AMD ecstatic over R700 success
AMD IS PLEASED as punch about regaining the graphics crown from Nvidia, but has said it won't be relaxing now that it has achieved that.
Speaking to The INQUIRER, Ian 'the happiest man in the graphics market today' McNaughton said, "today we may be able to plant the flag as the fastest enthusiast graphics card on the planet, but trust me when I say we're not going to rest on those laurels."
"Today's success is the result of a couple of years of effort and a change in strategy we started two years ago."
He pointed out that the R700 was by design rather than by accident, and that although there are some naysayer's in the market, the product reviews of the new cards will show that AMD is on to a winner.
"It's a good day for enthusiasts and it's a good day for AMD, but maybe not such a good day for our competitors. But I'll never count out Nvidia, they are very good at what they do and competition is good," added McNaughton.
He stressed that, rather than reacting to the competition or playing catch up, AMD has little idea what others may be developing and that it is just working on roadmaps based on what its engineers are capable of.
"Nvidia, like us, is very good at keeping things secret and we all have our own Cadbury's secret way of getting the caramel in the chocolate bar," McNaughton said, piling on the syrup.
Although AMD is keeping a watchful eye on Intel's upcoming Larabee chip, McNaughton is holding out judgement one way or the other until actual hardware hits the ground, at which point he reckons that the market will judge for itself.
McNaughton said this launch is the second step in the company's three step process. The first step was to bring to market the high end, mainstream 4800 series. The second step was to capture the enthusiast market with the launch of the R700.
The third, upcoming step will see the rounding out of the platform with launch of the RV710 and RV730, being the value and mainstream market products. Although he wouldn't give an exact timetable, McNaughton did say that this was 'imminent'.
"Hopefully there are lots of Geforce owners in the market who will see the light and go and buy Radeon graphics cards," he said. ยต
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
Lol, yeah, those that see the light as their NVidia graphic part flares up and melts due to the bad die packaging...
I was going to get an 8800GT earlier this year. I'm glad I waited for the 4800 chips. I recently bought a Diamond HD 4850 for $150 and couldn't be happier. Performs like a champ and a decent overclocker.
Glad to see AMD with some good news. (i'm currently Intel / Nvidia but miss u guys a bit :-p ) The very high end sector maybe a niche in comparision to other sectors but its where u find the hard core people who spread word of you. Good going! 

I'm also glad the engineers are starting to hit brick walls in terms of designs. I'm sure a lot of these cards can do a hell of a lot more with well revised drivers instead of just chucking more raw hardware power at them. 

Gratz AMD! .
I saw that light one year ago, the same day I installed my new 8800GTS.....

"Holy Kabab, this is my last nvidia"....

I had to endure all that year with their crappy drivers....a year later, finally a good driver, but not good enough + it is one year too late.

By the way, "GTS" means "Go To Sleep" ;-)
"Hopefully there are lots of Geforce owners in the market who will see the light and go and buy Radeon graphics cards," he said.

No. Why should I do that? I'm not buying a new card, Radeon or otherwise. Why don't you graphics card companies go and spend some of your revenue funding studios to do actual PC games rather than shoddy ports first? There's not a single game out there, not a single one, that I cannot play at my resolution (1680x1050) with a two year old card. The only challenger is Crysis, and I'm not going to buy a new card for a single game. Why don't you give people a reason to buy your card other than higher numbers in a benchmark? PC gaming is far from dead but it's no thanks to you two companies slapping your TWIMTBP and whatever on every other 120Hz console port the publishers shit out on us.
As much as I'm glad ATI/AMD are back in the game perfromancewise, am I really the only one who thinks that they are seriously lossmaking on their cards? I know nVidia have never been accused of not knowing how to make money but the price disaprity between the cards at the mo is staggering, & I simply dont beleive AMD are making a penny on their cards. 

I think they are doing the old marketing loss leader shenanigans to get people to buy their cards again after theri annus horriblus last year with the HD2xxx joke (one which is was unfortunate enough to get taken in by). 

