Gamer Nexus - BLACKLISTED by AMD | AMD's Dirty Tactics

DooKey said:

Every AMD fanatic told us AMD cares about gamers. Those of us that know how business works said you are wrong. I don't expect a single one of those idiots to take what they said back.

Many of them are the same ones that said no one should hope AMD will die when they were having their problems because we need competition but now hope for the death of Intel.

Click to expand...

To be honest. AMD was always clear dual x3d CCDs were of no benefit for gaming.
These are still consumer grade 9000 zen 5 chips they will mention gaming... and like the 9950x3d it doesn't offer gaming performance over the 9800x3d really. Though for a game dev that is compiling a lot of things every day... but still wants to "test" the games on max class hardware. These are an upgrade in the compiling dept. Hey if your running a bunch of compiles over the course of a day the ^2 might actually save you close to an hour depending.

This chip does fill a niche for people building powerful CPU based AI workstations. IMO that is why AMD has dropped them now. I don't think they dropped it cause Intel X or Y 270 pro 290 pro whatever.

IMHO this is more about thread ripper supply... wanting to use those dies for Epyc which they are having a hard time filling orders on. Use the supply of x3d dies to make dual x3d chips that will get snapped up for AI as well. I'm sure a bunch of people that would have been considering mid core count thread rippers... might go with these. AMD mades less BUT they also free up those potential thread ripper dies for even higher priced Epyc.

Chris_B said:

Yup, i remember that being part of an interview where they had tested dual 3d cache and it didn't make sense outside of a few apps and the cost was also a factor. Yet people went on and on about it, then they finally got it, engage more interwebs complaining.

Click to expand...

And they’re framing it in a “how dare they” context. If you want to spend $900 on this, you deserve to spend $900 on this. It’s not as if there aren’t far more viable products for a significantly more reasonable price FROM AMD that are available to buy. This is a halo product targeting guys who thought paying an extra $1000 for an ROG astral 5090 was worth it because “ROG branding” and marginally better cooling. That customer exists, it just isn’t me.

HockeyJon said:

Publicly traded companies don't owe us anything for any of that. You can't simultaneously have a fiduciary duty to shareholders for maximizing profits while also saying you're going to cut your margins to "do gamers a solid" while those same components are going to be swiped up by AI people who would have been willing to pay triple the price. It sucks, I hate it, but that's reality, and I don't hate the companies for doing what they're supposed to be doing. Instead, I purchased shares once I saw this trend forming a few years ago, which turned out to be a better decision than simply complaining about the crappy consumer situation.

Click to expand...

No dispute, but gamers have a legitimate gripe here and not owing loyalty cuts both way. Gamers do not owe them their business, and that creates opportunities for other companies. And consumers have a long memory...as a share holder, which its relatively small, I want the companies to be diversified and not chase short term profits while giving their known core business customers the shaft. A steady 6-7% gain is perfectly fine for me. But the majority share holders are the fund managers for funds that exist in 401ks, and the responsibility isn't properly doled out to the end shareholders. So, yes, you're right, but the structure and perverse incentives are what's driving this sort of behavior. Lets not act like the millions and millions of people that own shares in these funds want these specific
business practices.

It is worth noting, I have no problem with AMD making an 9950x3d2 for a high price tag. I was responding to a more general comment about companies shifting to feed the AI monster for big profits at the expense of their long time customers.

"The frustration comes from the fact the AI revolution wasn't possible without the gamer and enthusiasts community keeping the ecosystem alive until some big alternative uses showed up. And now that's it's here, that same community is an afterthought at best."

1.1.2.3.5... said:

It is worth noting, I have no problem with AMD making an 9950x3d2 for a high price tag. I responding to a more general comment about companies shifting to feed the AI monster for big profits at the expense of their long time customers.

"The frustration comes from the fact the AI revolution wasn't possible without the gamer and enthusiasts community keeping the ecosystem alive until some big alternative uses showed up. And now that's it's here, that same community is an afterthought at best."

Click to expand...

I'll pre call the outrage for this time next month... when SOMEONE is going to make a video about; The shortage of 9950x3d^2 chips, as AI users will be snapping them up. (half joking... really I can see that being Steves "follow up in a couple weeks" WE tried to buy one to review BUT.... AI AI AI AI lol)

1.1.2.3.5... said:

It is worth noting, I have no problem with AMD making an 9950x3d2 for a high price tag. I responding to a more general comment about companies shifting to feed the AI monster for big profits at the expense of their long time customers.

Click to expand...

I think it's really cool that they made it, I also think it's a pretty pointless product.

My hobby is about as dumb, frustrating, and self-destructive (aside from drug abuse) as it gets so there are lots of stupid things I'm glad exist.

Is there anything stopping them from buying the chip and reviewing it? If their reviews are top notch then people will wait for it. I would at least.

I think the issue is (GN) Steve takes things a lot further than he has to when it comes to criticism.

You can point out a flaw in a product or company without being combative. He's established himself as "that guy" (I'm sure intentionally) but for what gain? I would guess just for that share of the enthusiast market.

LukeTbk said:

I really doubt you do not know of techpowerup or phoronix or igorlabs

Click to expand...

