As a fan of @ChaoticLife13 's CPU monologues, I've been wanting to post something about @AMD 's decision to split their GPU arch into separate Gaming and Compute architectures. What follows below are my thoughts on a subject not many people seem to be discussing yet. 1/?

Seemingly centuries ago, AMD made a decision to develop a unified compute and gaming architecture as they believed GPU compute was going to become very important. This was GCN. Now they have reversed that decision and the GPU landscape is set to change drastically again. 2/?

Dedicated hardware done right will always outperform hybrid done right. With Nvidia still using a hybrid architecture, this is an interesting time. Dual archs are more expensive to develop and produce than a single arch, so an increase in investment was required for this. 3/?

So what are the gains? If RDNA can match Nv arch in gaming and CDNA in compute this will gain AMD market share, and the roi should be fairly easy to realise. With GPU compute needs growing, the potential for growth is huge. But big profits will be short lived in gaming. 4/?

A small fraction of people who pay over $500 for a GPU use it purely for gaming, a large part of the value comes from good compute capabilities. The market will adjust to this quickly for AMD, if you need gaming and compute, you won't buy 2 cards at $1000 each very often. 5/?

The size of the compute market will see most of the income offset if CDNA can outperform a hybrid architecture from Nv. If we get to that state, will Nv sit still? Won't they just move to dual arch? It might not be as easy for Nv as it was for AMD. Let's discuss that next 6/?

As mentioned, switching to a dual arc is expensive to do and maintain. Nv has most of the compute and gaming market and is really relying on the growth of compute to increase revenues. Dual arch, while potentially losing market share could hit Nv profits considerably. 7/?

If Nv is able to produce dual arch that beats AMD considerably then there won't be a problem, but there is no guarantee that would happen. And that is all without the blue elephant in the room, which no-one really knows anything about at the moment. 8/9

I am not a financial advisor, this is not financial advice, these are the thoughts of a random person who is interested in aspects of business strategy and the potential repercussions. 9/9.