AMD deprioritizing flagship gaming GPUs

I had a chance to speak to Jack Huynh, AMD's senior vice president and general manager of the Computing and Graphics Business Group, during IFA 2024 in a question and answer session. Due to speculation that AMD won't launch flagship GPUs for its next-gen lineup, I pressed Huynh for information regarding the company's plans for the high-end GPU market with the RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 8000-series. His comments sketch out a plan focused specifically on gaining market share in the GPU market above all else, and this strategy deprioritizes chasing Nvidia's highest-end gaming cards — at least for now.

AMD's plans for high-end GPUs with its upcoming Radeon RX 8000-series have been cast into doubt by several hardware leakers who assert that AMD has canceled its upper-tier RX 8000 cards. However, the company hasn't officially commented on the matter before.

Of course, if AMD chose to avoid the battle of flagship GPUs, it wouldn't be without precedent: AMD sat out the battle for the top of the desktop GPU market back in 2019 when it first launched its RDNA 1 cards with a heavy focus on the mainstream market. The intervening generations found the company battling it out for the performance leadership position with Nvidia once again, but with little effect — Nvidia has a stranglehold on discrete gaming GPUs with performance leadership and 88% of the market share, while AMD holds just 12% of the market.

I asked Huynh about the situation. Here's the lightly edited transcript of the conversation: