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The worst thing is that AMD….. a distant second place…. seems completely uninterested in competing or winning against Nvidia. Nvidia has given AMD the biggest

The worst thing is that AMD….. a distant second place…. seems completely uninterested in competing or winning against Nvidia. Nvidia has given AMD the biggest possible opportunity by charging insane prices and lately, with making garbage GPUs (4060/4070). AMD could rip Nvidia to shreds by taking this chance to price low and deliver powerful GPUs. Instead they seem content just to overcharge same as nvidia and make the same garbage cards as Nvidia. AMD has the technology… the 7900 XTX rasterisation performance is not far behind the nvidia rtx 4090. It’s weird. Maybe Lisa Su isn’t the right CEO for AMD. So we’re left to wait and hope that one day Intel will work out how to make a fast GPU.

jacquesm 3y ago
Or maybe she knows something that we do not. Such as AMDs yield and their ability to scale up. It's quite possible that AMD isn't able to price low and go for volume because that's not the market they are tooled up for.
- andrewstuart 3y ago
  You’re saying maybe they can’t make enough cards to compete because their tech capabilities are below par?
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    I'm not saying it is like that I'm saying there could be other factors invisible to us which close the door on low price/high volume plays. You'd assume that she has more than enough smarts to think about such options if they were on the table in the first place.
    - andrewstuart 3y ago
      When a company is in second place and the first place company leaves a massive gate open for competition, then it’s the duty of the CEO to do what it takes to capitalize, attack and go for first place. Lisa Su has had plenty of time to do whatever needs to be done to take advantage of Nvidias opening. There’s no sign at all she’s doing anything. The 7600 GPU just released is garbage. All the AMD cards are still overpriced. How long do you give a CEO who fails to attack a vulnerable #1 ?
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        > When a company is in second place and the first place company leaves a massive gate open for competition, then it’s the duty of the CEO to do what it takes to capitalize, attack and go for first place. I don't think that's in the fiduciary duties of a CEO. But: I'm not a shareholder of AMD so I'll leave it to them to decide whether or not they want to keep her on. > How long do you give a CEO who fails to attack a vulnerable #1 ? That depends on whether or not the attack is feasible, whether the #1 is as vulnerable as you seem to think they are and whether or not there is something in the armory to attack with. Lots of assumptions there. She's generally considered to be the person that 'Saved AMD' so I really don't know what you base your analysis on, it may well be that AMD has an attack on NV in the works but personally, without having a lot more insight into AMD than what's available in annual reports and various press releases I would be careful in second guessing a CEO that so far has done a pretty good job. And any such discussion should take into account that AMD has multiple strong enemies besides NV (Intel, for one).
      - ralfn 3y ago
        Starting a pricewar with NVidia is not in their interest. They are both limited by production capacity at the moment because we need more "open" foundaries which needs more machines from ASML. Both are in the works, but it takes time. As long as they sell all their inventory anyway you won't see a price drop, let alone a price war. I'm more surprised AMD is not playing in the AI field more. Although it seems the long term strategy for Google, Microsoft and Amazon is to supply their clouds with their own ARM based hardware rather than buying from Nvidia. But AMD could enter that market with a high volume low margin approach as well. Still, as long as TSCM and ASML can't scale up production further everybody will be waiting anyway. That's where the bottleneck is, thats whats keeping prices high.
washadjeffmad 3y ago
You might want to look into AMD as a company post Xilinx acq, and also why it doesn't pay to ship Nvidia cards[1]. Entertainment consumers have to ask for AMD before they can scale for competition against Nvidia, and it's apparently easier to get people to buy an inadequate Nvidia card than it is to buy another brand, regardless of cost, features, or quality. I'm loving being able to snatch up A770 16GBs for <$300, though - they're quirky powerhouses. There's also no point in flooding the shelves with graphics cards that no one is buying, like Nvidia did with the 40-series. Starving the market is a strategy, and a smart one when Jensen can be counted on to let his competitive streak make decisions for him. We're also still in an inflated market, and wages haven't risen for most people. Spending is down, desktops and components are not in demand despite falling prices, and the aftermarket / used GPU market is eating new sales. I don't know anyone with a 40-series, suppliers like Dell aren't shipping them yet (volume issues because they're all sitting on store shelves, unsold?), and people like me are only interest in A-series or newer, which already carry a premium. [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/evga-ends-nvidia-video-card/ https://www.pcgamer.com/evga-ends-nvidia-video-card/
- philwelch 3y ago
  > Entertainment consumers have to ask for AMD before they can scale for competition against Nvidia And yet AMD graphics cards have to be competitive against Nvidia before anyone will buy them. If only AMD had some other product family that was able to generate revenue for them to reinvest in GPU’s.
michelb 3y ago
AMD just announced they’re going after Nvidia over the next five years.

