AMD Now Almost Worth A Quarter of What it Paid for ATI

[FordGT90Concept]

The period after the Lehman Brothers collapse, AMD's valuation was under a billion if I remember correctly. They are still alive.

AMD was plummeting long before the 2008 subprime mortgage bubble burst. I said back in 2006 that buying out ATI was the dumbest thing AMD could do. Proven correct, I was.

AMD was a good company from about 1997-2005 (K6 to K8). Before and after, not so much.

They had all the deals with console vendors? WTF? Did they give their GPU's away?

They likely only make pennies on the dollar for every unit shipped and Global Foundries probably gets most of the profit margin. AMD killed itself when it was forced to sell its foundries.

 

[Caring1]

They had all the deals with console vendors? WTF? Did they give their GPU's away?

The person that wrote that licensing deal was probably a mole from Nvidia

 

[buildzoid]

They had all the deals with console vendors? WTF? Did they give their GPU's away?

The reason Nvidia refused the console deal was due to it being very very low profit.


On a side note. It's odd but I'm slowly moving away from intel products even though the performance gap is getting steadily larger, I've come to realize that I don't play enough new games to care about single threaded performance on the other hand I do stream and edit video on occasion and that's something an FX8370 at 4.8Ghz can do better than an i5 4XXX.

 

[thevoiceofreason]

(...) Stocks don't listen to fanboys, they listen to market presence and profitability.
It's brutally naive to assume AMD's decline is anything other than lack of product and lack of product perception, combined with possible major mismanagement.
(...)

I'd attribute it to the Intel marketing machine (reality check: Intel's tagline is Intel Inside, what's AMD's?), their close relationships with OEMs and industry's poor benchmarking standards that still make recommendations on purchasing CPUs based on how quickly they calculate Pi or transcode mp3s (I transcode mp3 maybe once a month for a total of two minutes when I buy a new CD, how often do you?).

The reality is that for a regular consumer who spends most of their time browsing reddit, watching Netflix, maybe fumbling with formulas in Excel or playing games, the choice of a CPU makes very little difference. But people are not some perfect, rational consumers and will gladly pay double because the guy at the computer shop read a review and the prime95 numbers were better so they end up getting the Intel i7.

What fairly few people here realize (the54thvoid being one of them) is that there is much more to running a profitable business than just having the best product, and that marketing is not just buying advertisements.

For the record, I have i5-3350P myself.

 

[Basard]

I have no idea how it works, I just figured it would be nice to have like two shares of AMD.

I'm not sure how it works either, but I remember their stock was at ten bucks a share before the original Athlons came out. Shortly after it was at seventy a share.

 

[Assimilator]

With fanboys all over the place and wrong information given by reviewers and review sites, AMD is taking heavy shots.

I'm always very careful not to make the wrong judgement, but Intel has been playing with the desktop customer for more than 2 generations. Crappy CPU assembly and minimal performance gains are very bad for their name, but people still buy them like candy. Just yesterday I was testing an i7-4770 on stock speeds and priming temps were more than 100C with an air conditioned room, while in the same room an 8350 @ 4.5GHz did not even reach 60C, while gaming performance was identical. and the price is 3 times less.

Conveniently ignoring the massively higher power consumption of the AMD CPU for that "identical" performance, and the chipsets for that "high-end" CPU that haven't been updated since 2011 (so no USB 3), to name two factors.

You're also ignoring how Intel has prioritised power efficiency over performance since Sandy Bridge, so that their CPUs can be put into even more devices and make even more money. This is called a "successful business strategy" and is something that AMD has not yet heard of.

 

[Basard]

Conveniently ignoring the massively higher power consumption of the AMD CPU for that "identical" performance, and the chipsets for that "high-end" CPU that haven't been updated since 2011 (so no USB 3), to name two factors.

