AMD has declared a strategic shift in its approach to the gaming GPU industry, as it prepares to deploy next-generation GPUs based on the RDNA 4 architecture. In an interview with Tom's Hardware, Jack Huynh, head of AMD's Computing and Graphics Business Group, stated that RDNA 4 will not target the enthusiast area, but rather the mainstream and performance segments. This is part of AMD's overall plan to enhance its market share in the PC gaming graphics sector by providing competitively priced, high-performance solutions.
The decision to prioritise the mainstream market comes as AMD attempts to increase its presence in the discrete GPU arena, where it currently has a 12 per cent market share. According to Huynh, the company's focus is on increasing scale, which is important to entice game creators to optimise their titles for AMD technology.
Huynh noted that, while the enthusiast category provides prestige, it is a low-volume, high-cost industry that AMD has historically struggled to capitalise on. The move into the mainstream category is reminiscent of the company's successful strategy with the Radeon RX 5000 series, which won price-performance clashes with Nvidia in similar categories.
AMD's withdrawal from the enthusiast segment is likewise consistent with overall market trends. During the crypto-mining craze, the business saw success with the RDNA 2-powered Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6900 series, although this demand has now subsided.
Its RDNA 3-powered Radeon RX 7900 series failed to keep up with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 4080, notably in terms of ray tracing performance. AMD intends to solve these problems with RDNA 4, which will improve ray tracing capabilities as well as overall performance and efficiency.
AMD's new goal is to gain market share by producing GPUs that appeal to a greater segment of the gaming audience, with a focus on performance-per-watt and price-performance benefits. The company's leadership views this as a more sustainable path to long-term success.
While it has not fully ruled out returning to the flagship class in the future, its present focus is to gain 40-50 per cent market share before attempting to reclaim the high-end market, which Nvidia now dominates.
