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[JEMC]

vivster said:

JEMC said:

Nvidia has caught AMD with their pants down in terms of performance, no doubts about it. They have the high end market locked with the 1070&1080, and with the 1060 they're also very, very competitive in the mid range one.

It's only in the low end market where AMD can really cause them trouble, which isn't that great as it's also the market with the smaller profit margins. That said, AMD wanted to regain marketshare with Polaris, and even if it comes from the low end, they look like they'll be able to do it.

What does AMD have in the low end that's not already dominated by Intel and Nvidia? I doubt that APUs are very common in prebuilds where most of the low end is. Polaris is only midrange and currently outperformed by the 1060 in both performance and availability. Do you really think that 30 bucks less for less performance will make a big difference?

That leaves themn with only 2 options to make a big splash this year, Zen and Vega. Vega will probably outperform a 1080 and will then be crushed by Big Pascal soon after. Zen might as well have the same performance and IPC as Intel and would still probably be left behind. If anything the coming gens for AMD's products are only little stepping stones to a hopefully better gen after it. Then again Intel and Nvidia aren't resting on their laurels. It kinda feels hopeless.

AMD has the 460 & 470, which will deliver a lot more performance than any integrated graphic chip can, while being cheap enough ($100 & $150). That will greatly help AMD to gain marketshare as they'll be more powerful than any competing products available. At least until Nvidia launches the 1050, whenever that happens.

And those $30 are just in theory. You'll have a rough time to find a 1060 priced at the $249 MSRP, with most of them being close to $300. And that's just in the US, because over here in Europe the 1060 is more like 350 € while the 480 is still 300 € (when you can find it). It's not a clear cut decision, with both cards being good choices.

As for Vega and Zen, we know so little about them (I mean real info, not rumors) that it's not worth speculating about them (tho I think Vega will be roughly on par with the 1080). And AMD's goal in the CPU market is not about defeating Intel, because Zen won't be faster than current Skylake CPUs or the future Kaby Lake ones, but rather doing better than they're doing right now.