You're also ignoring how Intel has prioritised power efficiency over performance since Sandy Bridge, so that their CPUs can be put into even more devices and make even more money. This is called a "successful business strategy" and is something that AMD has not yet heard of.

My GA-970A-UD3 has USB 3...

 

[john_]

The reason Nvidia refused the console deal was due to it being very very low profit.

That's what Nvidia wanted everyone to believe. They lost the consoles because they couldn't make an x86 APU. They didn't had x86 cores. On the other hand Intel didn't had a good GPU. So Microsoft and Sony gone with the only company that had an x86 CPU AND a good GPU. The fact that AMD is not in a posision to negotiate higher prices, was also a nice bonus for both Microsoft and Sony.

 

[cyneater]

You do know MIPS is still around and are in fact on the rebound with some help from Imagination Technologies who bought them a couple of years ago, right?

Mips are but they are nothing like they use to be... THey might be in tablets phones and other devices but they are not used in workstations anymore.

SGI sold them...

 

[Constantine Yevseyev]

My GA-970A-UD3 has USB 3...

Not really. I mean, it's a 3rd party chip (Etron EJ168). They do have their in-house USB 3.0 controller (goes with every single chipset they have for 2015, present in both ULV and mainstream category devices), but they have yet to start equipping their performance segment products with it.

 

[nunyabuisness]

I'd attribute it to the Intel marketing machine (reality check: Intel's tagline is Intel Inside, what's AMD's?), their close relationships with OEMs and industry's poor benchmarking standards that still make recommendations on purchasing CPUs based on how quickly they calculate Pi or transcode mp3s (I transcode mp3 maybe once a month for a total of two minutes when I buy a new CD, how often do you?).

The reality is that for a regular consumer who spends most of their time browsing reddit, watching Netflix, maybe fumbling with formulas in Excel or playing games, the choice of a CPU makes very little difference. But people are not some perfect, rational consumers and will gladly pay double because the guy at the computer shop read a review and the prime95 numbers were better so they end up getting the Intel i7.

What fairly few people here realize (the54thvoid being one of them) is that there is much more to running a profitable business than just having the best product, and that marketing is not just buying advertisements.

For the record, I have i5-3350P myself.

I have to agree.
I had a 4690 (non K) which my friend's CPU kicked the bucket so I gave that to him. and I had a pentium G3260 laying around. and I honestly couldn't tell the difference with basic stuff.
I even played CS go on the integrated GFX no joke!

This last week I got a I7 4790K as my Final CPU till the end of next year when Zen etc come out. and I can not notice any diff. except AAA games that need the HP and then multitasking apps.
The i7 is total overkill and thats cool id rather have it than not have it and need it.

if I had the pentium I woudnt be able to play battlefront etc. or I could but with less Ai etc. just like BF4 if you had a dual core you got less AI in the single players etc.

 

[the54thvoid]

...What fairly few people here realize (the54thvoid being one of them) is that there is much more to running a profitable business than just having the best product, and that marketing is not just buying advertisements.

For the record, I have i5-3350P myself.

EDIT: - I'm an arse and need to read properly, keeping this post for humility. My following reply is because i misread @thevoiceofreason's post

What I said.....

the share price drop is indicative of the mass perception and market belief that AMD are no longer delivering a solid product

Perception and belief are key to this, whether or not their products stack up. If you can't get it across to the consumer that your product is the best (even if it isn't, iphone for example) then you fail at changing opinions and perceptions. The same way that LG have problems shifting lots of their flagship G4 smartphone despite it being pretty damn good. Samsung and Apple hold the market perception amongst the masses as being the best (and they are good mind). AMD while delivering solid products are seen as lesser. That is a failure of AMD's own marketing strategy and it's business direction. AMD need to prove they have a viable alternative to Intel and/or that it fits a better pricing model. This product then has to be delivered to the consumer at a profitable margin.

