Currently everyone into tech is waiting for AMD to announce the pricing of their new 9070 and 9070XT GPUs (from here on referred to as 9070/XT to refer to both models). While it is true some are expecting to hear good news an overwhelming majority are expecting AMD to, “Snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, once again,” as Steve from Gamers Nexus so eloquently put it. A lot of people who aren’t into tech are curious why AMD has such a bad reputation and I’m here to explain why AMD means Always Manages (to be) Defeated when it comes to NVIDIA.
A brief overview of AMD’s strategies with CPUs
Some of you may find it surprising to read “Always Manages (to be) Defeated” when referring to AMD. After all, they took down Intel! They were the former industry titan in the CPU market! AMD CPUs are dominating Intel in almost every market now. Servers are swapping to AMD at an alarming rate, especially due to Intel’s 13th and 14th gen blunders of CPUs destroying themselves. Consumers are switching to AMD faster and faster with each passing month due to AMD having better multi core support and gamers loving that sweet sweet 3D Vcache. This makes their 3D series of CPUs the best CPUs when it comes to anything that is cache limited, like gaming. As someone who still uses Intel CPUs I frequently have people questioning me, and making fun of me, for using Intel CPUs. Since I use a lot of programs that rely on single core performance I have to stick with Intel. Also in China AMD is, for some odd reason, a shit ton more expensive than Intel. When I bought my i9 9900KF the i5s for 11th gen were on the market. I was debating going Ryzen but even the Ryzen 3600 was twice the price of my i9. I was thoroughly confused since the i9 9900KF was a much stronger, and more expensive CPU in the US, but not here. I went to multiple shops and they all had AMD CPUs significantly higher priced than Intel. When I bought my CPU the store owner actually tried to stop me explaining that AMD was better than Intel in every way. They even tried to say AMD beat Intel in single core performance software and memory intensive software. Anyone who knows dick about software can tell you that’s a lie as AMD CPUs still have issues with more than 2 sticks of RAM and at that time buckled under the load of needing to do a single core task. My point is it was significantly cheaper to get my CPU with a Z series motherboard than it was to buy an AMD CPU by itself. For some odd reason every computer shop I went to only had B series motherboards for AMD too. Even with these massive price disparities people in China purchase AMD by the fucking truck load. So, why is everyone expecting them to fail?
NVIDIA isn’t Intel
The truth on why AMD is the dominant CPU company now isn’t because of AMD. It’s due to Intel having their thumb up their ass. Had Intel decided to pull their thumb out of their asses and actually do something AMD would most likely still be in the same spot it was in before: a distant second fiddle to Intel. While AMD was innovating in the CPU sector Intel sat there with 14NM++. Each of those pluses were multiple completely wasted generations from Intel. They used 14NM from their 5th gen CPUs all the way until their 11th gen CPUs. Intel is currently not only trying to play catch up but restructure their entire business so they can even attempt to play catch up. To try and compete with AMD once they became a real threat Intel just upped the power usage of their CPUs. There’s this really terrible interview, terrible for Intel that is, by an Intel engineer on Derbauer’s channel. The engineer says, “When I am using my CPU I want it to be able to use as much power as possible so it can be used to the fullest.” Newsflash but a lot of people live in countries with skyrocketing power bills and fluctuating efficiency on the power grid entirely. Having a CPU gobble up 300 watts so it can compete with AMD isn’t going to sell CPUs. In fact, it did the exact opposite. In markets where electricity is extremely expensive, or heavily monitored, AMD roasted Intel and ate their lunch. It wasn’t until the Core Ultra series, their latest launch, did Intel actually try to do anything about their power inefficiency. That gave AMD a bonus 3 generations after the pluses to further cement themselves as the dominant CPU. Giving AMD almost 10 generations to improve their CPU line up while Intel huffed glue in the corner saying, “I’m the best!” is why AMD CPUs are a success. Even when it was rumored AMD was working on 3D Vcache CPUs almost 2 gens before they came out Intel did fucking nothing. Intel has had a long time to get their own version of 3D Vcache made and they still haven’t done it because they’re too busy thinking more power equals more better CPU.
