News - AMD GPU shipments jumped 11 per cent in Q2 2014 say analysts

[HEXUS]

Intel was also up 4 per cent but Nvidia GPU shipments slipped by over 8 per cent.

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[kalniel]

Low powered embedded graphics for everyone then I'm sure they'll catch up with the power of discrete some day, but looks like we're heading for a sort of 5 year drop back in graphical power that devs will want to target.

[Otherhand]

I hope DX12 is going to be a big enough leap that sales increase for both companies.

Are the guesses I've seen accurate, that we won't see DX12 until the Autumn after next (2015) at the earliest? I'm not sure which of the rumours I've seen are based on conjecture, or which are drawn from insiders' tips.

[Pleiades]

I remember the days when there were dozens of competing GPU companies... lots of probs with that too of course, but it's still sad to see only a couple of big players (and Intel I guess) left in the game.

Also, this was all fields.

[Percy1983]

I will say I am a fan of the APUs for general/media PCs.

I have a netbook based on the old C50 and my HTPC is about to be upgraded from a A8-3870K to an A8-7600.

To me the balance they bring in such machines is perfect, and hey with DX12/Mantle shaping up to better support multicore my 3570k may soon make way for an AMD 8 core.

[Brewster0101]

I wonder at what market share AMD have to be at to actually make hard profit.

[kalniel]

I wonder at what market share AMD have to be at to actually make hard profit.

Well, any. There's no relationship between market share and profit.

[Myss_tree]

For must folk an APU is fine for what they use a computer for. Its only for intensive stuff (gaming, rendering, for example) that you may need something more beefy.

[Brewster0101]

Well, any. There's no relationship between market share and profit.

Well that's incorrect.

Plenty of examples and business models rely on profit points based on market share in a given market.

Seen a few business forecasts base forecasted revenue on market share where a market value is known or predicted.

Increased market share = increased sales = increased revenue = increased profit (in theory)

If AMD had the same market share of 67.3% instead of Intel, I'm pretty certain that would earn them a good amount of profit.

[kalniel]

Well that's incorrect.

Plenty of examples and business models rely on profit points based on market share in a given market.

Seen a few business forecasts base forecasted revenue on market share where a market value is known or predicted.

Increased market share = increased sales = increased revenue = increased profit (in theory)

If AMD had the same market share of 67.3% instead of Intel, I'm pretty certain that would earn them a good amount of profit.

Nope. Market share by itself means nothing at all. Revenue - that's important, in conjunction with margin which determines profit. But market share is only useful insofar as it help you determine potential revenue for which you need to know the size of the market as well.

But you have have 1% market share and still be profitable, or 90% and still not be profitable. There's no link at all. Take someone like Bentley vs Vauxhall/GM for a car analogy. Bentley - very very small market share, but profitable. GM, relatively large market share, but not profitable.

Back to AMD/Intel - AMD are selling things at a vastly reduced margin compared to Intel - Intel have highly performance yet small die sizes and can pump out high priced, low manufacture cost chips. AMD have to reduce their margins to even compete, so they might gain market share, but lose profit.

[mercyground]

About time AMD chips got pushed more. Hell even intel gfx are getting "passable".

I guess losing the console business and getting pissed on by apple pretty much kicked nvidia where it hurt. Shame they are still trying to sell stupidly overpriced Titans instead of fixing Maxwell. (or just covering up two entire chip families being "removed" from their chipline)

[KeyboardDemon]

About time AMD chips got pushed more. Hell even intel gfx are getting "passable".

I guess losing the console business and getting pissed on by apple pretty much kicked nvidia where it hurt. Shame they are still trying to sell stupidly overpriced Titans instead of fixing Maxwell. (or just covering up two entire chip families being "removed" from their chipline)

AMD just don't seem to be able to promote their products as well as Intel, I don't know if it's down to the size of their marketing budgets, some historical anti-competitive behavior or just a general lack of confidence in the brand, it just looks like everything they try just fails and I do want to see more being done for AMD based hardware products. I know when I look through stores like John Lewis, PC World and Currys the AMD SKUs tend to only make up around 1 in 7 products on display, I think even laptops with Samsung CPUs are catching up with the amount of display space AMD based products are getting. I also know that both Microsoft and Intel have spent a lot of money helping DSGi (PC World & Currys) redesign their store layouts in order to highlight their features and benefits which then also makes any efforts that AMD make outside of stores to advertise harder to compete with the in store messaging and Intel's in store sales training.

Low powered embedded graphics for everyone then I'm sure they'll catch up with the power of discrete some day, but looks like we're heading for a sort of 5 year drop back in graphical power that devs will want to target.

How much attention do developers put on to the level of hardware being used by their potential market before they start developing titles? I would have thought that if this was as important as your post suggests it might be then titles like Watch Dogs and BF4 might not have been so 'high end.

[kalniel]

How much attention do developers put on to the level of hardware being used by their potential market before they start developing titles?

It's one of the most important things. First question is who wants to play this. Second question is who can play this.

I would have thought that if this was as important as your post suggests it might be then titles like Watch Dogs and BF4 might not have been so 'high end.

They're targeting exactly what the majority of the market for that kind of game has - ie consoles. Consoles are fixed hardware cycles, so in a few years time they'll still be targeting APUs rather than dedicated cards. The fact that as these shipments show, discrete cards are decreasing and APUs/embedded GPUs are increasing will only continue pointing in that direction. Any development above console spec has to pay off either in being cheap enough (so simply quick boosts like just turning up tesselation or resolutions a notch) or in generating additional return through halo effects. As discretes decline this cost/benefit will become harder and harder.

[shaithis]

AMD just don't seem to be able to promote their products as well as Intel, I don't know if it's down to the size of their marketing budgets, some historical anti-competitive behavior or just a general lack of confidence in the brand, it just looks like everything they try just fails and I do want to see more being done for AMD based hardware products.

I see it as a couple of things.........one is they don't have the budget, which in this day and age is a bit of a killer. Secondly, they did something that seems logical: Based on where they were, they targeted a market early to try and get a foothold. This is why we are seeing tons of APUs from them but not much happening with desktop/gaming CPU parts. In some ways it has worked well as they bagged the next gen console contracts, lets hope they keep gaining more profit so they can re-invest in desktop parts!

However you look at it though, the last 12 months GPU sales figures are completely and utterly skewed due to bitcoin miners and the shift to APUs for mainstream PCs/laptops.