Is AMD Really a Sinking Ship?

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Legit Reviews has an editorial posted today that asks the question “Is AMD Really a Sinking Ship?” What do you think AMD needs to do to turn things around?

Why is it that every time I read an editorial about AMD, it starts with the author portraying them as a sinking ship and ends with them begging to come out with a product that can compete with Intel's Core 2 series? Sure, AMD's Athlon 64 series of processors has been eclipsed by Intel's latest Core 2 series, but has everyone forgotten about the past?
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Hire one of the 9 million users who say fire Hector since obviously they know how to run a multibillion dollar company.
 
Yes, AMD is a sinking ship. Does it really need to be quantified anymore than that? Look at how much money they are bleeding and compare that to their product offering vs. their closest competitor and you will see that unless something cataclysmic happens to Intel, AMD doesn't stand a chance in the long run. However, that long run is nearly here.
 
What do they need to do?
Innovate. With intel beating them to 65 nm and quad core, AMD needs to find a technology that changes the game. Triple core does not, as the average Joe will recognize 4x is better than 3x...
 
They really need to step their game up. I disappointing to see them putting up very little to no fight right now.
 
"The first Athlon 64 X2 ‘Manchester’ processors featured 512KB L2 cache per core for a total of 1MB L2 cache. AMD then doubled the cache on Athlon 64 X2 ‘Windsor’ series to 1MB L2 cache for a grand total of 2MB of L2 cache"

Remember Toldeo? the thing that they started making right before Manchester?
 
i think the author hit it right on the nose.

i don't understand the nature of fanboyisms....i mean....if there are two companies vying for your dollars....they'll do what they can to put it in your hands....to me when i see a dumbass go on about the latest greatest from either company...and they're still using socketA/370 products....i cringe! lol the only reason why i bring up fanboys...they are the ones so blinded "by the light" that they would rather see the other company fail...

i think this back and forth between the two companies is great...and it only makes me happy to see prices so low! hell my wallet doesn't even complain quite as much! :D
 
Dr.LaRd said:
i think the author hit it right on the nose.

i don't understand the nature of fanboyisms....i mean....if there are two companies vying for your dollars....they'll do what they can to put it in your hands....to me when i see a dumbass go on about the latest greatest from either company...and they're still using socketA/370 products....i cringe! lol the only reason why i bring up fanboys...they are the ones so blinded "by the light" that they would rather see the other company fail...

i think this back and forth between the two companies is great...and it only makes me happy to see prices so low! hell my wallet doesn't even complain quite as much! :D
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Very well stated. I totally agree.
While I have never really considered my self as a fanboy, I've pretty much stayed fairly loyal over the years to AMD. Ive had several systems from the k62-300, all the way to an Athlon64. When I was ready to build a new rig, I went Intel C2D; why? Price/Performance ratio. When AMD comes back with something good, and I'm ready to build a new system we will see. But it looks like Intel will keep me for a customer for a couple of more years.
 
Of course AMD is a sinking ship. I don't think it'll completely sink, but it is sinking, since it had such a lofty position not too long ago.
 
The products in the <$99 range are still decent cost/performance. AMD has been a pile of suck in-between buyable products for 25 years. In that time they've had probably four profitable quarters. I think they should re-register as a NFP charity.
 
As much of an Intel fanboy as I am, I do not want to see AMD sink as it will allow Intel to become lazy again and not innovate like they have been. Intel needs AMD as much as AMD needs Intel.
 
Methadras said:
Yes, AMD is a sinking ship. Does it really need to be quantified anymore than that? Look at how much money they are bleeding and compare that to their product offering vs. their closest competitor and you will see that unless something cataclysmic happens to Intel, AMD doesn't stand a chance in the long run. However, that long run is nearly here.
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yeah, this was thought pre-2000 also.

people should be praising AMD launches, its keeps prices low for the consumer.
 
Theres almost too much down to earth kinda thinking in this thread. Where are all the idiots who always trash a forum thread like this?

But yes, I will join the chore. Sure I have been kinda AMD loyal in the past but just because when ever I upgrade, AMD:s products have been more attrractive.

