News AMD Posts Strong Results on Robust EPYC Sales As Consumer CPU Sales Disappoint

JamesJones44

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Datacenter actually wan't that good. The revenue was good, but the gross margins missed expectations. Where AMD is really winning is with the Xilinx acquisition. The "embedded" segment (largely automotive and aerospace) killed it on all metrics. The embedded segment was more than 50% of their total profit while only being about 25% of their total revenue.
 

SSGBryan

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Expectations were a bit unrealistic. Everybody upgraded their systems during the pandemic, so for the most part, they don't actually need a new computer. People don't replace their pc systems every generation. If they do, it is normally around 5 years with a GPU upgrade inbetween.

In my case, I went from a Ryzen 7 2700 to a Ryzen 5700x, nearly doubled performance. $199 and I didn't even need to replace the CPU cooler.

The upgrade wasn't a "have to have" - it was a nice to have, and it will extend my current system for at least 2 more years, if not more.
 
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kal326

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Most everyone that hadn’t already upgraded was waiting out new chips and gpus. GPUs hit almost mid December for purchase. Chips and new boards hit earlier, but still weren’t compelling purchases either. Especially with 3D cache chips yet to be released. Also through in a looming likely recession and not surprised to see soft consumer demand.
 

TechieTwo

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The economic recession in the U.S. and EU started at least 6 months ago. With 40 year record high inflation in the U.S., $5/gal. gas and $8 for a dozen eggs consumers simply have less discretionary income. With tens of thousands of tech job layoffs being announced almost daily by Microsoft, Apple, car makers, Intel and more it's inevitable that there will be significantly lower consumption because most unemployed workers don't make unnecessary purchases when they don't know when they will have a job again or how severe and long the economic recession will be. There is a snowball effect in all industries so expect a lot more lost jobs and drops in corporate revenue.
 

Amdlova

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The problem is windows 11, another problem is the really bad expecting for a great hardware every year. The pc master race is another pain. And the worst is the graphics price.... how to pay 1700 dollars for something will be obsolete next year? For an amd cpu you can get a Chinese board, 18 cores and 64 gb of ddr4. I got a Chinese 2696v3 cpu for 72 dollar without oc can match a 3700x with oc can match a 3900x 1/4 price and the heat? With a cheap air cooler is about 50 degree celcius on full load. MAN and have TONS OF CPU.
 

zecoeco

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AMD is probably the only tech company that didn't do a "mass layoff" and that is due to the positive financial reports.
Xilinx acquisition was a really smart move by AMD. The chips business is not only for Desktops/Laptops/Data Center
The embedded market is very important and probably the only segment that will only continue growing for the machinery needs of different use and embedded systems.
 

watzupken

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Investors expectation is generally unrealistic because they will only expect things to improve if not maintain. So the assumption is that companies will always make more or maintain profits. In reality, we know its not the case. In fact, the industry growth and high margins over the last few years are fueled by exceptional events that will come to an end. What we are looking at now is the same trend we saw pre-pandemic, I.e. a decline in demand for PC. So if we ate comparing the norm results vs exceptional results, then of course we should expect corrections.
 

Kamen Rider Blade

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Investors expectation is generally unrealistic because they will only expect things to improve if not maintain. So the assumption is that companies will always make more or maintain profits. In reality, we know its not the case. In fact, the industry growth and high margins over the last few years are fueled by exceptional events that will come to an end. What we are looking at now is the same trend we saw pre-pandemic, I.e. a decline in demand for PC. So if we ate comparing the norm results vs exceptional results, then of course we should expect corrections.
Sadly, Investors are always blinded by greed and unrealistic beliefs about what can really happen in the market.

Their fantasy land ideas of endless profits & growth is what causes issues and needs to be massively corrected on a Global Scale.

They need a MASSIVE Attitude/Expectation adjustment.
 

KyaraM

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The problem is windows 11, another problem is the really bad expecting for a great hardware every year. The pc master race is another pain. And the worst is the graphics price.... how to pay 1700 dollars for something will be obsolete next year? For an amd cpu you can get a Chinese board, 18 cores and 64 gb of ddr4. I got a Chinese 2696v3 cpu for 72 dollar without oc can match a 3700x with oc can match a 3900x 1/4 price and the heat? With a cheap air cooler is about 50 degree celcius on full load. MAN and have TONS OF CPU.
In which parallel dimension is a high-end GPU for 1700 bucks obsolete the next year? You make no sense. And let's assume that is really the case. How is your precious CPU not in the same boat? It will be superseded by a better, newer one next year after all!
 
