Comment by jungler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jungler | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

AMD doesn't have to win in discrete at all to make a killing. They only have to dominate the lower end, which they already are positioned to do with current APUs - these chips can manage 30hz/720p playability in most new games, which is easily ignored if your requirement is competitive gaming minimums or 4k, but in terms of price/performance, it's near unbeatable.

The Radeon VII is ultimately just a repurposed workstation card given flagship treatment. It's not where AMD's business really is, ever since they went down the route of semi-custom and small dies. While pushing RTX could renew Nvidia's advantages, the only game console they're on these days is the Switch - no raytracing to be seen there. Developers accommodate the Geforce cards for PC releases, but AAA going console-first precludes designing most content around RTX. They've made a lot of moves to try to repurpose high end graphics for other markets, but it looks like it's going to be very rough for Nvidia in the next few years if they can't find a "blue ocean" that needs both speed and programmability.

>Developers accommodate the Geforce cards for PC releases, but AAA going console-first precludes designing most content around RTX.

On the flip side, weak console performance is making the PC become the default platform for AAA games.

>but it looks like it's going to be very rough for Nvidia in the next few years if they can't find a "blue ocean" that needs both speed and programmability.

I don't see how. According to the steam hardware survey the top 10 GPUs used were all nvidia.

"PCs to Become the Smallest Gaming Platform in 2018"

https://www.statista.com/chart/13789/worldwide-video-game-re...

AMD's APUs are good but aren't really that popular with gamers, Intel's new iGPU also looks impressive as hell, as they are already competitive with Vega 8 with their current lineup this new one seems to be a powerhouse for integrated graphics.

It seems that AMD will have competition on the APU side very soon, and I really hope Intel would pull it off and actually be competitive in the discrete market as well in 2020 or 2021 and that their GPU adventure isn't going to get a backroom abortion.

The problem is most people who game aren't "gamers". By which I mean they aren't necessarily interested in the hardware or anything else except "will this game run?".

I'd bet there is a very large market for pre-built "Fortnite battlestations" in the $500 to $700 range, a little above current-gen consoles. If that's your budget, then AMD is the obvious choice.

Is there data for that? Anecdotally, I was thinking about buying a gaming PC recently. Every single thread you find on reddit about PC gaming starts with 'don't buy pre built.' It is engrained in the gaming community at this point that pre-built wastes money to the tune of hundreds of dollars, and PCs aren't all that difficult to put together.

As it stands $500-700 gets you 1080p gaming thats better looking than current gen consoles; this is the entry level and its already several notches above APU.

But if you're reading reddit threads on this I think you're several levels removed from the average person who plays games. Sure "gamers" will read up on this and be part of the gaming community but PC games are now mass entertainment and not the niche it used to be.

Few people build their own PC. Many more play games.

For me, the "don't buy pre built" mantra essentially means "research on what you want and buy accordingly".

I have heard that there are some prebuilts that are worth it. But you won't be able to know which ones are good until you had experience building your own.

And even then, this is not 2009 anymore. Sure, you still need a new card to play everything on max settings with new games, but you can get easily get by with moderate settings. I mean I haven't played Fortnite, but Destiny 2 is the same age (although the specs might be lower because I don't know how much the engine changed since Destiny 1) and it runs perfectly on ultra at 2560x1440 on my nearly 3 year old midrange AMD card with a 6 year old CPU.

Also what's up with kids these days not setting textures to potato mode to eke out the last FPS, like we did with Quake? :P

Most people that play current titles and invest in gaming might not care about the hardware but they aren't running on AMD APUs either they likely buy a best buy PC with a 1050 or a 1060 in it.

Or a games console plugged into a nice TV screen and sound system.

> AMD's APUs are good but aren't really that popular with gamers

It would help if you could actually buy them. The external graphics cards were great price-to-performance, but were basically impossible to find for a while (since they were the best at crypto/mining). So most of the people who wanted one, already had to settle for something else.

And all the OEMS are largely locked into Intel roadmaps, so even though AMD integrated GPUs are awesome, it's very difficult to find a laptop that ships with it. A laptop that could be an ultrabook all day, but still game at console-level graphics (1080p 30fps on low settings) would be a huge hit, and the product already exists. Most companies just aren't selling any of it yet (The Dell XPS 9575 being the only widely-available Windows unit I'm aware of).

So, to buy an AMD-powered laptop, you basically have to buy weird low-end hard-to-find laptops from HP or whatever -- even though the market that would best be served by these devices is the mid-range to high-end (ThinkPads, XPS, Spectre, etc).

It would help if they didn't broke their APU drivers on Linux for example.

APU with Radeon HD 6290, good DirectX 11 support, rebooted driver on GNU/Linux with loss of features from fglrx.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com