Ready to upgrade the rig in the next 6-12months, which ever has the better price/bang ratio then gets my euros.
 
From AMD's release of the a64 until intels release of the C2D AMD had intel bent over. Now it's AMD's turn to be the catcher for a while. I'm happy so long as they bring one another's prices down. I'll buy whichever is faster
 
I don't have a preference for Intel or AMD, but without any sort of processor competition, the consumers are going to be the ones who will suffer the worst.

Hopefully AMD will come out with something grand or another company does. We need competition.
 
Steve said:
What do you think AMD needs to do to turn things around?
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They have to execute everything on time. No more delays. If they finalize a date, they must execute. They are not only losing in performance in the desktop and notebook areas (and its damn close in the server area), they are losing customer and investor confidence by the constant delays, which affects them a whole hell of a lot more. This goes double for the ATI division, which hasn't seem to put out a product on time for 2+ years.

If they can make a competitive product, it won't even have to beat Intel flat out. All they have to do is deliver on their promises and meet price/performance expectations, and they will score larger OEM wins.

They also need another chip fab or two.
 
I think AMD had the upper hand for awhile not only because of their sucessful x2 64bit launches and Pentium 4's failures, but also because of the packages they bring. NVidia really gave them the much needed boost with the nForce lines of motherboards, and there's also the DDR/DDR2 and dual-channel bandwagon that helped them along.

I've always cheered them on, not because I'm an AMD fan, but because they amaze me on how a smaller company can compete toe to toe with the conglomerate giant that is Intel. That in itself is no small feat.

When AMD bought ATI I was a bit disapointed. Not only they spent lots of money in a lagging technology, but they also alienated their buddies in nVidia. This reeked too much of stabbing nVidia in the back after all they've done to help AMD.

I don't think AMD is sinking, but rather I think they're going back to where they were before, in Intel's shadow, until another DEC Alpha-like employee jumps in and give them an innovative technology they'll need to leapfrog Intel again.
 
I don't think it's anything AMD can or can't do right now. It's what Intel is doing. They are competitive at every price point against anything AMD has to offer. Nvidia is also competitive in the GPU space. And, further on down the line, Intel might enter the discreete GPU space.

AMD is getting squeezed on all sides and the offerings they currently have right now are unimpressive. I like them both, but AMD has some hard times ahead.
 
For the longest time I was all about AMD. Now I'm all for whoever gives me the best performance for the price. The Core 2 Duo had me sold on going over to Intel. Yes it may cost more to go Intel depending on what configuration you're going with, but at the same time, if the value is there, then there's little reason not to go for it. I'm the type of person that doesn't mind paying the extra if the value is there.

If AMD were to put out a product comparable to what Intel's going to be putting out, then I would take them into serious consideration again and my next configuration would be based on their platform. I've actually been hoping that AMD would give me a reason to switch back, if only because I know the guys at AMD have given Intel a run for their money before and put a nice little dent in the marketshare. It was enough for Intel to get their heads out of their ass and produce the Core 2 Duo. I know they can do it again.
 
Intel has the upper hand for now. But I'm still a hold out and waiting the Phenom chip to come out and then I will decide of what quad chip to drop in my new rig. But sinking ship, I hope not!!! But I think that AMD made a huge mistake buying ATI... Now they got two huge headaches...

I just don't understand it, why buy ATI when Nvidia supported AMD from the jump... Just shows you that Hector and company just too large and forgot who their friends were... Just look at their video card the 2900 XT Pro just release and what was Nvidia reponds they just release the 8800 GT with 512MB DDR3 memory and 256 memory.... Now they are getting hit from two fronts....

They should have just consentrated on CPU's and not GPU's.... I don't or should I say understand why they are going to try merge both CPU and GPU into one chipset when we know that cpu's uses to process a lot of the video functions in the early days of computers, That's why vendors started to make video cards in the first place so to take the load off the cpu...

