After the tantalising tidbit of information that AMD has carved out a 45% market share in Japan comes a much bigger bomb from the company's CEO. Dr. Lisa Su says that the Radeon RX 9070 XT is bar far the best-selling AMD Radeon GPU ever and by a factor of 10. Yes, really.
Is there a catch? Well, she was only talking about first-week sales. Speaking to Asus rep Ordinary Uncle Tony(otherwise known as Tony Yu and Asus's General Manager for China), Su said, "the 9070 XT has been a fantastic success. Actually, it's been the number one selling for all of the AMD Radeon generations for first-week sales by far, 10x higher than previous generations."
Su doesn't put actual figures on it, so it's hard to know how that translates into actual volumes. And of course, bumper sales for a week and then no availability for months, by way of example, wouldn't necessarily mean impressive overall volumes.
So, arguably the real question is long-term availability, not first-week sales. On that subject, Su says, "we're increasing the manufacturing so that we can have more gamers who have access." Again, the lack of specifics is a little frustrating even if we applaud the general sentiment.
Predictably, Su emphasised AMD's current focus on bringing features and performance to the relative mainstream of the market. "Everyone likes a very, very high-end GPU, but not so many people can access it," Su observes, adding that AMD remains committed to bringing, "the best gaming capability to a good price point."
Among other topics, Ordinary Uncle Tony also asked Su for her take on the view that chip manufacturing costs seem to be escalating while the performance benefits of new nodes are diminishing.
"It is true that the silicon scaling is getting more difficult. We saw this trend for the last five-plus years," Su says. The solution? Su thinks silicon still has some legs, but that it will require some companion technologies to maximise returns.
"From AMD's standpoint, we have invested in next-generation technologies, for example, our chiplet packaging technology. Our 3D stacking is another example," she says. "I think silicon still has a long way to go, but we have to continue to optimise not just on silicon but on package and also on system and also with software."
Anywho, it will certainly be interesting to see both how available AMD GPUs are over the coming months and then what impact that has on AMD's broader market share when the usual data-collating suspects chime in later this year with their estimates. Long story short, it seems clear there's major demand for AMD's new GPUs, the question is whether the company will actually make enough of them to gain significant market share. Watch this space.
