

how is it disaster?

It generally just doesn't work properly.

 

[cbn]

Oh come on, the 6450 is so low power that it is passively cooled- what more do you need from it, efficiency wise? If you want more performance, go buy one of the Oland GPUs. It's 28nm, GCN. You can get one of them for £36 from Amazon if you want to suck it up and use DDR3; GDDR5 versions will cost you a whopping £4 more. Just for comparison the cheapest Geforce card you can buy, the GT720, is also £35. AMD is covering the low end just fine.

Oland as in R7 250?

I rarely see those go sale, so I was thinking their volume was really low.

In fact, the R7 250X (640sp @ 1000 MHz with 128bit GDDR5) is usually within $5 of the same price as the R7 250 (384sp @ 1000 Mhz) at least here in the US at Newegg, etc

 

[AtenRa]

Dota 2 and Lol play fine on any recent integrated system.



384 kepler cores + 40 GB/sec is easily faster than kaveri.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6993/intel-iris-pro-5200-graphics-review-core-i74950hq-tested/6

A10-7850k only adds about 10% onto the 6800k. Never really catches the 640, let alone the 640 with more bandwidth.

First of all we are talking about GT730 with 64bit memory and GDDR5, not 640.

Secondly 7850K is faster than 10% over 6800K in gaming, especially with newer games and Mantle.

Thirdly, GT730 64bit GDDR5 is almost equal to A10-7850K with Dual channel 2133/2400MHz memory. It will be slightly faster in some games and slightly slower in others.

But as i have said, going for the Core i3 + GT730 you loose Freesync and Mantle, it cost more, you get higher noise and higher thermals. I dont know about power usage though.

 

[NTMBK]

Oland as in R7 250?

I rarely see those go sale, so I was thinking their volume was really low.

In fact, the R7 250X is usually the same price as the R7 250 at least here in the US at Newegg, etc

Oland = R7 240 and R7 250. Pretty common here in Europe.

 

[cbn]

Comparing prices on R7 250X and R7 250:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...bop=And&page=1

The R7 250X is actually $10 less than the cheapest R7 250 at the moment.

I've been thinking AMD must churn out a lot more Cape Verde (R7 250X, formerly known as HD7770) than the Oland cards.