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Given how diversified AMD has been trying to be (just look back at their CES presentation), they've been threading the rough waters a bit better, for sure.

As someone already mentioned, while having Xilinx is making them pay a lot QoQ, it is stil paying itself quite nicely and it'll definitely become a big part rather soon.

Server, well, we all know how that is going. AMD is truly competitive, if not flat out kicking Intel, so they have a strong foot there and it seems they'll be staying for a long while. Wendel in his podcast with Tom (MLiD) actually talked about how this is going from being in meetings where this is actually decided and shed some very interesting insights on the decision making for Corps. He had a very positive potential outlook for AMD, provided they keep doing what they have and don't go backwards on their pacing. Knowing AMD, that is not completely out of the scope of possibilities, LOL.

Anyway, on the consumer... Well, nothing much to say there. As many have already pointed out, these past few years, including "lockdown season" and the fierce competition between AMD and Intel on this front, nothing much either can do than just take the plunge and consider this a marketing expenditure (joking, obviously).

Let's hope they keep up the good (ish) work and bring competition.

Regards.
 
AMD wana sell more on the consumer market?, well they will have to lower the prices. The whole Ryzen 7000 platform price is too high for the current worldwide market.

We all understand the products are more powerfull overall and offer better performance, but that doesn't change the fact that for many of us, our pockets are not as full as they used to be 2 years ago.

Not to mention Intel which is finally ofering, with 12th and 13th gen, very compeling proudcts that are cheaper, and most times offer the same or even better performance than AMD counterparts.
 
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DavidLejdar

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Zen 3 was a late-2020 release, and Zen 4 a late-2022 release. Likewise for the 6000 and 7000 series. So, even when disregarding any other factor, arguably not surprising that 2022 wasn't a great year for sales, when many already had an upgrade and/or were waiting for the next release (and availability thereof).

And there arguably also is the issue that for many an upgrade doesn't make sense when not having that an interest to move to 4K (or when waiting for a few more offers of displays for it). Meaning that if AMD would be offering RDNA3 GPUs (with more performance and memory) for 1080p and 1440p in particular, then many of gamers with 5+ old GPUs (see e.g. Steam survey) may perhaps be more interested in that.
 
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PlaneInTheSky

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"2022 was a strong year for AMD as we delivered best-in-class growth and record revenue despite the weak PC environment in the second half of the year," said AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su.

Yes...keep the focus on "the year", we don't want anyone looking at the disastrous last quarter.

For the year 2023, that is already off to a horrible start for chip companies, maybe "Dr. Lisa Su" can focus on profits of the last decade to try to obfuscate recent data.
 
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PlaneInTheSky

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The reality is - most of us only need to replace a PC every decade or so.

My PC from 14 years ago still browses the internet just fine. It still does Spotify, Netflix, indie gaming, etc.

At some point your average PC became "good enough" for most tasks.

This is starting to happen with PC gaming too. While AAA developers still bother to spend years making "uber graphics", most developers have long stopped with this rat race because better graphics rarely translates to better sales.

etetetetete.png
 
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KyaraM

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My PC from 14 years ago still browses the internet just fine. It still does Spotify, Netflix, indie gaming, etc.

At some point your average PC became "good enough" for most tasks.

This is starting to happen with PC gaming too. While AAA developers still bother to spend years making "4k textures", most developers have long stopped with this rat race because better graphics rarely translates to better sales.

etetetetete.png
After all, it doesn't really matter if your game is fotorealistic or comic book... what counts is that people can actually play it. It can be the best game ever, if only few have the hardware to play it, it flops, plain and simple. I got into quite a few arguments lately about ridiculous many games this year are in system requirements. Some people don't seem to get that there are still many people with GTX 1000-era cards out there, for good reason at that, and why the hardware specs some of the current games ask for are simply stupid. Heck, they literally argued that almost half the people do have better cards as if that means anything! Best dude was the one who went "you had FIVE YEARS" (formatted exactly like that) at me, as if a 3070 didn't cost over 900 bucks a year ago, and more before that. And I have a 3070Ti. I still can acknowledge how dumb it is.

