AMD, with Polaris, is gambling big on VR

[zMeul]

source: http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/04/amd-focusing-on-vr-mid-range-polaris/

 

AMD's Roy Taylor said:

Quote

"If you look at the total install base of a Radeon 290, or a GTX 970 or above [the minimum specs required for VR], it's around 7.5 million units," explained Taylor. "But the issue is that if a publisher wants to sell a £40/$50 VR game, there's not a big enough market to justify that yet. We've got to prime the pumps, which means somebody has got to start writing cheques to big games publishers. Or we've got to increase the install TAM [total addressable market].

 

"The reason Polaris is a big deal," continued Taylor, "is because I believe we will be able to grow that TAM significantly. I don't think Nvidia is going to do anything to increase the TAM, because according to everything we've seen around Pascal, it's a high-end part. I don't know what the price is gonna be, but let's say it's as low as £500/$600 and as high as £800/$1000. That price range is not going to expand the TAM for VR. We're going on the record right now to say Polaris will expand the TAM. Full stop."

 

that gamble is going to hurt AMD

 

the problem with VR is that it's not cheap - both HTC's Vive and FaceBook's Rift have some hefty prices attached to their HMDs

the 2nd problem is that you need quite a beefy PC to run VR - what perf/cost do you need to strike in terms of a video card to make it more affordable?!

 

right now, a R9 290X is ~350$

a R9 390X is ~450$

a GTX970 is ~ 320$

 

theoretically, you can take the 290X design, die shrink it to 14nm and have (again .. theoretically) 2 times the number of GPUs / wafer - but how much lower is AMD going to sell these?

the "rumored" price for Polaris 10 is ~300$ and deliver near GTX980Ti performance!? come on!

 

the only viable VR alternative that has the potential to kickstart the VR is SONY, with their PS4 system - the rumored price (I think it was actually confirmed, not sure) of the system was ~800$ including the HMD

and this is where AMD is going - the new PS4 UHD "4K", with upgraded APU that will most likely include a Polaris 10 or 11 GPU

 

and the forecast for VR adoption was cut by 20% after the troublesome Rift and Vive launches: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-04-20-superdata-downgrades-vr-forecast-again

Quote

Superdata has lowered its expectations for virtual reality revenues in 2016 for the second time in as many months. The market intelligence firm today revised its 2016 global VR hardware and software forecast down 22 percent from $3.6 billion to $2.9 billion. Its projection at the beginning of the year had been $5.1 billion.

The revision came with the release of the firm's "Virtual Reality and the Next Killer App" report, which identified a number of reasons for the downgrade, among them recent production and fulfillment issues that have affected the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and even the Samsung Gear VR. The report says about 13 million Americans intend to purchase a VR headset this year, but Superdata is only expecting shipments of 7.2 million.

gambling on VR .. not a good deal, not right now anyways

 

---

 

AMD's notion that nVdia is abandoning VR is just dogshit - https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/04/27/virtual-reality-conference/

nVidia understood that, for now, VR is not consumer ready

[DarkBlade2117]

Or just find a used GTX 970 for $250 or 290/x for $200-$225.

 

[TriFlix Films]

It's ahead of it's time... the are they modern day Tesla vs Edison. VR isn't depelovoped similar to the US infrastructure during the prior's time.

[Streetguru]

12 minutes ago, zMeul said:

 

AMD mostly just needs to get back market share, even if they lose on profit getting there, you could almost just write that off as a marketing cost

[DXMember]

If you've followed AMD for the recent events like CAPSAICIN at GDC, then you'd notice that AMD is aiming for a VR spec GPU that is cheaper than this gens VR spec, so basically they are aiming for $200~$300 GPU that will indeed increase the "TAM"

also vive and oculus are not the only VR HMD

also many believe the next gen consoles will aim for VR spec

[zMeul]

3 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

AMD mostly just needs to get back market share, even if they lose on profit getting there, you could almost just write that off as a marketing cost

AMD needs to sell shit, marketshare or not - for couple of years now, they are hemorrhaging money left and right

[dtaflorida]

1 minute ago, zMeul said:

AMD needs to sell shit, marketshare or not - for couple of years now, they are hemorrhaging money left and right

Every time they're in a position to sell shit their supply fails them. 

[Misanthrope]

I don't give a fuck about VR. He's clearly using that as a PR talking point. Bottom line is that they are promising 290 performance at 280 price or lower.  That would benefit all gamers tremendously. 

