AMD quizzed over sharp drop-off in R&D expenditure

[crossy]

A sharp drop off in R&D for any company who's supposed to be "cutting edge tech" is always a bad idea. I've seen it a couple of times, and inevitably when the accursed MBA's or bean-counters decide to cut that "unnecessary" R&D spend, the end result is that the company starts producing "meh" or "evolution" products. Not the kind of gear to make us "tech heads" drool.

I think you'll find AMDs problems are more likely the ones some of us have pointed out for quite some time: Drivers, Marketing and TWIMTBP.

I'll argue this to an extent
Drivers - AMD's Linux drivers are (according to "the word on the street" at least) shockingly bad. On the other hand I've never had an issue with the Windows ones - upgrades especially have been trouble free.
Marketing - tbh the marketing spend all seems to have gone to the APU's - but despite that I'm sure that most regard an "AMD inside" sticker as a budget mark - akin to buying "Nice Price" at Asda.
TWIMTBP - hateful, and shame on the publishers for falling for this nonsense. I mean self-serving XXXX like "Nvidia: Without TWIMTBP, PC gaming would be dead" (yes, I know it's an old article - cut me some slack!)

Actually that's one thing I find refreshing when I moved from NVidia gfx to AMD(/ATI) - with the GeForce driver install there seemed to be a (long?) list of "additional" packages that it was going to install, like PhysX etc. AMD driver set installs those drivers and Control Centre.

From a tech point of view though, I think red and green teams are still pretty much even. Tick-tock for who takes the "best" crown year-on-year.

[shaithis]

Yes but the lie of Nvidia's supposedly better drivers (black ops), marketing and TWIMTBP (combination of black-ops and marketing) basically comes under the same blanket as being "uninformed".

Maybe in your eyes. If I want to play titles that utilise GamesWork and I want to enable the GW features (or I cannot turn them off), then certain cards are going to perform better. I fail to see how that is "uninformed". You could argue that it is counter-productive to the health of the market but only idiots will cut off their nose to spite their face.

Mantle is alive and well in LiquidVR, that's why AMD has a huge VR lead. Do you see any of the usual tech press talking about it though?

Yup, it's so alive all new titles are using it....oh no, actually no new titles have used it for quite a while.

Really simple tbh - if you're buying on what you're being told in the usual tech press you're not informed, you're simply being marketed into your choice. Places like Hexus long since fell to Nvidia's marketing bucks. Look at the articles here - all pro Nvidia and all negative AMD. It's like an Nvidia marketing cannon and it couldn't be more obvious. Just look at the current front page, how many Nvidia articles?

You really think Hexus are taking handouts from nVidia to post anti-AMD stuff? Perhaps (just PERHAPS) there is more going on in the nVidia camp? AMD have been the masters of future promises for quite some time with their latest promises slated for 2016/2017.......their "revolutionary" HBM has made very little difference and their HBM card is still out-performed by a GDDR5 card from nVidia that is being handicapped by the extra power draw of the RAM, yet still comes out ahead (even at the bandwidth-constrained 4k res) and doesn't need a water-cooler strapped to it. In that context, maybe you can understand why there are more nVidia customers and more nVidia articles. You also don't mention that some of the nVidia articles recently have been negative.

Look at this one, "Can AMD continue to devote fewer resources to R&D but succeed against the likes of Intel and Nvidia?" The article made it crystal clear than GPU was not at all affected and that it's more been about focusing rather than cutting back? Why the constant negativity and loaded questions?

GPU IS effected though. Even if you do not subscribe to the notion that their Windows drivers are lacking, you have to look at their investment into Linux drivers (hello STEAMBOXES!) and working closer with developers so we get less TWIMTBP and GamesWork titles. nVidia send devs out to help many software houses and a number of the companies have stated no such help forthcoming from AMD.......and you think it's uninformed to buy nVidia? I know which manufacturer puts the most time and effort into ensuring titles work properly on their hardware and it is NOT AMD.

[Jimbo75]

Maybe in your eyes. If I want to play titles that utilise GamesWork and I want to enable the GW features (or I cannot turn them off), then certain cards are going to perform better. I fail to see how that is "uninformed". You could argue that it is counter-productive to the health of the market but only idiots will cut off their nose to spite their face.