TechPowerUp is mostly for news for me. Phoronix of course but they focus on Linux news and once in a blue moon they have hardware reviews. I've never heard of igorlabs. There are other tech reviewers I pay attention to like Level1Techs, but Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed are peak tech reviews. Everything else is just theater. I'm surprised so many people here want to throw Gamers Nexus under a bus, as if he's done something wrong. We've seen this kind of behavior before many times in the past. Kyle here has had it done to him as well, and it was never done in good faith. AMD knows which tech reviewers are going to be the most critical of something like the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and just didn't give them a review sample for that reason. Has anyone actually said anything good about the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, besides it's the fastest gamer chip to own? This is the CPU to get for the people who need *want* the fastest and haven't yet maxed out their credit cards.

View: https://youtu.be/b8h5WGyz4P0?si=0yt1cxw_ckNGXpPq

DukenukemX said:

TechPowerUp is mostly for news for me. Phoronix of course but they focus on Linux news and once in a blue moon they have hardware reviews. I've never heard of igorlabs. There are other tech reviewers I pay attention to like Level1Techs, but Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed are peak tech reviews. Everything else is just theater. I'm surprised so many people here want to throw Gamers Nexus under a bus, as if he's done something wrong. We've seen this kind of behavior before many times in the past. Kyle here has had it done to him as well, and it was never done in good faith. AMD knows which tech reviewers are going to be the most critical of something like the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and just didn't give them a review sample for that reason. Has anyone actually said anything good about the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, besides it's the fastest gamer chip to own? This is the CPU to get for the people who need *want* the fastest and haven't yet maxed out their credit cards.

View: https://youtu.be/b8h5WGyz4P0?si=0yt1cxw_ckNGXpPq

Click to expand...

Tech Jesus has a tendency to be a bit "theatrical". I bet AMD was worried he might go off on a gamer rant about "why did AMD launch this thing?" I think TechPowerUp is right - AMD knew the 9950X3D2 would be a snore for gamers like they've told us a dual X3D CCD chip would be for gaming over and over across multiple years. Despite launching it they're trying to suppress gaming news. Not gloss over it, just straight up suppress it. Shut up, forget about it, buy a 9850X3D for half the $ and go play your games sort of suppress. Of course Phoronix got one and it won most of their tests... which didn't include games unless I missed one when I was flipping through their review.

bigdogchris said:

I think the issue is (GN) Steve takes things a lot further than he has to when it comes to criticism.

You can point out a flaw in a product or company without being combative. He's established himself as "that guy" (I'm sure intentionally) but for what gain? I would guess just for that share of the enthusiast market.

Click to expand...

Hey, he's more than a one trick pony, besides being 'that guy' he also dick glazes China!

DukenukemX said:

TechPowerUp is mostly for news for me. Phoronix of course but they focus on Linux news and once in a blue moon they have hardware reviews. I've never heard of igorlabs. There are other tech reviewers I pay attention to like Level1Techs, but Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed are peak tech reviews. Everything else is just theater. I'm surprised so many people here want to throw Gamers Nexus under a bus, as if he's done something wrong. We've seen this kind of behavior before many times in the past. Kyle here has had it done to him as well, and it was never done in good faith. AMD knows which tech reviewers are going to be the most critical of something like the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and just didn't give them a review sample for that reason. Has anyone actually said anything good about the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, besides it's the fastest gamer chip to own? This is the CPU to get for the people who need *want* the fastest and haven't yet maxed out their credit cards.

View: https://youtu.be/b8h5WGyz4P0?si=0yt1cxw_ckNGXpPq

Click to expand...

Not everything is about gaming. Especially these days.
AMD has always said dual x3d cache for gaming was pointless. Anyone that was expecting them to have been lying is proven wrong today. lol

https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-9950x3d2-linux
"Among the workloads with the biggest gains going from the Ryzen 9 9950X3D to Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 were easyWave, PostgreSQL, Incompact3D, OpenFOAM CFD, OpenVINO, GNU Octave, SPECFEM3D, OpenRadioss, RELION, Whisper.cpp, and others that were delivering a 20% or more advantage to this Dual Edition CPU. For those cases and similar, the ~$100 price premium over the Ryzen 9 9950X3D could be easily justified given the significant time-savings if routinely engaging such applications."

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/amd-ryzen-9-9950x3d2-dual-edition-review/
"Yes, AMD’s new Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition is indeed the ultimate processor for a wide range of creative professionals – offering unmatched performance across a large portion (though not all) of our benchmark suite."


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PcO2k6vprY
As per Wendel.... "I think AMD could have charged more" lol

The story is exactly the same as it was on the 9950x3d. If ALL you are doing is gaming. Don't be daft, buy a 9800x3d.
If your doing a bit more desktop type things like Adobe suite stuffs. You might want a 9950x3d.

IF you really really want a thread ripper, cause your a developer of sometype doing a couple hours of code comp daily. Yet you don't have the budget or are willing to spend 15k.... buy a 9850x3d^2.
AMD will happily sell fewer threadrippers so they can use that silicon to meet the current demand on Epyc processors.

ChadD said:

Honestly he has become more and more unwatchable.

Since he has decided he is a documentarian getting political and questioning companies political donations. YA fuck em.

