AMD Q2 2015 Financials Fall Short

[FritzEiv]

AMD answered questions about how it has managed its cash and its debt, with company executives pointing to a long runway where its financial maneuvers could continue to withstand performance weakness.

AMD Q2 2015 Financials Fall Short : Read more

 

[jaber2]

AMD gives excuses when it should concentrate on being number one, so far they are second banana when it comes to all, I just hate to see Intel and others just walking all over AMD, AMD was my first computer I build and sold, it was a 386.

 

[apazeus]

The interesting thing about AMD is that they compete on two fronts--GPUs and CPUs--with companies that each (for the most part, though not completely) focus on just one of those arenas: Nvidia in the graphics world and Intel in the CPU world. It takes enormous resources to double up like that, especially if a company expects to come out on top of the industry. Basically, they're spread too thin to win.

I use an AMD processor and and AMD graphics card and I'm happy with them. I like that they offer such cost effective options. The fact is, "bang for the buck/jack-of-all-trades" is their business strategy of choice and they will continue to lose ground until they make a true effort to be the best in the field, an effort that would require some big changes. Until then, people need to change their expectations. If you're looking for someone to challenge Nvidia or Intel, you'll have to look somewhere else.

 

[Shankovich]

Well, they have until some debts are due in 2019. Keller's leading Zen, and it looks like AMD might have the 14nm line, plus they had dibs on HBM2 modules. I have high hopes, it's just going to be a bumpy road the rest of this year.

 

[expunged]

Can you even remember the last time AMD had the best video card or processor on the market for high end devices. It was probably back when Matrox was a player... They might have had a good low end card, but for the upper end performance products they have not been the top dog for over 20 years. Now that they are using HBM and have the HBM2 deal going, they should partner up with IBM on the 7nm process, then they would have a good shot. True competition in the market place is good for us end users.

 

[blazorthon]

Can you even remember the last time AMD had the best video card or processor on the market for high end devices. It was probably back when Matrox was a player... They might have had a good low end card, but for the upper end performance products they have not been the top dog for over 20 years. Now that they are using HBM and have the HBM2 deal going, they should partner up with IBM on the 7nm process, then they would have a good shot. True competition in the market place is good for us end users.

The last time they had the best graphics card on the market? That would be when the Radeon R9 290X launched and before it, the Radeon 7970 when it launched. Before that, the Radeon 5870 when it launched. For CPUs, it's been a while. I think the last itme they had the best for CPUs was before Core 2 launched when it was netburst against Athlon 64.

Of course, that depends on what you mean by best... I'm assuming you mean highest performance with a single GPU consumer card or a single consumer CPU.

 

[goodguy713]

Its obvious people do research now days they don't just randomly go out and buy a processor or a graphics card. It really comes down to bad design choices. Ive been looking waiting for something worth while to upgrade to from my 1090t. sure there are better processors out there. and to be honest ive been eyeballing an intel 6 core just for the simple fact that it is the only real positive performance and power benefit sure the platform costs more but when you have the best processors you get more money.. more demand for your products im holding out for this next cpu release and unless I see meaningful differences. I plan to go intel I love to save money I don't need the best or the bleeding edge. Just something that will last me until my next upgrade cycle witch tends to be every 5 years.

 

[expunged]

im holding out for this next cpu release and unless I see meaningful differences.

I am in the process of building a new system now going to use a haswell chip, due to skylake not having enough pci lanes. Come on Intel 20 lanes are you kidding..

 

[expunged]

Can you even remember the last time AMD had the best video card or processor on the market for high end devices. It was probably back when Matrox was a player... They might have had a good low end card, but for the upper end performance products they have not been the top dog for over 20 years. Now that they are using HBM and have the HBM2 deal going, they should partner up with IBM on the 7nm process, then they would have a good shot. True competition in the market place is good for us end users.

The last time they had the best graphics card on the market? That would be when the Radeon R9 290X launched and before it, the Radeon 7970 when it launched. Before that, the Radeon 5870 when it launched. For CPUs, it's been a while. I think the last itme they had the best for CPUs was before Core 2 launched when it was netburst against Athlon 64.

