[H]ardOCP Editor Claims Internal Problems for AMD - Polaris Underwhelming and RTG Seeking to Leave AMD For Intel

[HKZeroFive]

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What HardOCP knows from sources inside and outside the company, AMD has a problem on its hands, as both these products have come up significantly short of where these were supposed to land. But that is OK for AMD, it will simply send Chris Hook out to fall on the sword and tell a story of that was the plan all along....to produce brand new parts much slower than its last high end GPUs. In the simplest terms AMD has created a product that runs hotter and slower than its competition's new architecture by a potentially significant margin. Let the internal finger-pointing begin! The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 and 1070 launch was a surprise to AMD and it simply does not have a harpoon for Moby Dick this time...again. One could go as far as saying that the potential exists for another R600 moment. Now, I am sure AMD will take every step possible to mitigate this gap but the simple reality of the situation as it stands today is that AMD has a loser on its hands and are going to have to pull every trick in the book to spit-shine the turds, and the fact of the matter is pricing is how you do that. All is definitely not fine in Radeon-land these days.

 

 

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Let’s move onto the bigger issue – the desire of AMD’s current GPU leadership to spin off from the rest of AMD and become "ATI" again. There’s been lots made of the current leadership structure of the Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) led by Raja Koduri and his band of ATI loyalists. After conversations with a number of current and recently departed employees a clear picture emerges. A picture ripe with tension, blind ambition, and backwards thinking.

 

Let’s start with the tension. Koduri was able to wrestle control of the graphics division away during AMD’s last leadership transition after threatening to leave the ship and take a role at Intel, something he's not shy about telling his AMD colleagues. Lisa Su caved and Koduri got the job.

 

Where the plot thickens is when you look at the Koduri’s unwavering ambition. Koduri’s ultimate goal is to separate the Radeon Technologies Group from its corporate parent at all costs with the delusion that RTG will be more competitive with NVIDIA and become a possible acquisition target for Koduri and his band of mutineers to cash in when it's sold. While Koduri is known to have a strong desire to do this by forging a new relationship with Apple on custom parts (no surprise there) for Macbooks, the real focus is on trying to become the GPU technology supplier of choice to none other than Intel. While this was speculated some time ago I can tell you with certainty that a deal is in the works with Intel and Koduri and his team of marauders working overtime to get the deal pulled into port ASAP. The Polaris 10/11 launch, and all of its problems, are set to become a future problem of Intel’s in what RTG believes will be a lucrative agreement that will allow Koduri and his men to slash the lines from Lisa Su and the rest of AMD.

So it sounds like (if Kyle's sources are to be true) that AMD isn't in a great position, with Polaris supposedly being underwhelming in performance and the internal politics between the parent company and Radeon Technologies. While I understand that Koduri's ambition to 'make ATI/RTG great again', this is possibly to worst time to split, especially with AMD's upcoming Zen (God forbid it being underwhelming as well). So it's basically all bad news, except for those who have been waiting for AMD to sell themselves off to Intel (@SurvivorNVL, I'm looking at you).

 

Now, there's been a massive load of controversy with this article. On one hand, Kyle is talking big - big enough to risk his credibility as an editor of a reputable hardware website. There may be some truth to what he says. On the other hand, he also has personal beef with AMD - he called out Roy Taylor, he excessively critiqued AMD and AotS, he didn't get a R9 Nano review unit and to top it off, he didn't get invited to the press event in Macau. He also doesn't have any sources either so the only thing we have is his own word that he did speak to AMD employees.

 

So what do you think? Is it truth or bullshit?

 

Source: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2016/05/27/from_ati_to_amd_back_journey_in_futility

[Thiback]

Isn't the info this Ryan guy is divulgating still under NDA ?  

[don_svetlio]

Seems like a PR stunt honestly. This should be under NDA aka this guy should get sued hard for leaking such info and since no action is being taken I'd imagine it's false.

[xAcid9]

Butthurt is real though he is not entirely wrong imo.

[HKZeroFive]

1 minute ago, Thiback said:

Isn't the info this Ryan guy is divulgating still under NDA ?  

*Kyle. Sorry, completely stuffed up the names.

 

IIRC, he said that since AMD has decided not invite them, he gave the greenlight to publish the info. In other words, it's payback for such a petty thing.

[TheRandomness]

Bulllshit (please..?)

[Thiback]

Either way, if this is true I am not surprised that it doens't perform GREAT against high end Nvidia Pascal GPUs since this is supposed to be a mainstream release. I am just concerned about the fact it is underwhelming on the temperature side. This has been a recurring problem with the past Radeon generations, and I'd have thought they would have fixed it with that new energy efficient architecture.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, Thiback said:

Either way, if this is true I am not surprised that it doens't perform GREAT against high end Nvidia Pascal GPUs since this is supposed to be a mainstream release. I am just concerned about the fact it is underwhelming on the temperature side. This has been a recurring problem with the past Radeon generations, and I'd have thought they would have fixed it with that new energy efficient architecture.

Thing is - every other news site is reporting 130W TDPs so I have no idea what that part was about. Seems awfully odd.

 

2 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

*Kyle. Sorry, completely stuffed up the names.

 

IIRC, he said that since AMD has decided not invite them, he gave the greenlight to publish the info. In other words, it's payback for such a petty thing.

Whole thing seems fishy honestly.