 

It's just too good to be true imho,  it will not achieve that much performance for that little money outside of very controlled dx12 synthetic benchmarks at best. 

[ivan134]

2 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

I don't give a fuck about VR. He's clearly using that as a PR talking point. Bottom line is that they are promising 290 performance at 280 price or lower.  That would benefit all gamers tremendously. 

 

It's just too good to be true imho,  it will not achieve that much performance for that little money outside of very controlled dx12 synthetic benchmarks at best. 

Why exactly is that? The exact same thing has happened the last 2 generations. Why is this generation an exception? The 680 and 7970 got rebranded as the 770 and 280x for $300. 390 and 970 gave better performance than 780 ti and 290x for $300. Why do so many people keep saying 980ti/Fury X performance for close to $300 is impossible? I'm not saying it's guaranteed to happen since I can't tell the future, but what exactly are the naysayers basing this on that makes them so sure?

[SeriousDad69]

VR is a pretty big deal, but it's not the only thing AMD is planning on.

[Streetguru]

6 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

 

AMD is finally on a small process node, they should be getting comparably way better yields than before, it's nearly half the size of what they've been using for years,

[zMeul]

3 minutes ago, SeriousDad69 said:

VR is a pretty big deal

no it's not, the analyst cut the prediction of VR install base two times in the last two months

you didn't bothered reading the OP? did you ...

[Notional]

5 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

Why exactly is that? The exact same thing has happened the last 2 generations. Why is this generation an exception? The 680 and 7970 got rebranded as the 770 and 280x for $300. 390 and 970 gave better performance than 780 ti and 290x for $300. Why do so many people keep saying 980ti/Fury X performance for close to $300 is impossible? I'm not saying it's guaranteed to happen since I can't tell the future, but what exactly are the naysayers basing this on that makes them so sure?

Exactly. And this generation is a double node shrink as well (from 28nm, skipping 20nm and down to 14nm), which should drive down the price quite a bit.

 

As for @zMeul's typical propaganda FUD; nothing new here. His analysis is heavily biased by his irrational hatred towards AMD and also reveals a completely lack of knowledge within market theories/analysis'.

 

Focus on VR just means high performance and low latency. Something that all gamers in all games benefits from, whether they have a monitor or a VR headset connected. He almost makes it sound like it's exclusively for VR or something. AMD focusing on this just means a boatload of performance for all users, even those with mainstream priced cards (and yes mainstream is a price bracket, not a performance bracket, but obviously those things are connected).

[SeriousDad69]

3 minutes ago, zMeul said:

no it's not, the analyst cut the prediction of VR install base two times in the last two months

you didn't bothered reading the OP? did you ...

It's going to be a big deal in terms of marketing I should've said. People have it stuck in their heads that nVidia is the best, highest quality GPU maker so if AMD can clearly beat nVidia at something like the hot topic of the minute VR it will go a long way in helping their image.

[Voids]

@zMeul how many F5 keys do you go through? 

[zMeul]

2 minutes ago, SeriousDad69 said:

It's going to be a big deal in terms of marketing I should've said. People have it stuck in their heads that nVidia is the best, highest quality GPU maker so if AMD can clearly beat nVidia at something like the hot topic of the minute VR it will go a long way in helping their image.

what AMD needs it's to not to be seen as the cheaper alternative - they continue to fail at that aspect

even Lisa Su agreed on this

[M4st4M1nd]

High performance and low latency? Sign me up! VR or not this is going to be awesome. Personally I can't wait for AMD's latest line-up. I'd love to move away from Nvidia and Intel.

[ivan134]

7 minutes ago, SeriousDad69 said:

It's going to be a big deal in terms of marketing I should've said. People have it stuck in their heads that nVidia is the best, highest quality GPU maker so if AMD can clearly beat nVidia at something like the hot topic of the minute VR it will go a long way in helping their image.

Not to mention VR was one of the focal points of Nvidia at GTC when they weren't even talking about gaming graphics card. I'm willing to bet my left testicle that Nvidia harps about VR when the gtx 1000 series is revealed. The reason we're hearing so much from AMD is that they're behind and they have to talk a lot about what they're doing to attract investors. Nvidia already has brand recognition and can sit back and keep things under wraps until the day they're ready to reveal their new cards. @zMeulis not known for consistency, so this is no surprise.

[ivan134]

3 minutes ago, zMeul said:

what AMD needs it's to not to be seen as the cheaper alternative - they continue to fail at that aspect

even Lisa Su agreed on this

So you're saying you know the price and performance of the new cards both sides are releasing?