Personally I dont want to see this years figures as I think its going to be another financial disaster & as much as everyone is baiting nVidia for losing cash this quarter, as a whole they are still tripping over sacks of gold. 

I think AMD is mortally wounded financially and just like the gerries found out in the 40's fighting a war on two fronts (Intel & nVidia) when your enemies have more resources is never a winner. Basically I think as much as I like the redish green corner & still buy their cards, I think last years $3.3 billion loss was too much to shake off for a company that only turns over $6 billion.
Radeon has none of the above, so other then dampening prices in the market place I see no real use for them, I'm really sorry wish it was otherwise....

Intel has paper promises, crappy drivers and an EU monopolist' trial to boot.

Nah, I'm an Nvidiot since 1999 and proud of it.


Remember that the graphics division of AMD only lost $11M last year. That was with poor sales and significant research expenditures while trying to come up with something a little more powerful than what they had previously.

Now that they have a chip that is powerful and reasonable cheap to make, they have something that they can charge less and sill make some money. Remember, two 4000 series cores are still smaller than a single nV280 core. Imagine what the benefits must be in terms of yield. 
However, they did say they wished they had charged a little more for the cards initially. They underestimated how well they would perform, both in terms of benchies and in the marketplace. 
Hopefully this starts to earn them some positive cash flow somewhere in their company.
Don't forget that nVidia blamed TSMC for the bad designs and all the packaging manufacturers as well. I'm sure that AMD and everyone else who buys from TSMC would have had some issues had the manufacturing been the problem.

Not only is nVidia going to lose serious cash over the recent chip failures, they are going to lose support from their manufacturing partners. Who do you think is a better customer for TSMC? AMD who's selling chips by the truckload or nVidia who's pointing a finger of blame at TSMC for their own bad designs?
all the pc,s i have built have had NVidia graphics cards apart from the first one that had a voodoo 3000 .all my pc,s have had amd cpu.s .I have been hoping ati would release a decent card that could at least compete with nvidia cards for a while i like to support the underdog and without competition manufacturers can re;ease any old crap and charge whet they like..I wont be buying any more creative soundcards again either seeing as there is no linux support for the xifi cards i have spent loads on there hardware .
...on the AMD train.

For the first time ever, I've moved over to the red graphics team after 10 years with the green team. Best money ever spent on IT gear and no regrets. 
I even think the drivers are great after hearing years of moans about ATI drivers. CCC is far and away better than Nvidia's pile of crap.
I love this site in spite of noting a layer lacking objective reporting, but that is what gives this place its flavor. It makes me laugh. 

I have stuck with nVidia products (mostly) for my main rig years. I usually buy something every other real (generation), waiting out mistakes and very much keeping my eye on all the competition.

I'm glad with what AMD is doing. nVidia had very little competition during the "Vista early years". 

Lets be honest; each comany has notable trip-ups We remember nVidia and its loud a$$ Cine-FX lol and AMD and the 2000 series blowdry heat cards. And now we are back with nVidia broken-fab chips, which I might add is a pretty big issue.

I guess I will be hoping to see a comeback from the Green team not because I'm a fanboy, but becasue of customer loyalty. In all honesty they usually have more stable drivers and turn around. As a customer, that is the most import thing to me when the processing power of both tech keep my games playable at the resolutions I use. Small % in framerate is dragable, but not a reason from me to buy anymore. 

I have an ATI part in my laptop that I'm pretty happy with, so I'm about good products. I was surprised to play FEAR with it.

I bought a 8800 GTS (1st edition) not long after market; I'm fine with the way it plays my games and the performance I have in 3ds max, so I'm playing the wait and see game. My next hardware decision will be made around the next iteration of technologies. It can go either way.

I am looking forward to see what intel brings to the mix; it is definitely an exciting market with the entry of intel and the annoucment of this Hydra Engine from an unknonw company in the pipline.