AMD is making a strategic shift with its upcoming RDNA 4 architecture. The company has confirmed it will be stepping away from the high-end GPU market, where it has been vying for top performance against NVIDIA. Instead, AMD’s new focus is on ‘customer scalability,’ prioritizing market share and affordability.
This change in direction has been rumored for months, and AMD’s Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Computing and Graphics Business Group, Jack Huynh, has now officially confirmed it to Tom’s Hardware. Huynh explained that AMD is aiming to avoid direct comparisons of its flagship GPUs, such as the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, against NVIDIA’s top-of-the-line GeForce RTX 4090, where the RTX 4090 currently dominates. AMD believes that competing in the high-end market with a slower product, even if it’s its flagship, can hurt its overall brand image. By focusing on market share and accessibility, AMD wants to make its GPUs available to a wider range of users.
Huynh stated, “So, my number one priority right now is to build scale, to get us to 40 to 50 percent of the market faster. Do I want to go after 10% of the TAM [Total Addressable Market] or 80%? I’m an 80% kind of guy because I don’t want AMD to be the company that only people who can afford Porsches and Ferraris can buy. We want to build gaming systems for millions of users.”
He further elaborated, “Yes, we will have great, great, great products. But we tried that strategy [King of the Hill] – it hasn’t really grown. ATI has tried this King of the Hill strategy, and the market share has kind of been…the market share. I want to build the best products at the right system price point. So, think about price point-wise; we’ll have leadership.”
As part of this new strategy, AMD has reportedly cancelled its planned Navi 41 GPU, which was intended for the high-end market. Instead, the company will be focusing on the Navi 44 and Navi 48 GPUs, which are expected to offer competitive performance at more accessible price points. More details on these new GPUs are expected to be revealed in the near future.