"2022 was a strong year for AMD as we delivered best-in-class growth and record revenue despite the weak PC environment in the second half of the year," said AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su.

Yes...keep the focus on "the year", we don't want anyone looking at the disastrous last quarter.

For the year 2023, that is already off to a horrible start for chip companies, maybe "Dr. Lisa Su" can focus on profits of the last decade to try to obfuscate the data.
They are all the same after all. Trying to look as good as possible to appease shareholders. The customers? Who?
 
AMD is probably the only tech company that didn't do a "mass layoff" and that is due to the positive financial reports.
Or they plainly don't have any spare employees to layoff...
They made 58% less net income this year compared to last year, I don't know how that specifies as positive financial reports.
Zen 3 was a late-2020 release, and Zen 4 a late-2022 release. Likewise for the 6000 and 7000 series. So, even when disregarding any other factor, arguably not surprising that 2022 wasn't a great year for sales, when many already had an upgrade and/or were waiting for the next release (and availability thereof).

And there arguably also is the issue that for many an upgrade doesn't make sense when not having that an interest to move to 4K (or when waiting for a few more offers of displays for it). Meaning that if AMD would be offering RDNA3 GPUs (with more performance and memory) for 1080p and 1440p in particular, then many of gamers with 5+ old GPUs (see e.g. Steam survey) may perhaps be more interested in that.
The big companies don't make CPUs to sell one at a time to end users.

No matter how bad things go companies still open up every day, and depending on the company they need dozens/hundreds/thousands of PCs to do their thing.
Companies don't just shoot out of the ground synchronized once every 5 years or so.
Sure the market is way down and less companies open up but they still do open up.
 
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Jimbojan

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AMD's data center products continue to shine, but sales of client CPUs and GPUs drop for the second consecutive quarter in Q4 2022.

AMD Posts Strong Results on Robust EPYC Sales As Consumer CPU Sales Disappoint : Read more
Yes, AMD's data center business will start to lose share, as Intel's Sapphire Rapids just came out and a new gen with Intel 4 in 6 month will gain significant market share as Intel's data center and other CPUs will have a better power efficiency than AMD's 5nm chip with better performance. Going forward, Intel-3 will be ahead of AMD's 3 nm in the future; If you strip out Xilinx's revenue, AMD's CPU business is actually falling farther than Intel's.
 

InvalidError

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The reality is - most of us only need to replace a PC every decade or so.
I used to upgrade every four years, but then there was the "great stagnation" from 2012 through 2019 and I ended up sitting on my i5-3470 for nine years and was still feeling generally adequate at that point. I mainly upgraded because I had no confidence in where the market was going and didn't want to be stuck having to upgrade on an emergency basis if my old i5 failed. Things have been moving much quicker since then, so I may get tempted to upgrade my i5-11400 sooner, though I don't expect to have much of an actual need to do so within the next 5-7 years.
 

KyaraM

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I used to upgrade every four years, but then there was the "great stagnation" from 2012 through 2019 and I ended up sitting on my i5-3470 for nine years and was still feeling generally adequate at that point. I mainly upgraded because I had no confidence in where the market was going and didn't want to be stuck having to upgrade on an emergency basis if my old i5 failed. Things have been moving much quicker since then, so I may get tempted to upgrade my i5-11400 sooner, though I don't expect to have much of an actual need to do so within the next 5-7 years.
Yeah, I calculate with my 12700k running for about 6-7 years more as well... minimum.
 

Elusive Ruse

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Adjusted fourth-quarter revenue rose 16% to $5.60 billion. Analysts on average were expecting revenue of $5.50 billion, according to Refinitiv data.
AMD's earnings actually beat expectations, the downturn in consumer CPU sales is in line with the whole segment going down as inflation bites and those who needed to buy or upgrade for home office work did so.
The server market has been a strong performer since 2017 and they continue eat into Intel's share, so it's not surprising it pretty much saved AMD's butt.

chart.png
 
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