Comments Locked

140 Comments

Back to Article

  • johnnycanadian - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    Perhaps they should consider merging with BlackBerry.
  • Jtaylor1986 - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    Bizarre?
  • Novacius - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    I had a good laugh.
  • SeanJ76 - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link

    Me too!
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link

    After they merge, they should rebrand the last 5 years of Blackberry phones, maybe Obama can do a free teleprompter spot endorsement.
  • Wreckage - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    Maybe America Online will buy them
  • AntDX316 - Friday, October 23, 2015 - link

    I wonder how many people are in eternal hell because they got messed up when the housing crisis happened. When netzero fell, when AOL fell.. when Enron fell.. Kodak fell.. due to bad strategies found by people who were smarter and had the team power to make what has been made Better.

    Look up NDE (near death experience) on youtube.
  • AntDX316 - Friday, October 23, 2015 - link

    myspace.. lucent.. I meant the people who committed suicide.
  • Mumrik - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Or... releasing products.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link

    re-releasing products, with a new name...

    FTFY
  • medi03 - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link

    Good joke, eh?

    10 years since Athlon 64-s AMD is still in the same problem, manufacturers aren't using it's products "for some reason".

    They have good notebook APUs that wipe the floor with Intel's at gaming (there is hardly anything else that most people do with their notebooks that would touch limits of the system, besides gaming) yet you cannot find AMD notebook with an IPS screen, only shitty TNs and cost savings all over the place.
  • Taneli - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link

    For stuff most people do on their laptops single threaded performance is most important for good user experience (besides memory and storage latency). AMD lags behind Intel here.
  • JonnyDough - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link

    To be honest neither laptops nor graphics matter. The business segment is the larger market share, and Intel's power draw advantage due to manufacturing process can't be competed with. Businesses don't care about graphics, they want fast low power chips as they go through life-cycle replacements for their workstations.
  • UtilityMax - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link

    AMD wipes Intel at gaming? Please. First, let's clear things about general CPU performance. AMD's quad core FX notebook APU can keep up with Intel's Core i3U only in heavily mulch-threaded benchmarks. But for anything using a single core, the FX APU is 50% slower than Intel's superbudget Core i3U. Now, Core i3U is something you normally find in a sub-$400 notebook. So OEM's are entirely right to put AMD chips at best into superbudget notebooks. Anything costing +$500 in USA has some kind of Core i5 CPU or better.

    Next only the issue of gaming, AMD APUs are faster than Intel discrete graphics but not by as much as you think. You get 15-20% FPS gain, maybe. While APUs look good on paper, in real life they're seriously starved for memory throughput and the slow compute cores can hurt the performance further. I personally don't know why the APUs are viewed as a big asset in gaming. A $50 discrete card like NVidia 840M will literally slaughter any APU or discrete graphics option, and anyone caring about gaming is probably smart enough to configure a laptop with at least an entry level discrete GPU.

  • chizow - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    Slaughtered in the marketplace again, now that their recent bellwethers are declining (GPU, console revenue), we really see how dire the situation is for AMD.

    It really is time for them to start planning an exit strategy, otherwise its going to really start getting ugly. Time to ramp up the acquisition talks or someone is going to get what's left for peanuts and pennies on the dollar.
  • Black Obsidian - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    It's a bit premature to suggest that AMD's GPU income is declining (at least beyond the short term). It's been 18 months since the last new lineup was released, and even the mighty Apple sees a significant decline in sales for 1-2 quarters before a new iteration is released.

    If AMD releases new product and the first full quarter of it being on the market DOESN'T show a significant increase in income and profitability, that's the point at which a long-term decline is likely.
  • HighTech4US - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    No it is not premature. AMD has been losing massive amounts of discrete market share to Nvidia and now only has 24% market share while Nvidia has 76%. AMD has lost 14% in market share (from 38% to 24%) in the second half of 2014.

    https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1828480

    With this quarters results that may fall to 20%.
  • chizow - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    That's an amazingly informative graph, who compiled that data?
  • HighTech4US - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    dbz on the beyond3d forum

    forumDOTbeyond3dDOTcom/posts/1194721

    dbz: I made the graph from aggregated quarterly reports, mainly from Mercury Research with fillers from JPR where Mercury's figures were unavailable.
    This is the link to this most recent post where I used the figures.

    Most should be verifiable via a quick search. Some of the older figures were collected via Business Week and the WSJ (amongst other publications) for 1995-2003 - most of which I've truncated from this graph since most of the graphics vendors from those years are now defunct/no longer making discrete graphics boards.

    The numbers were originally collated for a series of articles that ended up being published at Techspot.
  • HighTech4US - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Sorry, this is the proper link: https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1194721

    Yahoo financial censors posts that look like web links so I have to change them by removing http. www. and any dots. Forgot that I was posting to a forum that allows links as is
  • nunya112 - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    AMD dropped to 20% last time I saw it. Also for context virtually no one is buying AMD premium GFX cards at all. they are old to power hungry and Maxwell does much better and more efficiently

    AMD has been tanking last 6 months since maxwell, because its a much better architecture. and their lack of decent CPU, is now showing just how bad things are for AMD. they need to bring the 390X out in a months time. they need to start hyping, and showing it off, and kick start production. people are saying June release. That is too late. I dont think AMD will have enough cash to stay open. as you can see for the first time in a long time their operating income is in the negative. That means Hemorrhaging CASH.
    It either means a hostile takeover is imminent or AMD will declare bankruptcy. either way 300 series wont be coming out if it isnt moved up
  • ppi - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    AMD has certainly enough cash to stay afloat till June. They have some 900m cash+liquid securities (debt is $2.3bn, but of that only $235m short-term part), so they can afford to bleed a little bit. But they should slow down the rate nevertheless.

    THE product they are looking for is Zen/K12, that will come only in 2016 (if it fails, they are done for). AMD cannot really afford to lose $130m cash per quarter, as they did now, or else they will run dry just before they could turn the company around.
  • costeakai - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link

    i like it this way
  • medi03 - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link

    R9 vs 970 total system consumption is 370w vs 300w, while also being faster and much cheaper.
  • medi03 - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link

    That looks dubious, to say the least.
  • JonnyDough - Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - link

    We'll see what happens with Mantle/DirectX 12.
  • chizow - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    Yeah not premature at all, the results clearly show AMD has not been competitive in the marketplace the last few quarters since Nvidia launched their Maxwell-based GTX 970/980 parts. Not only was AMD forced to slash prices on their most relevant, highest margin SKUs (290/X), market indicators and AMD's own results show they still aren't selling enough GPUs.

    What used to be a segment that consistently turned a profit for them despite losses in the Compute segment, the GPU segment is now being cited as part of the reason this segment is posting losses and declining revenue.

    Last quarter AMD fell to a 76/24 minority share to Nvidia in the dGPU market, that's the biggest the gap has ever been since Nvidia's dominant share during the time of G80/G92 when AMD didn't have a competitive part and R600 was late. These results all but confirm more of the same in Q1 for AMD. 80% marketshare for Nvidia is not unrealistic. To put that into perspective, that is Intel levels of dominance.

    http://jonpeddie.com/publications/add-in-board-rep...

    Similarly, AMD's loss will be Nvidia's gain this quarter. 970 and 980 will undoubtedly continue to post strong results and with the introduction and strong sales of some massive margin GM200 based parts (Titan X and Quadro M6000), it is not unrealistic to expect 2-3% increases in gross margins from Nvidia and another record quarter for revenues and profits for Q1 historical basis.
  • nunya112 - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    exactly. I work for PC parts company, and no one is buying AMD high end. its stupid to. the GTX 9 series is on par or better and half the power usage almost. amd are just selling low end GFX for budget desktops etc. and Nvidia is dominating enthusiast segment in every caliber of performance. When I told Roy the VP of IP. all he had to say was. "that's interesting" surely he didnt know that. AMD is in bad shape.
    And as you said the GTX 9 series is only going to sell more. and I am one of them. I was waiting for R9 300 news, and this close to release NOTHING. means card is late or not going to be made.
    so I am ordering 2X 970's or a 980 GTX next week. its a sad day, but running AMD like this is a crime, and I feel sorry. I sold my shares a while back after I lost about $2.10 per share. think about the poor share holders now !
  • medi03 - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link

    At anandtechs chart total system consumption of 970 was 300w, vs 370 on comparable AMD.
    "Two times" eh? Maybe you meant price?
  • silverblue - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link

    I know, I'm also getting a little tired of this "AMD uses twice the power" crap. Not everybody games 24/7 (I certainly hope they don't), and when the 2xx series came out, its competition may have been cooler but used similar power. Idle power of AMD cards is usually very good, and if you do want a cooler card, you wouldn't buy reference... which is what everybody - except the detractors - has been saying anyway.
  • TheJian - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Incorrect. They have lost 6B+ in a dozen years. You don't read financial reports apparently. Is 12+yrs long term to you? No end in sight for another year+ to these losses and even then only if cpu/gpu are both a big hit. I'd say long term survival depends on selling short term, as in PUT THE COMPANY UP FOR SALE TODAY. The purchase price of ATI was the worst thing, but they've compounded it by not concentrating on CORE products (consoles stole from cpu/gpu/server), and making it worse by laying off 30% of the people that MAKE the core products that might one day make a profit. They need to sell so they can re-arm with engineers via somebody that has the cash to get the job done.