Well enough of my bitching... I hope AMD don't sink and cast off ATI...

shyguyy;):D:eek::confused:
 
AMD has historically always been mired in Second place (vs Intel). A64 was something of an anomaly, that they didn't really exploit enough. I don't know if they can do it again. Though from a buying perspective these days it doesn't really matter. Dual cores from either company are so powerful that almost no one will ever notice an actual difference. Looking a CPU scaling in games. These days any decent dual core will do. Graphics Cards show real differences for gamers. Average home user certainly doesn't need anything other than low end dual core.

But for the company bottom line, being second hurts a lot. Over the last year AMD has taken a pummeling where it really hurts: ASP. Intel having the lead, lets them command the premium. Even worse on quad cores Intel had the market to themselves for a long time at high premiums and before AMD even hits the market, they drop quads below $300. So intel sucked all the high margins out of quads before AMD even got to play. Being slower doesn't impact the consumer in reality, but it impacts AMDs ASP and that hurts. Being a late second to market(quads), is a double whammy.

Now comes the triple whammy. AMD bought ATI and has been playing the same exact second fiddle game (uncanny how similar) in graphics to NVidia. They ceded next generation video card market and premiums entirely to NVidia for the better part of a year, when they do show up, they are in second place and have to claim second place margins of a smaller saturated market. Same game, same results, largely diminished profits from fire sale pricing.

It certainly looks like a recipe for disaster unless AMD can turn around and score at least some wins in one of these businesses. Because all these lost revenues for being late and in second place lead to less money to spend on R&D vs the two more market focused leaders.

Turnaround hopes: I think they have more chance in graphics where I think the playing field is a bit more level. In CPUs I think Intel is just too powerful on the process side and won't make another Netburst stumble. Tick-Tock seems to be working as well. Scary well.

AMD(ATI) may have a better dual chip solution that actually uses decent chip-chip interface instead of clunky Xfire/SLI for a one board solution as both NV/ATI are rumored to be working on dual chip cards for high end. But AMD better fix things like driver niggles ( consumer to AMD/ATI, where is panel scaling? ). AMD seems to have everything that NVidia has on the graphics front, but they are currently stymied by NVidias double clocked shaders. ATI could resume the lead here once they master that tech. I really hope so, because a declining AMD would suck for consumers.

Predictions: Let's just say I wouldn't recommend ATI stock.
 
This always happens, it is a cycle. AMD/ATI will eventually recover, it is just a matter of time. Right now, I would not touch either, but give it 12-24 months and I bet that will change.

The whole merger situation left a sour taste in my mouth, but I can see why it made sense to them. AMD is moving towards a platform solution, and THIS is where I can see them regaining ground on Intel/Nvidia instead of the individual component sector.
 
I think its a bit early to say they are sinking as it takes quite a while to step up R&D then design, develop and test a new product.
They were clearly caught on the hop by Intel this time.
I'll await the next processor after Phenom to see how well they can stand their ground.
 
The merger was a mistake imo; have yet to see anything good come out of it. Instead the company is fighting on two losing fronts.

Is there potential? Sure; creating a single platformt hat works well togetehr is a great way to get alot of OEM orders. But they have not executed on this much yet.

Also, there was a price tag for this move - they burnt their longtime partner, nvidia. Not only diod they harm the relationship, but they ahve to fund the ocmpeittion agasint NV which is a super aggressive company.

Potential? Technically, human fat cells are potential energy. Too little of it means you ahve nothing to run on fuel wise; too much of it makes you sluggish. I think this has become the situation.


Right now they need work overtime to bring their roadmap forward as much as possible to bring next gen tech to fight agasint Intel. I bought alot of AMD parts over the years, but always b/c they had the best price/perf. Right now, Intel is slaughtering them on price/perf.

To be fair to AMD though, Intel is execting on everything flawlessly; I havent heard of major screw ups in marchitecture or manufacturing liek I used to, and their prices reflect a smooth, high volume setup. Its tough when your competitors execute on a dime, and for the time being at least, intel is.
 
