is this the end for AMD?

[smokey]

I was really looking forward to the release of the r9 390x, I thought it was gonna kick the titan x up the ass.(I was dead wrong)

As the release date comes closer, I have learned the following.

Cant even compare 390x to Titan x

R9 390x does not have full support for dx12

R9 390x is the ugliest card I have ever seen.

R9 390x will cost $200 more than a gtx 980 ti

Just when I thought things couldn't get worse for AMD, I read a article titled:
NVIDIA's next-gen GPU being tested, 16nm GPU with up to 32GB of HBM2

Its a really good article, and if its true we will have 16nm gpu's with upto 6000 cores within 1 year.

I don't think AMD can come back from this ass whooping, but I am just a noob, tell me what you think.

[undeath]

Aesthetics and DX support has always been what I have been looking for in a card. You are dead right.

[Rolf]

Let's see what we have:
1. AMD claimed that the upcoming Fiji GPU will not be a Titan X killer (direct competitor), but rather have a good performance/$ ratio (they didn't mention compute, so I assume it's about games).
2. High-end red GPUs are hot. Two headed engineering abominations are furnaces, which cannot be utilized fully with stock coolers. Green high-end cards are alright, living up the name.
3. ATI driver development team enjoy adding bugs into drivers, ask Atom how many times he had to add workarounds. Green drivers are better, though not ideal.
4. In the last year(s), Nvidia has been improving in compute, enough to finally beat AMD in integer performance per GPU, probably per Watt or $ too, so AMD no longer holds the crown.

So, yeah, unless you're a fanboy, green is the new black.

[epixoip]

That's a pretty good break-down. I'll break it down further:

AMD is hemorrhaging cash, and has been for years. Winning the bid for both consoles helped them for a couple of quarters, but they're losing huge in the big picture. This has resulted in massive layoffs and office closures, and the resignation of nearly all their upper management. There are a lot of clues to indicate they only have one person working on the Linux driver and libOpenCL. It has taken them 9 months to put out a decent driver to follow up 14.9!

Layoffs + no cash = no innovation. This is why AMD is limping to the barn with GCN for yet another generation (seriously, this architecture is 3.5 years old now!) They've just been doing a die shrink and tacking on more cores to create a new flagship, while re-branding the previous generation cards (280X = 7970, 280 = 7950, etc.) This model does not scale! And we're definitely seeing GCN reach its limits with the next-gen cards.

The 390X (or actually it looks like they're going to end up naming it the 490X) is basically a 7970 with double the cores. So basically a 7990 on one chip instead of two. This means it will have a total power draw of about 450W, but the 490X is rumored to have a max TDP of 300W. The math doesn't add up, so this card will throttle hard to keep power consumption under 300W -- much worse than the 295X2. Again, we've reached the limits of GCN.

490X is also rumored to be hybrid watercooled only, like the 295X2. While Nvidia is dramatically reducing power consumption, AMD's next flagship actually requires water cooling. Again, we've reached the limits of GCN.

So yes, this is the end of days for AMD. If they aren't acquired soon, they'll likely be out of business within the next 5 years. We'll see of Samsung is dumb enough to buy them.

Make no mistake: the only reason we've been tolerating AMD all these years is because they had BFI_INT and BIT_ALIGN_INT and slightly better integer performance on GPU, and also XOP on CPU. Now that Nvidia as LOP3.LUT and Intel has AVX2, there is absolutely no reason to buy AMD going forward.

[ati6990]

jeah fucking bad times for amd , but also my 4 x msi lighning boost edition ghz 7970 kickass....
but what i see now is expensive amd and expensive nvidia.... dont buy one of them.....

[wgmmmx]

I realy not know why writing about something that not was relised and we not know what this new card will got exacly. Better wait to 16.06 to official announcend and we will see.

[Flomac]

The new card is rumoured to be named Radeon Fury X. HBM is a radical design change for GPUs and still might be, as i've written before, a game changer. It shifts the profit for the memory to the chip maker (in this case: AMD) and makes the card layout way easier. The card will be shorter and cheaper to produce. The water cooler is in any way consequent if you think about the problems in noise and heat with the 290s.

No one knows which leap forward AMD was able to make optimizing the 28nm process. In my opinion, the 300W TDP is realistic and easy to handle for the liquid cooling system. It will all depend on what the card can do in games and though it might not beat the Titan X, the real competitor will be the 980Ti. As (not bulletproofed) benchmarks from last year indicated, it'll be close to the Titan X and clearly outperforming the 980Ti. Computing power is important for us and us only. 98% of the buyers don't give a damn for it. So the cards success will mainly depend on its pricetag in comparison to the 980Ti.

DirectX 12 is another game changer and is going to mix up all the benchmark rankings. AMD buyers will be glad even their three year old card is compatible to DX 12, while users of a last year non-Maxwell NVidia can't use any of the new features (this also includes the GTX750 btw). So yes, new cards only have 12.0 and not 12.1 and no, that will not make a big difference at the salespoint.

But I share Jeremies concerns about the drivers, they do look really shitty. Bad experience in this field hurts and bad reputation gained needs a long way to cool off.

AMD was supposed to be dead in 1991 and flipped back in the game with the DX40. Same in '97 with the K6. Same in 1999 when they brought the Athlon. Next year Zen comes out and the GPUs get their die shrink. This will be huge leap forward or finally drain them down. In the latter case i don't give them 5 years.