As for your whimsical fairy tale that it is Intel's fault, that's because AMD has failed to counter the industry's perception. Your general statement about using the tech for mundane purposes is irrelevent as I can also use a low cost Intel or even a SoC for that. AMD are a business and if they cannot change perceptions - they have failed as a business, irrespective of the market forces around them.

FTR, for you to simply state "fairly few people realise..." shows a staggering level of arrogance and ignorance. Even if i knew jack shit about business, there are a whole heap of folks here that do.

 

[thevoiceofreason]

What I said.....

Yeah, and what I said you said, including you in people who realize that brand perception is a powerful force. In other words, you seem to have launched into a tirade thinking I disagree with you, but I don't. You were "quoted for truth", as they say.

Perception and belief are key to this, whether or not their products stack up. If you can't get it across to the consumer that your product is the best (even if it isn't, iphone for example) then you fail at changing opinions and perceptions. The same way that LG have problems shifting lots of their flagship G4 smartphone despite it being pretty damn good. Samsung and Apple hold the market perception amongst the masses as being the best (and they are good mind). AMD while delivering solid products are seen as lesser. That is a failure of AMD's own marketing strategy and it's business direction. AMD need to prove they have a viable alternative to Intel and/or that it fits a better pricing model. This product then has to be delivered to the consumer at a profitable margin.

As for your whimsical fairy tale that it is Intel's fault, that's because AMD has failed to counter the industry's perception. Your general statement about using the tech for mundane purposes is irrelevent as I can also use a low cost Intel or even a SoC for that. AMD are a business and if they cannot change perceptions - they have failed as a business, irrespective of the market forces around them.

Yeah, we just both mentioned this above. However, I never said it's Intel's fault, if anything, they are better at it, and rightly reap the benefits. And I do maintain that the TPU comment section usually ends up circlejerking about performance and efficiency numbers as if they were all matters.

For those unfamiliar with how businesses work, it's the marketing's job to perform market analysis and communicate the value of the product to the customers, including business customers. And the fraction of high-end consumer grade CPUs (that is i7s rather than Xeons) that are actually used for number crunching as opposed to idling in office PCs is minuscule. They might as well be APUs, but AMD failed to convince anyone about that. After all, they are slower in Prime95, and the benchmarks don't lie.

 

[de.das.dude]

AMD needs to fire their current PR and Marketing and hire new ones. They suck. Not only do they not work enough, but their adverts and ideas are weird and creepy.
what happned to the good ol days when you could slap on a naked chick and a product would sell?

 

[64K]

They had all the deals with console vendors? WTF? Did they give their GPU's away?

Pretty much.

Mismanagement seems to be the biggest problem AMD has had over the years. It has brought them to the point of ruin and I don't think Lisa Su can turn things around now even though she is trying. Their debt increases at alarming rates and they probably can't borrow too much more because they are having trouble servicing the debt they already have.

In the last 10 years AMD has fallen from $40 a share to $1.87 a share. A market cap of 32.5 billion dollars to a market cap of 1.5 billion dollars. That's a staggering 2,140% loss for shareholders. In the last month alone AMD's market cap has fallen another 24%.

 

[GhostRyder]

Pretty much.

Mismanagement seems to be the biggest problem AMD has had over the years. It has brought them to the point of ruin and I don't think Lisa Su can turn things around now even though she is trying. Their debt increases at alarming rates and they probably can't borrow too much more because they are having trouble servicing the debt they already have.

In the last 10 years AMD has fallen from $40 a share to $1.87 a share. A market cap of 32.5 billion dollars to a market cap of 1.5 billion dollars. That's a staggering 2,140% loss for shareholders. In the last month alone AMD's market cap has fallen another 24%.

