AMD deprioritizing flagship gaming GPUs

I had a chance to speak to Jack Huynh, AMD’s senior vice president and general manager of the Computing and Graphics Business Group, during IFA 2024 in a question and answer session. Due to speculation that AMD won’t launch flagship GPUs for its next-gen lineup, I pressed Huynh for information regarding the company’s plans for the high-end GPU market with the RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 8000-series. His comments sketch out a plan focused specifically on gaining market share in the GPU market above all else, and this strategy deprioritizes chasing Nvidia’s highest-end gaming cards — at least for now.
↫ Paul Alcorn at Tom’s Hardware

Reading through the actual comments, it seems that AMD is not going to chase the very, extreme high-end that NVIDIA serves, like the 4090 level of GPUs. Honestly, I’m completely okay with that – those high-end GPUs are insanely expensive, and unlike what YouTube and tech websites might suggest, nobody buys these GPUs. Consistently, for more than a decade now, it’s the xx60-xx70 levels of cards that dominate the market, and it’s smart of AMD (and Intel) to focus on that segment if you want to sell as many GPUs as possible.

The very top of the GPU market just doesn’t make a lot price/performance sense. You pay considerably more for a 4090 compared to a 4080, but the price increase does not correspond to a similar increase in performance. It simply makes a lot more sense to save that money and spend it elsewhere, such as on a better CPU, more RAM, more storage, or a new display. I’d rather AMD not waste time and energy on making these high-end GPUs nobody buys, and instead focus on improving the GPUs people actually buy.

And of course, AMD just hasn’t been able to match NVIDIA at the top end, and that’s probably not going to change any time soon. Releasing a high-end, expensive GPU, only to be trounced by your one competitor every single time is not a good look, so why even try?