Can't really blame them for doing that. They almost ceased to exist during the Bulldozer era. It was only their penny pinching that probably kept them alive. Intel in the same situation would've been reduced to something much, much worse coz they are used to throwing away money and it would be hard to stop even when things aren't looking so rosy. AMD tries their best to be efficient. I can't really fault them for that strategy.
Fully agreed.
I don't think AMD is doomed to behave like a low funds corpo forever either.
But I'm getting a little tired of all the fanboys that don't understand a thing about running a company, whining about technical solutions to market problems.
AMD has been reborn through the dark years thanks to lean, cheap and efficient designs. Nobody will deny that.
However those years are long past. A lot of people still act like this is the pre Zen 2 company, when we're entering Zen 5.
- Pre Zen 2 was price competitive, not performance competitive
- Zen 2 required cheap solutions like IOD connected through traces to the CCDs
- Zen 2 was competitive while being a much smaller core
- Zen 3 took the performance crown across the stack (I even run Zen 3, happily)
- Zen 4 translated the success seamlessly into a new platform, new RAM, etc
Now Zen 5 is holding before the gate into the arena, and promises to be the first true new thing since Zen 2. We are 5 minutes before the bell rings, and the crowd is excited, yet everyone acts like this is going to be the Zen 2 fight all over again. This is typical, people admire what worked, instead of thinking about what doesn't work anymore.
I think AMD and its fans have not been able to shed that penny pinching mentality since it's what brought them victory before. But that's not how a market works. You can't be meek and try to save money when you are about to break the market. On the contrary you should behave like Intel or Nvidia, invest massively, risk a lot, and take everything you can. Playing second fiddle is fine when you're second, top dogs must play hardball. I feel like way too many AMD fans are still beholden to that "play smart not hard" mentality that makes absolutely no sense anymore.
You have the money, you have the IP, you have the weapons. You HAVE to hit hard, AMD. And not just with good technicals, but with expensive, ambitious stuff. That's what I'm seeing with Zen, steadily, with stuff like Zen 6 or Strix Halo, and I'm not seeing with Radeon, at all. Just the fact that everyone expected SEO and a BVH walker for RDNA 3 and that it only comes 2 years later, most likely because Sony requested it, tells me so much about the mentality at AMD when it comes to getting ahead. Same with RDNA 4 dropping anything past a N23 sized die. Admittedly their biggest problem is software anyway.
Let them get at least 60% CPU marketshare and maybe then they will be comfortable risking big money.
Sorry but that's never going to work. As one guy put it, you can play to not lose, or you can play to win. To not lose means to avoid losses and play safe. To win means to take the risks of attacking. In this case, to try possibly mad and ambitious things. I'm just not seeing that happening especially when all the fans are praising the "play smart not hard" strategy that belongs to the 2017-2022 era.
And you never ever get the dominant position by playing to not lose. You either take the risks and attack the top dog, or you don't and you stay an eternal second. Those 60% marketshare will take 15 years to happen with those couch strategies.
By the way, I was able to get someone to buy a Ryzen laptop (coz it was super cheap. Ryzen 5825U for the price of a Core i5). Only my third Ryzen sale so far (and I make zero profit on these sales coz I'm the helpful techie). This is after more than 10 years in my company. So you can imagine what kind of hurdle AMD faces.
Yeah I also got a friend who was like "wait what do you mean AMD...are you trying to make me buy a bum CPU?". But frankly I blame the marketing on this. Sure, fighting Intel's rep is a gargantuan task. And they don't have much of an argument against Nvidia yet. But their public presence is just poor. I don't know, it's 2024's marketing, make tiktoks or youtube shorts of Ryzens eating through workloads much faster than 13900ks and show the power consumption all along. 10 second video of a blender render comparison with some background music so you can send that to people. Tell everyone that the PS5 is AMD hardware through and through and is awesome.