[PCgamer] AMD's gaming graphics business looks like it's in terminal decline
- Thread starter anonpuffs
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Will never happen, nvidia is too greedy. Switch 2 is already $400 and it's not even as strong as a ps4 pro
AMD should start asking Sony and MS for royalties on software and subscriptions sold. They have them by the balls. Without a supplier, MS bails of the console market and what is Sony going to do? They can't go back develop custom made chips anymore, they don't have that kind of money.
Perhaps Nintendo doesn't want a handheld the size of a ROG Ally with a battery that lasts an hour.
They could go back to Nvidia I guess? Or maybe even Intel. If they did go to Nvidia they would either need to convert to ARM (not going to happen until/if PC makes the ARM switch), or consoles will have separate CPU/GPU like they used to (more expensive).
If they do they risk 2 generations of HW BC. Nvidia is expensive and Intel chips run hot. That's why I said AMD kind of has them by the balls.
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The other choice would be to go ARM with qualcomm.
Not a terrible choice given it instantly makes compatibility with mobile easier, and mobile is one market every game publisher and platform holder wants a piece of.
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No the latest rumor is Microsoft went and looked at intel stuff but pulled back at the last moment.
If they want to stay with the whole APU configuration, they can't, at least if they want to stay on x86.
Nvidia doesn't have a x86 license to make x86 CPUs. They could do an ARM-based APU, but the only real existing hardware they have that combines a GPU and CPU is either the Tegra, like what the Switch uses, or the Grace Hopper which is meant for data centers and is obscenely expensive.
AMD really is the only game in town for X86-based APUs. Intel is looking to compete but their entire GPU situation has been an absolute shitshow.
Other than BC, would it be a major issue if MS move away from X86?
Would Nvidia give them any hardware advantage? Sony and AMD are cosying up and denying MS certain software tech that Nvidia have as standard.
It would be a good excuse for MS to wipe the slate clean as well.
Rumors say Spencer senior tried to do the same, but as we know, he failed miserably.
Nvidia doesn't have a ready-made system-on-a-chip (SOC) that would be good for high end gaming. They don't have much incentive right now to get into that sector of the market either, because their AI hardware is making them ungodly sums of money, and they can use the same silicon that isn't quite as well-binned as the stuff selected for the AI hardware for their gaming GPU dies on their PC graphics cards, for which there is already quite a mature engineering and development pipeline.
The margins they could get from producing high end CPU/GPU combo boards targeted for game consoles that would have much in common with their Grace Hopper AI hardware would be way too slim to justify all of the required R&D that would go into it. Until the AI bubble pops, the juice would not be worth the squeeze for Nvidia and even when there was no AI sector to compete with, Nvidia was, by all accounts, an absolute PITA as a console hardware partner for Sony and Microsoft over two different respective generations for the console manufacturers.
All of that is before even getting to the backward compatibility hurdle as well.
Apple had their top engineers make a great emulation layer called Rosetta 2 to make x86 software work on their new ARM-based hardware, but Microsoft has not had anywhere near the same level of success in any kind of attempt to get ARM-based Windows PCs working. It looks like it's an incredibly difficult thing to pull off, and Microsoft does not appear to be up to the challenge. As for Sony, they won't even do PS2 or PS3 software emulation on PS5, so good luck.
Consoles staying with AMD's APUs makes a lot more sense for all relevant parties, and this does mean that consoles will miss out on the bleeding edge innovations that Nvidia has introduced us to in the past few years, like their raytracing acceleration being light years ahead of AMD's, the machine learning-assisted DLSS being leaps and bounds ahead of AMD's laughable FSR wannabe trick, and Nvidia's frame generation coupled with their Reflex latency reduction tech makes AMD's attempt at a similar tech look like one of those cheap late 2000s TVs doing their frame interpolation/soap opera effect postprocessing.
Nvidia knows how to make 4 things well:
1. AI hardware like the Grace Hopper unit that can make ungodly sums of money
2. Gaming PCIe GPUs that can use up the scraps unsuitable for #1
3. Workstation GPUs that can sell for five figures
4. Shitty Tegra SOCs for Nintendo
There's little to no incentive for Nvidia to branch out from there.
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1 - I don’t get why the guy's worried with AMD GPUs now, when their marketshare just started rising.
2 - AMD spending one generation on mid-range never did them any harm, on the contrary. Last time they did so was with Polaris where they gained marketshare from 20 to 30%.
3 - High end gaming GPUs haven't been going to gamers in years. Until 2022 they were going to miners, and now they're going to AI services and hobbyists. The proportion of RTX 4090 owners actually playing games is what, 10%?
Sure, halo products have good margins and they're great to dominate the charts and have fanboys raging in their favor in forums or give Alex Battaglia ammunition for his shllling, but what AMD needs right now is mind/marketshare through higher value-for-money.
4 - Since the consoles set the baseline for videogame requirements and quality and they're both based on 10-12 TFLOPs RDNA2 GPUs for a 4K output, the practical return for having GPUs much more powerful than a RX6700XT is going down.
Most GPUs above the 4070 Ti and 7800XT are just hitting CPU bottlenecks at 1440p + upscaling unless the reviewer turns on certainnvidia-sponsored advertisements ratracing effects that kill performance for an irrelevant IQ gain. PC gamers won't have any real reason to go much higher than 4070Ti/7800XT, anytime soon.
Fear not, loyal warrior. You can still just play with your Switch. Or wait a year to see how much better the Switch 2 is than everything else.
2 - AMD spending one generation on mid-range never did them any harm, on the contrary. Last time they did so was with Polaris where they gained marketshare from 20 to 30%.
3 - High end gaming GPUs haven't been going to gamers in years. Until 2022 they were going to miners, and now they're going to AI services and hobbyists. The proportion of RTX 4090 owners actually playing games is what, 10%?
Sure, halo products have good margins and they're great to dominate the charts and have fanboys raging in their favor in forums or give Alex Battaglia ammunition for his shllling, but what AMD needs right now is mind/marketshare through higher value-for-money.
4 - Since the consoles set the baseline for videogame requirements and quality and they're both based on 10-12 TFLOPs RDNA2 GPUs for a 4K output, the practical return for having GPUs much more powerful than a RX6700XT is going down.
Most GPUs above the 4070 Ti and 7800XT are just hitting CPU bottlenecks at 1440p + upscaling unless the reviewer turns on certain
Because the PS3's GPU was so much better than the X360's, right? Never occurred to you that Sony and Microsoft never went back to nvidia for a reason?
Fear not, loyal warrior. You can still just play with your Switch. Or wait a year to see how much better the Switch 2 is than everything else.