Its a mix of mismanagement and poor business practices all around. They sat on their hands, failed to deliver on promises (CPU market wise), and were essentially shoved to the side by unscrupulous business practices by their competition (Namely Intel) which has essentially shoved them to the side lines where they have a very limited number of OEM's. OEM's are what will make them some money back but essentially they are having to paddle up a water fall that they were pushed down with only a few paddles. Not much they can do except offer low margin deals with the companies which results in no profits and hurts them even more. Its a no win situation, the only way they can do anything is to hopefully win over enough OEM's that when they release new products they will hopefully start being able to negotiate more margins in the furutre but they need some products that can really wow people more than mobile APU's which are the only area they have any pull (CPU wise) and that is mostly because of the GPU on it.

Well there is only the hope that they will make some money with the GPU sales that are happening now. Other than that they are not doing much until 2016...

 

[ZoneDymo]

That's what Nvidia wanted everyone to believe. They lost the consoles because they couldn't make an x86 APU. They didn't had x86 cores. On the other hand Intel didn't had a good GPU. So Microsoft and Sony gone with the only company that had an x86 CPU AND a good GPU. The fact that AMD is not in a posision to negotiate higher prices, was also a nice bonus for both Microsoft and Sony.

ermmm how exactly, if AMD is the only one they can turn to as you state, is AMD not in a position of negotiate? that seems to me to be the most perfect position to negotiate.....

 

[ensabrenoir]

With fanboys all over the place and wrong information given by reviewers and review sites, AMD is taking heavy shots.

I'm always very careful not to make the wrong judgement, but Intel has been playing with the desktop customer for more than 2 generations. Crappy CPU assembly and minimal performance gains are very bad for their name, but people still buy them like candy. Just yesterday I was testing an i7-4770 on stock speeds and priming temps were more than 100C with an air conditioned room, while in the same room an 8350 @ 4.5GHz did not even reach 60C, while gaming performance was identical. and the price is 3 times less.

............... sounds like you were doing something wrong.

 

[ZeDestructor]

AMD can't keep haemorrhaging cash by selling CPUs and APUs at a loss or minor profit. They need a product that they can make high % of profits on. Unless Zen beats Skylake, it won't be that product, and AMD's CPU division will be done.

Yup. AMD really, really needs a proper server CPU lineup to make back some real cash. Consumer devices have tiny margins compared to server parts.

Just yesterday I was testing an i7-4770 on stock speeds and priming temps were more than 100C with an air conditioned room, while in the same room an 8350 @ 4.5GHz did not even reach 60C, while gaming performance was identical. and the price is 3 times less.

What coolers? What case? What fans in your case and where?

omg, green and red fanbois must be really ecstatic now! this is all they want, with AMD gone will have world peace, no more abortions, Kim will move to US, etc, keep it up fanbois!

Oh HELL no! I do NOT want an Intel-only x86 world, or an nVidia-only high-end GPU world for that matter.

They had all the deals with console vendors? WTF? Did they give their GPU's away?

The reason Nvidia refused the console deal was due to it being very very low profit.

So they hint. Nothing explicit was said as I recall.

On a side note. It's odd but I'm slowly moving away from intel products even though the performance gap is getting steadily larger, I've come to realize that I don't play enough new games to care about single threaded performance on the other hand I do stream and edit video on occasion and that's something an FX8370 at 4.8Ghz can do better than an i5 4XXX.

Or you could spend the big bucks and get a high-core-count Xeon and see what Intel has really been up to.

You're also ignoring how Intel has prioritised power efficiency over performance since Sandy Bridge, so that their CPUs can be put into even more devices and make even more money. This is called a "successful business strategy" and is something that AMD has not yet heard of.

The flipside of aiming so hard on power consumption (and die-size) is that they can make absolutely huge processors - E5-2699v3 is at 18 full blown Haswell cores already. At that end of the spectrum AMD has got absolutely nothing in their Opteron lineup to compete. Lower down the range, the Opterons are all too power/space-inefficient (for a given amount of work, you need more AMD servers, or if AMD servers are good, they use up and exhaust more heat for the same work) compared to the Xeons. The result is that AMD-based servers are simply not selling, and that's hitting AMD's profits hard.