    One more point on poor management; management needs to be fired for not understanding a few simple rules of business. Charge a price for your product you can make a profit at, and quit slashing attempting to price enemies to death that you financially can't price to death (NV price war is stupid, Jen has said so, AMD refuses to get the obvious). Intel can afford to price an AMD to death, but AMD can't afford to price an Nvidia to death. You only end up pricing yourself to death doing this crap. If AMD puts out 300's and prices below NV they are idiots. Nv will respond with higher prices as Jen has said openly he'd rather be making more money then being in a price war (well he should say that, he has ~2/3 of his money invested in himself and his company). Why does AMD keep pricing their products into losses? Intel is a bit different here, as they are actively seeking a price war at times, where NV doesn't want one at all (they'd rather be making 2007 income, which they haven't hit SINCE 2007...LOL). If you take out Intel's 266mil/yr paid to NV, they're making ~1/4 of what they made in 2007. Nvidia would love to make Intel's 266mil+800mil from 2007 vs. 266mil+200mil today, but AMD management insists on acting like idiots hurting both sides. I love low prices, don't get me wrong, but don't want either side not being able to do R&D because of it.

    AMD needs to release a CPU sans gpu again with massive IPC on a closer process to Intel so they can beat them while they're totally concentrating on gpu and ignoring cpu (intel ignores enthusiasts these days for a stupid gpu we turn off). Dedicate all the wasted gpu space (on apus which will never make a dime vs. Intel coming down the chain and ARM coming up) on a pure cpu die. That is a chip you could charge a premium for until Intel could fix the problem. Intel is giving away 4.1B of chips to stop ARM, so no chance AMD will get rich off of mobile any time soon and notebooks won't do any better either no matter what AMD does in apu. They've been better than Intel in gpu side on these for ages and it makes them nothing. A cpu for enthusiasts (who Intel has been ignoring for ages since AMD gave up) would get a premium as enthusiasts pay premiums for the best experience in gaming etc. Nobody pays a premium for an APU. Catering to poor people will never make you rich.

    As I've said many times before consoles are dying, and would never make them rich either (mobile is going to kill them, see GDC 2013/2014/2015 surveys). NV wisely listened to their bean counters, and surmised as Jen himself said, it would steal from their CORE product R&D. We see he was correct looking at AMD. When will AMD quit chasing things that can't make them a dime and start getting back to products that can at least have a chance at PREMIUM pricing? The last time they made consistent profits? They had a CPU king. They currently have the best opportunity in years if they'd just take advantage of Intel chasing gpu. You have Keller+Papermaster and are wasting them if not making a KING CPU. Beyond that though, SELL NOW before your tech is worthless and just bought for patent ip wars (chizow's pennies on the dollar comment) and no real product worth.

    It's comic they dumped dirk, because he wanted to concentrate on CORE PRODUCTS, stating you could go back to the rest AFTER you were on solid ground on CORE stuff. Bring back Dirk and Jerry, maybe they can get something done then...LOL. I loved Jerry. Then again, they may have shoved him out for other nefarious reasons:
    http://betanews.com/2011/02/02/was-former-amd-ceo-...

    Who knows how that realy went down but it wasn't good :( GF deal has been a mistake hurting AMD for years too (still going on!). It's almost like AMD has Obama/Kerry as their negotiators...ROFL. Bad price for ATI (3x what should have been paid), bad margin on chips for consoles, bad GF deal, bad Seamicro purchase etc etc...It's like they keep saying we just want to ink something today, no matter how bad it is for our company (or country, allies etc).
  • Solandri - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    While I agree things look dire for AMD, it ain't over til the fat lady sings. I'm old enough to remember when 3dfx was king and Nvidia (then written nVidia) was a 3rd rate GPU manufacturer. I had one of their first video cards in my work computer (which caused me no end of headaches because of the hardware bugs).

    If it's possible for a tiny GPU maker with less than 1% market share to rise to dominate the market, it's possible for AMD to recover.
  • CiccioB - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    No today it is not possible, unless you make constant huge investments in things that is not technologically limited only.
    nVidia grew as first VGA chip player (then GPUs) because the 3D market was relative new and could invest in many new technological solutions that could compete and beat its competitors. Strategic choices were important (like using 32bit pipelines instead of only 16bit like 3D FX did).
    Then all the others improvements that brought it to n.1 before all the others just died because of their own incapacity to stand up with nvidia progresses.

    Today you can repeat that. You cannot innovate in this market as you could at the time. Both CPU and GPU are mature markets. You can't really expect to surpass the competition with something extraordinary that it cannot do or do so bad to give you a winning position on the market.

    And many forget that creating HW is useless if you cannot support it as it should. AMD has the problem that can create the best HW ever, but if they cannot use it at it full, it is just useless. Think about the fact that AMD doesn't have a up to the competitive professional market. All those publicized DP and SP numbers that Hawaii/Tahiti can crunch, are simply wasted as they are not able to sell it to any HPC producer. Good for useless LuxRender benchmarks and nothing more.
    SW is as important as transistor. And as long as AMD invests only in the latters, no matter how good is the final product, they cannot surpass the competition that spend on SW as much as on HW.
  • Crunchy005 - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Just curious here, I thought if they sell and are part of another company they will lose their license agreement with intel. If that happens bye bye x86. Not sure just wondering.
  • JumpingJack - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Not necessarily. The publicly redacted form of the cross license agreement is available on the SEC website and, yes, there is a clear provision that the license is not transferable in the event of change of ownership of the company.

    However, the FTC settlement in 2010, Intel agreed to negotiate with any potential buyer in good faith to transfer the license if such a situation arises.
  • ppi - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    It is also part the shareholders, because they have picked CEO with this "go mobile" and "cut costs" vision.
  • JlHADJOE - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    AMD is selling huge Tahiti chips for $200 or so. Income is definitely declining.

    My guess is they're probably selling near cost, if not at a loss. Still better than having unsold inventory, but no there's no way the current prices on the 290/290X are anywhere near profitable.
  • dragonsqrrl - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    The problem is AMD really doesn't have a solution for this near term. According to rumors the only GCN 1.3 GPU in AMD's upcoming lineup will be Fiji. The rest of the lineup will be refreshes of existing GCN 1.1 and 1.2 GPU's, with at most hardware revisions to improve efficiency. This means that we're still going to see something like Tonga at ~$200 price point, and something like Hawaii at ~$300-$400 price point, along with their expensive GPU's and memory interfaces relative to the competition.

    But AMD fanboys don't really ever seem to see this as a problem for AMD. I think they're too preoccupied by their single minded obsession with price/performance ratios to even begin to think in this way.
  • silverblue - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    I think with the enhanced compression in Tonga, AMD are trying to reverse the trend of stupidly complex memory controllers, much like NVIDIA did. Can't speak for HBM, though.

    It's much easier to scale down large GPUs that scaling up small ones as far as I can see, so the GPUs within even lower end AMD cards are far more complex than they should be, hence some of the power drain (remember - the 5830 used more power than the 5850), though it does mean they get to reuse more failed parts.