Companies don't have to play nice with anyone. No one is entitled to review product. If your going to turn into a bunch of assholes questioning every move a company makes trying to weaponize politics against them... expect to not be in their good books no. I'm sure Nvidia and AMD have about had it with Gamers Nexus. I'm sure he is questioning Intel right now about the % of the company owned by Trump... err I mean the federal gov right? Or I guess he wasn't a big enough documentarian yet to be asking those questions while he was at their US tax payer paid for fab projects.

Honestly at this point Tech Jesus needs to check himself. He isn't the industry moral authority and his acting like it has become grating. I don't blame AMD for ghosting him. He has transitoined from a tech reviewer to a tech industry moral crusader... as long as your morals align with his poltics it seems anyway.

Click to expand...

I’ve never liked his content since he manages to spread 3 minutes of content across 25 minutes of video every single time. I’ll take an AI summary of a GN video over the real thing every single time.

ChadD said:

Two DO NOT bitch when you get cut out of day zero hardware from companies you are attacking. Kyle got blacklisted, I don't mean to speak for him but it seems like it was a badge of honour. Not a OH NO NOS look the big bad corporation that I have been calling a big bad corporation for the past year is not being nice to me. Maaa business model !!!!

Click to expand...

Again, if you watch the video, Steve literally says it's a badge of honor to get blacklisted by these companies.

Also, it's not just this lack of a review sample, AMD has been ghosting them on any sort of communication for a while now and apparently now they are shunted off to a third-party marketing team.

MavericK said:

Again, if you watch the video, Steve literally says it's a badge of honor to get blacklisted by these companies.

Also, it's not just this lack of a review sample, AMD has been ghosting them on any sort of communication for a while now and apparently now they are shunted off to a third-party marketing team.

Click to expand...

He has made a habit of mis quoting low level AMD employees. SO... No doubt they have been told to keep their communication with him professional and likely via mail that has had multiple eyes on it.

STEVE did that to himself when he decided he was a Tech news reporter and not just a tech reviewer and enthusiast.

I mean why ever would they tell their low level outreach type employees to be careful/not talk to a hostile reporter? I know crazy...
I mean this is a headline from a couple months ago.....
" AMD Needs to Just Shut Up: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB GPU Review "
Seems like he has gotten what he asked for. If your going to post a public review of someones product and say they should SHUT THE FUCK UP. (really in the printed version of that review he drops f bombs) Maybe just maybe the company in question will take you seriously.

If we are going to get right down to it though... THIS is where HE fucked up. If you want to be a hard hitting reporter. Cool be a hard hitting reporter. Just don't expect the company is going to treat you like a hardware reviewer anymore. NO one wants to get fired cause they said something that gets quoted out of context by a jackhole on youtube with 2.8m subs.
ALSO if your hard hitting reporting... is to make up IMAGINARY Links between a company and JEFFERY FUCKING EPSTEIN. YA the low level employees are going to be instructed to ghost you lest it cost the company a bunch of cash and force them to fire you for being the dumb ass.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJcf2UGCH1w

Bottom line is Steve has made his brand toxic for ALL the hardware companies. He should probably be planning to buy hardware for now on. I'm sure Nvidia and Intel will likewise "ghost" him.

HE accused AMD of being corrupt.... like not making bad products. BUT he thinks he is a journalist now and claims to be reporting on ILLEGAL behaviour. I would not doubt at all the AMDs legal team told his contacts to ghost him, and have copied every communication with the dude just in case it should become important.

This is a bunch of overhyped bullshit. Blacklisting happens all the time for tons of different reasons. Kyle did tech journalism alongside tech reviews long before this guy was even around. I think at some point he was probably blacklisted by every single tech company but not necessarily all at the same time. The difference is Kyle knew what he was getting into and went ahead despite the consequences and even more importantly he didn't whine about it. Hell, he has probably only ever mentioned a fraction of the blacklistings he's been under which is probably the smartest thing you could do in a situation like that.

That's one of the problems with this. No one needs to hear him whine and he's only doing it for outrage baiting. What makes this even worse is the fact that he may not even have been blacklisted with regards to this release. It wasn't a wide release to reviewers and he has no proof that he was blacklisted here. Even if he has been blacklisted, so be it. Only a moron wouldn't know blacklisting would be a consequence of his actions so he has no place to whine about it.

I'm going to assume Steve from HU probably asked for permission from AMD and/or their outsourced PR company before sending his sample kit off to Steve from GN. Which if GN was blacklisted he would have been told no to his request to send it to GN.

Probably more of a case that the only people that will buy these while RAM prices are through the roof, are people that already own an AM5 system and have money to burn, or someone that can actually use the 2nd cores 3d cache and can afford the current AI RAM/storage tax. Their sampling was a lot more targeted for certain markets, skipping entirely the market that Linus would reach since they won't buy these. There's a lot of overlap with HU and GN, but personally I would put HU above GN in review quality and getting to the point instead of filling a video up with 70% filler. (Plus I'm Australian and prefer the accents over the overly loud US ones.)

