However real talk here, doesn’t it feel like AMD doesn’t try to challenge Nvidia like they do with intel? Them being related just makes me feel like this is intentional and will remain the status quo for the foreseeable future.
I think AMD is trying to challenge NV, but just can't. Nvidia is a bit like Apple, where everything they do is designed around selling their 1 or 2 core products. For Apple, that's iPhones and Macbooks. The Apple store is obviosuly big revenue too, but that revenue is predicated on someone owning the hardware. For Nvidia, it's almost all GPU based. The same tech is used in an A100 AI card as in a 4060. What NV does around that (like DLSS/etc) is still designed to sell GPUs. Even things like their Mellanox buy was just to sell high-speed networking to data centers to support AI cards.
In NV's 2023 "data center" revenue was $15b, the vast majority of which was AI cards. AMD's 2023 data center revenue was $6.5b, which was probably a 95/5% split between server CPUs and AI cards. Overall 2023 NV revenue was $27b compared to $22.7b for AMD. Easily 90% of NVs revenue was probably derived from GPU/AI sales and related products. Maybe 33% of AMD's revenue was derived from GPU/AI (per their earnigns report). NV also has a much higher gross margin. So in terms of where to spend money for development, AMD has less to spend and has to spend it across more areas.
The counter to this is that both companies earn enough to compete - it's not a David vs Goliath situation here. But it could be framed at AMD with $22.7b in revenue versus the $81b combined revenue of Intel and Nvidia.
I think the 7000 series under-performed compared to AMDs expectations and goals. The chiplet design may have given them the cost savings they were hoping for but the GPU core didn't have the performance. And it's a design they have to live with for years and years because of the cost and labor required for a modern GPU (including driver development). Maybe AMD can pull a Ryzen on the GPU side and refine their core across the 8000 and 9000 GPUs to better compete. This is no different from AMD and Intel on the CPU side. Intel is only now mostly caught up with AMD on ST and MT performance for consumer CPUs, but at 2x the power cost. And they still don't have anything in the workstation or server CPU space to compete in cores or effieiency.
And finally there is also the mindshare/marketing issue and real/perceived quality issues to address. AMD has been making strides here, but to Joe Random Nvidia is just better. I've had AMD GPUs for a long while - AMD 4870/50 through 7950/50 and 480, then NV for the 1000 through 3000 series, and now back to AMD for 6000/7000 series. I'm mainly AMD now for Linux integration, but for pure gaming I don't think my 7900XTX is any better than a 4080(s) - they will trade blows depending on the game but NV does have the better feature set. AMD needs to lead on a software feature instead of being the "Me too" side with a shittier implemenation.