    AMD were late to the party with compute, but they might have been too early to the party with asynchronous shaders.
  • TheJian - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link

    The problem with HBM here, is it isn't needed for a while yet. I mean NV just went from 384bit to 256bit bus and BEAT their own card handily while doing it. IE, you don't need more bandwidth and if NV does they can just go back to 384. For AMD, this is like Intel's old blue crystals (marketing hype) except for AMD it will cause a price hike on the cards that nets them nothing in perf. NV has wisely chosen to avoid HBM until 1) it's actually needed, and 2) cost is down. Until then you're just adding costs to your cards for nothing. We also see in many benchmarks that you get more from a gpu clock increase than mem, so again, we can use far more gpu before the old memory is tapped out and with die shrinks that old stuff gets faster also giving even more bandwidth. I'm not quite sure why AMD would want to go HBM probably a year or two before needed (I say two because we are supposed to have 300's now, but delayed due to channel being stuffed with old stuff nobody wants), other than again, TERRIBLE management decisions. Memory bandwidth doesn't sell cards, the fps does (and now with more tools, how fluid that is while playing). Compute crap is doing nothing for AMD besides winning junk stuff like F@H (who cares). They need to put out a pure gaming card like NV did with TitanX (and all maxwells). Lower the power and up the perf or just get weaker vs. NV.
  • dragonsqrrl - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link

    Nvidia doesn't need more bandwidth at the moment, but you're assuming that AMD's on par with Nvidia in terms of memory bandwidth requirements which hasn't been the case, even with the improvements made to GCN 1.2 (Tonga). And correct me if I'm wrong, but it also sounds like you're saying AMD would need to saturate their HBM interface in order to justify it's use, which isn't true. All AMD would need to justify HBM is a GPU that can saturate a 512-bit GDDR5 interface, and I have little doubt that Fiji can do this if its rumored specs are true. This is of course assuming that the color compression in GCN 1.3 hasn't improved over 1.2, which may not be the case. HBM has a number of efficiency advantages over GDDR5 (in terms of both power consumption and trace complexity) that make it worthwhile if your bandwidth demands make GDDR5 the less practical option, and I think at 512-bit you're hitting the limits of practicality for GDDR5. Make no mistake HBM is the superior interface in practically every way, and definitely in terms of costs if your bandwidth demands are really high.

    "Memory bandwidth doesn't sell cards, the fps does" ... Actually I think we've seen a lot of evidence over past year that would suggest otherwise, unfortunately. That's certainly a noble aspiration, and current dGPU market share results certainly seem to support what you're saying, but I think you're also overlooking both AMD users and AMD's marketing department. There have been many recent examples of AMD marketing their "superior" memory interfaces over the competition, rather than relative real world performance, and I can give even more examples of both current and prospective AMD users parroting and buying into this spec sheet marketing. This is why I've said pretty much the only people buying AMD right now are those with either a single minded obsession with price/performance ratios, or the uninformed who think wider memory interfaces and more cores relative to the competition = greater value and performance.

    "Compute crap is doing nothing for AMD besides winning junk stuff like F@H (who cares)" ... Actually Nvidia currently outperforms AMD in F@H by a pretty wide margin.
  • SeanJ76 - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link

    I've been saying it for years.....
  • Michael Bay - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    Time for intel to lose another lawsuit, eh.
  • silverblue - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    AMD didn't get a penny of that.
  • chizow - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    They did get $1.25Bn in settlement money actually, but many even at the time said they settled for far too little and should've also structured it as an annuity instead of lump-sum payment, like Nvidia did. That 1.25Bn spread over 5 years would've made AMD's financial statements look far better rather than the one banner year they had in 2009.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/technology/compa...

    There was a story about the whole settlement discussion and AMD settling for too little, but at this point, it doesn't really matter.
  • silverblue - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Yes, but only because Intel didn't want to be hauled in front of regulators in the States. Their payment was to stop AMD dragging them through the courts, which to me looks like a bribe and a clear admission of guilt. Still, as you say, it doesn't matter now, and AMD's lack of new product lines over the past 18 months is killing them. So much for pursuing a more aggressive product release schedule.
  • chizow - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Right, but AMD"s leverage against Intel relied on the fact Intel was being sued for anti-trust allegations. In reality, AMD should have waited to settle because they could've gotten a LOT more, but for some crazy reason they settled for a paltry sum before judgment was even handed down in the EU case.
  • silverblue - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    They could have, though the EU judgement was handed down a few months before the settlement. Intel would have looked at that as a precursor to a real spanking and decided it wasn't worth the risk, so they settled (very smart move) and AMD were far too happy to grab what cash was on offer instead of refusing and leaving Intel out to dry. As such, AMD strengthened Intel's position even more - what's $1.25B to Intel? Two months revenue, tops? Could AMD have been awarded far more by the US courts following a successful case?

    AMD's real problem is its management which has strangled it for ten years and run off with its money. You need money for hardware and software development, marketing, research, and just as importantly, hiring and KEEPING talent to drive the aforementioned. Without at least two killer product launches over the next nine months, AMD are going to fade into irrelevance.
  • JumpingJack - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Mr. Bay is incorrect, Intel did not lose any lawsuit, Intel and AMD settled out of court. The original lawsuit, which included the class action in addition to AMD was dropped as I recall. What AMD got in the settlement was 1.25 billion dollars and a written contact on what rebates and discounts Intel can and cannot offer to OEMs. In return, Intel got a promise from AMD that they would never again claim "unfair competition" and would withdraw all complaints to administrative bodies both domestic and internationally.
  • jjj - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    Q1 was close enough to expectations but Q2 outlook is soft. Intel's outlook was 400 millions up on quarter but that is likely to mostly come from non PC . So the PC market being flat in Q2 was to be expected but AMD should have had some growth in console.
    It's also a bit surprising that AMD has less exposure to the business segment slowing down ,yet they keep sliding.

    As tragic as it all is, i'm starting to be more optimistic about next year. If GloFo is already making the Exynos 7420 (likely at poor yields) , chances are AMD could go 14nm on the GPU side later this year and by next year the process will be mature enough for the new core. Remains to be seen how good the core is and if they manage to find something to mess up but maybe there is hope. Ofc Intel is killing them on the marketing side and the PC market lacks enthusiasm so AMD might need a fantastic product not just good to gain share and recover.
    They got their yearly Analyst Day on May 6 so we should see some updated roadmaps then but i doubt they'll spill the beans on the new core.
  • casperes1996 - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    Do you see a 14nm GPU as being at all likely this year? I doubt you can get high performance GPUs down to that fab node this year. Well, no, I don't doubt it being possible, but I doubt anyone will. AMD are taking over Apple desktop parts, and considering that Macs are still a growing business, even with the PC industry in general declining, this is brilliant for AMD, but they have to get into the laptops, since that's where most the growth is. They won't however get into the laptops because of power consumption and heat. Only the high-end rMBP even uses a dedicated GPU, and if AMD can't improve their perf/watt drastically, Nvidia will continue to be the GPU used in future models. This is what they have to improve upon if you ask me. Now a die shrink would be absolutely brilliant for this, and if they can rival Nvidia (not even outperform, just rival) I think Apple will be happy to use AMD parts, since Apple also has an interest in keeping the market competitive.
  • jjj - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    I don't know if they will go 14nm GPUs this year but it seems doable if they chose to. Medium term it's likely that Nvidia will be more efficient but at least AMD could have a few months head start on 14nm and that might help them a bit.
    Winning more of Apple's GPU business doesn't have much relevance from a financial perspective and is slightly positive from a marketing perspective. Apple is not that big in PC and more importantly the OEM business in general is low margins. Plus AMD likely would have to offer very good pricing to win Apple.
    In server, in pro , in high end gaming margins are nice. Even bellow high end gaming margins are good so all those segments are what matters.
    If they could get an APU in a Macbook that would be great for them even if they don't make money from it, it would greatly improve adoption at other OEMs but remains to be seen what the new cores have to offer next year.
    Ofc we don't have much of a clue when Nvidia goes for a shrink but they got no reason ,for now, to rush it and it doesn't seem like it will be this year.
    For AMD what really matters is the new core, if that's a dud, i have no idea how they survive.
  • casperes1996 - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    I think you're underplaying the marketting relevance. I think it'd have much greater worth than you're making it seem. Look at how much they bragged about being the GPU vendor for the Mac Pro, which isn't exactly Apple's best selling machine, and could hardly have made very much money. They wouldn't have played that card so much if it weren't a big marketting plus. Or perhaps they would, considering looking to AMD for good business strategies probably isn't the greatest idea. Anyhow, I'm quite certain it would still be a very good marketing tool.
    An APU I don't see probable at all though. Apple isn't going to change their CPU vendor anytime soon. It's Intel x86 cores only for the foreseeable future. Writing OS X for AMD chips, whilst certainly not as hard as going from POWER to x86, would still require a lot. And way more than it's worth... Especially since it at the moment is worth nothing. Oh, and again, PC is shrinking, Apple is not. So whilst they're still fair from being a market leader, they're undeniably a bigger and bigger share of the market. And what Apple demands of the hardware they chose is also what the other OEMs either want, or will want. The 2-in-1 route so popular with most OEMs requires similar characteristics from the components as a super thin MacBook. Improving the efficiency of their GPUs will also improve their APU designs, making them better fits for low-power devices, and GPUs are of growing importance, so if they can leverage their GPU department well enough, they might have a better shot at taking that market than Intel (marketting aside). Problem is that Intel is already moving faster.