LTT had a review of this. They said, yeah, it's a great gaming chip, but way overpriced for that. They referenced Phoronix and someone else and said there are other workloads, not just AI, where it actually is useful.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfRCEeRiLI4


Down in the comments, and, I guess, take this for what it's worth: "no one was blacklisted. Product seeding is not a right lol. This is completely different from the situation between Hardware Unboxed and NVIDIA -LS"

They bought one, weren't seeded it. I assume "LS" means Linus Sebastian.

You have to understand that limited samples are not "blacklisting". This is also not the first time AMD has done this. They frequently did this with Epyc and Threadripper CPU's.

Sometimes, they limit availability for various reasons. In this case, it wasn't worth the cost of sending so many CPU's out. They may also have yield issues.

ChadD said:

To be honest. AMD was always clear dual x3d CCDs were of no benefit for gaming.
These are still consumer grade 9000 zen 5 chips they will mention gaming... and like the 9950x3d it doesn't offer gaming performance over the 9800x3d really. Though for a game dev that is compiling a lot of things every day... but still wants to "test" the games on max class hardware. These are an upgrade in the compiling dept. Hey if your running a bunch of compiles over the course of a day the ^2 might actually save you close to an hour depending.

This chip does fill a niche for people building powerful CPU based AI workstations. IMO that is why AMD has dropped them now. I don't think they dropped it cause Intel X or Y 270 pro 290 pro whatever.

IMHO this is more about thread ripper supply... wanting to use those dies for Epyc which they are having a hard time filling orders on. Use the supply of x3d dies to make dual x3d chips that will get snapped up for AI as well. I'm sure a bunch of people that would have been considering mid core count thread rippers... might go with these. AMD mades less BUT they also free up those potential thread ripper dies for even higher priced Epyc.

Click to expand...

It also makes for a good VM host.
The extra cache helps offset the limited memory bandwidth.
You could probably stretch it out to 56 virtual CPU cores and hand out as much ram as you could cram into it.

Build 2 or 3 workstations based on these, toss an iSCSI storage array into the mix and you have a decently reliable VM stack.

Lakados said:

It also makes for a good VM host.
The extra cache helps offset the limited memory bandwidth.
You could probably stretch it out to 56 virtual CPU cores and hand out as much ram as you could cram into it.

Click to expand...

That would make sense as well.
I think pretty much any reason you might be considering a low to mid range thread ripper... this might be a better option right now.

AMD this year has been rising the price on CPUs in general I don't think they have as many high end CCDs as they would like right now. Burning them in thread ripper parts is probably low priority. This ^2 should take market pressure off the thread rippers. Giving AMD more CCD stock to fill the Epyc orders.

This whole situation with GN though, and gamers being MEH on something they have been assured would be Meh for years is pretty entertaining today.

ChadD said:

To be honest. AMD was always clear dual x3d CCDs were of no benefit for gaming.
These are still consumer grade 9000 zen 5 chips they will mention gaming... and like the 9950x3d it doesn't offer gaming performance over the 9800x3d really. Though for a game dev that is compiling a lot of things every day... but still wants to "test" the games on max class hardware. These are an upgrade in the compiling dept. Hey if your running a bunch of compiles over the course of a day the ^2 might actually save you close to an hour depending.

This chip does fill a niche for people building powerful CPU based AI workstations. IMO that is why AMD has dropped them now. I don't think they dropped it cause Intel X or Y 270 pro 290 pro whatever.

IMHO this is more about thread ripper supply... wanting to use those dies for Epyc which they are having a hard time filling orders on. Use the supply of x3d dies to make dual x3d chips that will get snapped up for AI as well. I'm sure a bunch of people that would have been considering mid core count thread rippers... might go with these. AMD mades less BUT they also free up those potential thread ripper dies for even higher priced Epyc.

Click to expand...

Even as a dev box it appears to only be a minor upgrade (unless Phronix has some wow results later in their review). 5-10% faster on multi-minute compile times is nothing to sneeze but outside of scenarios where I'm automating dozens of sequential compiles (ie testing under a variety of build settings) where they might add up (and in that case, a build farm in a data center to run in parallel is really the way to go). A multi-minute compile time is long enough that I'm not going to sit waiting for it to finish so I can immediately test, I'll start it and context switch to something else (email, looking at some other issue, etc). Regardless of what the context switch is, I'm not going back to the build until the task I switched to is a a stopping point. 5 or 10 seconds is almost never going to matter there.

If I was speccing a new dev box with a large but not unlimited budget (so not a workstation build with parts that would make this chip look cheap), I'd probably go for it as the fastest available option; but it doesn't look like it'd be enough faster to be worth upgrading from any current generation dual CCD chip. (The review doesn't seem to have any last generation ones to compare against.) It would be good vs the 9800x3d; but if there was a reason I didn't get the dual CCD model 6 months or a year ago that reason would still probably be in play to stop me from upgrading.

zandor said:

Tech Jesus has a tendency to be a bit "theatrical". I bet AMD was worried he might go off on a gamer rant about "why did AMD launch this thing?"

Click to expand...

It is $900, which in this economy isn't great. The main complaint from Gamers Nexus probably would have been price, which is justified in my opinion.

I think TechPowerUp is right - AMD knew the 9950X3D2 would be a snore for gamers like they've told us a dual X3D CCD chip would be for gaming over and over across multiple years. Despite launching it they're trying to suppress gaming news. Not gloss over it, just straight up suppress it. Shut up, forget about it, buy a 9850X3D for half the $ and go play your games sort of suppress. Of course Phoronix got one and it won most of their tests... which didn't include games unless I missed one when I was flipping through their review.