Of course, that depends on what you mean by best... I'm assuming you mean highest performance with a single GPU consumer card or a single consumer CPU.

Benchmarks show that the Radeon R9 290X was below the gtx 690 as shown here, while it did win in some categories it fell behind in most of them. Don't get me wrong i am not a fanboy, If AMD was to bring out a card that would out perform it's rivals i would buy it. Currently I am waiting on windows 10 with DX12 so I can see the results of the fury x. then i will make the decision on either the Fury x or 980 ti. As it stands now they are neck and neck.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290x-hawaii-review,3650-10.html

 

[blazorthon]

im holding out for this next cpu release and unless I see meaningful differences.

I am in the process of building a new system now going to use a haswell chip, due to skylake not having enough pci lanes. Come on Intel 20 lanes are you kidding..

Are you complaining about getting MORE PCIe 3.0 lanes than Haswell, and then saying you're going to stick with Haswell because of it? That's what this looks like.

 

[blazorthon]

Can you even remember the last time AMD had the best video card or processor on the market for high end devices. It was probably back when Matrox was a player... They might have had a good low end card, but for the upper end performance products they have not been the top dog for over 20 years. Now that they are using HBM and have the HBM2 deal going, they should partner up with IBM on the 7nm process, then they would have a good shot. True competition in the market place is good for us end users.

The last time they had the best graphics card on the market? That would be when the Radeon R9 290X launched and before it, the Radeon 7970 when it launched. Before that, the Radeon 5870 when it launched. For CPUs, it's been a while. I think the last itme they had the best for CPUs was before Core 2 launched when it was netburst against Athlon 64.

Of course, that depends on what you mean by best... I'm assuming you mean highest performance with a single GPU consumer card or a single consumer CPU.

Benchmarks show that the Radeon R9 290X was below the gtx 690 as shown here, while it did win in some categories it fell behind in most of them. Don't get me wrong i am not a fanboy, If AMD was to bring out a card that would out perform it's rivals i would buy it. Currently I am waiting on windows 10 with DX12 so I can see the results of the fury x. then i will make the decision on either the Fury x or 980 ti. As it stands now they are neck and neck.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290x-hawaii-review,3650-10.html

I guess you ignored the last sentence of my comment? The GTX 690 is not a single GPU card and against it is the Radeon 7990, granted that did come out afterwards.

 

[expunged]

im holding out for this next cpu release and unless I see meaningful differences.

I am in the process of building a new system now going to use a haswell chip, due to skylake not having enough pci lanes. Come on Intel 20 lanes are you kidding..

Are you complaining about getting MORE PCIe 3.0 lanes than Haswell, and then saying you're going to stick with Haswell because of it? That's what this looks like.

They have the same number of 3.0 lanes at 20, I was expecting the next iteration to have more.

 

[jimmysmitty]

The interesting thing about AMD is that they compete on two fronts--GPUs and CPUs--with companies that each (for the most part, though not completely) focus on just one of those arenas: Nvidia in the graphics world and Intel in the CPU world. It takes enormous resources to double up like that, especially if a company expects to come out on top of the industry. Basically, they're spread too thin to win.

I use an AMD processor and and AMD graphics card and I'm happy with them. I like that they offer such cost effective options. The fact is, "bang for the buck/jack-of-all-trades" is their business strategy of choice and they will continue to lose ground until they make a true effort to be the best in the field, an effort that would require some big changes. Until then, people need to change their expectations. If you're looking for someone to challenge Nvidia or Intel, you'll have to look somewhere else.

Their stratagey is not bang for the buck. They are only bang for the buck because they don't have a competitive enough product. The second they have a competitive or better product, they will price it accordingly. Look at Fury X. It is about on par with the GTX 980Ti so it is priced the same. If it was better it would have been priced higher, if it was worse lower.

The original FX series is a good example, as is the whole Athlon 64 lineup. They had a better chip so they priced it equal to or higher than Intel. Thats how capitalism works.