    14nm. Doable, yes. Will they? I don't think so.
  • nunya112 - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Q2 looks "soft" LMFAO the Nasdaq news team said quote "Tanking" lol
  • chizow - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Yep, the market is punishing AMD heavily on this news, down 14% in overnight and early trading. Will buoy again on ANY news of potential buyout as investors are looking for any signs of respite.
  • Novacius - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    I hope they don't go bankrupt before they can launch K12 and Zen. I really think those will improve the situation if AMD can make it that far.
  • Nagorak - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    Yeah, but if they do make it that far, those processors are basically make or break. The construction machinery cores were a real disaster for AMD. Performance never was competitive with Intel, and frankly they didn't even outperform their previous parts. In retrospect, they probably should have tried to come up with a crash course to a new architecture, rather than try to refine those cores.
  • SaberKOG91 - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    Well if you look at GAAP, they went from $1.6 billion in expenses Q4 to $1.2 billion in Q1. Non-GAAP shows a reduction of $100 million. So, I'd say Lisa Su has done a lot to reduce operating expenses. Especially in light of the poor performance in consumer markets. Although enterprise (etc) seems to be doing pretty well, considering.
  • melgross - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    You can't keep reducing expenses. This is a misunderstanding I read often. Once you go below a given level you lose competence in a number of areas.

    A major problem for them is that as sales continue to fall, large organizations prefer to not do business with them, that reduces sales further. Blackberry is undergoing this problem too, with about the same sales dollars coming in. Apple had that problem in the late mid 1990's.

    But few companies come back from this. I hope AMD does, but it's looking doubtful.
  • SaberKOG91 - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    You can drastically reduce expenses in the short-run. Long-term, AMD will need to obviously begin increasing their expenditures again. But in their current position, they need to start turning a profit. They are likely to grow in emerging markets, allowing this gap to close from one direction, but will still need to turn an overall profit to encourage investment. This will also require them to continue to reduce operating costs, closing this gap from the other direction. As much as it saddens me to see it, AMD must either find a way to make their consumer segment more profitable, offset the short-run losses with enterprise revenues, or continue to reduce operating costs. They simply do not have the investor backing to operate in the negative for an extended period.

    I see the stories of AMD and Blackberry as very similar. They thrived for many years in high profit niche markets, but failed to expand into other less profitable areas. This lack of diversification ultimately led to their inability to quickly adapt to changes in later iterations of their ecosystems. Even Intel stumbled in areas like mobile due to their own complacency during the same time period. They have only been able to survive because of strong investor backing and being able to sustain significant short-run losses in some segments as the result of a surplus of available profits in other core areas.
  • chizow - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Yep, it has gotten to the point they aren't just cutting expenses, they are cutting engineering and R&D resources in some of their core competencies. Casting Sea Micro adrift was probably a good idea because it was bleeding money, but that was good money they spent at a time they simply couldn't afford it. Ironically, it came shortly AFTER they sold off their mobile division for a bag of peanuts ($67M). Horrible decisions.

    In any case, back to the cuts, it is becoming obvious it is impacting AMD"s product stack as there are rumors this next-gen of Radeon products will be nothing more than a single new ASIC headlining a bunch of rebrands for the rest fo the stack. Obviously, cutting engineers means fewer teams working on multiple ASICs for a full product stack, and ultimately this is how AMD pays for their "cost-cutting" measures.
  • silverblue - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    It's almost as if somebody is deliberately running AMD into the ground, akin to Microsoft placing Stephen Elop at Nokia in order to make it far cheaper to acquire.

    Damn, I'm on a real conspiracy theory bender today.
  • chizow - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Hah, doubt its deliberate, they have just been trying to do too many things out of their comfort zone without focusing on their core competencies first. Also far too much effort and resources spent on a dead-end solution (APU) that no one is willing to spend top dollar on.

    AMD has learned the hard way that people just aren't willing to spend much on a mediocre CPU coupled with a slightly-better-than-Intel IGP graphics solution.
  • silverblue - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Had AMD kept a wider core architecture when plonking a GPU on the side, it's more than likely that it would've been faster and used less power. I've said before and I'll say again - only one core may be working but the whole module will be active. Trinity required a clock frequency hike over Llano to get anywhere near parity and was more a proof of concept in the end - that Bulldozer could go into an APU.

    Bulldozer makes far more sense when you're ragging the crap out of it with multiple processes running at the same time. SMT makes more of a difference in synthetics so AMD will want to show off SiSoftware/3DMark/CineBench scores to get people interested in Zen even if SMT starts to falter the busier workloads get.
  • smilingcrow - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    "SMT makes more of a difference in synthetics"

    Bollocks. SMT works well for workstation loads and media creation. Just look at real world bechmarks for i7 for i5 for proof. Intel don't put SMT in Xeons for no reason as the people buying those aren't the idiots that give a shit about synthetics.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link

    AMD screwed the pooch when it's IPC and other processes per single core were slower than Intels.

    All the hoopla about multiple cores then fell entirely flat. The theory failed.

    Intel didn't fail to notice, the $49.99 G3258 that clocks at 3,200 and OC's like mad is a mere dual core pentium haswell, but it equals and often beats Intel's $1,000.00 chips in half the games when OC'ed.

    So when AMD releases it's next processor, they have better been focusing on the fastest single core performance they can muster, or they will lose miserably again.
  • sonicmerlin - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    I'd love to see Samsung buy AMD. AMD would gain a huge source of funding for x86 and have its own foundry again. Instant threat to Intel's dominance.
  • iwod - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    Do the license agreement allows AMD to manufacture x86 CPU in TSMC and Samsung or only GF?
  • LiviuTM - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    ISA license (x86 license, in this case) has nothing to with manufacturing. It's the same as for ARM or MIPS licensees - they buy the right to use the cores (or ISA, as the big names do) and they are free to make the end product at any foundry they choose.
  • JumpingJack - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Incorrect.
  • JumpingJack - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    The license agreement is available on the SEC website if you search for it. AMD is free to manufacture at any foundry. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2488/000119...

    The prior agreement Intel limited AMD to only a certain percentage of their products to be made at a foundry, the exact percentage was not public but redacted.
  • jwcalla - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    We're essentially looking at a tech company with no fresh products.
  • silverblue - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Well, they do have Carrizo-L, but considering it usually takes AMD a good six to nine months to get their mobile APUs out into the market, it doesn't bode well for full fat Carrizo. Look what happened to their ARM server chips...
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link

    They've been going mADDDD over Liquid VR !!!!

    Oh boy, 3D headache speed for 1%ers !!!!

    They care about the gamers ! Gamer's Manifesto !
    /sarc !
  • agentbb007 - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link

    Oh man not looking good for amd. I'm fully invested in nvidia with 3 ROG Swift monitors and 2 Titan x's but I really want amd to stay competitive in the CPU and GPU markets to help push innovation and keep pricing honest.
  • person749 - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    I hear this kind of thing a lot, but honestly if you feel that way, why did you buy dual Titan X's? R9 295x2 offers better performance for half the price. Supporting Nvidia gouging is not helping to keep pricing honest.
  • HighTech4US - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Nvidia is not gouging if the buyer is happy with their purchase and feel they got good value for their dollars.