Click to expand...

I think gamers would still buy it, assuming you have other uses for a CPU this powerful. For gamers, an eight core X3D is still the ideal CPU.

sphinx99 said:

I’ve never liked his content since he manages to spread 3 minutes of content across 25 minutes of video every single time. I’ll take an AI summary of a GN video over the real thing every single time.

Click to expand...

That's YouTube today. Digital Foundry frequently makes videos like this. Some reason, YouTubers need to make videos very long and will repeat themselves. That run time must be making them money.

ChadD said:

Not everything is about gaming. Especially these days.
AMD has always said dual x3d cache for gaming was pointless. Anyone that was expecting them to have been lying is proven wrong today. lol

Click to expand...

Doesn't stop gamers from buying them. Anything past eight cores isn't needed for gaming. Six cores might be good enough. Something like a 9950X3D is for gamers who also use their computers for work. The 9950X3D² is for those who work hard and want to also play hard.

DukenukemX said:

Doesn't stop gamers from buying them. Anything past eight cores isn't needed for gaming. Six cores might be good enough. Something like a 9950X3D is for gamers who also use their computers for work. The 9950X3D² is for those who work hard and want to also play hard.

Click to expand...

I tell you right now, more than 8 cores does wonders when compiling Vulkan shaders, the more cores the better.

DukenukemX said:

TechPowerUp is mostly for news for me. Phoronix of course but they focus on Linux news and once in a blue moon they have hardware reviews. I've never heard of igorlabs. There are other tech reviewers I pay attention to like Level1Techs, but Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed are peak tech reviews. Everything else is just theater. I'm surprised so many people here want to throw Gamers Nexus under a bus, as if he's done something wrong. We've seen this kind of behavior before many times in the past. Kyle here has had it done to him as well, and it was never done in good faith. AMD knows which tech reviewers are going to be the most critical of something like the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and just didn't give them a review sample for that reason. Has anyone actually said anything good about the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, besides it's the fastest gamer chip to own? This is the CPU to get for the people who need *want* the fastest and haven't yet maxed out their credit cards.

View: https://youtu.be/b8h5WGyz4P0?si=0yt1cxw_ckNGXpPq

Click to expand...

The last truly good review from GN was for the Ryzen 5000; since then, their reviews have still been good, but they’re not what they were before.
As for HU, I haven’t trusted any of their reviews for several years now—they’re full of errors, inaccuracies, and misleading information. Take the launch of the Ryzen 9000 series, for example—they made so many videos, and each subsequent video “corrected” the mistakes in the previous one.

Igorlabs is a small group of enthusiasts, and in their reviews they include many comparisons that no one else does.
TechPowerUp does a great job with their reviews, and you can even compare them to older products—which is really cool.

Mazzspeed said:

I tell you right now, more than 8 cores does wonders when compiling Vulkan shaders, the more cores the better.

Click to expand...

He’s right; 8 cores are sufficient for gaming in 99% of cases.

Compiling shaders isn’t a big deal—we can just wait a little longer for it to finish, and ultimately, it doesn’t happen very often. There’s no point in getting a processor with 2 or 3 times as many cores just to compile game shaders faster. After all, Valve and Microsoft have started a campaign to have shaders downloaded along with the game... And that makes more cores even more pointless for the games themselves.

Yes, if you can use those cores for something else—fine, but they aren’t used in games. I can disable SMT on my 9800x3D, and that will even boost the FPS in some games...

grok summary:

Key Findings (from the video and consistent with other reviews):

• Gaming: Very fast overall, but gains over the regular 9950X3D or even high-end single-cache X3D models (like 9800X3D/9850X3D) are marginal — often just a few percent or less in most titles. The extra cache helps in cache-sensitive scenarios but doesn't deliver a big leap.
• Productivity: Better scaling in some heavily multi-threaded or cache-sensitive workloads (e.g., certain simulations, databases, or inference tasks), but still not transformative enough to justify the price jump.
• Power/Efficiency: Higher TDP shows up; it can draw more power under load, with mixed efficiency results.
• Value: GN calls it a "rip-off" for the vast majority of buyers. The tiny performance uplift doesn't match the ~$300–$400 premium over better-value alternatives like the 9950X3D or 9800X3D.

View: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RDpBuiu0ql8

AVATARAT said:

He’s right; 8 cores are sufficient for gaming in 99% of cases.

Click to expand...

6C/12T is fine in most cases, I actually prefer 6C/12T as I can push all cores to a higher synced overclocked boost due to the fact power draw and thermals are often lower. Furthermore, I never said he wasn't right.

AVATARAT said:

Compiling shaders isn’t a big deal—we can just wait a little longer for it to finish, and ultimately, it doesn’t happen very often.

Click to expand...

Don't downplay the issue, compiling shaders is a necessary PITA, and I don't want my system compiling shaders in the background - games like Stalker 2 compile shaders every time the game is launched as opposed to just compiling shaders after a game or driver update. So while 6C/12T is enough for gaming under an OS that isn't a background process resource hog, there's little doubt more cores make the tedious task of processing shaders considerably less painful. The simple act of downloading/installing shaders every time you launch Steam becomes old really quick, to the point whereby you disable the process altogether and just let the game manage shaders.