Can you even remember the last time AMD had the best video card or processor on the market for high end devices. It was probably back when Matrox was a player... They might have had a good low end card, but for the upper end performance products they have not been the top dog for over 20 years. Now that they are using HBM and have the HBM2 deal going, they should partner up with IBM on the 7nm process, then they would have a good shot. True competition in the market place is good for us end users.

The last time they had the best graphics card on the market? That would be when the Radeon R9 290X launched and before it, the Radeon 7970 when it launched. Before that, the Radeon 5870 when it launched. For CPUs, it's been a while. I think the last itme they had the best for CPUs was before Core 2 launched when it was netburst against Athlon 64.

Of course, that depends on what you mean by best... I'm assuming you mean highest performance with a single GPU consumer card or a single consumer CPU.

I will give you the HD7970 but the R9 290x? That I don't quite agree with only because the stock reference unit ran hot, had throttling issues and didn't perform much better. It was short lived too.

im holding out for this next cpu release and unless I see meaningful differences.

I am in the process of building a new system now going to use a haswell chip, due to skylake not having enough pci lanes. Come on Intel 20 lanes are you kidding..

The biggest problem is that everything else is being moved to the PCIe bus. So the choice is have more for GPUs or have new features (i.e. M.2).

Either way a PCIe x4 is equal to a PCIe 2.0 x8 which is not a bottleneck for most GPUs right now. Maybe future GPUs will need more bandwidth.

 

[Gurg]

Well, they have until some debts are due in 2019. Keller's leading Zen, and it looks like AMD might have the 14nm line, plus they had dibs on HBM2 modules. I have high hopes, it's just going to be a bumpy road the rest of this year.

AMD will have to come up with something way before 2019 as their cash burn is so high that they will be lucky to stay out of bankruptcy for much more than another year. Cash for any new products will also be slim as it looks like Global Foundry is requiring prepayments.

http://seekingalpha.com/news/2636765-amd-minus-2_9-percent-post-earnings-street-worried-about-cash-burn-competitiveness

 

[expunged]

The interesting thing about AMD is that they compete on two fronts--GPUs and CPUs--with companies that each (for the most part, though not completely) focus on just one of those arenas: Nvidia in the graphics world and Intel in the CPU world. It takes enormous resources to double up like that, especially if a company expects to come out on top of the industry. Basically, they're spread too thin to win.

I use an AMD processor and and AMD graphics card and I'm happy with them. I like that they offer such cost effective options. The fact is, "bang for the buck/jack-of-all-trades" is their business strategy of choice and they will continue to lose ground until they make a true effort to be the best in the field, an effort that would require some big changes. Until then, people need to change their expectations. If you're looking for someone to challenge Nvidia or Intel, you'll have to look somewhere else.

Their stratagey is not bang for the buck. They are only bang for the buck because they don't have a competitive enough product. The second they have a competitive or better product, they will price it accordingly. Look at Fury X. It is about on par with the GTX 980Ti so it is priced the same. If it was better it would have been priced higher, if it was worse lower.

The original FX series is a good example, as is the whole Athlon 64 lineup. They had a better chip so they priced it equal to or higher than Intel. Thats how capitalism works.

Can you even remember the last time AMD had the best video card or processor on the market for high end devices. It was probably back when Matrox was a player... They might have had a good low end card, but for the upper end performance products they have not been the top dog for over 20 years. Now that they are using HBM and have the HBM2 deal going, they should partner up with IBM on the 7nm process, then they would have a good shot. True competition in the market place is good for us end users.

The last time they had the best graphics card on the market? That would be when the Radeon R9 290X launched and before it, the Radeon 7970 when it launched. Before that, the Radeon 5870 when it launched. For CPUs, it's been a while. I think the last itme they had the best for CPUs was before Core 2 launched when it was netburst against Athlon 64.

Of course, that depends on what you mean by best... I'm assuming you mean highest performance with a single GPU consumer card or a single consumer CPU.

I will give you the HD7970 but the R9 290x? That I don't quite agree with only because the stock reference unit ran hot, had throttling issues and didn't perform much better. It was short lived too.

im holding out for this next cpu release and unless I see meaningful differences.

