For months, internet rumor mills have claimed that AMD’s next-generation Radeon RX 8000 graphics cards would cede the high-end market to Nvidia’s GeForce lineup, after the GeForce RTX 4090 stomped all over the competition this time around.
Now, AMD’s senior VP and general manager of the computing and graphics group, Jack Huynh, all but confirmed it when he responded to Tom’s Hardware’s question about whether Radeon will compete with Nvidia at the “top of the stack”:
“My number one priority right now is to build scale, to get us to 40 to 50 percent of the market faster. Do I want to go after 10 percent of the TAM [Total Addressable Market] or 80 percent? I’m an 80 percent kind of guy because I don’t want AMD to be the company that only people who can afford Porsches and Ferraris can buy. We want to build gaming systems for millions of users.
Yes, we will have great, great, great products. But we tried that strategy [King of the Hill] — it hasn’t really grown. ATI has tried this King of the Hill strategy, and the market share has kind of been… the market share. I want to build the best products at the right system price point. So, think about price point-wise; we’ll have leadership.”
Huynh conceded that “one day, we may” battle Nvidia for flagship supremacy again, but it’s not in the cards right now because AMD wants to drive broader user adoption to convince developers to focus on Radeon products. Gaming and AI are both very hot categories right now, and while AMD has footholds in both territories, Nvidia dominates.
Brad Chacos / IDG
Brad Chacos / IDG
Brad Chacos / IDG
It’s a noble goal — but it’s not the first time AMD has headed down this path. Way back in 2016, AMD’s high-end Vega GPU was floundering in development, and the company focused on the mid-range with its Polaris architecture. The resulting Radeon RX 480 redefined what was possible in a $200 graphics card and proved to be a huge success for AMD. (Though it didn’t put a dent in Radeon’s long-term market share, despite “price point-wise, we’ll have leadership” basically summarizing AMD’s positioning against Nvidia ever since.)
Back then, however, graphics cards weren’t used for cryptocurrency or machine learning tasks at the levels they are now. Today, developers are clamoring for Nvidia alternatives. And the gaming market itself certainly looked different in 2016 than it does now; then, the RX 480 could deliver solid 1440p gameplay for $200; now, $300 to $400 graphics cards are technologically designed to work best with 1080p gaming alone. The GPU market and its pricing is a mess for gamers right now.
A mainstream savior is needed. Intel’s first-gen Arc GPUs took a stab at it, but driver woes held them back during the crucial launch window. Can a renewed focus on affordable GPUs woo gamers (and developers) over to Team Red? It sounds like we’ll see next generation.
