Intel teases discrete graphics card for 2020

[kalniel]

Oh I agree it's different. I just don't think it's beyond the reach of Intel's existing driver teams (with some expansion).

[fend_oblivion]

Excellent. More competition is always appreciated.

[Biscuit]

any kind of rod to bash Nvidia about with is good in my books, they have far too much control of the market IMO.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

any kind of rod to bash Nvidia about with is good in my books, they have far too much control of the market IMO.

Nvidia reported another set of record results - net margins have doubled or even tripled since the Fermi/early Kepler days. Plus control of the market was seeded yonks ago,when people just accepted things like the Titan luxury rebrand,Fermi,etc and with AMD giving up(and also not wanting to be a "budget brand") the only thing keeping the prices in check has gone. Saw what happened when AMD gave up to a degree in the CPU market - Intel just milked things for years.

My major concern is whether Intel has looked at the massive margins Nvidia is making now and wants more of that. If that is the case are they really going to compete mostly on price/performance or would rather keep poking them here and there?

[Biscuit]

Nvidia reported another set of record results - net margins have doubled or even tripled since the Fermi/early Kepler days. Plus control of the market was seeded yonks ago,when people just accepted things like the Titan luxury rebrand,Fermi,etc and with AMD giving up(and also not wanting to be a "budget brand") the only thing keeping the prices in check has gone. Saw what happened when AMD gave up to a degree in the CPU market - Intel just milked things for years.

My major concern is whether Intel has looked at the massive margins Nvidia is making now and wants more of that. If that is the case are they really going to compete mostly on price/performance or would rather keep poking them here and there?

Well the big margins are in the data centre, not in the consumer gaming market, so that's almost certainly what Intel are doing. The vega cards do decently there because they're significantly cheaper than the Nvidia alternative. I would hedge my bets that Intel is aiming primarily at that market, so we might not see much of the benefit for our PC's at home in the short term. OTOH, if Intel finds a way to build a scalable GPU architecture that works really well for gaming, and can be manufactured cheaper (given they have their own fabs), perhaps they could do a "zen" on Nvidia...

I guess we really dont know much, except for if what Raja says about AMD not providing the resources he needed is true, I doubt that will be the same issue at Intel... so at least we will find out how good he actually is and what AMD could have achieved.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Well the big margins are in the data centre, not in the consumer gaming market, so that's almost certainly what Intel are doing. The vega cards do decently there because they're significantly cheaper than the Nvidia alternative. I would hedge my bets that Intel is aiming primarily at that market, so we might not see much of the benefit for our PC's at home in the short term. OTOH, if Intel finds a way to build a scalable GPU architecture that works really well for gaming, and can be manufactured cheaper (given they have their own fabs), perhaps they could do a "zen" on Nvidia...

I guess we really dont know much, except for if what Raja says about AMD not providing the resources he needed is true, I doubt that will be the same issue at Intel... so at least we will find out how good he actually is and what AMD could have achieved.

I think the gaming market is also now decent margins for Nvidia as the biggest segment is still gaming at around 60%,and look at how much a large die Nvidia card now costs,or the 04 series GPUs were they now end up in.

On the other stuff,Raja said a few years ago AMD started to give up on gaming cards,and IIRC I think it might have been partially down to the HD5000/HD6000/HD7000 series not doing as well as what AMD expected. Just look at CPUs and GPUs. Plenty of times in GPUs ATI/AMD has gotten close to even beat Nvidia but despite this they haven't made mega bucks from that. Now look at CPUs,whenever AMD has gotten close or beaten Intel,sales have skyrocketed - Ryzen has flaws but despite this its selling well.

This is the issue - AMD has to use its R and D to cover CPUs,GPUs and chipsets. AMD admitted a while back that they spent most of their R and D on Zen,which no doubt had an effect on RTG,but even if AMD did manage to have matched Nvidia this gen even with performance/watt I doubt the sales increase would have reflected that R and D spend.

Personally I will be quite surprised if AMD tries to go after the higher end gaming market again - I think its a waste of money for them. They should concentrate on data centre where they can bundle their own servers with their own cards as a package,consoles and midrange. You are kind of starting to see this shift - the first 7NM graphics card demoed was by AMD for non-gaming applications.

Edit!!

Also if Intel has prototypes already it means the card was already being developed before Raja arrived,so I do wonder how much of the first GPU iteration they release will be developed by his team??

I also think Intel will need to realise how much marketing is needed too - so if they do release a new gaming card,they probably need to really make sure that is covered.