I am in the process of building a new system now going to use a haswell chip, due to skylake not having enough pci lanes. Come on Intel 20 lanes are you kidding..

The biggest problem is that everything else is being moved to the PCIe bus. So the choice is have more for GPUs or have new features (i.e. M.2).

Either way a PCIe x4 is equal to a PCIe 2.0 x8 which is not a bottleneck for most GPUs right now. Maybe future GPUs will need more bandwidth.

I do agree with your statement above, but my issue will be running 2 video cards in sli and also a Intel 750 PCie which requires 4 lanes of 3.0. from what i have read, the ssd will run on 2.0 but with very noticeable speed degradation.

 

[blazorthon]

I will give you the HD7970 but the R9 290x? That I don't quite agree with only because the stock reference unit ran hot, had throttling issues and didn't perform much better. It was short lived too.

Most people don't buy reference coolers anyway. Nvidia has made some decent reference coolers since Fermi, I'll give them that. However, no system builder in their right mind even looks at reference cards. Sure, that's a bigger issue for people who aren't don't builds their own system or get someone else to do it for them, but they aren't us. There aren't such throttling issues on the non-reference cards with proper cooling.

Still, I agree that AMD's attempt at a reference cooler was particularly pathetic with that card. Any time you slap a cooler on a card when the cooler isn't even close to being able to handle the card's heat is asinine and AMD should be ashamed of themselves for that fiasco. That's even worse than the pump issue on the Fury X because at least that got fixed.

How long it lasted or by how much it won wasn't part of the question But yeah, you're right about that too.

What about the 5870? By all accounts, that may have been AMD's greatest victory in the graphics department. A whole six months of being the top while also being the most energy efficient (even after it was finally dethroned) and it was beaten by the GTX 480 (also not by a large amount) which remained infamous for years to come. Too bad they have yet to have a proper repeat of it. The 7970 could have been that if they had proper drivers for GCN to begin with instead of a few months later.

 

[blazorthon]

I do agree with your statement above, but my issue will be running 2 video cards in sli and also a Intel 750 PCie which requires 4 lanes of 3.0. from what i have read, the ssd will run on 2.0 but with very noticeable speed degradation.

Am I missing something here? 16 lanes for the graphics cards then, 4 for the SSD. That's still 20 lanes of PCIe 3.0 being used, assuming you go for Skylake.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I will give you the HD7970 but the R9 290x? That I don't quite agree with only because the stock reference unit ran hot, had throttling issues and didn't perform much better. It was short lived too.

Most people don't buy reference coolers anyway. Nvidia has made some decent reference coolers since Fermi, I'll give them that. However, no system builder in their right mind even looks at reference cards. Sure, that's a bigger issue for people who aren't don't builds their own system or get someone else to do it for them, but they aren't us. There aren't such throttling issues on the non-reference cards with proper cooling.

Still, I agree that AMD's attempt at a reference cooler was particularly pathetic with that card. Any time you slap a cooler on a card when the cooler isn't even close to being able to handle the card's heat is asinine and AMD should be ashamed of themselves for that fiasco. That's even worse than the pump issue on the Fury X because at least that got fixed.

How long it lasted or by how much it won wasn't part of the question But yeah, you're right about that too.

What about the 5870? By all accounts, that may have been AMD's greatest victory in the graphics department. A whole six months of being the top while also being the most energy efficient (even after it was finally dethroned) and it was beaten by the GTX 480 (also not by a large amount) which remained infamous for years to come. Too bad they have yet to have a proper repeat of it. The 7970 could have been that if they had proper drivers for GCN to begin with instead of a few months later.

The HD7970 came out on top in January of 2012 but that only lasted 2 months as the GTX 680 came out in arch 2012 and took the crown back. They did trade blows as drivers improved and of course the HD7970GHz. Still the HD 7970 was a proper GPU. It launched with good performance and good thermals and the after markets were just icing on the cake, as were the GHz variants.

The R9 290X did come out on top but the throttling killed it. Plus the other issue was the price, it was still during the bitcoin craze so they were being sold at much more which killed it until about a year after launch when GPUs became no longer viable for bitcoins. It was just a bad launch cursed by a bad craze killing the performance per $.

The HD5870 was a good GPU. The HD6970 however was not. It was not faster than the HD5870. It had less SPUs too.

 

[blazorthon]

The HD7970 came out on top in January of 2012 but that only lasted 2 months as the GTX 680 came out in arch 2012 and took the crown back. They did trade blows as drivers improved and of course the HD7970GHz. Still the HD 7970 was a proper GPU. It launched with good performance and good thermals and the after markets were just icing on the cake, as were the GHz variants.

The R9 290X did come out on top but the throttling killed it. Plus the other issue was the price, it was still during the bitcoin craze so they were being sold at much more which killed it until about a year after launch when GPUs became no longer viable for bitcoins. It was just a bad launch cursed by a bad craze killing the performance per $.

The HD5870 was a good GPU. The HD6970 however was not. It was not faster than the HD5870. It had less SPUs too.

Two moths is a pretty good time considering although 7970 availability wasn't great at first, it was still far better than the 680's availability. My gripe with the 7970 was that it had several severe driver issues around launch time. A few games hardly worked at all and several features were either absent or non-functional. Crossfire wasn't even really viable at first.

To be fair, the bitcoin craze wasn't something AMD had control over.

The 6970 wasn't just about beating the 5870 in performance- which it did in at least some situations- it was about improving efficiency and it did that very well. It made more efficient use of the SPUs it had, much like Maxwell compared to Kepler.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The last time they had the best graphics card on the market? That would be when the Radeon R9 290X launched and before it, the Radeon 7970 when it launched. Before that, the Radeon 5870 when it launched. For CPUs, it's been a while. I think the last itme they had the best for CPUs was before Core 2 launched when it was netburst against Athlon 64.

Of course, that depends on what you mean by best... I'm assuming you mean highest performance with a single GPU consumer card or a single consumer CPU.

The last time I can remember was when nVidia stumbled badly and missed the XMas season in 2009 .... the 4-6 month period between the 5870 and the 480 release was AMDs last hurrah.

As for the the 290x, that just doesn't hold water. Yes, we could talk about the week or so that the 290x existed before nVidia blew the dust off the card they has sitting on the shelves all that time and released the 780Ti. .....

.... or we could talk about the fact that AMD's very aggressive "in the box" overclock made headlines on release day but soon everyone started to realize just how small the gains that were to be had when overclocked. When we got a hold of them and fired up Afterburner, we were all going "whaaat"like the guy in Sandler's Grownups movie.

Unfortunately, overclocked couldn't catch the 780 let alone the 780 T (8:40). We managed just 7 - 12% overclocks (16% once) on our 290x builds but the 780s reliably did 24 - 27%, and widened the gap when both were under water (4:30).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djvZaHHU4I8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqaHh-y51us

And I agree 2 GPU cards are always outperformed by two single cards using the same GPUs

AMD held there own for a good run owning the low to mid market up thru the 6xx / 7xxx period and ceding the high end. The 650 Ti Boost was a big blow to AMD but AMD has held the $200-$250 segment for two generations, to getting pressure from the top with what appears to be predatory pricing on the 970. Intel's starting to cut in on the low end and nVidia pushing them from the top puts them in a position of fighting on 2 fronts w/o even considering CPUs.

Assuming they have the margins, something in at $280 could make the 960 irrelevant and put pressure on the 970. I shudder to think the market share graph looks like today.

Benchmarks show that the Radeon R9 290X was below the gtx 690 as shown here, while it did win in some categories it fell behind in most of them. Don't get me wrong i am not a fanboy, If AMD was to bring out a card that would out perform it's rivals i would buy it. Currently I am waiting on windows 10 with DX12 so I can see the results of the fury x. then i will make the decision on either the Fury x or 980 ti. As it stands now they are neck and neck.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290x-hawaii-review,3650-10.html

Again, at reference speeds....

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/
GTX_980_Ti_G1_Gaming/33.html
the 980 Ti overclocks (134.8 / 102.6) ~ 31.4 %

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_Fury_X/34.html
The Fury X just (108.1 / 102.9) ~ 5.0 %

That's not neck and neck....that's Secretariat at the Belmont Stakes.

 

[Mathos]

Well, they have until some debts are due in 2019. Keller's leading Zen, and it looks like AMD might have the 14nm line, plus they had dibs on HBM2 modules. I have high hopes, it's just going to be a bumpy road the rest of this year.

I'm hoping we see Zen or possibly a 14/16nm FinFet Excavator before the end of the year. And that looks to be a massive strategic move, corning the market on HBM2, guessing we'll see a refresh to the Fury line soonish with HBM2 and increased memory. Need holing my breath on that though.

Its obvious people do research now days they don't just randomly go out and buy a processor or a graphics card. It really comes down to bad design choices. Ive been looking waiting for something worth while to upgrade to from my 1090t. sure there are better processors out there. and to be honest ive been eyeballing an intel 6 core just for the simple fact that it is the only real positive performance and power benefit sure the platform costs more but when you have the best processors you get more money.. more demand for your products im holding out for this next cpu release and unless I see meaningful differences. I plan to go intel I love to save money I don't need the best or the bleeding edge. Just something that will last me until my next upgrade cycle witch tends to be every 5 years.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat here. Still sitting on my 1090T, been eying upgrades. But either way I go I have to buy a new motherboard, since my 890Fx deluxe 4 won't support the newer Piledriver CPU's. Which begs the question, do I want to upgrade to a 990FX when AM3 may be a dead end socket. Or Switch to Intel, and go a mid range i5.... I've really been wanting to wait for at least Excavator on the desktop or Zen before upgrading though. On the other hand, I may replace my old HD7850 with an R9 Fury, especially if I can catch one on sale.

 

[alidan]

I will give you the HD7970 but the R9 290x? That I don't quite agree with only because the stock reference unit ran hot, had throttling issues and didn't perform much better. It was short lived too.

Most people don't buy reference coolers anyway. Nvidia has made some decent reference coolers since Fermi, I'll give them that. However, no system builder in their right mind even looks at reference cards. Sure, that's a bigger issue for people who aren't don't builds their own system or get someone else to do it for them, but they aren't us. There aren't such throttling issues on the non-reference cards with proper cooling.

Still, I agree that AMD's attempt at a reference cooler was particularly pathetic with that card. Any time you slap a cooler on a card when the cooler isn't even close to being able to handle the card's heat is asinine and AMD should be ashamed of themselves for that fiasco. That's even worse than the pump issue on the Fury X because at least that got fixed.

How long it lasted or by how much it won wasn't part of the question But yeah, you're right about that too.

What about the 5870? By all accounts, that may have been AMD's greatest victory in the graphics department. A whole six months of being the top while also being the most energy efficient (even after it was finally dethroned) and it was beaten by the GTX 480 (also not by a large amount) which remained infamous for years to come. Too bad they have yet to have a proper repeat of it. The 7970 could have been that if they had proper drivers for GCN to begin with instead of a few months later.

The HD7970 came out on top in January of 2012 but that only lasted 2 months as the GTX 680 came out in arch 2012 and took the crown back. They did trade blows as drivers improved and of course the HD7970GHz. Still the HD 7970 was a proper GPU. It launched with good performance and good thermals and the after markets were just icing on the cake, as were the GHz variants.

The R9 290X did come out on top but the throttling killed it. Plus the other issue was the price, it was still during the bitcoin craze so they were being sold at much more which killed it until about a year after launch when GPUs became no longer viable for bitcoins. It was just a bad launch cursed by a bad craze killing the performance per $.