[Megahurt]

I don't know if a lot of people will buy this for VR specifically, but being VR ready could be a selling point, you have the option of going VR if you want to. Also, they're saying they want to increase the potential customers for VR, if that means a gpu that has great perf/$ why would anyone think this is a bad thing.

[ivan134]

4 minutes ago, Megahurt said:

I don't know if a lot of people will buy this for VR specifically, but being VR ready could be a selling point, you have the option of going VR if you want to. Also, they're saying they to increase the potential customers for VR, if that means a gpu that has great perf/$ why would anyone think this is a bad thing.

That my friend is the million dollar question, but don't lose sleep over trying to figure out why buffoons think the way they do.

[Fetzie]

45 minutes ago, zMeul said:

no it's not, the analyst cut the prediction of VR install base two times in the last two months

you didn't bothered reading the OP? did you ...

Even if vr turns out to be a bust, having a graphics card that can drive the equivalent display of a vr headset (similar to 2x 2560*1440) @ 90fps on high settings available for 250-300 dollars will make headlines.

[CTR640]

Fuck VR, I want a next-gen GPU that can do GTAV at 2160p60 with all settings on Ultra!

[Misanthrope]

1 hour ago, ivan134 said:

Why exactly is that? The exact same thing has happened the last 2 generations. Why is this generation an exception? The 680 and 7970 got rebranded as the 770 and 280x for $300. 390 and 970 gave better performance than 780 ti and 290x for $300. Why do so many people keep saying 980ti/Fury X performance for close to $300 is impossible? I'm not saying it's guaranteed to happen since I can't tell the future, but what exactly are the naysayers basing this on that makes them so sure?

Because of the other promises like very low tdp and a long history of both companies but amd specially over hyping things. 

 

I'd love to be proven wrong though, we'll see. 

[alamox]

2 hours ago, zMeul said:

source: http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/04/amd-focusing-on-vr-mid-range-polaris/

 

AMD's Roy Taylor said:

 

that gamble is going to hurt AMD

 

the problem with VR is that it's not cheap - both HTC's Vive and FaceBook's Rift have some hefty prices attached to their HMDs

the 2nd problem is that you need quite a beefy PC to run VR - what perf/cost do you need to strike in terms of a video card to make it more affordable?!

 

right now, a R9 290X is ~350$

a R9 390X is ~450$

a GTX970 is ~ 320$

 

theoretically, you can take the 290X design, die shrink it to 14nm and have (again .. theoretically) 2 times the number of GPUs / wafer - but how much lower is AMD going to sell these?

the "rumored" price for Polaris 10 is ~300$ and deliver near GTX980Ti performance!? come on!

 

the only viable VR alternative that has the potential to kickstart the VR is SONY, with their PS4 system - the rumored price (I think it was actually confirmed, not sure) of the system was ~800$ including the HMD

and this is where AMD is going - the new PS4 UHD "4K", with upgraded APU that will most likely include a Polaris 10 or 11 GPU

 

and the forecast for VR adoption was cut by 20% after the troublesome Rift and Vive launches: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-04-20-superdata-downgrades-vr-forecast-again

gambling on VR .. not a good deal, not right now anyways

 

---

 

AMD's notion that nVdia is abandoning VR is just dogshit - https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/04/27/virtual-reality-conference/

nVidia understood that, for now, VR is not consumer ready

i dont see how that would hurt AMD or for it being a gamble

AMD lost market share not because of desktop, but because they had no GPU for Mobiles, OEMs...since 2012, so intel and nvidia took what AMD couldnt provide, now with the die shrink, they are going to grab back the market share they lost with a 50watt mid end and a 100watt top end for mobiles, and it just happens that the performance of the polaris 10 to be around VR requirement, so they PR the thing like they are the benefactors of VR, but inreality with or without VR AMD would have launched this line up with a very agressive price point  for it's performance/watt, because they are aiming for market share anyway, and seriously you should be happy that AMD is going to provide high performing card for under 300$ mark, so i dont know where you get that gambling part because there is none.

beside Roy is right that Nvidia's cards will be expensive, because their top end is like 80mm² bigger than polaris10, with a node this new, the yields should be crap, and the price will reflect that.

now about VR headset, everyone saw the teardowns by now, the high price is here just to milk who can be milked, once the sales will slow, the price will drop, and soon enough you will find 200$ chinese VR headset.