AMD Admits to Abandoning the High-End GPU Market, Aiming for Market Expansion Through Volume Sales

Recent leaks, proven to be highly accurate, revealed that AMD has scrapped its plans for the high-end GPU series Radeon RX 8000.

During a Q&A session at IFA 2024, Tom’s Hardware editor Paul Alcorn spoke with AMD's Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Computing and Graphics Business Group, Jack Huynh, where Jack confirmed that some of the rumors circulating online are indeed true.

AMD's primary focus moving forward is to expand its market share:

NVIDIA's high-end GPU products are highly priced and profitable. Ideally, AMD would capture some of NVIDIA's market share in the high-end GPU market. However, NVIDIA significantly outranks AMD in this segment.

In its future plans, AMD aims to capture a larger portion of the overall GPU market by focusing on mid to low-end GPUs rather than continuing the battle with NVIDIA in the high-end segment.

Jack Huynh stated that the company is now in a different position, focusing on scale. If AMD can produce the best products at the right prices, it will, at least from a price perspective, gain a larger market share.

Will AMD return to the high-end market in the future?

This depends on whether AMD can indeed gain more market share with its current strategy. If successful, AMD might consider re-entering the high-end GPU market in the future.

Currently, a lack of scale makes it difficult for AMD to garner developer support, as developers prefer to partner with NVIDIA. However, if AMD manages to exceed a 40% market share, it could win developer cooperation and optimize GPUs.

Interestingly, AMD did not explicitly deny the possibility of launching high-end GPUs in the future. However, according to Jack Huynh's strategy, it seems unlikely that AMD will compete with NVIDIA's high-end GPUs in the near term.

For AMD, this market capture strategy could be quite beneficial. A larger user base could lead to more developer support, which in turn could optimize gaming experiences for users.

The outcome of this strategy will take a few years to evaluate, so for now, we can only wish AMD success in capturing market share from NVIDIA.