AMD’s great, but it keeps getting in its own way

How do you scare customers off? Some good strategies for that include selling bad products and making false promises. Intel’s certainly making a name for itself in the first discipline at the moment. Although its competitor AMD benefits from these faux pas in terms of sales, it’s hardly blunder-free either. Not because its products are bad, but because of the way it promotes them. The most recent example? Ryzen 9000 processors.

False promises for the Ryzen 9000

When AMD first showcased its new processors, it compared the Ryzen 7 9700X to the Intel Core i7-14700K. It claimed the new CPU was superior in terms of gaming, productivity and content creation. In reality, the opposite is true. According to Techpowerup, the 9700X is 2.4 per cent slower on average in gaming than its Intel-made rival. Computerbase goes as far to say that the processor runs games at eight per cent fewer frames per second (article in German). In other applications, Intel’s processor is ahead of AMD’s new model by 29 percentage points (article in German).

Admittedly, AMD’s new processor is significantly more efficient than the competition’s. But this isn’t what AMD chose to discuss at the showcase. The figures it presented appeared to be absolutes. That being said, presenting relative figures – i.e. comparing CPUs with the same TDP – wouldn’t have made much difference to the results, at least for gaming. The performance in watts when gaming is far below the potential maximum, with both CPUs reaching similar levels.

In the run-up to its release, AMD announced that the 9700X wouldn’t quite beat the 7800X3D, the reigning gaming champ. At AMD Tech Day, AMD representatives supposedly claimed the reverse was true. The fact is, both statements are wrong. The 9700X is well behind the 7800X3D, falling 8-12 percentage points short depending on which review you read.

Generally speaking, the Ryzen 9000 represents a more modest generation-to-generation performance increase than previous processors. At least when it comes to the applications most important to consumers, such as gaming and productivity.

Given the moderate performance increase, AMD could’ve focused on price and touted Zen 5 as a cheaper, more efficient version of Zen 4. Right now, Zen 5 chips are just too expensive compared to Zen 4. The chip designer, however, opted to take a different tack. Instead, it advertised the product as great for gaming, misleading customers before the processor’s release. And it’s not the first time it’s done so.

Similar story with the Radeon 7900 XTX, 7900 XT, 7700 XT and 7600

AMD set a precedent for false promises when it launched the Radeon 7000 series. The flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX, for instance, was advertised as being up to 1.7 times faster than its predecessor, the RX 6950 XT. This would put the graphics card within reach of the RTX 4090 – all at a low introductory price of 1,000 US dollars. However, as tests conducted by Techspot revealed, its performance was «only» 1.35 per cent better. This puts the RX 7900 XTX in competition with the RTX 4080, which is in a similar price segment. However, with DLSS and better ray tracing performance, it has more to offer. The title of my review, «The Radeon RX 7900 XTX leaves me cold», says it all. Not because it’s a poor-quality graphics card, but because AMD’s marketing had set my expectations at a different level.

Its little sister, the RX 7900 XT, could’ve been an effective addition to AMD’s product portfolio if it hadn’t been for the 900-dollar launch price. Tests run by Computerbase found the card to be more than 15 per cent slower than the RX 7900 XTX. At launch, it just didn’t provide value for money.

AMD repeated its mistakes with the Radeon RX 7700 XT. Compared to the Radeon RX 7800 XT, it was also poor value for money when it was released. When AMD launched the RX 7600, it cut the price shortly before release in a bid to improve things at the last minute. For some reviewers, however, the change came too late to get a mention. But even this last-minute price reduction did nothing to change the fact that the card was a bad deal at launch.

It isn’t just hardware launches that AMD has fumbled in recent years. Feeling the pressure when Nvidia’s DLSS frame generation technology came out, it announced its own technology prematurely. FSR 3 Frame Generation was introduced alongside the Radeon 7000 cards in November 2022. Although the technology didn’t hit the market until September 2023, it was unusable on release and only available in two games. Again, AMD’s marketing had stoked misplaced expectations.

AMD, please go back to being the lovable underdog

I like AMD. As a matter of fact, I like it a lot. Ever since the late 90s, I’ve been fitting my own computers exclusively with the Red Team’s CPUs. To me, AMD has always been (and still is) a likeable company. Why? Because of its underdog status.

These days, that underdog narrative seems to have changed – at least when it comes to CPUs. At the moment, AMD’s simply offering better products than Intel. Maybe not in terms of raw performance, but on the whole. Nevertheless, AMD’s making similar mistakes to Intel. Instead of promoting its products the right way, it’s making false promises. That may be working now while Intel’s at rock bottom. However, if the beleaguered chip giant recovers, it might strike back. Perhaps AMD should return to its strengths as a former underdog. If a product can’t live up to expectations, it should be marketed realistically. Doing exactly that has always made the company stand out.