It's not often that senior management within multi-billion-dollar companies engage technology enthusiasts in quite the way that Roy Taylor does. A corporate vice president of global channel sales at AMD, Roy is well versed in offering his undiluted opinion on a wide range of topics.
Presented against the backdrop of recent high-end graphics launches by arch rival Nvidia, with the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 setting new performance and energy efficiency standards for single-GPU cards, getting Roy's take on events presents an intriguing opportunity that's too good to pass up. We quizzed Roy on recent graphics developments in the console and PC markets.
HEXUS: How would you assess the premium Radeon graphics positioning as we go into the holiday period?
RT: With great performance plus features like Eyefinity and TrueAudio in addition to our ground-breaking Mantle API (supported in key holiday games like Civilization Beyond Earth and Dragon Age Inqusition), we believe the AMD Radeon™ R9 Series simply offers the best gaming experience.
On top of all that, with the new promotional prices in the channel from our AIB partners, AMD Radeon Graphics are very well positioned in the market today. In North America our competitor seems to have huge component supply issues with 970 and 980. Even if you could find one in retail, Radeon is clearly a better value with the Never Settle: Space Edition promotion and the tremendous performance/$ of the latest retail pricing. Gamers can choose 3 titles from a catalog of 25+ games, including Star Citizen and Alien Isolation, whereas our competition offers no bundles.
HEXUS: It can be argued that AMD is largely reusing technology first seen with the Radeon HD 7970 in 2011. Three years is an awful long time between genuinely new architectures, right?
RT: We don’t do ground-up redesigns just for the sake of doing so. The GCN architecture that was first introduced with the Radeon HD 7970 has been very successful for us and continues to be praised by developers who are still exploring its potential. Its broad adoption in the game console space ensures there will be finding innovative ways to exploit it for years to come.
On the PC new APIs like Mantle and DirectX 12 have only just begun to unlock its latent capabilities. We see GCN continuing to be a great framework for us to keep adding new features, better performance, and greater efficiency as we have done with each successive new generation of products.
HEXUS: Rival Nvidia has made impressive performance-per-watt gains with the new Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 GPUs. Does this performance/efficiency/architecture lead worry you?
RT: Not at all. It’s great to see good products from the other side finally – that being said, I don’t see that efficiency making a huge impact on the end product. NVIDIA is charging a very hefty premium on a small performance uplift from their previous generation – a premium that many people will probably think twice to pay. And while they’re in that thought process, they’ll see Radeons offering a lot more than just superior performance/$ - with the Never Settle: Space Edition you’re getting the latest and greatest gaming content.
Not only that, but top games of the holiday season, like Civilization: Beyond Earth and Dragon Age: Inquisition are games that everyone is looking forward to – and as I already mentioned they’re also Mantle titles, so you’ll want a Radeon to play them on for maximum performance. That performance advantage pretty much puts R9 parts on top of their respective NV counterparts.
HEXUS: Is the energy efficiency angle for desktop graphics cards overplayed in your opinion? Does it matter if one card consumes 20 per cent more watts than a performance-comparable rival?
RT: Energy efficiency is important, and AMD’s 25x20 commitment shows we take it seriously, but it’s not the only measure of a solution. If we actually put the competition’s efficiency gains in context, we can see that it saves users about $3 per year. But you don’t play games with efficiency—and that’s what people buy GPUs to do: play games.
People must look to technologies like VR: AMD has had since 2012 the low-latency features our competition is just now claiming. 4K gaming? We have led the way to playable framerates in that space, and reviewers continue to see the 290X leading on a large number of titles. Multi-display gaming?
Eyefinity remains the gold standard. Multi-GPU? HardOCP just claimed AMD is leading in smooth gaming, and the competition still requires archaic bridges on flagship products. AAA developer relationships? Mantle is a shining example of AMD’s leadership in game optimization. Titles like Civilization: Beyond Earth, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Battlefield Hardline and Star Citizen will all be Mantle titles. These things impact gameplay, and that’s what truly matters in a graphics card.
HEXUS: Nvidia is using the 900-series launch as a pretext for rolling out a number of new technologies such as Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) and Multi-Frame AntiAliasing (MFAA). What is AMD doing in terms of evolving the Radeon feature-set?
RT: FreeSync for gaming
· XDMA
· TrueAudio
· Mixed-mode Eyefinity
· 3x DVI Eyefinity
· Mantle
· Delta lossless color compression (Tonga)
· Improved tessellation performance (Tonga)
All of these features exist because AMD is constantly iterating the base GCN Architecture and supporting software to evolve the Radeon feature set. Many of these features, like FreeSync, Mantle and mixed mode Eyefinity were free technology upgrades for millions of our customers.
HEXUS: AMD is invested heavily in the console market. That’s great news for brand exposure and awareness, but what opportunities and synergies does this exclusivity provide the PC gamer?
RT: There is no bigger opportunity that has come from our console leadership than Mantle, and the results speak for themselves. However, it doesn’t stop there - AMD has previously documented some additional opportunities. For example, Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition for the PS4™ and Xbox One™ features TressFX Hair.
In comments by the developer on our topical blog, you can see that past collaboration on the PC had a knock-on effect in the console. More recently, we’re seeing the PC version of Ryse: Son of Rome playing very well on AMD products. This required very minimal work in the graphics driver—the right optimization was already in the game from its time on AMD-based consoles. Forza Horizon 2, recently released on console, is also using a descendant of AMD’s Forward+ rendering technology. AMD engineered and demonstrated to the world in our Leo demo and later on DiRT: Showdown. More Forward+ games are in the works. The cross-pollination benefit is very clear.
HEXUS: As a corporate vice president of global channel sales it’s your job to ensure retailers are picking up AMD products. Is the recent price drop on Radeon R9 290(X) products a tacit understanding that value is the only real play currently open to AMD in the premium space?
RT: AMD is constantly evaluating its position in the entire graphics market, not just the premium space, with the goal being to ensure purchasers of AMD Radeon Graphics constantly are getting the greatest bang for their buck. In the past you have seen us do various things such as major software updates which unlock performance improvements across the board, enabling new features through our Catalyst updates on products already in market products (or previously purchased by customers) such as 5x1 portrait Eyefinity and Project FreeSync and amazing bundling offers like our Never Settle Program which are possible due to our gaming partnerships with developers.
All of these things have enabled us to provide the value our customers demand. Recently in talking to our customers and end users one of the requests that had the most resonance was for AMD to bring the exceptional performance offered by the AMD Radeon R9 Series, including the R9 290 series down to new price points. What you are seeing with the new promotions is a reflection of our commitment to listening to our customers and continuing to respect the value the put on their hard-earned dollars when they are purchasing an AMD Radeon product.
HEXUS: AMD, however, remains strong in terms of providing an array of quality games at every price point. Can you provide any guarantees that the Never Settle bundle will continue into 2015?
RT: Gaming is the centrepiece of AMD’s graphics business – we will continue to partner with the top game developers and publishers worldwide to ensure AMD Radeon users get the best experience and performance in the top titles. These partnerships also give us the ability to create great promotions like the Never Settle campaign.
We will continue to look for opportunities to bring great promotions like this to our customers in 2015 and we’re always talking to our customers and partners on ways to improve these promotions as well. I’d also be remiss for not calling out our great partnership with Raptr which brought the AMD Gaming Evolved Client to our customers to augment their AMD Radeon gaming experience.
In addition to all the great features (game optimization, Twitch streaming, game capture and sharing) we also have our AMD Rewards loyalty program which gives our users points for activities like playing games, participating in the community, and using the Gaming Evolved client to optimize game. They can then spend points on an ever changing inventory -- free games, hardware, discounts, sweepstakes entries, and much more!
HEXUS: Whetting appetites, can gamers be hopeful of seeing the Radeon R9 300-series early next year?
RT: I'm unfortunately unable to make comments on unannounced products, but I’m very much looking forward to 2015 and AMD in Graphics.
HEXUS: Coming back to the present, as a gamer looking to purchase a console-beating graphics card in the coming weeks, for the holiday season, ‘sell’ a Radeon to our readers in one paragraph.
RT: The R9 290 or 290X is what they’re looking for. No NVIDIA product can match their performance/$$ right now, they won’t get 3 games essentially for free with their GPU purchase, and they will get the latest support Mantle and they’ll want Radeons to play those great Mantle games that are on our doorstep (Civ: BE and DA:I), and they’ll also get support for FreeSync.
Editor's note
Roy clearly has a naturally biased view on the state of play in the graphics card market. Though AMD does have significant value-adds in the form of free games and recent price cuts, the overall consensus is that the next generation of GCN cannot come fast enough. Agree, disagree? Let us know your thoughts in the HEXUS community.
