No new AMD GPUs in 2013

AMD has now confirmed they have no new GPUs coming in 2013, and likely only have one final GPU in the works for 2014 before shifting entirely to the SoC space. Most anyone who's followed the larger GPU and gaming space for a while has likely seen the writing on the wall here. AMD knows there are diminishing returns in pushing the graphics tech envelope considering software will stagnate/not surpass current GPU capabilites once new consoles are released, Moore's law is slowing, and the market is shifting to the mobile space. What does this mean for the PC gaming space? I have a few ideas:

-As mentioned, the release of PS4 and Xbox 720 will usher in a nice initial bump in graphics for ported PC games, followed by stagnation for the next 7-8 years (or longer)
-With no real competition, nVidia will jack prices on their next gen high-end cards to near-absurd levels
-PC gaming will become more of a niche hobby with consoles and mobile gaming taking the lion share of the market (even more so than today)
-The SoC space will see major gains in processing power, and more competition


This is just my educated conjecture, and I'd be interested hearing in what some of NBR's other informed members think?

 

Where do you see anything that says they're abandoning high end GPUs for the SoC market?

 

Hmmmm nop.
There is no ceiling on the level of performance a game can push. This has been discussed and is a fact well known to the game-development crowd.

In most game development companies, the issue is not "Oh my god, how can I make enough high-quality material to use all this processing power". Instead, it's "Omg, how can I downscale the polygon count enough to keep the framerate playable?".

As far as game performance and visual quality goes, a console is an abomination. If I have the money to spend, I'll gladly pay 1000-2000$ for a bomb-a$$ pc and max it's settings out, rather than get a console and run it at what the developers deem the "maximum possible settings" to keep gameplay fluent (which, in the case of the PS3 and Xbox360 has frequently been a case of running at 720p with low-res textures and not that fluent).

AMD has no reason to abandon it's GPU division. It's the highest-yielding segment of the firm and the only real fallback for them considering their efforts of pushing CPU/GPU tech SoC's into the mobile market. They need some kind of profit fallback for that.
Current-gen GPU line for AMD has been a resounding success, and the only thing Xbox720 and PS4 will do is push the envelope even further, because: Using x86 architecture and PC-similar GPU chips will mean the games are much easier to develop multiplatform (PC/Console), and will more than likely revitalize the PC gaming sector, not to mention the possibility of emulation.

The two consoles will become obsolete performance-wise by 2014 at the latest. Meanwhile, for ported or PC-developed games, there will continue to be (as there always have been) gamers who prefer to be able to use quality-enhancing options such as higher resolution, more detail, bigger textures, AntiAliasing, Tesselation etc. and will pay the price to do so.

The SoC space has a great big thermal ceiling coming up. The chips are cute... for portable devices. Comparing that to a modern non-top-end gaming PC or even last-gen console (ps3 or xbox360) is absolutely hilarious. We're talking a decade of development. People liked to hype up the fact that PS Vita could run PS3 titles... only it couldn't really. It runs most games downscaled at 720x408, lower than it's native res. We're talking 14% of full-hd in pixel quantity. You call this a contest? I helped develop two PS Vita games and know the amount of downsizing and downscaling the game got even compared to an iPad3 title. And this even counts the console advantage of natively-coded apps. The SGX543MP4+ GPU in it is top-spec for the mobile sector, you won't find many devices at that level of performance too soon. You really think gamers will want to downscale even further from their PC's and consoles?

So no, i believe that not only will the PC market pretty much carry on as before, but have an extra boost from the better cross-platform-compatibility that will occur due to the architecture similarities.

In fact, I'm 100% sure that some people will try to push windows/linux onto their next-gen consoles and use them at PC's, 1000$+ performance for their 500$ machines.
If they're lucky.

If not... well, they'll buy a PC.

Now, if you want to know why neither they or nVidia will launch a new line of products (except rebrands of the existing ones), it's because fab process transition to 28nm at TSMC has been extremely costly, both Kepler and GCN ar near-maturity architectures and they'll need a year of sales to start building the cash bank for further development.

Not to mention, if techsites are to be believed, AMD landed the biggest mother of all orders in supplying GPU's for the Xbox720 and PS4. We're talking probably tens of millions of chips. This will more than likely use up a lot of fab capacity, which is what will probably provide the cash needed to tech up to the next fab process shrink.

In the semiconductor field, you can either: Build a new architecture; Implement a new revolutionary technology to leverage the performance of your existing tech, lower the fab process or improve performance through drivers.

For the moment the fab process is a glass ceiling. It will break, but they'll need around 2-3 years to recoup the costs of adopting 28nm and push out new tech. This is something that TSMC will work on. Intel's running 22nm in their own foundry, so maybe, maybe, we'll see current-architecture products on a new fab process in the 8000/9000 series.

The architecture is something that works wonderfully. GCN is cold and fast. Not quite as overclockable as kepler, but generally colder, even though it consumes more. It's a good product. They don't need to replace it that soon.

Regarding revolutionary tech, nVidia have and are trying this with CUDA and PhysX. Like all marketing gimmicks, it's not turning out too well. I'm of the opinion that the last true tech revolution occurred with the introduction of Transform n Lighting, if anyone remembers that. No new tech, no fast reason to update to a new series.

Regarding driver performance, this is actually really fun, but the driver improvements for AMD for the last few months have been SUBSTANTIAL. When buying the 7970m, I had no idea that waiting a couple months will get me an extra 20% performance across the board. I had no idea that the frame latency situation would be resolved. I am a very happy customer. What this does, is push the lifespan of the current series. The only competitor is in the same performance class, and more expensive for consumers. Why should they refresh right now? It's better for them to build up a pile of cash, take it easy, keep updating drivers, have time to do some more research and get the ball rolling in the mobile field.