People seem to have the memory of a fish these days, or maybe I'm just getting old. You lose one round and people start declaring funerals. AMD is still competitive in the < $99 range. After that, the core2duo's win especially with their overclockability. I'm lazy and cheap so I stuck it out with socket 939 buying a cheap 4200 and oc'in it to a 5200. My 8800GT is in the mail and hopefully arrives tomorrow.

I'm a fanboy of better products and cheaper stuff, and like many others, my money will go to whomever can convince my lazy butt. Buying ATI is the only move I'm still confused and can't see the advantage to be gained but, time will tell I guess. I keep hearing R700 is supposed to be killer and NVidia is not releasing the 8800GT at $199-249 MSRP only for the consumers.

Some make think this is a huge "favor" by NV but it seems to be foretelling that AMD/ATi is about to drop something good. We did miss two product cycles with no new parts so we actually should be "expecting" that kinda performance at that price. While ATi is merging completely with AMD, NV had time to keep on trucking. One basic rule in business, pick something you do good and do it good.
 
Paul_Johnson said:
Hire one of the 9 million users who say fire Hector since obviously they know how to run a multibillion dollar company.
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Any random person probably wouldn't do worse. How can anyone lose $15 billion in shareholder value in one year and still be considered competent?
 
LOL I just read the article now. I should have done it before I posted above. This guy is on crack with some of his statements. He should now better, so i'll file this one under click-bait.
 
In the CPU area, AMD needs to catch up to Intel FAST in terms of process technology and in terms of an updated architecture. The fact that the RV670 is supposed to be released soon using 55nm process leaves me hope that they may be able to release cpus with a 45nm process fairly quickly if they are already using 55nm for gpus (I know the chips are different, but I'm *hoping*). As for architecture, AMD has had to tackle some really tough issues with their jump to 65nm and the move to Quad core. Hopefully they can get things refined and up to speed to make them competitive again (I think they bit off more than they could chew with Barcelona and the shrink to 65nm). As for ATI, well, they sold to AMD at the righ time, just as RV600 was about to go up in flames (literally)... I feel for AMD with their acquisition of ATI, it apears that it didn't turn out as well as they hoped, but with the early talk of RV670 and the 55nm process, it looks like they may be on the way to turning things around there (but the overhead of the ringbus architecture still seems to be a burden to the HD series). I don't think AMD is ready to be "put down" yet, but they don't exactly look very healthy either...
 
Azhar said:
When AMD bought ATI I was a bit disapointed. Not only they spent lots of money in a lagging technology, but they also alienated their buddies in nVidia. This reeked too much of stabbing nVidia in the back after all they've done to help AMD.
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i agree, considering the only person making a dual-opteron chipset for workstation boards was nVidia they kind of shot themselves in the foot with that one... and we all saw with the MP and MPX chipset and AMD isnt really interested in making a good chipset

so unless ATi can pull off some nice chipsets, i think AMD made a pretty big mistake
 
pxc said:
Any random person probably wouldn't do worse. How can anyone lose $15 billion in shareholder value in one year and still be considered competent?
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Bill Gate$ managed to kill ~20Billion in shareholder value in a year back in 2003-2004. Is he incompetent too?
 
Nemesis999 said:
Bill Gate$ managed to kill ~20Billion in shareholder value in a year back in 2003-2004. Is he incompetent too?
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Eh, $20 billion out of how many still on the market $300 billion? AMD now has a market cap of $7B after it was lost. Not sure how you lump those two in the same situation.

Even taking that further, I don't think MS lost market capitalization/shareholder value due to any earnings and operating income shortfalls, as AMD is doing now.
 
While I can't totally agree with the article, I see his point.

AMD is far from dead. ANY corporation that big takes years to die. Usually something will come along that can atleast prolong the slide, but even if it doesn't it takes years of non-profitability before it's "dead". Even then "dead" can mean many different things; buy out, re-branding, and so on.

If you want an example of all this look at the automotive industry, Dodge especially. They were in trouble, Mercedes Benz picks them up hoping it will help them capatalize the lucrative mid/low market in the US. After a few years M/B dumps them and they get picked up by a private consortium. All this going on and the Viper not only lives on, but gets way better along the way. The point being that even in those dire times, the least profitable model flourishes. How bad could it have been.