Actually only idiots would support something that locked them into a certain manufacturer to the detriment of competition. Only an absolute moron would support GameWorks when every game tainted by it so far has been a piece of crap.

Yup, it's so alive all new titles are using it....oh no, actually no new titles have used it for quite a while.

Did you even read what I wrote? LiquidVR is based on Mantle. DX12 is based on Mantle. Vulkan is based on Mantle. In what universe does that make Mantle dead?

You really think Hexus are taking handouts from nVidia to post anti-AMD stuff? Perhaps (just PERHAPS) there is more going on in the nVidia camp?

Or maybe most of the good AMD news just isn't being reported? Case in point

http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/...esignworks-vr/

Today yet another Nvidia article. Since Mark Tyson started writing for Hexus all we've had is a slew of Nvidia-biased propaganda articles. Check the first post, see all those AMD LiquidVR news items that weren't reported?

AMD have been the masters of future promises for quite some time with their latest promises slated for 2016/2017.......their "revolutionary" HBM has made very little difference and their HBM card is still out-performed by a GDDR5 card from nVidia that is being handicapped by the extra power draw of the RAM, yet still comes out ahead (even at the bandwidth-constrained 4k res) and doesn't need a water-cooler strapped to it. In that context, maybe you can understand why there are more nVidia customers and more nVidia articles. You also don't mention that some of the nVidia articles recently have been negative.

What you don't see in the tech press is that this "inferior" AMD card absolutely destroys the Nvidia card in stuff like VR, compute and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Seen the Crossfire vs Sli benches? Even Fury non-X beats out the 980 Ti. Seen any evidence of that on Hexus?

GPU IS effected though. Even if you do not subscribe to the notion that their Windows drivers are lacking, you have to look at their investment into Linux drivers (hello STEAMBOXES!) and working closer with developers so we get less TWIMTBP and GamesWork titles. nVidia send devs out to help many software houses and a number of the companies have stated no such help forthcoming from AMD.......and you think it's uninformed to buy nVidia? I know which manufacturer puts the most time and effort into ensuring titles work properly on their hardware and it is NOT AMD.

Is that so? Funnily enough we keep hearing about how AMD was late with Far Cry 3 and how Witcher 3 had dubious Crossfire performance. Do you forget that Nvidia was late with Ryse, Shadow of Mordor (a TWIMTBP game no less), Titanfall (wait wasn't that another TWIMTBP title?), Alien Isolation and Wolfenstein TNO?

Do you remember reading about AMD's new upcoming Linux driver? http://www.pcworld.com/article/29565...th-nvidia.html

No? What a surprise. You won't find anything except Nvidia propaganda here, that's why.

Take a look at this screenshot -



You're fooling nobody.

[pvtbanner]

Well that was thorough.
AMD definitely get a bad rap, id say on most tech sites.

[Jimbo75]

Well that was thorough.
AMD definitely get a bad rap, id say on most tech sites.

Nvidia pays more in advertising and demands more for it. It's borderline illegal tbh as paid articles are supposed to be made clear. Some writers might just be fanboys but some are definitely being paid directly by Nvidia.

It doesn't matter too much as the written press is dying anyway and this is just helping them on their way. You can't buy this kind of advertising on YouTube because Google demands to know if videos include paid advertisements. I pretty much stopped reading this crap a long time ago, you simply cannot trust any of them to be objective while Nvidia is paying them so much in advertising revenue.

[Lenny_Nero]

AMD have always managed to do more with less over the years.
But its hard when you are the small guy that has any mistake blown up and there are big companies willing to bend the rules if not smash through them to get their stuff sold.

Their main rival has always had spare cash to grease the way for their stuff, be it news, moving testing onto things only they do better on and calling out every problem.

Just remember to look back when there is no competition and you can only get what they want to sell you because there is no other place for you to go.

..and yes I am a looong time AMD user because I always favour smart out of the box thinking and engineering over just throw money at a problem to make the duff stuff 'seem' to look ok.

[stephen0205]

not surprised with the stock slump, the fury was a joke , compared to the 980ti,