The HD5870 was a good GPU. The HD6970 however was not. It was not faster than the HD5870. It had less SPUs too.

my brother got a 290X pretty much the day it came out, he planed on water cooling it so he didnt care about the reference design...

fun thing is, even with the reference cooler, getting that card to run at over 80 degrees full load was hard, but he also didn't give a crap about noise... even when that thing was going 70-85% full speed, it wasn't as bad as people made it out to be... it wasn't silent, but i have heard far FAR worse cards when it comes to noise.

also, if i remember correctly, it wasn't till about 1 week after black friday or so after the launch that the madness happened for the bitcoin mining, and this lasted till i beleive april ish... i wanted a 7970 ghz at the time and everything priced reasonably was sold out, and stock for the 280X didn't come in reasonable prices till around than.

if you want to talk about the 290X in the long term though... right now its the card i would buy, possibly even get 2 if i didn't think multi gpu was such a stupid idea because price performance is great on these things. while the 390 may have a bit more to offer with 8gb ram, by the time something comes along to use it properly the gpu itself would be suck a crappy option and a newer one would be what i would look at.

 

[motocros1]

IMO, AMD has been working harder than Intel and Nvidia. They have less financial resources available and thus less money to go into R&D. I buy AMD simply because they are the underdog and they work harder with less to make the best they can. It's like the movie "Money ball", where a team in MLB that make's a quarter of the revenue as other teams still has to compete in the same league and at the same level. AMD has been making competitve products the whole time. Yes they may fall a few FPS to titles here and there and the power and thermals are a little higher, but overall they have a great product and a competitive price(Oh no I have to buy a new PSU 6 months sooner than i wanted). I buy AMD because without some competition Intel and Nvidia will be able to charge whatever they want(and with Intel and the core 2 & 4 we know that could get ugly). AMD doesn't compete in the high end with intel because they have a fraction of what intel has in revenue and thus less on R&D. AMD has done a fantastic job on price/performance area, you know, the most important area. I love hearing from the fanboys all the problems AMD has had with drivers. I have owned 4 AMD cards and 1 Nvidia card. I've only had driver problems wilth the ONE Nvdia card i had. I see that the general public has less money to buy on new equipment for their computer, but AMD has had their hands full for many years and still had competitive products. If your hoping for an AMD product to blow either companys out of the water, you are mistaken. They haven't the money or the time to do that, they need your support to further their cause and that isn't going to happen if nobody buys their product. Which it appears has slowed down in a industry wide effort.

 

[hans_pcguy]

Ever since Intel was forced to bail out AMD and they stole all the good engineers from them. AMD has been a front for Intel's monopoly. They let AMD survive so they can keep their prices crazy high. Just a price fixing scheme. There now you know.

 

[Guest]

The 7970, 290X, and now the Fury and Fury X have been great performers. The Fury X has nowhere to go but up in performance as it is only a baby at this time and I think with driver maturity it will begin to gain on the Titan X more. The older AMD cards also seem to perform the same for longer than Nvidia ones do in my experience, which is one reason I choose to buy AMD cards now. I used to buy Nvidia only until I bought a 7850 in 2012. Just look at the Keplar cards current performance compared to what they did when they were new. I have seen some benchmarks recently showing the GTX 770 (680) has fallen behind the 280X (7970) a bit, where the 770 used to beat it more often. It seems like every new architecture from Nvidia means the last one becomes slower as they can't keep up with the driver wizardry on old and new cards simultaneously and focus more on the newest ones. I know a few people with Keplar GPU's that are complaining about their performance in some games saying the card seems less powerful than it used to be. It will be interesting to see how Maxwell fairs a few years down the road.

As for AMD, 2015 is more of a stop gap than anything. They said basically that at the beginning of the year. Their embedded and GPU sales will keep them treading water for this year as they set themselves up for 2016. Dibs on HBM 2 as well as experience gained using HBM 1 will help them on the GPU front, and Jim Keller will help them everywhere else. Remember, along with the Zen CPU it is highly likely he is re designing the way the whole system will operate. Hyper Transport will likely be tweaked or maybe changed completely to handle faster RAM and PCI-e speeds which will make the whole system faster of course. I am confident we will see another Atlon 64 with Zen. On top of design, Lisa Su seems to know very well what she is doing and I think she can take the company into the future given the proper hardware to work with. They are headed in a good direction overall.