Are AMD's margins actually any worse in the graphics card market? Or is it just that AMD is also playing in the (lower-margin) CPU market, so their overall margin is worse?
Nobody here can tell you that officially, at least without breaking an NDA, but the answer is very obviously "yes".
Comparing apples to apples, AMD sells their Vega 64 flagship at a MSRP of $499, NVIDIA sells a product with an equivalent die size at $1200. AMD sells their cutdown at $399, NVIDIA sells theirs at $799. And that's before you figure that NVIDIA is using commodity GDDR5/5X while AMD is using expensive HBM2 on consumer products - NVIDIA charges between $3k and $15k for their HBM2 products. So half the MSRP, with a more expensive BOM.
AMD's margins on Vega are trainwreck bad. Some experts actually think they are losing money on every unit sold at MSRP, hence the "$100 free games bundle" on launch, and the de-facto price increases above MSRP during the fall. They're banking heavily on HBM2 costs coming down, and probably also on NVIDIA not being aggressive with the launch of gaming Volta (aka Ampere). Apart from Vega FE, they really don't see any of the extra revenue from the inflated prices during the mining boom either. That's all going to AIB partners and retailers. All AMD gets out of it is volume, and up until now they've been reluctant to increase production.
In contrast Ryzen is actually dirt cheap to manufacture due to its MCM layout. Their margins there are probably better than Intel, even with prices significantly below the launch prices.
