Should I wait? Worried about AMD's future

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon' started by Valagard, Oct 8, 2014.

  1. Valagard

    Valagard Guest

    So on the 29th I'm probably going to drop 10 months of saving cash down on a brand new GPU to replace my well worked 7970, but lately AMD is kinda scaring me with their product cycles/support

    For about year now I just can't shake that feeling of "Are you ok AMD? You're acting odd" I get whenever I deal with AMD products etc, key examples of that being:

    -Constant restructuring, PR double talk of "Moving focus" onto other area's etc

    -AMD fishing for investors something fierce right now, almost every third article I read about AMD lately is them doing conferences to capitalists etc

    -The frankly abysmal driver support out of AMD the last 6+ months, so bad I can rightfully go "Well, Nvidia fanboys are right for once...."

    It just seems lately that AMD with every new card release is adding like a month or two to its cycles, which in itself wouldn't bother me too much, but while I have no problem buying Nvidia stock cards if I have to, AMD you're forced to buy reference cards for what, three months after release?

    So right now they say the new 390x's will be out supposedly by Q1 2015, so a worst case scenario is its out in march, and then I have to wait three months till june just to buy a card with an aftermarket cooler etc

    And lets not wax hypotheticals here, I have no idea how fast its going to be, perhaps it blows the 980x out of the water, perhaps it doesn't, as it is ATM I'm just worried about AMD itself as a business, which I feel is bordering on paranoia that waiting on the AMD product in itself would be self defeating

    Does anybody else feel this way, that AMD for some reason the last year or so really feels like its taken a backwards step from its customers in the market? Like I absolutely HATE Nvidia's business practices, but I'm buying a video card, not fighting a war.
     
  2. CPC_RedDawn

    CPC_RedDawn Ancient Guru

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    Wait it out.

    This is what I am doing, my 7970 @ 1150/1650 1.138v is perfect for me at the moment nothing I can't max out and get good fps.

    I am waiting for the monster Volcanic Islands or Pirate Islands GPU's.

    Mainly the Bermuda XTX R9 390X GPU that is rumored to have 4224 Stream Processors, 264 TMUs, 96 ROPS, and a 3D stacked memory with a 448GB/s bandwidth.

    That for me will be a true upgrade.
     
  3. Dch48

    Dch48 Guest

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    AMD is fine. Don't worry about all the prophets of doom.
     
  4. Fox2232

    Fox2232 Guest

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    Only problem AMD has is scared market itself. Resulting in nearly ZERO presence where they would make big hits.

    They have chips for those markets, but no devices on sale.
    - current AMD APU based tablets = none
    (intel sells here full range from trash to gold, but AMD would still win at GPU field in few places, and I would not even mind bit thicker tablet "rugged like" with better performance and higher capacity battery)
    - current AMD APU based netbooks 12~14" without dGPU = only HP and at high premium price
    (even 35W FX-7600p would be better 12" alternative to 15W intel + 20W nVidia, allowing for smaller board, much bigger battery)

    And people in AMD must know that space inside device matters and they have this APU advantage.

    I get feeling that AMD tries to slide by and wait out end of 28nm era and then go directly for 14/16nm FF with many cumulative improvements.

    But in meanwhile they are not bringing in money they could. They are not competing in many markets with intel which inflates prices.
    And worst of all they are losing presence (if any left) on those markets and faith of their customers.

    Edit: And if they do not get partner like Sony, ASUS, MSI to build that kind of device which would make difference, they should design it themselves & brand it as AMD.
    It is not that hard to make required feature list and put pieces together in designer tool.
    Many devices see light of day just with limited kickstarter funds.
    And having AMD branded notebook/tablet/or even cellphone...
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2014

  5. Sukovsky

    Sukovsky Guest

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    Give me a break. They have the whole consolemarket in their pocket.
     
  6. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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    I wouldn't say AMD is dead, not quite dying either, but still, until the 3xx generation hits the market, I would hold out if I was you. There's always a green option, but tbh if the 380/390 works good, I guess quite some people will have to see what it brings, even from the green side. Pascal will take it's time until sometime in h2/2015, and that's 6 months at least where AMD could score big time with GPUs, imho.
     
  7. h4rm0ny

    h4rm0ny Guest

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    I think AMD are actually making a lot of very smart moves in a very hard situation. Their APUs are actually my go to recommendation for "normal" people. Good bang for your buck as the saying goes and you can get by without a graphics card. Very good with multi-threading, also. As someone else said, AMD have gambled on multi-threading and been hurt by slow move towards this by the games industry. But that still leaves them as excellent bases for a modern OS and general usage.

    For anyone who isn't a serious gamer, just throw in a decent APU and be done with it. You have to be spend quite a bit on your GPU to reach the point where it, and not the CPU, is the bottleneck.

