Well, well! I’ve made it to 20 rants so far. I’m clearly not being controversial enough as I’ve only received mildly chastising e-mails from my superiors here at eTeknix. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but I do have superiors… in employment terms at least.
Anyway, I digress. Over the last 12 months, we’ve seen AMD successfully start to claw back a little bit of the market share they once enjoyed in the mid 00’s. Perhaps not so much in the GPU stakes, but definitely in the processor market. There have even been suggestions that AMD’s CPU share might even hit the lofty heights of 30% before the end of the year. Not bad considering it was less than 19% at the start of 2017.
Yes, in less than 2 years AMD has been able to slowly eat away at Intel. The facts do not lie!
In terms of long-term projections, AMD is like a duck trying to nibble Intel to death. It could happen. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility. But it’s going to take a long time! On the other hand though, while it might start as something mildly annoying to Intel, it could soon become a whole lot more painful!
I, therefore, have decided to put on my business cap and present to you five ways in which AMD could dominate 2019!
With Intel set to launch their new processors, literally within the next few weeks (possibly even by the time you read this) interest is going to be quite high. While Intel might have the edge in gaming, AMD has proven with Ryzen that in pure computing power, they have a lot to offer consumers.
Despite Intel set to release the most recent line of processors, it seems that there may be more than a few problems at the factory. It’s been well documented in the last few weeks that Intel is having problems producing enough 12nm chipsets for the new line. If it comes to that, they’re struggling to keep up with the older 14nm demands. AMD can capitalise on this.
If throughout all this, they can keep their supplies at a good, solid and consistent level, they might find that people look to them simply because Intel can’t get the products out of the shelves!
As above, it’s fairly well documented that, at least in terms of outright gaming performance, AMD struggles to compete with comparative Intel processors. Despite the excellent performance that Ryzen gives, if money was no object, then most of the more serious Intel i5 processors have it beat for games. It’s the age-old issue that while AMD adds more cores and threads, Intel concentrates more on single core operation speeds. With so few games truly optimised for multiple cores, it’s why Intel has (nearly) always had the egde.
In fairness, between the two companies, AMD doesn’t have the resources (or more accurately research development) to create products better than Intel. It’s like comparing the resources of Tesla to the resources of BWM. What AMD should look towards is a simple premise; if we can’t beat them on performance, lets beat them on price.
In fairness, AMD is already doing this and has done so for a long time. A Ryzen processor, even a 2600X is, more or less, about 30-40% less expensive than the Intel i5 8600k (which I would consider it’s logical competitor). With lack of supply and high demand for Intel products comes prices increases though. The chances are that Intel’s new processors are perhaps going to be some of the most expensive to date.
As such, if AMD can keep their processors on the less expensive side, they will continue to win business. People can, after all, only afford what they can afford!
AMD has also made the rather gutsy move to delay the Ryzen 2800X to go into direct competition with Intel. If they hadn’t, such a suggestion might have gone on this list!
Taking a side-step from CPUs, AMD does, of course, have a line of graphics cards. I personally highly rate the 4XX and 5XX series that AMD has released in recent years. I purchased an AMD 480RX back in 2016 for about £200 and, albeit it’s not my main GPU these days, it’s still easily eating up games on a second PC I own.
Even in 2nd hand terms, a quick glance at eBay shows they are still regularly achieving prices above £150. A mere £50 depreciation in a graphics card after over 2 years is not to be sniffed at!
If you’d have asked me a month ago, it looked fairly certain that in terms of graphics cards AMD would be doing nothing until at least next Summer (and likely later). A recent report, however, has indicated that AMD might be looking to release an AMD 590 model within the next few months. This could be fantastic news for consumers.
While we are, of course, all dribbling over Nvidia’s 20XX series, there is a major stumbling block for many of us. Put simply, they’re bloody expensive! When you consider that the Nvidia 2080 is only relatively comparable in performance to a 1080ti, it’s hard to justify spending a minimum of £700 on one. Particularly if you already own a 1080 or 1080TI. It gets worse with the 2080TI which have a starting price of around £1200. A price which I frankly feel is insane!
While I’m not suggesting that the AMD 590 could come anything close to these in terms of performance (again, the research/resources issue) if a 590 card could at least compete with the Nvidia 1070, it would give consumers something to think about.
At present, the AMD 580 operates about on par with the Nvidia 1060. It’s a really close race, but at least in terms of performance, the latter just sneaks it. If AMD could, however, produce a 590 and be able to say “hey, look at this, it’s as good as a Nvidia 1070, but costs £100 less”, then many would be tempted to switch to team red and save some money.
In terms of graphics cards though, AMD has a mammoth task on its hands though with them only having a current 14-15% market share. It is, however, doable!
One of AMD’s single biggest issues, perhaps throughout its entire lifetime, is branding. AMD has never been sexy. It’s been cool, it’s been alternative, but deep down, it’s always been associated with being Intel’s budget competitor. With Ryzen though, they finally have a product with a cool name that people can get behind.
Since the Ryzen brand launched in 2017, we’ve already seen AMD eating into Intel’s market share dominance. Moves that have led many to speculate that this might be as much as 30% before the end of the year.
In terms of the AMD processors themselves, they do, essentially, what AMD has done for years. Provide a solid performance on a reasonable budget. What AMD has to do though is start running with this branding. We’ve already seen indications of this with them releasing a 2nd-generation so quickly after the first. If 2019 could bring a third-generation of Ryzens, again with a slight but solid performance increase, they could well on the way to something special.
It’s absolutely beyond any question that at least in the UK, Intel is the much better-known brand. Why? Because they advertise! You’d be lucky to go a day on the TV or internet without seeing Intel’s logo pop up once (do-do-do-do). The chances are though that you could go a week, maybe even a month, before you saw AMD mentioned.
A recent UK study found that Intel was the 43rd best-known tech brand in the UK. AMD wasn’t even on the list!
The simplest way that AMD could help their sales is to stop relying on cheap prices entirely and actually spend some money on brand awareness. A little advertising could go a long way in terms of sales. The advert practically writes itself – ‘hey, look at us, we’re cheaper than Intel and can provide comparative performance’. Not exactly catchy I know, but you get the idea.
Why AMD barely spends any money on advertising is beyond me. I can, of course, only speak as a UK consumer. Perhaps they push stronger in the UK, Asia or Europe, but something tells me that they don’t.
Well, there you have it. Five ways in which (I believe) that AMD could potentially dominate 2019. Admittedly, the chances of a ‘domination’ are slim. At the very least, it’s perhaps too strong a word. If you think I’m crazy though, you might want to think again. It seems that many industry specialists may agree with me! How about that!
What do you think? Would these strategies help AMD get on par with its competitors? – Let us know in the comments!
Mike may have written this rant in the hopes that AMD read it and offer him a job in their advertising department. He may also have written it to see if Nvidia or Intel would send him a free copy of their latest hardware to sway him away from Team Red. Put simply, Mike is meant to be loved, not understood. Regardless though, Mikes Rant is an opinion piece and may not reflect the views of eTeknix.com as a whole.
Did you enjoy Mikes Rant? If so, please check out his previous ones which include:
Did you enjoy Mike’s Rant and want to check out more? – Well, for all of his rants you can check out the link here!
Which one is your favourite? – Let us know in the comments!
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