AMD posts record revenues and says RDNA 4 is 'on track' for early 2025, but why are gaming GPUs the one thing it can't get right?
Why are gaming GPUs for PCs the one thing AMD just can't get right? That's the multi-billion-dollar mystery following AMD's latest earnings call for professional bean counters (via Seeking Alpha) despite a promise that the chip maker's next-gen RDNA 4 graphics is on track for early 2025.
AMD's Lisa Su, celebrating her 10th anniversary as CEO, explained that the company's revenues have hit a record high in the third quarter of this year at $6.8 billion. That was achieved courtesy of healthy increases in revenues across data centre CPUs and GPUs, plus CPUs for client PCs and laptops.
But once again, Su had to concede that gaming revenues were down. In AMD parlance, «gaming» means a combination of graphics cards for PCs and custom APUs for games consoles, most obviously the Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation.
All told, AMD said revenue for gaming fell fully 69% year-on-year to $462 or well under 10% of AMD's overall revenues. That sounds catastrophic, and it kind of is. However, much of that is down to the inevitable cyclical slump in console sales as the two big beasts from Sony and Microsoft continue to age.
Su pointed to the upcoming PS5 Pro as a cause for optimism in the near term. But as for PC graphics cards specifically, unfortunately AMD doesn't break out the numbers separately.
Su would only say that, «revenue declined year-over-year as we prepare for a transition to our next-gen Radeon GPUs based on our RDNA 4 architecture. In addition to a strong increase in gaming performance, RDNA 4 delivers significantly higher ray-tracing performance and adds new AI capabilities. We are on track to launch the first RDNA 4 GPUs in early 2025.»
The thing is, AMD has been reporting non-specific declines in PC gaming graphics for about as long as we can remember now, while third-party analysts continue to report declining market share for the company versus the only other significant player in the market, Nvidia.
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