NVIDIA isn’t like Intel. NVIDIA will do everything within their power to make sure when the next generation comes they’ve an answer to whatever it is you just released. Then they’ll make sure the generation after that it not only matched the previous gen in terms of power but beats it into the ground. Then they’ll implement it even better in the third generation and now you’re catching up to NVIDIA on a piece of technology you made. However, it doesn’t end there. While NVIDIA is catching up and beating you with a piece of technology you invented they’re also inventing their own technologies and releasing them, or in the case of Phys X buying the company who made it. NVIDIA will make sure you’re trying to catch up to them in multiple races to stretch your resources out. If AMD actually makes a competitive play this generation then NVIDIA is going to try to out compete them next generation. Which means AMD is going to have to keep making competitive plays. NVIDIA isn’t going to give them the luxury that Intel did by ignoring their actions. We can see this back when NVIDIA and ATI used to trade blows. Any time ATI gained a dominant share in the market place NVIDIA fought back. Luckily ATI also fought back and made sure to outplay NVIDIA any chance they got. However, AMD has never done this. If you look at when AMD bought ATI they held over 50% of the GPU market space. As the years have gone on AMD has dwindled down to their current 10%, if you only count dedicated GPUs and not integrated with CPUs, and they’ve never once tried to trade blows with NVIDIA. Their strategy has always been do what NVIDIA is doing but be 1 generation behind and price our GPUs $50 cheaper. Which has everyone in the world asking the same question, “Why are you not trying?”
The AMD and NVIDIA family conspiracy
I’m going to preface this by saying I don’t actually believe this is true. However, I 100% understand why people do in fact believe it. After I explain the conspiracy of AMD and NVIDIA secretly working together I promise you I will explain why it is impossible. So, what is this grand conspiracy? For those that don’t know the CEOs of AMD and NVIDIA are related. Jensen Huang’s mother is Lisa Su’s grandfather’s sister. The two are distant cousins who, apparently, never met until much later on in life. To put this into perspective they’re not going to family gatherings together. However, when a great grandparent, or possibly a grandparent, dies it’s a big enough event for them to be mourning at the same funeral. Outside of that there is such a limited possibility for them to meet that they never did until they were established in their careers. The conspiracy lots of people have come up with is that AMD isn’t competing with NVIDIA on purpose. That AMD purchased ATI to tank NVIDIA’s only competitor. Which if you look at the drop in market share year over year seems to make sense because their current business strategy makes absolutely zero sense. There’s also a belief that NVIDIA is invested in AMD helping them stay afloat, due to them being family members, as long as AMD doesn’t compete. I’ve heard a couple more but they all relate to them being family members and Lisa Su is secretly helping NVIDIA for anything from private kick backs to research that would lead to AMD wiping Intel out of the CPU space entirely, and more.
Now, there’s just one little itty bitty problem with these conspiracy theories. If any of this were to be true then they would also need to pay off the board of directors as well as anyone who owns more than 5% of shares in the company. See publicly traded companies have a bit of built in checks and balance. If shareholders don’t like how a CEO is doing they can call for a vote and kick them out. To make sure a call to replace the CEO doesn’t happen they’d need to pay off a lot of people. When a call happens the investors have to say why and if the investors go, “We think you’re not even trying to compete with NVIDIA!” well that’s going to make headlines and if Lisa Su stays on as CEO there’s a chance that could affect share prices entirely. Especially if she wins with a vote of 51-65%. That could trigger a sell off from people who aren’t happy with how she’s leading the company which would lead to the stock price tumbling. There other tiny problem is that what these conspiracy theories are claiming to happen is illegal. The investors could sue AMD and in both Taiwan and the US this is a jailable offense. Both CEOs would face jail time and have to pay hefty fucking fines to the investors and places where their businesses operate. In fact, this blunder would be so big that the EU gets involved since both NVIDIA and AMD have offices in the EU. Every investor would be licking their lips at the chances of these conspiracies being true because it means they’re going to get fucking paid, and so are the countries that can fine them to collect a shit ton in taxes. If you’re one of those people going, “Well big CEOs never….” yeah shut up. This would involve them scamming other billionaires and tech companies. Like Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Valve, MSI, Asus, and any company that has to use one of their GPUs could sue for damages due to them rigging the markets. This is why I know for a fact this can’t be true because there’s too much money to be earned in taking down both AMD and NVIDIA.
NVIDIA fucked up a lot with the 50 series
I’m sure you’re wondering why everyone is so interested in this launch of AMD GPUs. The answer is really simple: NVIDIA fucked up the 50 series launch. Raw performance of the 50 series GPU is abysmal. Raw performance, for those who don’t know, is the actual power of the GPU without any AI upscaling. It’s the rasterization power of the GPU, or how many polygons and textures it can handle. The stronger the rasterization the better the card is and doesn’t need things like DLSS. Now if it was only a poor increase in rasterization performance this wouldn’t be that big of an issue but NVIDIA is currently shipping out GPUs that are missing ROPs. A ROP is the module that handles rasterization. The missing ROPs can cause a decrease of 4.54% in performance. This means if you paid $2,000, or more due to scalping, for a 5090RTX there’s a chance it could be 4.54% weaker than it is supposed to be. If you bought a 5070TI and it’s missing some ROPs then your GPU is weaker than a 4080. Not a 4080 TI or the super variant but weaker than the already lackluster 4080. This would also make your 5070TI only 10% faster than the 4070TI Super. If you think 10% is a lot then realize going from 30FPS to 33 FPS is a 10% gain.
