Across the tech world, companies are conducting fourth-quarter earnings calls to discuss revenue and losses and project future quarters.
AMD is no exception. While the overall numbers were in the black — $7.7 billion in revenue, an over billion-dollar increase over last year—the company's gaming division "only" earned $563 million, a nearly 60% drop from the previous year.
CEO Lisa Su blamed the drop on a lack of dedicated graphics card sales and a dip in "semi-custom" chips. While Sony launched the PS5 Pro in the fall of 2024, both Xbox and Sony appear to be winding down the current generation's hardware. They will likely work with AMD again on the PS6 and whatever hardware Xbox is or isn't fiddling with now.
Nvidia already outpaces AMD in the gaming department, and the company just released its RTX 5090 GPUs, which have already hit absurd prices.
Su's call offered some hope. She revealed that the new Radeon RX 9000 series, 9070 and 9070 XT, will launch in early March.
The graphics card revealed at CES in January is aimed at the mid-tier. Su said the company would bring "high-quality gaming to mainstream players."
During CES, AMD presented the 9070 series as competing against Nvidia's RTX 4070 Ti and 4070 Super cards and the company's current 7000 series. It ranges from $500 to $799 between the chips.
With Nvidia's high-end cards seemingly unavailable to purchase as stock gets snatched up instantly, AMD might have a good opportunity to grab attention with a quality, less expensive GPU.
The 9000 series is supposed to feature a new 4nm TSMC process, which should improve efficiency; AMD's Fidelity Super Resolution (FSR) 4 might catch up to Nvidia's DLSS upscaling, along with enhanced ray-tracing — all improvements over the 7000 series.
Our testing found that the new Nvidia 50 series doesn't blow the RTX 40s out of the water, so you don't need to upgrade now. However, DLSS 4 hasn't dropped yet, which will make the difference.
All AMD has to do for now is keep the 9000 series in stock, and maybe they can lure gamers looking to upgrade away who don't need all the bells and whistles of a high-end GPU.
