- Moderator
- #5,976
I'm not sure it's overly dangerous, their high-end kit never really made a dent so dropping it isn't a massive deal. Until they can pull ahead of Nvidia it's probably a bit of a waste to keep fighting that losing battle.
Building their brand around the low to mid market where the vast majority of users exist can help them push into the OEM space that's still largely dominated by Nvidia, and lets them put more development into a range chips that will likely also get used in consoles and portable devices. The market is ultimately going to move more towards mobility and streaming, and more of a console-type approach, and they're closer to pulling ahead there than the high-end where Nvidia's dominance is probably only going to expand due to their work in the data-centre space.
An element of danger for AMD if they go down this path is the Intel ARC range and where that heads, because that showed some promise and Intel's links to major OEMs puts them in the box seat to bundle their GPUs with other Intel products.
Dangerous wasn't the right word, more precarious of a business model. I agree with what you said, but I just worry if they've given up innovating and value in the mid range becomes their point of difference then there is nothing stopping their competition from coming with a knockout blow by matching the value with a better product. Zen 2 couldn't compete with high end Intel and it would have been a shame if they conceded then. Instead they kept on innovating. AMD's Ryzen and Radeon divisions seem leagues apart though.
The bit about aiming at OEM is apt because in the same interview with Tom's Hardware they also mentioned Intel which I think is the market they want to muscle in on.