[Thiback]

Then possible BS. I am also wondering why this journalist is taking such a decision to crap at AMD ; they'll never invite him to anything ever now if it was what he wanted.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, Thiback said:

Then possible BS. I am also wondering why this journalist is taking such a decision to crap at AMD ; they'll never invite him to anything ever now if it was what he wanted.

More or less. The fact that they are on Samsung's LPP (Low Power Plus) design alone is enough to discredit the "hot" part.

[HKZeroFive]

1 minute ago, don_svetlio said:

Whole thing seems fishy honestly.

Eh, whole thing is a shitshow. Just sit back, enjoy the fireworks for now and wait for benchmarks.

1 minute ago, Thiback said:

Then possible BS. I am also wondering why this journalist is taking such a decision to crap at AMD ; they'll never invite him to anything ever now if it was what he wanted.

He's burnt those bridges a long time ago. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't care.

[Fetzie]

I think it is mostly conjecture.

 

I mean, take this sentence:

Quote

In the simplest terms AMD has created a product that runs hotter and slower than its competition's new architecture by a potentially significant margin

So he claims that Polaris runs significantly hotter than the 1080, which thermal and power throttles like crazy. Not to mention that he glosses over the fact that Polaris 10 is a competitor for the GTX 1050(ti)/1060 and Polaris 11 will likely release as competition for the 1060(ti), with a couple of balls to the wall SKUs by AIBs that might come close to the 1070. So of course it will be slower than a 1080.

 

But exactly where he is getting the thermal performance from is a mystery to me, unless he is party to NDA information which he is reporting on (he alludes to this in the forum thread attached to the article), in which case he is probably hoping that AMD sue him so that he can write another hatchet job on AMD's future ("AMD sues review website over bad reviews" would likely be the title).

 

Not to mention that his "sources" are mostly people that have left AMD (either of their own volition or fired), in which case they are hardly likely to talk about how awesome their ex-employer was.

 

Anyway, I'm not sure this is "news". It is an editorial by a writer who is anything but unbiased, and - in my opinion - belongs more in "General Discussion".

[don_svetlio]

3 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

Eh, whole thing is a shitshow. Just sit back, enjoy the fireworks for now and wait for benchmarks.

He's burnt those bridges a long time ago. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't care.

Yup. This is why I prefer PCper. Looked up their articles - a recent one has specs detailing "150W or less" which begs the question, why does this dude claim it runs hotter than the older high end cards?

Source: - http://www.pcper.com/news/Editorial/New-AMD-Polaris-10-and-Polaris-11-GPU-Details-Emerge

[Thiback]

yep that would mean that it would run hotter than 390x / Fury, which are pretty hot. I call BS, since if it were the case, AMD would simply not go suicidal by advertising the Polaris lineup to be much cooler and more power efficient than the previous R9s.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, Thiback said:

yep that would mean that it would run hotter than 390x / Fury, which are pretty hot. I call BS, since if it were the case, AMD would simply not go suicidal by advertising the Polaris lineup to be much cooler and more power efficient than the previous R9s.

Not to mention, we have a showcase where a Polaris GPU was performing like a 950 at literally half the power draw. Take that with a grain of salt but still, AMD releasing a mess as described above would be them literally killing the company as a whole

[Nexxus]

I'm sure if this is at all true AMD/its foaming mouth followers will find some way to spin it in a way to blame nvidia.

[captain cactus]

One source says the 480x beats a Fury X and now this guy says it's all not true and Polaris is underperforming.

 

Let's wait until we actually see what the cards do and then go on ok?

[Shoob]

Seems like HardOCP is still butthurt after AMD denied them R9 Nano review samples and didn't invite them to the Macau event.

 

Take what is said in this article with this amount of salt:

[Altecice]

"I can already hear the fanboys ripping into my thoughts here yelling about the HardOCP's NVIDIA and Intel bias. This editorial is based on what I hear throughout the industry from insiders that know what is going on inside of AMD. AMD is not in a good place and there is no shortage of current and recently departed employees that are eager to share their take on what's going on. Lisa Su has lost command of her ship, and Koduri is about to put it on the beach and hope he can make it to shore in his Radeon Technologies Group lifeboat."

 

I love it because this is exactly whats happening.

 

Sure I agree that the tone of this article is bias, I also dont agree with him comparing the 1080 (something thats ' enthusiast grade') to Polaris that is aiming for med-high end. But you cant deny the guy if he has talked to people leaving AMD and THEY have told him whats going on (ATI wanting to be bought my Intel, internal issues). So ignore the GPU section but read between the lines. You lot are just reading the title and turning your defences up, read the whole article please!

[Prysin]

clickbait. This is just a load of bullshit.

[NinerL]

I think it's true, instead of a personal heater, now buyers will get a full fledged furnace.

[captain cactus]

2 minutes ago, NinerL said:

I think it's true, instead of a personal heater, now buyers will get a full fledged furnace.

LETS GO BACK TO THE THERMI (FERMI) DAYS BOIZ.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

LETS GO BACK TO THE THERMI (FERMI) DAYS BOIZ.

Well, 1080 already throttles so that's one thing off the Fermi "To-do" list

[Valentyn]

Reads a lot like Sour Grapes because he wasn't invited to the Macau event like other people.

In general he's a very salty person.

[captain cactus]

13 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

Well, 1080 already throttles so that's one thing off the Fermi "To-do" list

Well, 1080 throttles due to both being on a reference cooler which always throttles any card and it has a single 8-pin so if it isn't throttling due to heat it's because it's at its peak power.