General Discussions

[black_zion]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ceo-lisa-su-first-woman-top-ap-ceo-pay

[pokester]

Maybe she could give a little bit of that back so the can hire some software engineers in the GPU division?

[black_zion]

Decidedly. AMD went from bust to boom very quickly, but now that they're where they're at, they're going to need a lot more than just a strong CPU to continue to grow and produce profits like the projections are. I believe analysts have said AMD is going to have to post 50% revenue improvements per year for each of the next five years to justify their stock price.

AMD is about to basically reinvent their GPU half by introducing two new architectures (CDNA and RDNA2) to separate gaming and professional cards, and GPUs are going to be the deciding factor of how much AMD grows over the next couple of years at least, and they cannot afford to continue having issues like they are now. A look at the current release notes reveals two major known issues despite Navi having been out for approaching a year.

[pokester]

I am glad they list it now as known issues. They for a long time did not. As a result many users in this forum continue to blame end users for doing something wrong causing their own problem. There is no doubt that some users have not had issues. It is also no doubt that it is wide spread the users that do have issues. 

I honestly just feel sorry for the uncountable people who have given up on AMD in the last couple years do to horrible GPU drivers that have in many ways got worse not better until these last couple drivers, that seem to be making in roads.

I hope that the future architectures will bring with them much improved drivers as well. 

I like my 2 Ryzen systems I have, even though I've now had 2 motherboards die, not the fault of the Ryzen processor, bad luck I think. Actually one went bad then they shipped me back another bad board.

I however would not touch a current GPU. 

[black_zion]

And the really bad thing is that in as few as three months, Navi cards are redundant. They do not and cannot support any form of ray tracing, which is becoming ever more accessible on lower end cards as algorithms and methodologies improve, or any new feature introduced in DirectX 12 Ultimate. This wouldn't be such a bad thing but AMD needs to slaughter prices, which is something they will reportedly do with Navi Refresh, but when someone asks now for a GPU replacement who cannot wait, how can you ethically recommend the RT 5700XT over the RTX 2070 when they're the same price and have the same performance, but one has a vastly superior and forward looking feature set?

At a feature level the RX 5700XT competes against the GTX 1660 Ti, and if the RX 5700XT were priced at that price level there'd be no question, the RX 5700XT is about 25% faster, and it'd be $100 less expensive than its RTX competitor, which is about the premium nVidia attaches to RTX. Quite likely this is what Navi Refresh will do, up performance of Navi and return it to the <$250 price points while RDNA2 is >$250, so again how can you recommend a current Navi card when in 3 months (assuming the September launch date is correct and this is also retail availability) a card with the same performance is going to be drastically less? Combine that with the driver issues and the fact that AMD has a nasty habit of dropping previous generation driver updates to focus on new generation hardware, likely due to the fact there's probably five people on the Radeon driver team and probably a dozen on the FirePro/Instinct driver team, and AMD simply cannot be recommended. 

And this is the kind of thing which happens year after year with AMD, and this is something they, and when I say "they" I specifically mean Andrej Zdravkovic (SVP software development RTG), David \/\/ang (SVP engineering RTG), and Rick Bergman (EVP computing and graphics) need to address at this point while AMD is still riding high on CPU revenues so that when they fall off, which they will no doubt start doing once Intel sorts out their issues and roars back with a vengeance, they will be able to compensate by increased graphics division sales. Remember AMD missed estimates by $100 million this last quarter, and though it was shrugged off as Covid-19 induced by investors, they're not going to be able to continue to miss estimates and keep their stock price.

They're also going to continue to hemorrhage users when you have people who pay a premium for high performance GPUs only to either experience issues and/or see them getting made either redundant or EOL in a short period of time. I as a Fury user saw it, those who invested in Vega saw it, and the few who grabbed a Radeon VII -really- saw it, because these same people are looking at the competition and seeing that they aren't complaining nearly as loud as AMD, and they're seeing that when Feature X is added, it's added to the entire supported product stack, whereas with AMD there are disclaimers that Feature X is only available to certain series of cards they claim are currently supported.

A fundamental shift must occur else AMD is going to start going back downhill, and you can bet that when that happens, Lisa Su and Rick Bergman both will be working for different people. I'm sure Intel would boot Bob Swan in a second to grab Lisa Su even if it cost them $100 million a year, and there are a host of companies who would snap up Bergman in a heartbeat if he didn't accompany Lisa Su to take over the same position at Intel.