I honestly wish there was some way to accelerate the process using AVX-512.

Dan_D said:

You have to understand that limited samples are not "blacklisting". This is also not the first time AMD has done this. They frequently did this with Epyc and Threadripper CPU's.

Sometimes, they limit availability for various reasons. In this case, it wasn't worth the cost of sending so many CPU's out. They may also have yield issues.

Click to expand...

I agree, but it's easier for GN to say they were blacklisted and create a whole video on it for clicks. In this day and age where it's expensive to build a PC and some people aren't interested in reviews on hardware they can't afford GN seems to be more interested in making videos like this which to me is a big turn off.

ChadD said:

STEVE did that to himself when he decided he was a Tech news reporter and not just a tech reviewer and enthusiast.

Click to expand...

He has for the lack of a better term become more "arrogant" in his presentations.

1.1.2.3.5... said:

The frustration comes from the fact the AI revolution wasn't possible without the gamer and enthusiasts community keeping the ecosystem alive until some big alternative uses showed up. And now that's it's here, that same community is an afterthought at best.

Click to expand...

I imagine many thought like that when gaming on computers become popular with Doom release and the PC industry turned quite a bit toward it... gamers would see we did push good money, followed the competition when we bought to create a nice responsive market and thus help advanced the tech quite a lot by creating an incentive for performance per $, something AI is doing by the trillion right now. It is not like gamers did not seat on decades of computings that was build without them.

Imagine poor scientist trying to get hardware for important work seeing line-up of gamers hoarding it out during previous supply crunch.

The idea computing and the capacity to run neural net do not happen without gamers and enthusiast community feel quite speculative, that amount of power to run local AI on a PC was not possible without gamers and enthusiasts and modern neural net do not come from the work of random grads that did not had access to supercomputer, that true, but we do not know how supercomputer would have evolved otherwise and if massive parrallel SIMD cpu does not start to be a think if GPU didn't do it, the IBM cray supercomputer started in the 80s or an equivalent could have went from super wide vector math to matrix and work for this.

The Cray X1 in the early 2000s was almost there.

GotNoRice said:

Honestly I prefer it when reviewers buy their own hardware rather than relying on review sample handouts. The later opens the door to potential bias. I'm not worried about GN having a bias at this point, but too many other reviewers out there are all too happy to keep their reviews positive in order to make sure that the free hardware keeps flowing in their direction. Then there is also the possibility of cherry-picked review samples altering data, which again is not an issue if the parts are simply bought retail. Don't let a company put a noose around your nuts and just hope that they aren't going to tug on it when it suits their purposes.

Click to expand...

If you're running a review site/channel as a business (you have staff and value your personal time at greater than $0), the cost of the hardware is immaterial compared to labor cost incurred to actually do the review.

Dan_D said:

You have to understand that limited samples are not "blacklisting". This is also not the first time AMD has done this. They frequently did this with Epyc and Threadripper CPU's.

Sometimes, they limit availability for various reasons. In this case, it wasn't worth the cost of sending so many CPU's out. They may also have yield issues.

Click to expand...

Both AMD and Intel have done this multiple times over recent years. The 3000/5000 series XT chips and parts like the 9900X3D come to mind on the AMD front, and just about every KS chip on the Intel front along with them typically sending 1-2 out of the 3 SKUs they launch for a new K-series.

And of course he posts a review today... with a BIG ole click bait thumbnail.

Steve has become the Morton Downy Jr. of tech.

This is what happens when people started considering you tube content creators serious reviewers.
Serious reviews don't generate the clicks. Serious reviews don't feed 2m subs.
Click bait titles, sensationalist rants... in which the ranter waits the appropriate amount of time to avoid the automation before dropping the F bombs.

Being hostile to hardware companies generates more clicks and views. Being conspiratorial generates more rabid viewership. (Really you accuse AMD leadership of being connected to Jeffery E on a channel with 2m subs... and then act shocked when their legal dept says maybe don't interact with that guy)

He is going to get 3x as many clicks and views. Complaining about not getting samples then if he had.

Steve is an asshole. I think that is the take away from this weeks events.

1.1.2.3.5... said:

No dispute, but gamers have a legitimate gripe here and not owing loyalty cuts both way. Gamers do not owe them their business, and that creates opportunities for other companies. And consumers have a long memory...as a share holder, which its relatively small, I want the companies to be diversified and not chase short term profits while giving their known core business customers the shaft. A steady 6-7% gain is perfectly fine for me. But the majority share holders are the fund managers for funds that exist in 401ks, and the responsibility isn't properly doled out to the end shareholders. So, yes, you're right, but the structure and perverse incentives are what's driving this sort of behavior. Lets not act like the millions and millions of people that own shares in these funds want these specific
business practices.

It is worth noting, I have no problem with AMD making an 9950x3d2 for a high price tag. I was responding to a more general comment about companies shifting to feed the AI monster for big profits at the expense of their long time customers.

"The frustration comes from the fact the AI revolution wasn't possible without the gamer and enthusiasts community keeping the ecosystem alive until some big alternative uses showed up. And now that's it's here, that same community is an afterthought at best."

