Up until now we’ve only had rumours, but now it’s confirmed: AMD is officially withdrawing from the race for the biggest (graphics card). Indeed, the Reds have realised that the race for the biggest graphics card isn’t doing them much good. The company wants to implement a strategy that will enable it to regain market share!
High-end GPUs: AMD gives up!
Up until now, all this has been known through leakers, but now it’s official. During IFA 2024, Tom’s Hardware interviewed Jack Huynh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of AMD’s Computing and Graphics Business Group. In other words, it’s not coming from a random Joe.
Broadly speaking, AMD is currently looking for market share in its graphics card sector. To achieve this, the company is changing its approach and abandoning what they call the King of the Hill strategy. As a result, the enthusiast sector will be left to NVIDIA, which has carte blanche over pricing, and the brand wants to concentrate on the sector that attracts the most people.
However, the company will have to fight on all fronts by offering cards with an excellent performance/price ratio. Because AMD is going to have to change its mindset, and that’s going to take time. If we look at CPUs, despite some very interesting products (even superior to the competition, depending on the field/reference) in recent years, the Reds are struggling to win market share from Intel.
It’s likely to be the same battle against NVIDIA. The company is going to have to work on its graphics cards, of course, but also on the functionalities that revolve around them, not to mention marketing and working with developers. But to do that, they need to win back market share, because as Huynh says, they can’t ask a developer to optimise their game for their cards if they only have 10% of the market. To do that, he needs something concrete that will ensure a regain in market share to convince studios to optimise their games for AMD.
In short, we’ll see whether this strategy pays off in the future. In the meantime, AMD’s new cards are expected at CES, according to the latest rumours. However, it’s not very reassuring to know that NVIDIA is being given a free rein to charge whatever it likes for its high-end cards. Consumers are likely to suffer as a result.