That's what Nvidia wanted everyone to believe. They lost the consoles because they couldn't make an x86 APU. They didn't had x86 cores. On the other hand Intel didn't had a good GPU. So Microsoft and Sony gone with the only company that had an x86 CPU AND a good GPU. The fact that AMD is not in a posision to negotiate higher prices, was also a nice bonus for both Microsoft and Sony.

Interface options are irrelevant: if if was profitable enough, they have BUILT a completely new interface for the consoles, as Nvidia has for the Summit and Sierra supercomputers (NVLink).

 

[Constantine Yevseyev]

AMD needs to fire their current PR and Marketing and hire new ones. They suck. Not only do they not work enough, but their adverts and ideas are weird and creepy.

This, this so much. Honestly, a single person with knowledge of DTP tools and some background in illustration can do better then their whole freaking team. Just bloody awful, everything they spawn.

This is definitely one of the reasons they're not doing very well lately. It's not 2005 anymore, people need quality stuff. Nice art, some social media interaction, a couple Microsoft-style ads (no, not with Balmer having a stroke). Just putting a triple-tittied lady on the box of your Fury XXX GPU isn't gonna be enough.

 

[GhostRyder]

This, this so much. Honestly, a single person with knowledge of DTP tools and some background in illustration can do better then their whole freaking team. Just bloody awful, everything they spawn.

This is definitely one of the reasons they're not doing very well lately. It's not 2005 anymore, people need quality stuff. Nice art, some social media interaction, a couple Microsoft-style ads (no, not the with Balmer having a stroke). Just putting a triple-tittied lady on the box of your Fury XXX GPU isn't gonna be enough.

Hmm, I don't Recall that being on one of their boxes But that may get some interest in some form!

They need to focus on winning over OEM's, get their products in the market and maybe show off that they are in every console. That would at least help them get their names out a bit more which is part of their problems currently.

 

[the54thvoid]

Yeah, and what I said you said, including you in people who realize that brand perception is a powerful force. In other words, you seem to have launched into a tirade thinking I disagree with you, but I don't. You were "quoted for truth", as they say.



Yeah, we just both mentioned this above. However, I never said it's Intel's fault, if anything, they are better at it, and rightly reap the benefits. And I do maintain that the TPU comment section usually ends up circlejerking about performance and efficiency numbers as if they were all matters.

For those unfamiliar with how businesses work, it's the marketing's job to perform market analysis and communicate the value of the product to the customers, including business customers. And the fraction of high-end consumer grade CPUs (that is i7s rather than Xeons) that are actually used for number crunching as opposed to idling in office PCs is minuscule. They might as well be APUs, but AMD failed to convince anyone about that. After all, they are slower in Prime95, and the benchmarks don't lie.

Yes, my mistake, please accept my apologies. Long week at work and completely misread your post.

Whoopsies!

 

[RCoon]

AMD needs to fire their current PR and Marketing and hire new ones. They suck. Not only do they not work enough, but their adverts and ideas are weird and creepy.

This, this so much. Honestly, a single person with knowledge of DTP tools and some background in illustration can do better then their whole freaking team. Just bloody awful, everything they spawn.

Hate to say this, but I'm pretty sure they already laid off their entire marketing department a couple of years ago and replaced it with a whole new one.

They need to focus on winning over OEM's

In order to win over OEM's, you must offer them large subsidies to incorporate your hardware into theirs. AMD can't really afford to do that as much as Intel. Add to that that OEM's prefer to have Intel's hardware inside their laptops and stuff, simply because it's a globally consumer trusted brand. If you're designing a new car and get approached by Hyundai and Audi, both offering their engines with significant subsidies, you're going to go with the one consumers trust the most.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Why doesn't the board break the company up? The leadership at AMD is just simply awful.

 

[GAR]

No one is to bum but Amd here, they have junk CPUs, at I is the only good thing to come from them right now and even that is not that great