AMD has officially confirmed a strategic shift to focus solely on mainstream GPUs based on the RDNA4 architecture, abandoning efforts to compete in the high-end enthusiast market. This decision, aimed at capturing more market share from NVIDIA, was revealed by AMD’s head of Computing and Graphics, Jack Huynh, in an interview with Tom’s Hardware.
Huynh clarified that AMD’s new focus is on the entry-level and mid-range segments, emphasizing the cost-effectiveness of their RDNA4 GPUs instead of competing with NVIDIA’s upcoming GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 in the high-end segment.
This strategy is a repeat of AMD’s previous approach during the launch of the Radeon RX 5000 series, where the company prioritized volume sales and profit margins by focusing on affordable GPUs. With AMD currently holding just 12% of the discrete GPU market, and their most popular model being an outdated Radeon RX 580, the company recognizes that the majority of the market is driven by entry-level and mid-range cards, such as the GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 4060.
Huynh acknowledged that “there is no point in trying to be King of the Hill,” as this approach has not been successful for AMD. Instead, the company aims to build a portfolio of competitively priced GPUs to increase sales volume and attract more developers to the platform.
By concentrating on more accessible products, AMD hopes to strengthen its presence in the mainstream market and challenge NVIDIA’s dominance in the graphics card industry.
“My priority now is to give AMD scalability. Because without scale I can’t attract developers. If I tell developers, ‘I’m only going to go for 10% of the market share,’ they’ll say, ‘Jack, I wish you the best, but we have to go with Nvidia.’ So I have to show them a strategy that says we can have 40% of the market. And then they’ll say, ‘I’m with you now, Jack. Now I’m going to optimize for AMD.’ Once we have that, then we can go for the top.”
Why exactly is AMD changing its strategy?
AMD’s shift in strategy within the graphics card market stems from the declining sales it has experienced in recent years. While the RX 5000 series strategy proved successful, and the RX 6800 and RX 6900 models saw even higher sales, much of this success was driven by the crypto mining boom of 2020 and 2021 rather than sustained consumer demand.
As the mining craze faded, so did the strong sales, particularly when AMD launched the RX 7900 with RDNA3 architecture, which struggled to compete with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4080 and RTX 4090.
AMD’s GPUs have lagged behind NVIDIA in key areas like ray tracing, upscaling, and AI-driven features, which only further shifted attention toward NVIDIA’s offerings. In response, AMD is now refocusing on efficiency and rasterization performance with its upcoming RDNA4 architecture, particularly in the Radeon RX 8000 series. By concentrating on mainstream GPUs that offer better cost-benefit ratios, AMD hopes to regain its footing in the market.
The success of this new approach remains to be seen, but we’ll likely get the first glimpse of AMD’s plan in action when the Radeon RX 8000 series is unveiled, likely at CES 2025 in January.