[black_zion]

And it seems like Intel is still on the path to grab every AMD executive they can...

Intel Poaches Yet Another AMD GPU Executive: Ali Ibrahim‌

[colesdav]

I was interested in  PowerColor RX5700XT Red Dragon but not at price of >400.

Drivers have been reported as unstable since launch.

Adrenalin 2020 GUI/UI is awful and AMD will still not release a basic Adrenalin 2019 19.12.1 GUI + 20.5.1 driver install for those who do not want to use Adrenalin 2020.

There are reports from some users that claim Adrenalin 20.5.1 has fixed some issues for them.

AMD should just drop the RX5700XT pricing and forget the "AMD Gaming Promotion" Bundles. 

Lowest price for PowerColor Red Dragon RX5700XT I can find today  is 370.
The gaming bundle is "worth" 100.
So the GPU could be sold at 270.

Getting the AMD Gaming Promotion codes can be  a complete pain and you can spend more time getting the codes and attempting to install them than they are worth anyhow.
Also if the codes run out you do not get them. 

AMD need to Fix drivers and interface  and drop prices on RX5700XT now.

The entire AMD Gaming Promotion situation is confusing anyhow.

Read below if you are interested what is going on now. 

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The AMD Gaming Promotion has ended on May 30th 2020:
AMD Raise the Game GPU Bundle - Resident Evil 3, Monster Hunter World & Xbox 3 month pass
That is "worth" ~100.
I think that promotion is covered here: https://www.amdrewards.com/terms 
Specifically this:
Q1 2020 AMD Radeon™ Raise the Game Bundle Promotion

Posted April 23, 2020:GAME BUNDLE EXTENSION
Campaign period extended and will end onMay 30, 2020, and coupon codes must be redeemed byJune 30, 2020.

Lowest price for PowerColor RX5700XT Red Dragon Ican find today  is 370.
They still advertise AMD Raise the Game GPU Bundle.
Discussions with the Vendor - they say codes are still o.k. until end June 30, 2020.

They seem confused.
I pointed the vendor to this and asked if those are the codes they sell:

Q2 2020 AMD Radeon™ SI Game Bundle Promotion

a,CampaignPeriod:Campaign PeriodbeginsMay 18,2020at 9:00:00 AM Eastern Time (“ET”) andendsonJune 6, 2020at 11:59:59 PM ET,orwhensupplyof Coupon Codes isexhausted,whichever occurs first. Please consult the world clock for time zone conversion information.

b.Purchase Period:To receive a Coupon Code, Participant must purchase an Eligible AMDProduct duringCampaign Period from a Participating Retailer.

c.Redemption Period:TheCoupon Code must beredeemedno later thanJuly 11, 2020 to obtain Application downloads after which the Coupon Code isvoid.

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[pokester]

I have had some really bad luck with getting the games I was promised. My last few purchases have landed me between promotions, so I paid full price and no extras with them at all. Funny how that seems to happen, I keep ending up with no offers. Twice now within a couple weeks they have started another give away after I purchased. I do agree and especially since they have had such painful methods of getting the games that they should just stop the free stuff and have a value price to begin with. 

[black_zion]

Sadly it seems AMD is not interested in offering value prices anymore, unless they backtrack with Navi Refresh and RDNA2.

My opinion is that instead of partnering with specific developers, they should partner with Steam, EA, Ubisoft, and Epic and offer $30 gift cards/promo cash/coupon code to the platform of the user's choosing, or let them choose a $20 cash card. The promo period would never end, both the product serial number and an invoice/receipt would be required, and would be retailer/etailer agnostic. This would have to go in tandem with undercutting nVidia by a notable amount else you still get the consensus that nVidia is just a little higher so there's no real reason to switch teams.

[pokester]

I love the idea of an appstore credit. If they did something like that the could just put a redemption code on a scratch off in the retail box that never expires. Boy that would make sense and be easy. You know exactly why it will never happen! LOL

[colesdav]

I have had really bad luck getting the card that was advertised.

[pokester]

Yah that is even worse

[black_zion]

What's going to come first: The card you ordered, or AMD EOLing it?

[colesdav]

True.