It's working not badly for AMD yet they have a lot of debt. I'm having a hard time reconciling those statements. Is that like "sell every unit at a loss and make it up in volume "?
How's that strategy working out for AMD?
Judging from the recent boost on their stock price, apparently not too badly.
They are 300% healthier than AMD. Haven't you seen the amount of debt AMD is carrying lately?
AMD might be nothing compared to Intel in terms of market cap, market share, and so on but that hasn't stopped them from trying to compete in most of the same areas. They have made and continue to make what appear to be serious efforts in laptop, desktop, server, and tablet spaces, in addition to the discrete GPU and console markets Intel doesn't touch. You can hardly say that VIA is making efforts anything like that. I don't know what their R&D spending is but I imagine that AMD's absolutely dwarfs them, even given how much it has gone down in the last few years.
If AMD is to resign itself to being another VIA they're going to need undergo a massive shift in corporate culture and probably cut a huge chunk of their workforce.
It's working not badly for AMD yet they have a lot of debt. I'm having a hard time reconciling those statements. Is that like "sell every unit at a loss and make it up in volume "?
It's very easy to reconcile -- it appears that the Retailers (Newegg / TigerDirect / etc) took the loss / writedown for their Black Friday sales. So it appears that AMD was able to move a ton of GPU product and maintain a decent margin. It's kinda hard to complain IMO (I just bought an R9 380 for $159).
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/48683/amd-price-drop-gpus-doing/index.html
NVidia did the same. Meaning the 2 things pretty much cancel one another out.
Also Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales are actually so small its irrelevant. And any effect cant be seen yet either, assuming there was any.
No, they didn't.
The Nvidia deals didn't even come close to the Radeon discounts. Many Radeons were selling at close to 50% off their MSRP for Black Friday/Cyber Monday -- the best Nvidia deals were only 20 - 25% off their retail price. I would expect that AMD probably hit 20% marketshare for dedicated GPU's this quarter (for the first time in a while). A Macroeconomics fundamental is supply and demand. I was planning to buy a Maxwell, but the Radeon was a far more compelling deal.
You can't assume a hike on AMD sales based on that. While you can be right, it may be just the channel dumping inventory of stuck AMD products they had in the first place.
Maybe NV is keeping their stock for something.. Maybe HBM won't make in time for them.The fact that the AMD GPUs were apparently sold at a deeper discount to the NVIDIA GPUs might suggest this, but we'll have to see when AMD/NV report their numbers to get good info one way or another.
Maybe NV is keeping their stock for something.. Maybe HBM won't make in time for them.
Maybe they will come late to the party this time while AMD will have some initial advantage thanks to their experience with HBM 1What do you mean?
Maybe they will come late to the party this time while AMD will have some initial advantage thanks to their experience with HBM 1
That's quite the leap of logic. Wouldn't the much simpler answer be that the nVidia GPUs sell much better than their AMD counterparts, so retailers need to discount them less to move them?
In my opinion (and it is clearly very subjective), Nvidia is considered the more desirable GPU maker for most gamers.... I think it is mostly due to the reputation of having better drivers (especially for OpenGL) and lower heat generated).
I suspect that Nvidia buyers are definitely more willing to pay a premium. I suspect Radeon buyers are more price sensitive.