Graphics The Polaris core could be AMD's last competitive GPU

http://wccftech.com/amd-confirms-polaris-gpus-released-school-season-desktops-laptops/

back to school is slated for july in retail

 

I'm looking at this too. In terms of price/performance they seem to hold their own against Nvidia yet every build advice thread I see people recommending Nvidia almost exclusive. AMD can't seem to shake the power, heat and driver arguments everyone puts forth.

 

Zen is AMDs survival in the end of the day, Polaris whilst nice and all will not keep the company in business. A lot of people think the rebrand is the beginning of the separation process of the CPU and gpu. Which will eventually result in the gpu business been sold.

AMD and Nvidia are both in somebody else's hands in terms of how fast they can get 14/16nm products to market. Both are after space that is been sold to a much bigger company.

If Samsung owned this we would of had a 14/16nm gpu last year, similar story to Intel owning it would of been done and dusted.

Does either AMD or Nvidia know how to make a small but fast gpu on limited die space. The days of 400mm dies are over for now at least. With most reports suggest between 200 to 300 as the maximum this year.

In theory we should see a doubling of performance we are talking 2 node shrinks here. Even just reducing maxwell or fury to 14/16 should see a big performance jump.

 

power wise - its a misconception about how awesome Nvidia is - the factory OC GTX 980ti are where AMD high end are - its only the GTX980 and GTX 750ti which are `awesome`

 

AMDs biggest issue is a shocking PR team who do not understand how to market a product. Anyone with a passing intrest in AMD could market the product better

The Nano GPU is awesome for what it is but how many people know it.

 

So much this.

The Nvidia 970 memory issue seems like a distant memory because of their PR team. If AMD had made the same mistake, they'd be buried by the fanboys and critics.

It's such a shame, and I hope Polaris and Zen absolutely blow us away as AMD are the only ones making genuinely creative strides in the hardware market right now.

 

Since the AMD 5XXX series I had used Nvidia almost exclusively, mostly because I usually use more than one GPU.

Since the 970 thing I have switched to AMD and now own two Fury X.

Not all of us fall for Nvidia's BS.

 

Do you think a small section of enthusiasts make a dif to AMDs bottom line. Even if every single user of bit tech brought a full AMD CFX rig with AMD CPU it would be peanuts probably less than £1millon.

AMD need ZEN to succeed and to do that it needs correct marketing to the masses.

AMDs market share will continue to reduce till they get a competitive CPU on the market, most casual consumers see AMD as cheap budget option with Intel the premium product. AMDs problem is even the ultra cheap Intel chips despite been pretty bad and worse performance wise than AMDs are still out selling them across all markets.

This budget idea marketing has affected there gpu market share as people do not want to buy the AMD brand. When your brand is bad you struggle and AMDs brand is in the negative.

They have no market presence in Uk stores anymore, PC world used to sell a good mix of Intel AMD rigs now they exclusively sell Intel rigs and that's replicated in places like John Lewis ect. Dell does not sell AMD period. Lenovo has 2-3 systems and that's the 2 biggest suppliers of PCs.

With the recent 10% drop in like for like sales of PCs, AMD needs to compete on 3 fronts Price / Performance and energy consumption ( basically heat / noise )

Only Apple has saw growth in the PC sector in the recent results posted.

Zen will either save AMD ( we can hope) or be its fairwell, It is at the point where only 1 of the 2 will be certain. Polaris however good will likely just result in a higher increase in price for whoever buys out the gpu brand. Which in recent weeks and months they have been desperately trying to seperate from the CPU brand.

 

FTFY

 

What AMD mostly need to do is shut up the AMD trolls who post nothing but bad news, financial reports in the wrong context and nonsense about their products.

And the only way they can do that is by beating Nvidia on price and performance (note I said price *and* performance I have not separated either word).

Right now AMD own the low end of the market. You would have to be quite brainwashed to buy a card for more money that actually performs far worse. It does happen though.

AMD also own the mid range of the market with the 390 and 390x. Technically both of those cards are superior to the 970 and 980 and most importantly they have (lately) been £50 cheaper. So the whole £15 a year power argument goes out of the window.

Now they are slashing Nano prices, hopefully with X and regular Fury to follow. If they do that and are actually interested in selling Fury (because I sometimes have my doubts) then they can most certainly take back a share of the market. There was nothing wrong with any of the Fury products apart from the "Hiring a brain dead monkey to price them up" part.

It's funny because as the months drag on people are actually starting to think that Fury performance is worse than it really is.

AMD then need to STFU making outrageous claims. "Overclockers dream" erm, no. When you build yourself up like that a fall can be far more painful than it would have been if you hadn't told a few porkies.

I knew from day one that Fury X would not overclock. I had no expectations, so over the months when rumours came that voltage control would cure all I just didn't believe any of it.

They don't overclock but I'm not disappointed in any way

 

They don't own the low or mid range that's the point and the problem. Low end is Intel Igpu which is still the highest graphics device on the market. Low end is Nviida products dominating sales. With mid range sales been the 970 or 960 they are the 2 most popular cards on the market according to none biased market trackers.