Now if it was only missing performance that wouldn’t matter much. You could RMA your GPU and get it a new one but NVIDIA’s problems don’t end there. Because of an amazing video by Actually Hardcore Overclocking a majority of people discovered that NVIDIA removed resistors and made it so all 600 watts can go through a single cable rated for 120 watts. This has caused the cables themselves to burn as well as the possibility of the PSU port and the plug on the GPU. Unfortunately NVIDIA’s burning problems don’t end there. As there were reports of a 5090 having its power stages blow causing the card to burn.
To steal a line from Frankenstein’s monster “Fire baaad!” but unfortunately the bad news for NVIDIA doesn’t stop with fire. There have been reports of 5090s and 5090Ds (an exclusive model in China) just bricking themselves. It is rumored that this is caused by PCIE Gen 5 as forcing PCIE Gen 4 via your BIOS seems to prevent this from happening and has a chance to revive your GPU. Unfortunately for NVIDIA there’s currently a problem with the only drivers that the 50 series GPU can use. They are causing random black screens which forces you to pray and wait for your screen to come back or restart your PC to fix it. Unfortunately for AMD this is only a temporary problem and NVIDIA is working on a fix that will most likely be out in a few days.
Finally the last major controversy for the 50 series is NVIDIA removed support for 32bit Phys X. This results in games like the Batman Arkham series being unable to run at max settings on a 5090 without plummeting to 40FPS. If you wish to play older Phys X games, like Monster Madness Battle for Suburbia (fantastic game that requires Phys X), while gaming on a 50 series GPU then you need to buy an older GPU and plug it in as a second GPU to run exclusively as a Phys X card. Forcing you to potentially upgrade your PSU to power two GPUs. Which then leads to more power being consumed just so you can play an old game. With NVIDIA fucking up this bad we can only ask, “How will AMD fuck this up even more than NVIDIA?”
The incompetence of AMD
This brings us back to our golden question, “Why isn’t AMD trying?” The only answer I have is incompetence on a level that’s never been seen before. Which, if we’re being honest is 100% on brand for AMD. There’s a rumor that’s been going around on the internet that at this past CES AMD was supposed to reveal the price and launch date of the 9070/XT but canceled the reveal because NVIDIA announced they were delaying their 5070s. Some people call us retarded for believing this but there’s enough evidence that suggests this to be true. At CES a lot of board partners had 9070/XTs on display. Companies weren’t sure what they were allowed to comment on and some of them were said to be removing the 9070/XTs from the floor. Stores have been posting proof that they have had 9070XTs since January that were ready to be sold and are now waiting for AMD to say what the price is going to be and when they can sell them. Some stores even went as far as posting footage of an unboxed GPU and many had listings that were removed a bit before CES.
Now, if you think all of this is too far-fetched let me remind everyone what happened during the Radeon RX 7600 launch. As reported by Gamers Nexus in their review (It’s at the start of the video), AMD had changed the embargo date for the review multiple times. From the pictures shown by Gamers Nexus it looked like AMD was following rumored NVIDIA dates to make sure AMD could respond after Intel launched a major driver revision for their Arc GPUs and after NVIDIA launched the 4060TI. So they could adjust marketing and prices to follow NVIDIA better while trying to compete with Intel. Which, again, may seem absolutely retarded but that’s exactly what happened. NVIDIA launched the 4060TI on May 24th 2023 and AMD changed the price hours before the review embargo for the RX 7600 which was lifted on May 24th 2023, again, a mere hours after the 4060TI launched. This isn’t like the conspiracy of AMD tanking their GPUs to help Lisa Su’s cousin dominate the GPU market. These are cold hard facts and a history that AMD repeats every fucking year. In fact the current launch date of March even seems like they are waiting for NVIDIA to launch their 5070s to make sure they’re not directly competing with a 5070 launch but the leftover scraps, further adding to AMD’s weird history of following NVIDIA. This makes zero sense from a business standpoint because it just allows NVIDIA to eat up an early share of the market that AMD refuses to compete in. If you need a GPU in February and you wanted an AMD GPU they left you with no choice but NVIDIA unless you’re willing to wait 2-4 weeks.
You know what makes this even worse? AMD constantly follows NVIDIA in terms of pricing and launches but when those don’t work they drop their prices. Which you may think, “Isn’t that good? You’re getting a GPU for cheaper!” Yeah, when you look at it like that it is good. However, if you were someone who decided to buy an AMD GPU near launch then it means you got fucked in terms of pricing. People I know who still buy AMD GPUs wait a year after they came out to buy them because they were tired of being ripped off. AMD knows their prices are too high and they’re just trying to rip off their loyalists. This has the added effect of causing their loyalists to shrink in numbers. Are you starting to see why their market share shrinks every year? How about why everyone expects them to fuck this up?