Click to expand...

No one owes anyone anything. You shouldn't be loyal to a faceless multinational corporation. You buy what works that someone sells you at a reasonable price. That's it. The seller doesn't owe you anything, and you shouldn't feel compelled to buy from a company because you bought their product before. In any case, where else are you going to go? Who's making the GPU you want that isn't Nvidia?

I don't understand what you expect these companies to do. Their responsibility, legally, is to their shareholders, not to "the gamers that brought them there". Like they can actually be sued if they don't operate in the shareholder's best interests. Nvidia's business has shifted to something like 95% datacenter in the last couple of years. Those customers are willing to spend far more for the same silicon than guys like you and I who want to maximize our FPS and take advantage of whatever life-changing feature Nvidia's marketing team has convinced us we absolutely have to have. Should Nvidia segment out a significant part of the business and check IDs or something to ensure that the guy buying a 6090 for 1/3rd the price they can otherwise sell it at is a "certified confirmed gamer" and not some AI dude? Maybe you're satisfied with a 6-7% return, but I'd like to see how you explain capping returns like that to a group of shareholders when you could have 10x'd the value of the company in a few years like Jensen did.

The demand for compute right now is insatiable, and it's not just in AI, and these aren't just short term profits in spite of what bitter YouTubers are claiming. Businesses evolve, everyone needs to get over it. Yes, it sucks, but instead of complaining about it, invest accordingly.

interesting observation by videocardz

AMD deploys “war room” to monitor our website - VideoCardz.com​

AMD, please stop scraping our website​

We recently noticed a strange surge of invalid requests hitting our website. After checking the traffic, we found roughly 26.6K requests in the last 24 hours, and the source pointed back to AMD’s network.

War Room deployed​

What caught our attention is that these were not normal page visits. The requests were targeting content that does not exist on our site, which made it clear this was some kind of automated monitoring or scraping activity. The traffic also exposed a war-room-dashboard user agent, which is where the “war room” label comes from. I believe it is this open-source project located here.

So here is a friendly reminder to AMD. We have an email address, and they can always ask us for comment or input directly. There is no need to send bots after our site, especially when several of our previous emails have gone unanswered (including the one about FSR4 INT8, btw). That’s why we are not going to bother writing to you about this, rather will just block the network if this continues. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

For the record, we already provide an official RSS feed for anyone who wants to follow our content properly. And by the way, Markham was ATI’s old HQ.

Update: The bot has stopped visiting our website.

https://videocardz.com/pixel/amd-deploys-war-room-to-monitor-our-website-for-leaks

HockeyJon said:

Nvidia's business has shifted to something like 95% datacenter in the last couple of years.

Click to expand...

that can be a bit of an over statement, it is getting close in revenues that was already around 91.5% last quarter, more in profits, but better margin make it look bigger than it is in term of Nvidia production, using estimated margin ~20% of Nvidia production is still outside datacenter. And those margin (we say that every quarter so maybe we would be providing wrong and will have existed for 5-6 years) cannot hold

HockeyJon said:

No one owes anyone anything. You shouldn't be loyal to a faceless multinational corporation. You buy what works that someone sells you at a reasonable price. That's it. The seller doesn't owe you anything, and you shouldn't feel compelled to buy from a company because you bought their product before. In any case, where else are you going to go? Who's making the GPU you want that isn't Nvidia?

I don't understand what you expect these companies to do. Their responsibility, legally, is to their shareholders, not to "the gamers that brought them there". Like they can actually be sued if they don't operate in the shareholder's best interests. Nvidia's business has shifted to something like 95% datacenter in the last couple of years. Those customers are willing to spend far more for the same silicon than guys like you and I who want to maximize our FPS and take advantage of whatever life-changing feature Nvidia's marketing team has convinced us we absolutely have to have. Should Nvidia segment out a significant part of the business and check IDs or something to ensure that the guy buying a 6090 for 1/3rd the price they can otherwise sell it at is a "certified confirmed gamer" and not some AI dude? Maybe you're satisfied with a 6-7% return, but I'd like to see how you explain capping returns like that to a group of shareholders when you could have 10x'd the value of the company in a few years like Jensen did.

The demand for compute right now is insatiable, and it's not just in AI, and these aren't just short term profits in spite of what bitter YouTubers are claiming. Businesses evolve, everyone needs to get over it. Yes, it sucks, but instead of complaining about it, invest accordingly.

Click to expand...

The idea that being responsible to shareholders for short term profits above all else isn't accurate and not legally required at all.

There's a lot of companies I own specifically because they don't chase profits above all else but are anchors that pay long term consistent dividends.

Other companies take big risks.

There's NO obligation to shareholders to chase short term profits. That just not true in any sense.

My expectation is empirically grounded.

People are loyal to brands because of the expectation they get from those brands and that does equate to a sustainable business model. Full stop..and that IS being responsible to shareholders.

Stated plainly, it is a 100% myth that fiduciary responsibility means chasing profits.

It means duty of care and duty of loyalty.