    Dual R9 295's would be a major pain as quad crossfire really does not scale. Then take into account the added heat, noise, a bigger case to handle the two water coolers, 1200+ KW power supplies and the R9 295x2 looks even less desirable. 24 GB for the dual Titan X's is also a plus.

    And then you have the AMD drivers.
  • chizow - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Because what AMD and their fans have failed to grasp over the last decade is that end-user experience and satisfaction extends beyond FPS numbers on a bar graph or simple price:performance metrics.

    People are willing to pay a premium for the better product, and Nvidia delivers this over AMD in multiple ways.
  • silverblue - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Yes, but NVIDIA was also affected by frame pacing, heat, power consumption etc., just two years removed from AMD, not to mention the odd driver which caused issues with fan profiles.

    Neither firm is perfect, with drivers it's certainly a case of YMMV, but I'll definitely concede that higher end NVIDIA cards are better packaged and, currently, better cooled and more frugal. Still, NVIDIA are all too ready to stop optimising for their last generation; I'd feel cheated if I owned a 780 or a 780 Ti right about now.
  • chizow - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Eh, Nvidia knew about framepacing long before AMD even acknowledged it was a problem with CF, so not sure what you are referring to there. Indeed, it was Nvidia's own framepacing profile tools that clearly showed the problem on AMD's solutions. Heat and power consumption have clearly been going the opposite directions since Fermi, which is now 2 generations in the rear-view mirror and the improvements Nvidia has made with Maxwell on the same 28nm process as Kepler are nothing short of astonishing.

    But that's really only the surface of things, Nvidia provides a number of value add features in their ecosystem that end-users come to rely on and enjoy. Even the OP of this thread refers to G-Sync for example, which we have recently seen, is still superior to AMD's FreeSync solution.

    And what proof do you have of Nvidia stopping optimizations on last-gen? Certainly you can't say AMD is any better in this regard as their track record of cutting support for VLIW4/5 is well documented, as well as their spotty support on older generations for FreeSync, Mantle, CF framepacing and various other driver-level enhancements like DX9/10 SSAA and VSR. Indeed, if anything, AMD has proven they are far worst when it comes to supporting new initiatives and features on older hardware.
  • lordken - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Well mantle works on HD7000 series also (should work on all GCN). As for freesync
    I'm not sure, it looks it needs something else just driver update - as not even whole R9 series support it. Though I would love if freesync would work on my 7950
  • silverblue - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    That's exactly what I said. NVIDIA fixed their issues two years before AMD fixed theirs. FCAT was a method of showing AMD up in front of its customers for not listening, and it worked a treat.

    Your opinion on G-Sync is partly clouded by owning a monitor with said module inside, and the fact that the first few FreeSync monitors have been wide of the mark. The drivers can be tweaked to resend frames to reduce low FPS tearing, sure, but it would be incorrect to place the blame at FreeSync's feet as the standard isn't at fault for the tearing or flickering.

    NVIDIA's last generation was the 7xx series; VLIW4 was AMD's last pre-GCN series. It's hardly the same thing. As it is, the 780 Ti should be beating the 290X universally, but if you take a look at DX11 gaming results in AT's GPU 2015 bench section, the 290X goes from a small loss (on average) with older titles to a small win (on average) in newer ones. Shouldn't the 780 Ti be winning by 15-20%? The 7xx series is only JUST the last generation; in AMD's defence here, they've had the 2xx series out for a while, however they should've done better with pushing those advancements back to GCN1.0. I suspect the lack of the XDMA bridge is mainly the reason why the 7xxx series doesn't get as much love. FreeSync is GCN1.1 and up due to their DisplayPort support, hence the reason why GCN1.0 won't get it, though you could implement an algorithm to send extra frames if the rate doesn't hit the target.

    You haven't mentioned TressFX... I'm not sure what AMD were thinking here. Who cares about Lara's hair?
  • chizow - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    No, Nvidia knew about framepacing and had a software fix for it since G80 and a hardware fix for it since Fermi (source: Tom Petersen interviews). Inventing the current implementation of multi-GPU/AFR, debugging, and providing a solution before the competition even knows about it does not fit your characterization of "Nvidia also having framepacing issues".

    My opinion of G-Sync isn't clouded at all, its *ENLIGHTENED*, there is a difference. If Nvidia invents a Variable Refresh Rate solution and claims it solves all of the issues that made V-Sync On/Off undesirable, and their working product actually does all they said it does, that becomes the STANDARD for what you would expect from such a solution. When the competition fails to meet that standard, obviously G-Sync remains the superior solution as we have seen with this initial introduction to FreeSync.

    Also, you should be careful about your claims about what can and cannot be accomplished via "driver tweaks" lest you add to and perpetuate the misinformation regarding FreeSync fixes. If it it was so easy, why hasn't AMD fixed it yet? There were already rumors and concerns about ghosting at CES, why wasn't it resolved in the 3 full months since then? Why hasn't it been fixed in the month since then if it is just as simple as tweaking drivers? Maybe there was some truth to what Nvidia said, that getting VRR right is hard, and that that their ultimate conclusion that additional hardware in the form of a scaler that directly communicated to both the GPU and TCONS with its own local frame buffer, was the more sound approach?

    It is clearly the fault of the spec/standard when the flickering and ghosting does not exhibit itself when FreeSync is disabled. I'm not sure how this is hard to understand, AMD came up with a very simple solution of relying on Vblank but didn't work out the intricacies of other fixed frequency functions, like overdrive and backlight pulse. Nvidia did. The end result is evident, FreeSync is a decent attempt at copying G-Sync, but it still falls short in a number of key areas which ultimately means it fails at solving the key issues with V-Sync, which is the fundamental reason for using VRR to begin with.

    When AMD abandoned VLIW4/5 and went to GCN there were still VERY relevant parts on the market with the 5850/5870 and their last-gen was VLIW5 6000 series. But even within GCN arch AMD has already made clear distinctions in support levels with FreeSync support, FramePacing and even Mantle support. And CF? Good luck, its either still broken with many of these features or in constant states of half-support.

    And title support? It was always the 780Ti winning at lower resolutions up to 2560 and the 290X pulling ahead at higher resolutions. This can mainly be attributed to differences in ROP/mem controllers and Nvidia clearly fixed their ratios, re-emphasizing ROP to TMU with Maxwell. Look at recent titles like GTA5 for example. Everyone panned the GTX 680/770 for falling out of support and being abandoned and getting trounced by the 7970/280X yet there it is, often pulling ahead of the Tahiti-based parts. It just depends on the game engine but clearly Kepler still has legs and continues to be supported which is still certainly better than the support level you can expect from Tahiti vis-à-vis AMD's newer technologies.
  • TheJian - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link

    http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Displays/AMD-FreeSync...
    "For its part, AMD says that ghosting is an issue it is hoping to lessen on FreeSync monitors by helping partners pick the right components (Tcon, scalars, etc.) and to drive a “fast evolution” in this area."

    Apparently you haven't read about ghosting etc (even anandtech had to mention it after PCper's 19th article). Hoping to LESSEN? So not hoping to TOTALLY STOP IT like NV? Stop reading so much anandtech where they minimize amd's problems and get the rest of the facts elsewhere. ;) AMD currently blames the hardware, but you can't fix current monitors with a driver. Even AMD says they'll have to help monitor makers pick proper parts to improve the experience, and they can't seem to force that. On top of that BS, there is no proof it's PURELY about components chosen by the monitor people. Until we see a unit work without ghosting etc, it is AMD vapor-logic IMHO.

    You certainly wouldn't want to be one of the buyers of beta 1 versions of freesync :( I call it beta until we see it match or beat NV's gsync (with this special AMD picked components...LOL), and certainly beta while AMD is claiming it's the parts in the monitors that are at fault. I mean you expect me to believe they couldn't tell monitor makers "don't put this in it, as it will give our tech a bad name for launch monitors, use that junk on later models if desired please". Really? I would have thought you would have at least funded ONE monitor with correctly picked parts if that was the case right? They're hoping to drive a fast evolution of monitors? ROFL. So you'd be wise to NOT BUY FREESYNC until it's EVOLVED then right? It's comic you don't read AMD's comment on anandtech ;) (unless i missed it). It would appear they've cut costs by going crappy or they're just not telling the truth.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/9097/the-amd-freesyn...
    "There may be some additional costs associated with making a FreeSync display, though mostly these costs come in the way of using higher quality components. The major scaler companies – Realtek, Novatek, and MStar – have all built FreeSync (DisplayPort Adaptive Sync) into their latest products, and since most displays require a scaler anyway there’s no significant price increase."