jacquesm 3y ago

Or maybe she knows something that we do not. Such as AMDs yield and their ability to scale up. It's quite possible that AMD isn't able to price low and go for volume because that's not the market they are tooled up for.

andrewstuart 3y ago
You’re saying maybe they can’t make enough cards to compete because their tech capabilities are below par?
- jacquesm 3y ago
  I'm not saying it is like that I'm saying there could be other factors invisible to us which close the door on low price/high volume plays. You'd assume that she has more than enough smarts to think about such options if they were on the table in the first place.
  - andrewstuart 3y ago
    When a company is in second place and the first place company leaves a massive gate open for competition, then it’s the duty of the CEO to do what it takes to capitalize, attack and go for first place. Lisa Su has had plenty of time to do whatever needs to be done to take advantage of Nvidias opening. There’s no sign at all she’s doing anything. The 7600 GPU just released is garbage. All the AMD cards are still overpriced. How long do you give a CEO who fails to attack a vulnerable #1 ?
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      > When a company is in second place and the first place company leaves a massive gate open for competition, then it’s the duty of the CEO to do what it takes to capitalize, attack and go for first place. I don't think that's in the fiduciary duties of a CEO. But: I'm not a shareholder of AMD so I'll leave it to them to decide whether or not they want to keep her on. > How long do you give a CEO who fails to attack a vulnerable #1 ? That depends on whether or not the attack is feasible, whether the #1 is as vulnerable as you seem to think they are and whether or not there is something in the armory to attack with. Lots of assumptions there. She's generally considered to be the person that 'Saved AMD' so I really don't know what you base your analysis on, it may well be that AMD has an attack on NV in the works but personally, without having a lot more insight into AMD than what's available in annual reports and various press releases I would be careful in second guessing a CEO that so far has done a pretty good job. And any such discussion should take into account that AMD has multiple strong enemies besides NV (Intel, for one).
    - ralfn 3y ago
      Starting a pricewar with NVidia is not in their interest. They are both limited by production capacity at the moment because we need more "open" foundaries which needs more machines from ASML. Both are in the works, but it takes time. As long as they sell all their inventory anyway you won't see a price drop, let alone a price war. I'm more surprised AMD is not playing in the AI field more. Although it seems the long term strategy for Google, Microsoft and Amazon is to supply their clouds with their own ARM based hardware rather than buying from Nvidia. But AMD could enter that market with a high volume low margin approach as well. Still, as long as TSCM and ASML can't scale up production further everybody will be waiting anyway. That's where the bottleneck is, thats whats keeping prices high.

washadjeffmad 3y ago

You might want to look into AMD as a company post Xilinx acq, and also why it doesn't pay to ship Nvidia cards[1]. Entertainment consumers have to ask for AMD before they can scale for competition against Nvidia, and it's apparently easier to get people to buy an inadequate Nvidia card than it is to buy another brand, regardless of cost, features, or quality. I'm loving being able to snatch up A770 16GBs for <$300, though - they're quirky powerhouses. There's also no point in flooding the shelves with graphics cards that no one is buying, like Nvidia did with the 40-series. Starving the market is a strategy, and a smart one when Jensen can be counted on to let his competitive streak make decisions for him. We're also still in an inflated market, and wages haven't risen for most people. Spending is down, desktops and components are not in demand despite falling prices, and the aftermarket / used GPU market is eating new sales. I don't know anyone with a 40-series, suppliers like Dell aren't shipping them yet (volume issues because they're all sitting on store shelves, unsold?), and people like me are only interest in A-series or newer, which already carry a premium. [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/evga-ends-nvidia-video-card/ https://www.pcgamer.com/evga-ends-nvidia-video-card/

philwelch 3y ago
> Entertainment consumers have to ask for AMD before they can scale for competition against Nvidia And yet AMD graphics cards have to be competitive against Nvidia before anyone will buy them. If only AMD had some other product family that was able to generate revenue for them to reinvest in GPU’s.

michelb 3y ago

AMD just announced they’re going after Nvidia over the next five years.