AMD discrete GPU market share eroded to less than 20 per cent

[HEXUS]

Latest Q2 2015 figures show that Nvidia has captured 82 per cent of the market.

Read more.

[Tunnah]

The problem is nvidia have the market covered top to bottom. I've stopped using AMD altogether in all builds now.

It's a shame because it's going to make nvidia stop trying as hard

[Jace007]

As long as I get my Pascal card with 16GB RAM i'll be happy Tunnah. But true, there needs to be abit of lively competition in there to keep Nvidia on their toes

[yeeeeman]

The issue with AMD is that they are executing slowly and not keeping pace with NV. Also, they created a reputation of having bad drivers and being inferior to NV (this is just in people's minds) and that is hurting them. They ditched alot of good engineers for the sake of saving money so I guess it's just a result of their own actions. And when you look at their current line-up what you see? 390X, a beast consuming a ton of power which is almost as fast as a 980 and Fiji which is a bit slower than 980Ti. What AMD should really understand is that they need to be the best, really. To have the best absolute performance in order to win this tech competition with NV.

[mudpie]

"drivers and being inferior to NV (this is just in people's minds)"
No, it wasn't just in my mind. I had lots of issues with the 6970, blue screens, mouse cursor getting corrupted with 2 displays etc.
To be fair, NV had it's issues as well. Win 10 driver crashing after install, and I'm sure there were other issues which I did not bump into happening to other people.
So, assuming AMD stepped up their game in the driver department (seems they did with the dx12 drivers), thery're on the right track.

[Medallish]

"drivers and being inferior to NV (this is just in people's minds)"
No, it wasn't just in my mind. I had lots of issues with the 6970, blue screens, mouse cursor getting corrupted with 2 displays etc.
To be fair, NV had it's issues as well. Win 10 driver crashing after install, and I'm sure there were other issues which I did not bump into happening to other people.
So, assuming AMD stepped up their game in the driver department (seems they did with the dx12 drivers), thery're on the right track.

Your personal experience isn't really proof of anything I've had AMD since 4800 series and haven't had any of the problems you describe.

[cheesemp]

Got to be honest I've not had problems with AMD or Nvidia drivers for a while now.

Just hoping AMD keep going otherwise prices will rise and innovation will stop. Did my bit with my last laptop purchase.

[shaithis]

Your personal experience isn't really proof of anything I've had AMD since 4800 series and haven't had any of the problems you describe.

Personal experiences are evidence of issues with certain setups. Just because you don't run dual monitors, blizzard titles, use a 7.1 external amp etc etc does not mean their drivers are fine, it just means you were lucky enough to use the drivers in the most mainstream way and therefore didn't have to put up with their shoddy coding for anything that AMD could sweep under the carpet until later.....

[shaithis]

So, assuming AMD stepped up their game in the driver department (seems they did with the dx12 drivers), thery're on the right track.

Well, they just cut support for anything pre-GCN so they essentially have 1 architecture to support....making their DX12 drivers faster to get to market.

nVidia do seem to be having some issues at the moment but then they are supporting Maxwell and Kepler while trying to add Fermi, so I can see it taking them a little while longer.

[Brian224]

I switched back to AMD a few months back (R9 280 replacing my GTX760 which my son wanted for SLI). Hardware wise I prefer AMD, largely as my Sapphire card lets me run triple DVI monitors without an unreliable active adapter. A pity therefore that when I tried to run an old game that works perfectly with the 760, I find that AMD doesn't support it, so I instead of considering a second card for crossfire I have bought an SLI capable motherboard as I know I will have to go back to NVidia for my next card.

In the final analysis, it doesn't matter how good AMD's hardware is if it isn't supported by game developers and users cannot run games optimised for NVidia hardware as well, if at all.

[watercooled]

Personal experiences are evidence of issues with certain setups. Just because you don't run dual monitors, blizzard titles, use a 7.1 external amp etc etc does not mean their drivers are fine, it just means you were lucky enough to use the drivers in the most mainstream way and therefore didn't have to put up with their shoddy coding for anything that AMD could sweep under the carpet until later.....

The same could be said of Nvidia TBH. There's a chance you'll run into driver problems with very specific hardware configurations with any brand, AMD/Nvidia/Intel and really I haven't seen anything close to proof that any one brand is worse or better than another in terms of stability, just anecdotes which as Medallish says doesn't prove anything.

Well, they just cut support for anything pre-GCN so they essentially have 1 architecture to support....making their DX12 drivers faster to get to market.

nVidia do seem to be having some issues at the moment but then they are supporting Maxwell and Kepler while trying to add Fermi, so I can see it taking them a little while longer.

GCN is more than one single architecture, though AMD just gives it the one name, and Nvidia's uArchs aren't that vastly different either, so that makes no sense. Nvidia just prefers to give names to all of their microarchitecture revisions while AMD doesn't, though they're unofficially given version numbers i.e. 1.0 1.1 1.2, etc. And don't forget the (sometimes serious) performance issues of pre-Maxwell cards in certain games lately.

Edit: What's that about AMD cutting support for pre-GCN, as their latest driers seem to support right back to the 5000 series which were Terascale 2 based?

[Blastuk]

Having used both AMD and NV over the years, I've had more issues with AMD/ATI drivers than I have had with NV, pretty much never going back to AMD from all those bad driver experiences over the years.

[shaithis]

The same could be said of Nvidia TBH. There's a chance you'll run into driver problems with very specific hardware configurations with any brand, AMD/Nvidia/Intel and really I haven't seen anything close to proof that any one brand is worse or better than another in terms of stability, just anecdotes which as Medallish says doesn't prove anything.

Er, this threads title kinda says something

GCN is more than one single architecture, though AMD just gives it the one name, and Nvidia's uArchs aren't that vastly different either, so that makes no sense. Nvidia just prefers to give names to all of their microarchitecture revisions while AMD doesn't, though they're unofficially given version numbers i.e. 1.0 1.1 1.2, etc. And don't forget the (sometimes serious) performance issues of pre-Maxwell cards in certain games lately.

Edit: What's that about AMD cutting support for pre-GCN, as their latest driers seem to support right back to the 5000 series which were Terascale 2 based?

My understanding of GCN is that they hardly differ. Perhaps my understanding is incorrect but as far as I knew the differences between GCN 1, 1.1, 1.2 etc were minimal compared to the differences between Maxwell and Kepler, let alone throwing Fermi in there also.

As for "cutting support"...I was replying to talk about dx12 drivers.

[RyanM]

Your personal experience isn't really proof of anything I've had AMD since 4800 series and haven't had any of the problems you describe.

Your personal experience isn't really proof of anything because **insert my own personal experience here**....right okay then

[Tunnah]

As long as I get my Pascal card with 16GB RAM i'll be happy Tunnah. But true, there needs to be abit of lively competition in there to keep Nvidia on their toes

Holy crap this post scared me. This is the only place on the net I use tunnah (it's my surname), reading your reply in the email I was like HOW DOES HE KNOW MY REAL NAME

I am not a smart man

[cptwhite_uk]

The problem is people don't buy AMD even when they offer best products at a similar price point. I remember trying to convince people a 7870 was an amazing high-med range card a couple of years ago. It was powerful, frugal and quiet. Yet people were still defending the nVidia equivalent that was ~ £20 more and ~ 10% less performance as the better option.

When people have that mindset (AMD = Bad drivers and crashing) it's going to be an uphill struggle for them to regain market share they've lost.

Yet the final result will be terrible for consumers if AMD were to lag behind by a significant margin or completely fall leaving only nVidia to buy from.