Read more.Analysts say that AMD has gained ground at the $200 and $400 price points.
Read more.Analysts say that AMD has gained ground at the $200 and $400 price points.
I wonder how AMD will do now, the 3XX while they are rebrands they are still good cards for their money and the dx12 support will give them a good selling point (before pascal is out at least).
Also I want to see what is going on with the fury line because I haven't seen much availability and seems like a wasted opportunity since they can perform pretty nice for the price.
Well, I hope so, I'm buying a whole new PC with an R9 390 and I don't want to be left with a GPU from a dying company.
I'd go for a R9 390X, but over $100 premium for extra 10% performance, which, if I'm lucky, I'll get from overclocking, wouldn't be money well spent. And even if I get a poorly overclocking unit, it'll still be a decent performer. Maybe I'll even add a second one at the end of the year...
I think that AMD suffer from the "old tech, rebranded" train of thought (amongst those who have some knowledge of graphics), whereas nVidia can seem to be new tech developers.
Most folk though have absolutely no idea or actual interest in graphics, as long as their devices perform to the level they want. Bigger numbers impress though, so a salesperson/flyer saying graphics XXXX is 4GB while xx is only 2GB can help garner a sale.
Personally my ageing HD 6950 2GB (with unlocked pipes) is still playing all my games fine in fine detail up to the max resolution on my monitor of 1200P.
I'm holding off 'til at least the Rx 4xx series and hoping AMD finally puts rebranding to bed.
Let's not forget how various 9800 were rebranded 8800. And that even the GTX was 9800GTX+
My guess is that it is not really the goal of either company to rebrand over and over, but it is a delay tactic when for one reason or another, they could not get their next big thing in the market on time. Missing even one product cycle can prove fatal to a company (re: 3DFX).
Main PC: Asus Rampage IV Extreme / 3960X@4.5GHz / Antec H1200 Pro / 32GB DDR3-1866 Quad Channel / Sapphire Fury X / Areca 1680 / 850W EVGA SuperNOVA Gold 2 / Corsair 600T / 2x Dell 3007 / 4 x 250GB SSD + 2 x 80GB SSD / 4 x 1TB HDD (RAID 10) / Windows 10 Pro, Yosemite & Ubuntu
HTPC: AsRock Z77 Pro 4 / 3770K@4.2GHz / 24GB / GTX 1080 / SST-LC20 / Antec TP-550 / Hisense 65k5510 4K TV / HTC Vive / 2 x 240GB SSD + 12TB HDD Space / Race Seat / Logitech G29 / Win 10 Pro
HTPC2: Asus AM1I-A / 5150 / 4GB / Corsair Force 3 240GB / Silverstone SST-ML05B + ST30SF / Samsung UE60H6200 TV / Windows 10 Pro
Spare/Loaner: Gigabyte EX58-UD5 / i950 / 12GB / HD7870 / Corsair 300R / Silverpower 700W modular
NAS 1: HP N40L / 12GB ECC RAM / 2 x 3TB Arrays || NAS 2: Dell PowerEdge T110 II / 24GB ECC RAM / 2 x 3TB Hybrid arrays || Network:Buffalo WZR-1166DHP w/DD-WRT + HP ProCurve 1800-24G
Laptop: Dell Precision 5510 Printer: HP CP1515n || Phone: Huawei P30 || Other: Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Pro 10.1 CM14 / Playstation 4 + G29 + 2TB Hybrid drive
I don't really care about rebranding, staying on the bleeding edge of graphics cards technology is a fool's game. New technologies need a lot of time to get into games, by the time those technologies actually get used the graphics cards they debuted on can't even run them well. Give me memory bandwidth and TFLOPS, that is value in hand and it keeps the GPU relevant for a longer time.
I think there're two aspects to the rebrand cycle.
One is that it can look bad for a company to have a mix of "generations" in their catalogue: so AMD *could* have just released an R9 290X and left the rest of their cards in retail as 7000 series. The problem is once you've got a new card with a new "generation" of naming, it makes the other cards look old and out of date - particularly to the everyday consumer (you know, the ones who think *any* graphics card with 4GB of RAM is a good buy!). So you *need* to rebrand if you don't have a full roster of parts to fill the market.
The other is the demand of big box OEMs: they like to refresh their range every year and they like their new generation of desktops and laptops to have new generation *everything* in them. So there's a real driver for an annual release of some kind, which often doesn't fit with the technology cycles in GPU development. So nvidia and AMD have the option of rebranding or risking those OEM design wins. There was an entire Radeon 8000 series of GPUs that were never sold at retail, because they were specifically branded for OEM system integrators to feel like they were putting new tech in their new computers.
I suspect the reason we never saw Oland-based retail 7000 series cards was because AMD wanted *something* new to release to retail under the R7 brand when it came time: so the R7 240 and 250 were genuinely new parts to the AMD desktop retail product stack. As with all companies, AMD's strategy has to be driven by market forces. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't rebrand if they didn't think they had to, and the PC market has been pushed so far towards the consumer electronics market over the last 5 years or so that it's no surprise that product refresh cycles are having to be forced where they don't fit naturally....
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)