AMD actually sells more in the high end on graphics than the low and mid range dedicated gpus. According to the same analysts.

Fury X was not really overpriced, it was cheaper for 4K than a 980ti with a better cooling solution. And offered better performance in a lot of popular games at 4K. And let's be honest if your spending that much cash then your gaming at 4K.Normal fury was over priced not a lot faster than cheaper competition.

 

Need more info, what is the 970 thing?

 

Nvidia wanted to have more than 3GB of vRAM on the 970, but the only way they could do that is by having 3.5GB of vRAM and then a separate block of 0.5GB of vRAM which was only accessible at a slower rate. They didn't communicate this when they initially put the card on sale and there was (rightly) a huge backlash about it and many people claimed (wrongly) that they were now unhappy with the cards performance.....despite being happy about it when they bought the card.

 

To post news based on evidence is not trolling, it's the core of journalism and analyst market examination. Financial news can be good as it can be bad.

 

I think he meant just your average internet users rather than the press.

 

I wasn't talking about this place Bindi. I was talking about other forums I visit, where pretty much most of the day is spent bad mouthing AMD.

That's the nice way of explaining it. Then there's the other way, where they lied about the ROPS and then when caught out offered up the lamest explanation/apology I have ever seen with no offer of people returning the cards.

Want to know what was even more messed up than that though? those who weren't happy proceeded to sell their 970s for the now "cut rate" (due to the vram thing) and then reward Nvidia by going out and buying 980s and 980tis.

That'll teach em !

lol small section of enthusiasts? You mean 90% of very busy forums is a small section?

AMDs sales are on the floor. That means every one has been buying Nvidia. 99% of those who buy Nvidia then go onto forums wanting a polish bragging about their purchase decision at at the same time slagging off anything even remotely good about AMD. Nvidiots, I believe they're called.

On most of the forums I visit there can be a thread about AMD (for example, most recently the Nano price reduction) and by page two the only posts you will see are about the 980 and 980ti.

It's absolutely sickening.

And I don't understand it because most of these users are 'so called' adults. Not 12 or 13 year old kids but fully grown adults with children.

But it's pretty much the same everywhere go you, even here sometimes. I saw some one yesterday say that they would not buy a Fury Nano and would instead buy a 970 mini. So they would deliberately lose a massive chunk of performance just to avoid buying anything AMD make. Very clever....

I don't know how AMD are going to achieve this troll silence I really don't. Nvidia are now the Apple of GPU manufacturing and as we know once you achieve that sort of status it's pretty difficult for any one else.

 

Don't think I've listed a PC component I've brought in years it's pretty pointless stuff most people I know are in a similar position.

People got sick of AMDs promised performance years back and have since turned there back on them. That is down to there shocking marketing team.

duel gpu cards cost AMD a lot of rep on forums, the 5990 was horrible rubbish that should not of saw light of day. The fact that even with custom bios it was still unstable was always quiet sad that was my last AMD card or product.

Considering my full PC at the time was AMD and I'd only brought AMD they lost a customer that day and a lot of others have followed judging by there year to year figures that have dropped a lot since the Nvidia 5 series and AMD 6 series launched.

Nvidia the apple of gpus lol haha. Come back when they make 10bil profit a quarter. Nvidia has its popularity on forums like this but the general public would not know who AMD or Nvidia is.

Intel has the biggest brand awareness in PC technology.

You could show most people a fury X and a 980ti and they would not be able to tell you who made the cards. I build PCs for family / friends and all will tell me they want a Intel CPU in it even if it's not the best option in the price range.

For AMD to succeed they need to take the current PR team fire the lot of them and hire some people who actually want AMD to be successful. Alienwareandy would do the best job he was AMDs biggest supporter on here. Andy harle yourself could all market the products AMD make better than AMD currently does.

 

As for the small section thing yes we are a tiny majority of the total sales that are available.

 

I think AMD's approach to Polaris has changed a little. Instead of anything outrageous or pics of it hitting 7ghz under LN2 they have been far more sensible.

Showing "a card" doing the same thing as an Nvidia part but using half of the power is much more grown up and refined.

To be fair they didn't make any stupid claims about Fury X other than the "overclockers dream" part. And Fury X stands up quite well given that it's quite a venerable part with HBM glued to it.

I've seen excellent boosts running Crossfire X in games that support it, most of which were unplayable @ 4k with max settings before.

 

I think a part of the problem is AMD's unwillingness to play dirty.

It seems that whenever Nvidia has sent a card for review, it's always had seemingly impossible overclocks and runs like a dream. They've evidently tested a multitude of cards and sent the best ones out for review.
AMD doesn't seem to have done that. Nano being just one example. They really shat the bed with that one, as with a few glowing reviews under it's belt it would've had a far better start out of the gate.

AMD need to get their hands dirty and start slinging the mud as well (better, even) as Nvidia and Intel if they want to catch up.