I personally see this as a good thing. The slower it takes for the new series of cards to come out, the more my 7970m will retain it's top-dog spot and value.

 

No new desktop GPU, not no new laptop GPUs

.

 

This makes fat-sangemaru fat-happy.

 

Does this mean I can catch my breath between the new releases for once? Phew *takes big breath*

I see no issue with this. At the moment technology seems to be advancing faster than my wallet!

 

lol I know, right? I was dreading spending $1k+ later this year to upgrade my 680ms. I'd rather spend that cash to build a desktop or buy an AW Aurora.

 

the actualy preformance of your system stays the same tho. So that wouldnt matter there is something better out there. Just a pain that no new gens means no better chips. Really bad news..

 

Wow, what possible game could show any improvement from upgrading beyond dual 680ms at 1080p? Or do you have like a 4k UHD monitor?

 

lol no, it's just an illiogical obsessive urge to always have the latest and greatest tech. I used to be the same way with my cars. Fortunately computers are cheaper

I will be getting a 1600p monitor though, and I'd like to try some gaming in 3D, so those will definitely bring the 680ms to their knees.

 

That's a stupid assumption. They still wanna sell their products you know. Prices will stay the same.

 

There is a direct correllation between nV's pricing and whether or not they have a competing AMD/ATI card in that segment. That's a fact well established over the past 9 years of GPU generations. Will they price a product outside of the demand curve? - No. But they will be able to charge as high as the market will pay without a lower-priced competitor.

I, for one, am not really concerned if there is a gap in AMD's next gen line-up, or if nV will have free reign to charge at the upper echelon of what enthusiasts will pay. As mentioned by a couple others, there's not a single game out, nor will there be in the near future, that challenges top-end GPUs e.g., 680m SLI.

 

what troubles me the most is the possible halt of the GPU development. Why would nvidia continue putting 100´s of milions of $´s if they already have the best in the buisness. They could get lots of profits.. If they keep developing AMD will have a big gap to make up with theire new GPU´s in 2014 and they might lose the competition to nvidia for good

 

Don't know what this is in reference to, but real-world AMD and Nvidia seem to release a new GPU architecture what, once every couple years (or even longer?) and then just kind of rerelease them, perhaps tweaked slightly? So if true that doesn't really mean much.

 

It's no problem. If they stagnate, a new competitor will show up. They may not last long, or they may overtake through new tech and innovation.

 

usualy once a year or so. Not in 2013 means more than a year. And note that the 7xxx series are already from 2012.. I hope when amd does release the new gpu´s in 2014 it is going to be an entire new platform. In such a long time span we should expect maybe even a 100% gain from older gen´s

 

I actually hope this is true, - also for laptops. Because then they might release a 100% optimized driver for Enduro!

 

This thread is terrible, it's based on an article that is proven to be false and written just to drive traffic to a terrible website. AMD did not contact that website or confirm anything.

AMD has said the 7000 series is their focus for desktop for the foreseeable future. That does not mean that no 8000 in 2013. It just means they haven't announced it yet. That's it...

Also the SoC has nothing to do with Graphics. The Graphics department runs business separately, the current standing of AMD is not a reflection on the Graphics department, which is doing very well.

 

They already announced a number of new laptop GPUs shipping this year.

 

However, they are rebranded 7000M variants and not true next-gen GCN.

 

But the new mobile 8900's are due for q3/q4 and could possible mean are an actual upgrade.

 

Again ....NO.

Sea Islands is new and for mobile only, as I posted here.

 

Been on OCN too much that I totally forgot. Mah bad.

I think the announcement has been only applied to the desktop variants, hinting that the development of mobile and desktop solutions are diverging for the next generation. With that said even if 'Sea Islands' is next-gen, it is very likely that the cores derived for them is still based on HD 7000 technology but not a direct re-hash from the existing variants. In other words, the desktop variants in the future will not be derived from 'Sea Islands' nor will 'Sea Islands' be directly related to the desktop HD 8000 lineup.

With that said, it could be a nightmare for future drivers though as that would mean the drivers for desktops and laptops are going to be independent...

 

I was seeing it a different way.

I think this is like back when the AMD 3000 series didn't quite cut it and the 4000 came out just 6 months after, now AMD is in sort of the same boat vs Nvidia because Nvidia is ahead enough that they sat on the GK110. Instead of following that same playbook though, AMD went a different route. I think AMD has some other work supplying the next gen console so Sea Island is actually a generation of new architecture while the subsequent desktop GPUs will actually be another generation of architecture after for maybe both desktop and mobile.

 

Plausible since AMD has the contract to all three consoles as the sole GPU developer and that they could be developing the core of those machines based on the 'Sea Island' architecture. Therefore, they might as well adapt them to the mobile sector since consoles use around the same TDP as most mobile GPU's. With that said, I can still see them divulging the HD 8000 series between the desktop and the laptop with independent architecture and HD 9000 a reunification.

 

This thread is a lot of conjecture based on extremely little information.

 

What else should we do? Just sit silently until something shows up?

 

AMD did announce some new laptop cards: AnandTech - AMD Releases Full Product Specifications For Radeon HD 8000M Series

 

I find this thread O RLY.

 

Nah, AMD hardware rep restating statement from CES that Sea Islands was new architecture exclusive to mobile variants, mobile cards showing up, all is right with the universe.

 

Yup.

/tenchars