In about 8 hours we’ll find out how AMD fucked this up
I am not a betting man. This is because I have a real bad gambling addiction so I avoid gambling at all costs. However, if someone was to bet my entire life savings that AMD wouldn’t fuck up the launch of their 9070/XT GPUs I would immediately run outside to apply for as many instant credit cards as possible and max those bitches out. This is so I could increase the amount of money that qualifies as my life savings to maximize the amount of money I will earn from this bet. That’s how sure I am of the ever revolving fact that AMD will fuck up this launch. In fact, I believe when Intel Druid comes out we’ll be talking about how AMD fucked up a launch VS Intel and managed to lose market share to Intel. Since their GPU division isn’t resting on their laurels like their CPU division was. One of the major reasons I believe this is because AMD is literally asking YouTubers what they should price their GPUs at. That’s not the sign of a company that knows what the fuck they’re doing.
Right now a lot of people are going around on social media trying to tell AMD how to price their new GPU since Hardware Unboxed made this announcement. I pray to fucking God that AMD ignores a majority of these because lots of people are making stupid claims. One I saw was AMD should price it at $50 profit instead of $100. The problem here is $50 isn’t going to move the needle much. When you are above $500 the average person only looks at the hundreds spot. This is the 99 psychology of marketing. What they have found is if people see 99 after a certain point they just round down. For instance if something is 99 cents you round up to a dollar. If it’s 1.99 you see it as $2. However once you get to 5.99 people see it as $5. I can confirm this is true because when I worked at Domino’s we had so many customers who used to ask why our 2 pizzas for 5.99 deal wasn’t $10. Yet for some odd reason our 1 large for $7.99 deal people saw as $8. I still don’t understand that. Eventually as you go up in prices people stop seeing the cents and just truncate them. So if something is priced at 65.99 a majority of people see it as $65. When we move to hundreds of dollars the same thing happens which means for the average consumer $749 and $700 are the exact same. The same is true for $699 and $650.
If AMD dropped their price by an additional $50 the average person probably wouldn’t even noticed. The best suggestion I saw was NVIDIA price -30%. This would make the 9070/XT an instant purchase for lots of people. Due to how expensive the 5 NM production line I’m unsure if AMD can do this. I feel that NVIDIA -20% would do just as well. With that said there’s still the problem of AMD just following in NVIDIA’s footsteps and trying to be cheaper related to their price. I feel like a $625 9070XT would do really well, especially if it isn’t being sold for over 800 like the 5070TI, and $475 for the 9070 would do well to take market share from NVIDIA. It would also make it so people waiting for the B58 would just upgrade to the 9070 since that’s currently about he price B580s are being scalped for. Should Intel release a B780 then AMD will be some serious competition at that price range. This also makes it so there’s a $150 price difference between the two GPUs while allowing them to appeal to two completely separate sections of the GPU market.
I’ve put more effort in this article than AMD has in the GPU market
Do I think AMD will price their GPUs competitively like that? No. I expect the 9070 to be $500 putting it $50 cheaper than the 5070 and the 9070XT to be maybe $75 cheaper than the 5070TI. History has shown us time and time again that AMD will do whatever it can to lose to NVIDIA. Right now they have a golden platter and the whole world isn’t expecting a wonderful meal to be served with it. Instead we’re all watching AMD walk to our table while we wait for them to trip over their own feet, shit their pants, and then get up and act like nothing happened. I actually want to switch away from NVIDIA GPUs. I really do. I used to buy ATI GPUs way back in the day. In fact, every single one of my friends had one. However, when AMD bought ATI we all slowly switched to NVIDIA. When you look at the market share it seems my friend group matched everyone else’s. I’m not going to buy an inferior product that’s barely cheaper because I dislike NVIDIA, and the market shares that sentiment. Dear God give me a reason to even look at your GPUs. AI and Ray tracing ain’t going to do it, at least for me. Give me a great price or amazing rasterization performance. If someone from NVIDIA, or Intel, reads this and wants to know how they can destroy that remaining 10% of AMD’s market share it’s pretty easy: open source your drivers so Linux nerds can maintain their own drivers. You’ll steal the one market AMD has locked down from them. Maybe then they’ll actually try but I have my doubts. To round this up I’m going to end it with a quote someone I know once wrote to their husband, “You’re currently Mr. Incredible at the beginning of the movie. I need you to be Mr. Incredible at the end of the movie.”