The doomsayers just make me chuckle.

And as far as the AMD/ATI merger, they had little choice. They needed a FULLY integrated platform to compete in the OEM market, where the real money is. Nvidia sure as hell wasn't willing to merge with AMD, much to my chagrin.

BTW Intel is definately going to make a go in the dedicated graphics market at all levels. That's just a fact.
 
FLECOM said:
i agree, considering the only person making a dual-opteron chipset for workstation boards was nVidia they kind of shot themselves in the foot with that one... and we all saw with the MP and MPX chipset and AMD isnt really interested in making a good chipset

so unless ATi can pull off some nice chipsets, i think AMD made a pretty big mistake
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if AMD could have scrounged up enough cash to buy into nVidia, things would be a lot better, probably for the both of them.... i mean it can't get worse for AMD, and at least nVidia would be back in and selling chipsets to OEMs...

the company i work for has always bought HP/Compaq workstations, pretty historically AMD too, at least for production, probably 95% of our machines are AMD... two years ago, about 65% were AMD with nVidia chipsets (nforce2 with 2400+s)... now its about 65% nvidia and 30% ATi (3000+s with xpress200)


i hate ati chipsets... always have... for the longest time (since AXP, mainly cuz i was broke at that point and the 9700pro was mopping the floor with geforce5) i used to say "let AMD make the chips, nvidia make the boards, and ATi make the video cards"

i've never owned an ATi chipset motherboard i'd call stable.... the old IGP chipsets for Athlons and P3s were crap... i'd take a SiS over them any day... the xpress200 at work is crap... i had a laptop with another xpress chipset... all so crappy...

every nforce board i've ever owned has been great.... nforce was the roughest, nforce2 was golden, nforce3 was amazing, nforce4(nforce3+) all good...



AMD should have shelled out the cash on a company with potential in more than just discrete graphics
 
AMD needs totally new CPU for notebooks. What intel did basically, made a whole new cpu just for notebooks that kicks ass.
 
deeznuts said:
Eh, $20 billion out of how many still on the market $300 billion? AMD now has a market cap of $7B after it was lost. Not sure how you lump those two in the same situation.

Even taking that further, I don't think MS lost market capitalization/shareholder value due to any earnings and operating income shortfalls, as AMD is doing now.
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pxc said:
Obviously, because MS is losing money hand over fist too. :rolleyes:
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Lads his post was in jest at the original poster pointing out AMDs losses.
He maybe should have used Sarcasm tags :)
 
Yes, AMD + Nvidia would have been friggin awesome. But Nvidia wasn't about to sacrifice the relationship it had FINALLY established with Intel to ally itself with AMD. I mean, look at what Intel did to ATI, they actually had ATI chipsets on a few of their motherboards before AMD bought ATI. After that the break happened so fast even those of us in the system builder program were shocked at how quickly the ATI based boards were pushed out of the market. I mean less then a month and all those boards were GONE. They got there own separate section in the products part of the Intel website, go look. And all this even though AMD had nothing to do with the chipset involved.

The whole situation sucks, but hey, that's life.
 
They are hurting right now because of their debt, but it won't last. They just need one product that sends intel ees back to the drawing board.

It's happened before.
 
Dreknaught said:
AMD is far from dead.
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The EMTs probably shouldn't wander too far off with the infusions of cash needed to keep AMD going. :p

The "everything is all right" people make me chuckle. :D It seriously is time to take a good look at the situation AMD is in right now, and how it's unlike AMD rough times in the past. AMD can no longer afford to survive on low end scraps due to massive debt and interest payments, and borrowing money to continue is at an interest rate of 2x what it costs the competition.

BTW, IBM is about to have its Barcelona SPEC submissions invalidated because it is failing to ship systems within 3 months of the date it sent in the scores (IBM submitted one day before the Barcelona "launch"). It's a sad state when no tier one OEM can ship a flagship processor due to continuing issues. Yeah, Barcelona launched and it's been a complete disaster, a symptom of the dysfunction dragging AMD down. Sure, everything is just peachy.
 
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