Intel Thread

[Zoraptor]

17 hours ago, Sven_ said:

I think RDNA 2 (6000 series) would have done better if it wouldn't have been for Covid / mining crisis...

Ultimately the problem there was limited fab space, which was not really an AMD problem per se since the only realistic way it might not have been a problem would be if they'd held onto their fab arm (now Global Foundries). But then they may have gone bankrupt trying to hold onto it. Without a valid competitor everyone bar nVidia/ Intel was squashed onto the limited TSMC capacity, which they had to book a year in advance based on what they thought might happen.

Since there was limited fab space and more or less unlimited demand it was always a question of what would make AMD more money; and that was CPUs. You can simply make a lot more of them per wafer than a GPU, and at top end the profit margin for them compared to a consumer GPU is massively greater in profit/ die space terms. So when they did acquire extra capacity it went into satisfying the CPU demand.

The situation where AMD could have done better GPU wise was one where they could up production exactly how they pleased. Then the relatively low margins would have been fine since there would have been no intra AMD product competition for space. If nVidia was really limited by Samsung's capacity/ reliability they could have taken significant share.