    Well I guess if its not working properly with current parts, and as stated better parts cost more (well duh), freesync isn't so free ;) How much will it cost to get it right? As usual anandtech sugar coats AMD problems as much as possible. "No significant price increase" for the JUNK models. But how much for "works like gsync" models? They end claiming freesync is winning (by numbers anyway), but forget to say why would you want ghosting crap etc? I call that losing. The reason you buy one of these techs is to FIX the problems, not still deal with them.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link

    silverblue, there are so many additional nVidia features that AMD doesn't have it's absolutely ridiculous.

    I think the count is likely beyond 10 by now. Of course none of them matter to amd fans such as yourself, that's why AMD is almost defunct.

    I'm sure the AMD monitors come by and see what their little fanboys say, and they constantly see they just don't care for all the many extra nVidia features, so why would AMD do a dang thing to improve your end user experience ?
    None of you want any of it.
    No game day drivers, who cares
    No PhysX, who cares
    No auto config card settings for hundreds of the most popular games, who cares
    No adaptive sync, who cares
    No twitch in game broadcasting and recording, who cares

    It's one after the other, it's on and on and on .... but amd fans just want cheap barely higher and not worthwhile fps, that's all....

    It's no wonder AMD is in a deep hole it cannot dig itself out of - it's fanboys are frankly a detriment!
  • TheJian - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link

    If NV was gouging they'd be making as much as 2007, which they haven't (even if you could say they were then at ~800mil/yr income). If you take out Intel's 266mil/yr right now you end up with NV making ~200mil/yr, which is 1/4 of what they were making in 2007. Gouging? LOL. Making peanuts because AMD insists on pricing themselves to death while trying to price NV to death. Very stupid management over there at AMD. You can't price someone to death when you're the guy with debt, and the other guy has 3B+ cash.

    IF NV was gouging titanx wouldn't be selling for 20%+ over retail on ebay daily. Clearly they could have put a $1200 sticker price on it and sold the same. TitanX vs. 295x2, you likely need a PSU with AMD here, and your electric bill over 4-5yrs (longer when buying this high end?) will cost you $200-400 depending on where you live and how much you game. I think its safe to assume someone spending this much games a fair amount. My assumption is at ~12c/kwh and 21hrs a week gaming. IF you have a kid or two this can be completely blown up (especially in summer, or anyone playing world of warcraft etc...LOL), and if you live in any of the 15 states that are over 15c it also blows up. No idea how bad it is out of USA, but it can't be much better in many places.

    People need to consider the TCO when buying a vid card. Also 295x2 does not win every benchmark vs. titan, not to mention you can OC it, be far less watts and beat them in a LOT of games. Most review sites say its got far better gameplay even if fps say otherwise in some games (fluid). You are counting on AMD to make profile after profile for years for it, and they don't have the money to even get that done for all the games tested at a dozen review sites (about 30 games that don't change for ages in testbeds). So what are the odds they'll hit games that aren't tested if they can't get ~30 done?
  • Impulses - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Yeah I dunno why many are seemingly all too happy to start dancing on AMD's grave, NV isn't Intel, they don't have big client demands or outside forces like ARM closing in (as far as GPUs goes). The desktop GPU market will go to hell in a handbasket if AMD goes poof. Maybe not immediately, but it'll happen.
  • mgilbert - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Intel and Nvidia products are going to get very expensive if AMD fails...
  • TallestJon96 - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Yeah, the only AMD product I've bought is xbone and ps4, but I want them in business to compete with Intel and Nvidia. Intel barely does anything for CPUs anymore, imagine what we'd get without AMD chasing after performance.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link

    What ? Have you tried a G3258 intel haswell for 50 bucks ?

    AMD can't beat a 50 dollar haswell, but it's intel who does nothing... R O F L

    Tell me lies, tell me sweet fanboy lies, ya tell me lies won't you tell me lies
  • Klimax - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    When will people stop asserting clearly wrong things. Not going to happen. There is already quite significant barrier for Intel called "good enough", if they would increase price, they would lose even more. Basic logic and economics.

    And it is not like AMD didn't have high price when they could get away with... (see Black edition CPUs during P4 era)
  • silverblue - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Weren't Intel charging similarly high prices then as well?
  • chizow - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Nope, despite Intel's dominance for most of the past decade since Core 2 Duo, they have still offered me outstanding relative performing CPUs at $300 or less.
  • silverblue - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    I'm clearly referring to the P4 era. The P4 3.46EE was $999, and that wasn't even the top of the pile. Still, the 3800+ was overpriced compared to the P4 560.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/1529/16
  • chizow - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Intel's EE was a market reaction to the $800-1000 Athlon FX chips that dominated the era and sold poorly as it had all the problems of Netburst with just higher FSB but clockspeeds you could achieve with most any Prescott.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/1335/2

    How quickly people forget that when AMD had market leading performance, they made sure to charge you for the privilege.
  • silverblue - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    It's not about forgetting. I know how much they charged. Ironically, it was Intel releasing Conroe and dropping prices significantly for mainstream CPUs which lead to our current state of great performance without needing to spend a fortune on it. CPUs like the E4300 were a revelation.

    Not having the IPC lead and the ability to charge more than $500 for a CPU reined in AMD as well.
  • chizow - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Yes and that was my point to begin with, despite nearly a decade of dominance on the CPU side since Core 2 Conroe'd AMD, we still have that same level of affordable, outstanding performance CPUs despite all these anti-monopoly claims to the contrary.

    How does that happen if monopoly is bad and everyone needs AMD to thrive in order for us to get cheap goods? Its rubbish theory that doesn't hold truth outside of econ101 classes, that's how it happens.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link

    siilverblue.... try honesty please
    AMD, overclock rebrand, RECENT

    220 watt FX5950 (aka fx8350 overclocked)

    $800.00 ON RELEASE.

    Now what was that about way back when yesteryear ?
  • JumpingJack - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    The EE is top of the pile, it was P4 so it was a pile of you know what, but EE historically was always Intel's $999 processor (even though it was laughably not worth that when compared to AMD's EE version -- an FX-57 or FX-60 which BTW were also $999 CPUs.). No, in fact, when AMD had the upper hand, they routinely priced it higher.

    Example quote: "The cheapest dual core Pentium D processor could be had for under $300, yet AMD's cheapest started at $537. Intel was effectively moving the market to dual core, while AMD was only catering to the wealthiest budgets. " http://www.anandtech.com/show/1745 it wasn't until the x2 3800+ came out that AMD populated affordable price points.

    Yes, indeed, AMD gouged the fan base every bit as much as you would expect Intel given they had a lead.
  • silverblue - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    The Athlon64 was a dual edged sword. On one hand, it was significantly faster - outside of encoding - than the P4, whilst using less power due to being clocked much lower, but on the other hand, AMD didn't consider its follow-up properly. Had the P4 not been an Intel CPU, it would've bombed massively and never had developers trying to work every little bit of power out of it. Likewise, had Bulldozer been an Intel design...

    AMD couldn't produce enough CPUs for demand, so whilst I don't like their mid-2000s pricing, I don't completely disagree with it, either. I didn't buy a CPU during that era as my little Athlon XP 2500+ was still doing well enough, but thanks to Core 2's dominance, my PII X3 710 was a third of the price that it would've been had Core 2 not been the success that it was, so I do have Intel to thank as well.
  • chizow - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Exactly, people keep stating the same nonsense when in reality, Intel and Nvidia still need to compete against themselves.

    Simply put, if you never spent more than $300 of your own money for a CPU or GPU, this WILL NOT CHANGE if AMD goes the way of the dodo.

    And if Intel/Nvidia start trying to charge more, people will start looking into cheap ARM-based alternatives (already happening).
  • Crunchy005 - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Right now against AMDs current architecture Intel pricing is pretty good and their performance. But the black editions were running around $300 for top end AMDs around the Core 2 time and I remember Core 2 extremes being $1000, I would hate to see where top end intel prices go when they are the only x86-64 game out there.