AVATARAT said:

The last truly good review from GN was for the Ryzen 5000; since then, their reviews have still been good, but they’re not what they were before.
As for HU, I haven’t trusted any of their reviews for several years now—they’re full of errors, inaccuracies, and misleading information. Take the launch of the Ryzen 9000 series, for example—they made so many videos, and each subsequent video “corrected” the mistakes in the previous one.

Igorlabs is a small group of enthusiasts, and in their reviews they include many comparisons that no one else does.
TechPowerUp does a great job with their reviews, and you can even compare them to older products—which is really cool.

Click to expand...

GN has to play the algorithm game, every time Google tweaks it to drive their own metrics everyone else has to adopt, and I can’t say it has ever been an improvement…

LukeTbk said:

that can be a bit of an over statement, it is getting close in revenues that was already around 91.5% last quarter, more in profits, but better margin make it look bigger than it is in term of Nvidia production, using estimated margin ~20% of Nvidia production is still outside datacenter. And those margin (we say that every quarter so maybe we would be providing wrong and will have existed for 5-6 years) cannot hold

Click to expand...

Ok, but the revenue is what matters, and that's kind of the point.

1.1.2.3.5... said:

The idea that being responsible to shareholders for short term profits above all else isn't accurate and not legally required at all.

There's a lot of companies I own specifically because they don't chase profits above all else but are anchors that pay long term consistent dividends.

Other companies take big risks.

There's NO obligation to shareholders to chase short term profits. That just not true in any sense.

My expectation is empirically grounded.

People are loyal to brands because of the expectation they get from those brands and that does equate to a sustainable business model. Full stop..and that IS being responsible to shareholders.

Stated plainly, it is a 100% myth that fiduciary responsibility means chasing profits.

It means duty of care and duty of loyalty.

Click to expand...

Who says these are short term profits? Respectfully, I'm not sure you're following this market the way I have been. Every tech company has said plainly that there is a shortage of compute right now globally. Every tech company is also saying that there is a shortage of compute right now globally regardless of the adoption rate of AI. I don't understand how you can emphatically state that we're looking at short term profits here when the companies that are developing technology have clearly stated they need more compute regardless of whether or not AI is a bubble, and the idea that AI is a bubble is also speculative because we don't know the size of that market yet. Any tech company involved in chip manufacturing at any point along the supply chain would be foolish to not be investing in more compute.

Consider that Facebook's revenue on Reels now exceeds $50 billion, and it's growing. That's JUST for Reels. Reels is a product people use for scrolling short videos while taking a dump. For perspective, Target is currently worth $58 billion. Zuckerberg stated he doesn't care what happens to AI because they need the compute for other things anyway. With this backdrop, please explain to me how Nvidia and AMD are being "irresponsible" by chasing "short term profits"? What about these projections are short term?

HockeyJon said:

Ok, but the revenue is what matters, and that's kind of the point.

Click to expand...

It depends what we are talking about, in term of abandonning/being angry of the level of attention a market segment is getting, actual production tend to matter more.

Take consummer memory, micron revenue in the mobile&consummer market segment result of the last quarter were of 7.7 billions thats almost 3 times bigger than a whole quarter of all dram business combined of 2023, that would make all the talking point of them focusing on HBM quite silly, once you factor in margin you see there was indeed a small decline over time.

HockeyJon said:

Who says these are short term profits? Respectfully, I'm not sure you're following this market the way I have been. Every tech company has said plainly that there is a shortage of compute right now globally. Every tech company is also saying that there is a shortage of compute right now globally regardless of the adoption rate of AI. I don't understand how you can emphatically state that we're looking at short term profits here when the companies that are developing technology have clearly stated they need more compute regardless of whether or not AI is a bubble, and the idea that AI is a bubble is also speculative because we don't know the size of that market yet. Any tech company involved in chip manufacturing at any point along the supply chain would be foolish to not be investing in more compute.

Consider that Facebook's revenue on Reels now exceeds $50 billion, and it's growing. That's JUST for Reels. Reels is a product people use for scrolling short videos while taking a dump. For perspective, Target is currently worth $58 billion. Zuckerberg stated he doesn't care what happens to AI because they need the compute for other things anyway. With this backdrop, please explain to me how Nvidia and AMD are being "irresponsible" by chasing "short term profits"? What about these projections are short term?

Click to expand...

It's risk.

We do not know the end state of the supply demand curves for AI. We don't for sure what profits will look like long term.

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries...-7-trillion-dollar-race-to-scale-data-centers

https://www.jll.com/en-us/insights/market-outlook/data-center-outlook

https://datacenter.uptimeinstitute.com/rs/711-RIA-145/images/2024.GlobalDataCenterSurvey.Report.pdf

Bottoms line we really do not know the real ROI due to so many factors so it is a massive risk with massive investment.

We have seen markets play out like this before.

Short term over investment and long term under investment. There's definitely going to be demand, but what's the fair market price to charge to cover the costs plus risk? You can't claim anyone know this for sure.

If there is a bubble that pops, and no one actually knows this either way, that's not going to be good for companies making these moves.

My preference for companies I invest is, is that that understand risk and have diversified supply chains and more than a couple of pillars they support.

If you're going to claim there's not substantial risk to AI over investment then your operating on narratives and not empirical evidence. I don't think there's a productive discussion under those circumstances. No offense intended.