AMD Radeon GPU boss is leaving, hopes AMD can beat “final boss” Nvidia

pcgamesn.com:

One of the biggest players in the graphics card war between Nvidia and AMD has left the building. Well, they will be leaving the building at the end of the year. That’s right, Scott Herkelman, the head of the AMD Radeon GPU business, is leaving the company at the end of 2023 after leading the graphics business unit since 2016.

Herkelman announced his plan to leave AMD in a tweet thanking his colleagues and reminiscing over their time “fighting shoulder to shoulder in the trenches together,” calling the graphics card world a “wonderful, vibrant industry.”

Herkelman’s seven years at the helm has seen a lot of change at AMD. When he took over as senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s Graphics Business Unit, it had just launched the AMD Radeon RX 460, which had a boost clock speed of 1,200MHz. Seven years on, the latest team red cards are the excellent AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT and less excellent Radeon RX 7700 XT, with the former hitting a boost clock speed of 2,430MHz, more than double that of the RX 460, albeit for a higher tier card within their respective generations.

The tweet announcing his departure also shared hopes that AMD could “one day… beat the final boss”, referring, of course, to Nvidia. But as GPUs get increasingly rapid and powerful, how much closer has AMD got to wresting control over the market from team green?

The answer is: no closer at all. In fact, it’s gone backward. At least, that’s according to the Steam Hardware & Software Survey. When Herkelman took charge in September 2016, AMD presided over a 24.06% market share. The most recent survey, for August 2023, suggests AMD is sitting on just a 15.94% slice of the pie. Meanwhile, Nvidia went from 57.8% to 74.93% market share in that same