    Also yes they do have a limit in how high they can go on pricing before people just leave, and Intel doesn't compete well against ARM, Atom, LOL. Love the i cores but those atoms suck(given away for free for a reason). The biggest problem is where power is needed ARM isn't there yet and it will suck for consumers in the short run but if people move more towards ARM prices will probably come back down. Just worried that Intel and Nvidia being to greedy to care. Monopolies are a thing people.
  • chizow - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    No...AMD was charging $450+ for their entry-level Athlon 64 chips and almost $1000 for their high-end FX chips before they got Conroe'd, only after did they start dropping prices into that $300 range.

    Certainly the Intel EE were out there but they never made much sense since they were just 1 or 2 multipliers away from the next lowest SKU which was priced reasonably in that $280-300 range.

    The problem Intel (and Nvidia) would face is what we have already seen. People are relying less and less on big powerful machines for most of their computing needs, so Intel and Nvidia are going to be competing against themselves to get you to upgrade that last 1 or 2 powerful PCs you may maintain.

    If they want $500, $800, $1000 for a 20% increase, you simply have the option to say "No thanks, I'll stick to what I have" which is basically what everyone has been doing in the CPU market anyways for the last 8 years. See: Comment section of any Intel CPU review since 1st gen Core i7 Nehalem.
  • Nagorak - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Why would you begrudge AMD charging for premium products? AMD has never been super profitable, and the anticompetitive practices from Intel when they had the performance crown meant they didn't benefit as much as they should have. It's probably part of the reason AMD is in the position they are today. It's not really about either company being saints, it's about the overall competitive landscape that harms all of us consumers.

    Maybe with the way things are going with PCs/x86 and Intel being so much stronger there is only room for one company. Maybe that is the reality of the future. But it's still basically unfortunate for all of us that there isn't more competition in the PC processor space. Intel is basically resting on their laurels now, resulting in next to no improvements in processor speed in 3-4 years. If you have a Sandy Bridge then you're still basically fine after all this time.

    Sure we've long since passed the point of "good enough" but Intel nor AMD is really pushing the performance envelope to give us a reason to upgrade, albeit for different reasons.
  • chizow - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    I explained it elsewhere, AMD provided numerous reasonably priced, outstanding performance parts at very competitive price points relative to Intel, even if they didn't beat them outright, they were close enough to provide a great alternative.

    As soon as they got the commanding lead against Intel with Athlon 64/FX parts, they simply priced out this entire segment of users. If you were an AMD Socket A user, you simply had no option for an upgrade at your existing spending levels, AMD wanted 2-4x more and that's not even counting new, expensive mobo and RAM requirements. If anything, strong competition in this case led to worst pricing for the consumer.

    People keep wanting to blame Intel's anti-competitive practices for AMD not making a bigger market penetration with Athlon 64 but the reality of it was AMD couldn't get out of their own way. Supply shortages were the biggest problem, but the second biggest problem was they simply priced out the overwhelming majority of the market!

    Like I said, they made it VERY easy for me to switch to Intel for the first time in some 6-7 years when Intel released the Core 2 Duo and I was able to pick up an E6600 on Newegg for $283.

    Also, while it is true Intel is not necessarily pushing the core or IPC envelope anymore, they are still pushing in 2 key areas they consider their biggest threats/deficits relative to the rest of the market: iGPU and TDP. Still, despite what many consider lackluster gains they still provide me with a clear upgrade path and worthy upgrade every 2-3 years at the same price points I've always bought CPUs.

    This simply will not change even if AMD goes the way of the dodo, I simply won't pay more than ~$300 for a CPU, if Intel wants more than that I'll stick to what I have or find alternatives.
  • ppi - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Well, right, but only to an extent.

    For example, without the first Athlon, Intel would have PIII clocked at 700 Mhz at the time of P4 release - and then the 1.4 GHz would have looked good. But Athlon forced them to go all the way up to 1 GHz with PIII, and all of sudden the initially released P4 was not such a hit.
  • silverblue - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    The P4 was an emergency release because the Athlon was starting to take the performance lead. Like Bulldozer, it needed higher clocks, but the power situation was dire. Being the market leader gives you some wriggle room, however - SSE2 and SSE3 allowed developers to push the P4 to new heights before AMD put such support into their CPUs.
  • Impulses - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Intel has clearly eased off the performance pedal since AMD stopped being competitive tho... You can argue it was bound to happen with the mobile sector driving sales anyway and efficiency becoming paramount yadda yadda... But there's no question that if AMD had something that could rival any i Core part over the last few years Intel would've had to respond.

    So a CPU world where AMD is borderline irrelevant hasn't been as bad as many would've predicted in 2000... Hasn't been perfect either and Intel had outside forces to worry about. NV's got distractions instead of outside forces, they're not gonna make better GPUs worrying about ARM or HC. Intel made more efficient parts, NV would just go mess with something else... Hopefully not, but I don't see what keeps them on pace with desktop GPUs, certainly not devs.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link

    That's a bunch of CRAP.HE

    Intel has some 14nm finfet or something, the bleeding edge they taped out, and last time I looked I saw some 16 core INTEL MONSTER WITH HYPERTHREADING AND 32 MEGS OF L3 CACHE !

    It's all in your amd fanboy head, and it's all wrong.

    intel pre sandy - sandy bridge massive increase , ivy bridge another 5-15%, haswell add another 5-15%, broadwell I don't even know....

    Intel has been forging AHEAD for 4 entire generations since it passed up AMD's cpu's.

    You're either insane or so used to lying to yourself so much that you'd believe anything you told yourself at this point, so long as it +'s amd or attacks amd's competitors or preferably both, and it certainly must be untrue, or you won't like it.
  • Impulses - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Ehh... GPU prices might go up, probably, and NV would likely slow down and/or focus on other markets (mobile and high end compute) if they have little competition. So yeah, we're probably screwed to a degree as gamers... The 970 would've surely been a $400+ part if there was no R9.

    On the x86 side, AMD hasn't been putting any tangible pressure on Intel for years. Not at the high end, and certainly not on mobile. They might have a niche with APUs on, but it's small... Intel's had bigger worries than AMD anyway, the enthusiast and high end market might've suffered some...

    But it hasn't been as bad as we might've guessed during the heyday of Athlon and scorching P4s.
  • Achaios - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    AMD appears to be headed the way of 3dfx.
  • jabber - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    The biggest issue for AMD at the consumer level?

    You walk into say Bestbuy to buy a new laptop.

    You see 30 laptops for sale.

    28 of them are Intel and give you the full range of price and specification.

    2 of them are AMD, one is bargain basement E1 trash. The other is some Ax spec chip with a low res screen, a 5400rpm HDD and costing $800.

    That's it.
  • mapesdhs - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link


    At PC World here they have a somewhat broader selection available, but I don't think
    it's the hw that's the issue. Rather, it's the sales staff who haven't a clue what they're
    on about. I overhead one lady say, in answer to a customer's question, "Yes, it has the
    latest Windows 8 processor."

    *sigh*

    Ian.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link

    Yes, only when it comes to AMD, the free market suddenly doesn't work....

    AMD gets screwed by stupid salespeople, the latest free market disaster for amd...

    Yep. It's amazing, I guess Saturn aligned with lake Horus, so amd is going down, even the stars conspire against them.
  • Crunchy005 - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Ya very true although looking at desktops I have seen AMD A10 APUs with performance similar to i3's with better iGPUs running for $200 less and sometimes with more RAM on top of that. To bad the desktop market itsn't great anymore and Salesmen know nothing of what they are talking about. All they are told to do is sell the more expensive laptops, even if the AMDs might be a better deal for a facebook machine...most people out there. Any heavy usage user should probably go with intel right now but the AMD APUs work just fine for the everyday user.
  • meacupla - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    The thing is, at those kinds of rock bottom prices, Intel Atom and Core M can do the same job as AMD Ax chips, but remain smaller, lighter, thinner and more energy efficient.

    It's not that AMD didn't have decent E and A series mobile chips, it's just that they haven't really bothered to improve them sufficiently in 5+ years. And then Intel caught up.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link

    It's microsoft's fault, they need to optimize their OS for amd cores....