    Of course their dire lack of money means they're struggling to really exploit this window of opportunity. But I think their chips are pretty popular with the financially constrained (which is a lot of us) and I think they're finally starting to see more inroads to laptop presence because of the APUs. And slowly but definitely, software is shifting to start to be able to take advantage of high core counts and hUMA will be a big thing, I think.

    Just my take on it. AMD is one of those companies that amazes me not because of its triumphs, but because of its survival instincts against endless adversity. It is the Ellen Ripley of the hardware world.
     
  8. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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    Oh I think for everything besides gaming the AMD APUs are very handy, in fact I'll use one on a friends HTPC I'm going to build soon. But we're on a hardware enthusiast's board I thought, so it's about high profile gaming.

    AMD just moved the weight of it's economical survival aways from traditional gaming computing, which I'm talking about as in it is behind it's adversaries regularely. The budget doesn't help that much imho, if you want to go silent, cool, and energy efficient with dGPU gaming.

    I'd be happy to go back to the market situation that was when I was running an Athlon and a Radeon X800 in my gaming rig :D
     
  9. h4rm0ny

    h4rm0ny Guest

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    Oh I agree, but the OP is worried about survival. That's a different question and one which I think is more about AMDs general well-being rather than high end gaming(1). And they're certainly not going to be giving up their GPU side so as long as AMD are in the game, I don't think anyone needs to worry about buying their GPUs.

    Anyway, this just in:

    http://fudzilla.com/home/item/35982-amds-new-ceo-is-dr-lisa-su

    I have a lot of respect for any company that appoints an actual engineer as their CEO. She will have a very deep level of understanding of the market and the technology and where both are going. And as CEO she'll have all the support and people around her to take care of any other aspects the job requires (e.g. schmoozing, PR).



    (1)Just to note, you can still high-end game on AMD chips very happily. They're NOT as powerful as Intel's best but as I say, it's seldom that you're going to be CPU-constrained rather than GPU constrained until you've spent a very significant amount of money on the system already.
     
  10. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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    True, and with the help of mantle, the CPU part is a little less important than with an Intel / Nvidia system anyway.
     

  11. Deathchild

    Deathchild Ancient Guru

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    Just get a 970 dude, what's with all this crap.

    Or wait it out and get a 390X or whatever.
     
  12. SLI-756

    SLI-756 Guest

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    OP will just be looking for chat with like-minded folks in same boat, though sure this is a review site and card's performance are for all to see. (in whichever games /benchies you care for).
     
  13. MacT

    MacT Member Guru

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  14. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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  15. h4rm0ny

    h4rm0ny Guest

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    I think it's clear that no-one can create a chip that will kill Nvidia. Unless there's some revolutionary breakthrough that no-one is anticipating. Nor would any smart person want AMD to kill Nvidia because competition drives them both forward. But I would bet money that the new GPUs WONT kill Nvidia, but that they will be a great improvement on AMD's already good chips and it will be plenty to keep them in the game. The question posed by the OP is should they worry and avoid buying AMD GPUs. I really think the answer to both is no.
     

  16. Clawedge

    Clawedge Guest

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    i say wait. cos very soon a new gpu will come out, and then everyone will say nvidia is done. then you will go oh wait, and then nvidia will release a new gpu, and then amd will be doom, but wait, they will come out with a new gpu, and then, nvidia willl blow up forever, and then amd will relese a new gpu... crap i lost track. you get the idea. there are many idiots who just love to bash the other company.


    just buy the gpu that needs your needs. neither company is going down
     
  17. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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    I wouldn't want to "kill" nvidia in the sense of the word, rather just taking the performance crown with reasonable heat and voltage again, if only for a few months. Maybe with increased standard VRAM like the 290X had against the 780.

    I was just about to go for the 290X back then, but refrained due to the high temperatures (which meant little room for overclocking for me as I wouldn't be going for h2o), then wanted to go for the 780Ti with 6GB VRAM (which never saw release in that form). What I'd wish for AMD was to do the same they did with the 290x compared to Keplers, only with lower temperatures and the usual reasonable pricing, and then the fight is back.

    As for the op's question, no worries about AMD being around for the next years, for that matter. And if you think the red team is your way to go, then don't hesitate, as the promotion with lowered prices certainly is an offer not to come around two weeks after the promotion's end again ;)
     
  18. Valagard

    Valagard Guest

    I'm still here, I'm just reading everyone's responses as I try to figure out my actions, but if I go forwards and order the new card I'll make the decision on wednesday, so if you want to keep giving me feedback everyone that would be nice.
     
  19. stevevnicks

    stevevnicks Guest

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    No, you should not be worrying about AMD's future, its AMD who should be worrying.
     
  20. amdranger

    amdranger Guest

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    i hope there will be a day amd will start to releasing proper drivers , and not hurrying releasing a new gpus without proper support to use gpu like it should be mostly in crossfire setups , the amd drivers support it is the number one problem in their gpus section and not their hardware which is good
     

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