    (no wait, it's the stupid public, clueless fools with too much money)

    On second thought it's intels devil like business malpractices

    No the 4th thing going against amd unfairly is vendors

    I just realized if people wanted to save money amd wouldn't have problems

    Some tech companies have headhunted AMD's best people, and that's illegal or should be

    Why won't TSMC do amd any favors, could anyone compete under those conditions ?

    ... wait it's coming to me ...
  • Impulses - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    I think AMD had to pick, at some point over the last decade, whether to focus on mobile or performance... Instead they ended up being mediocre at both and the APU play didn't pan out. Being slower and less efficient at most price points and in most form factors just doesn't work.
  • wintermute000 - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    This.
  • Mark_gb - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    It often takes time to complete a turn around when it comes to companies that are loosing money. AMD is no stranger to that. But I think with an engineer back in charge of the company, that AMD has a real shot at becoming profitable, and remaining profitable for a very long time. Lisa Su clearly understands where AMD is, was, and is going. I think AMD is going to surprise a whole bunch of us in a good way within the next year.
  • silverblue - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Engineers need resources. Let's hope that Zen is practically finished by now.
  • costeakai - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link

    paper zen.
  • costeakai - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link

    if paper zen is 98% ready, i believe there's time and enaugh money to make flesh&blood zen, next year
  • silverblue - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link

    If they're hoping to release it in a year, you'd hope they would have prototypes by now. We usually hear such things, however, and it'd help their stock price.
  • jabber - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    Another bizarre trait I find with some AMD fans is that they get annoyed when folks say AMD need to sell more product (usually the basis of most businesses). Instead they just keep going on about how future paper designs will save the day.

    Somehow.

    Been a long time waiting on that strategy. Either start pushing your chips into decent products people want to buy or just give up.
  • meacupla - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    I'm going to hazard a guess and say it's because AMD doesn't have a single chip capable of making products decent.
    AMD chips run too hot, consume too much power and are slower when you compare them to offerings from nvidia and Intel.

    And it's not just the chips, but the technology behind it has also been lacking. Quick encoding (quicksync, NVENC), or game streaming, has basically killed the purpose of having separate computers in the house, which an AMD A8/10 could have filled in for. All you need is one good computer to run everything off of, and then an ARM device can easily display the results without needing massive computing power itself.
    And I do realize AMD has VCE, but the software support has been extremely slow for it.
  • webdoctors - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    I find this part to be really scary:

    Computing and Graphics segment had a 20% decline in revenue quarter-over-quarter, and 38 percent from Q1 2014. The sequential decrease was primarily due to lower desktop and notebook processor sales and the annual decrease was driven by lower desktop processor sales and GPU channel sales.

    That's a HUGE drop (38%). Not sure how you can recover from that.
  • Da W - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link

    That's it, AMD's dead :(

    -AMD fan
  • D. Lister - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link

    Don't worry. Someone would buy them off. New administration with new money could be just the thing that the brand needs. I personally am hoping that Intel takes the GPU side and Samsung grabs the CPU. Then we would have some real competition in the market.
  • nunya112 - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Hitler reacts to R9 300 delays
    http://meemsy.com/v/31509
  • WaltC - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Microsoft really threw a whammy into the PC OEM markets with Windows 8. The market is still trying to recover from that fiasco. But Intel is bullish on the PC sector, and so am I. I think things will turn around for the PC sector in general when Microsoft at long last finally ships Win10--as it seems clear that fewer people are interested in purchasing new PCs with Win8.1 on board just to have to install Win10 a bit later in the year. (In perspective, when we say "PC slump" we're still talking better than 30M PCs sold by the OEMs every *month* in a *bad* quarter--which is more in a month than xBone and PS4 combined have sold since they started shipping.) It doesn't bother me, of course, and it won't bother the people like me who don't buy OEM PCs but always build their own boxes--which I've done since 1995 (Gartner/IDC don't count those 20M-40M PCs a year.)

    It's fairly clear to me what happened at AMD. They scurried to jump on the ARM bus when they should have concentrated on x86 and competing with Intel instead of trying to go around them. AMD still sells greatly superior IGPs, sells great graphics cards, but the company has simply let its x86 cpu R&D languish and grow stale--and that's just beginning to hurt them in a big way. AMD needs to do some serious cpu work and get right in there head to head and compete with Intel on the cpu side of things--AMD leapfrogged Intel once for a couple of years...if they did it once, they can do it again. But they sure as heck won't do anything if they don't try. The ARM market and the low-cost mobile sector are obviously not enough to keep the company going. AMD is way ahead of Intel on the GPU side of things--so it's clear as to where they need to be to return to profitability. The sad thing is I don't see any signs from the company that it recognizes where it needs to be. AMD it seems has forgotten on which side its bread is buttered.
  • meacupla - Saturday, April 18, 2015 - link

    Strong IGP has become largely irrelevant for the people it was aimed at.
    Now, you no longer need to use a weak GPU due to size constraints. Just stream a feed, which can be video and games, from a more powerful computer somewhere else in the house. The only thing the end computer needs is a video decoder. Heck, it doesn't even need to be an x86 based PC, semi modern ARM devices can also decode video streams no problem.

    Now, if you need a portable gaming PC, then it's most likely going to be a gaming laptop with dedicated nvidia graphics or an mITX computer with dedicated GPU. Either way, the tendency is for nvidia, thanks to higher efficiency and lower power consumption.
  • medi03 - Sunday, April 19, 2015 - link

    Storng IGP is meant for mobile market, and it's more than relevant there.
    Except that nobody is pairing AMD CPUs with good screens.
    i3 or i5 have faster single core performance, but show two times lower FPS at games? What gives?
  • meacupla - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link

    I don't think the issue with AMD IGP is being paired with a good screen, rather, it's the power consumption and heat output of those A series APUs.

    Yes, Intel HD4x00 and 5x00 graphics are inadequate at games at practically all resolutions, but they run videos and streams just fine at 1080p. AMD A10 graphics are inadequate at 1080p, and you'd even want a 960m or 970m for some decent graphics.

    And let's not forget that the market is heading towards higher energy efficiency and thinner/smaller form factors... AMD A series chips are just out of the question.

    Like, what current AMD chip could you cram into, say, a 2012 macbook air 13" and net similar battery life and performance?
  • Yorgos - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link

    "Earnings Per Share -$0.09 $0.02 $0.05M"
    so in 2014Q1 the shares jumped from ~3$ to 50.003$
    :D
  • SeanJ76 - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link

    COMEDY!
  • LittleLeo - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link

    I don't see people lining up for days to buy the 1st AMD product.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link

    I guess AMD really is tanking since the gigantic AMD red logo paying anandtech has been long gone for a while.

    The massive fanboy dollar pumping amd machine is dead.

    Do the amd fanboy infiltrators still get free hardware on the sly ? Who knows ?
    If they drop their secret raging fanboy fanatic shuffle, they're dead for sure.
  • HungryTurkey - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link

    It seems like every quarter, they post some gargantuan loss. I don't see how they stay in business, but I pray to the Sun Gods daily that they remain somewhat relevant. Lack of competition will make Intel sloppy and lead to the i7 equivalent of Willamette (you know you all miss that PIV 1.4 Ghz that could cook eggs, used expensive Rambus DRAM, and still performed worse than a lower clocked, cheaper Athlon). With AMD's IP shortfall compared to Intel, they really need to make some key moves not in marketing, but in bringing in some paradigm shifting-silicon designers. They've had some nice advances in the low-end segment, but they have to find a way to compete with Intel at the mainstream level (and do so without spending money they don't have). That's a tough order and short of a merger/acquisition with/by another entity that could fund insane levels of R&D, I can't see it happening.
  • dragonsqrrl - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link

    I hope that AMD can survive until Zen, because it actually sounds quite promising based on what we've been hearing. In the years following Bulldozer so many people have said AMD needs to scrap it and start from scratch, which I've always found a little odd. Not the scrapping Bulldozer part, that definitely needs to go, but the starting from scratch part. AMD has a great architecture right now that could serve as the base for future designs, Jaguar and its successor Puma. When Jaguar first launched I really thought it was the most impressive architecture to come out of AMD since K8, and it only got better with Puma. I thought AMD could have a real winner on their hands if they beefed up this architecture and took it to another performance level, similar to what Intel did with its Pentium M. Recent rumors about Zen's architecture being based on Puma actually have me pretty excited. I just hope AMD can hold out until 2016.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now