AMD Q414 results

[III-V]

Its quite obvious that Zen and K12 will be another idiotic attempt for AMD to come back to servers. Yet again dragging the rest of the company down with it.

I don't really see why they couldn't be the budget alternative again.

 

[stuff_me_good]

Steam's HW Survery GPU Makeup:-
44.0% nVidia
22.0% AMD
19.8% Intel
13.8% Other
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

Out of AMD's 22% GFX market share, Kaveri's are included under the 0.55% user base "AMD Radeon R7 200 Series" shared with desktop dGPU's like R7 240/250/260/260X, etc. Remove those dGPU's, and Kaveri users basically make up nearer 0.20-0.25% (1 in 400-500) of the gaming market. Not exactly sure how that results in dGPU's being made "fringe" for gaming or AMD APU's being "mainstream" (either for gaming OR compute)?

There seems to be a constant "split" between the assumption of "20% of Steam users use Intel iGPU's therefore AMD's APU must be selling well" or "everyone's interested primarily in APU compute performance" vs what 99.5% of the market is actually doing to the contrary in observable reality...

After all these years with the mining craze, I can't understand how amd's market share has plummet so much? There was a serious shortage on amd cards for so long that I cannot fathom where all those cards went?

To the thrash? Or doesn't miners play games and because of that steam HW survey isn't very reliable place to get definitive numbers?

 

[III-V]

After all these years with the mining craze, I can't understand how amd's market share has plummet so much? There was a serious shortage on amd cards for so long that I cannot fathom where all those cards went?

To the thrash? Or doesn't miners play games and because of that steam HW survey isn't very reliable place to get definitive numbers?

AMD's been losing out on OEM wins big time since Maxwell released nearly a year ago.

 

[AtenRa]

It would be very foolish from AMD's part if they decided to burn half the die of their products for the sake of a nonexistent feature like compute

Yeap, Intel did it just for the fun of it or was it for gaming ??

 

[ShintaiDK]

After all these years with the mining craze, I can't understand how amd's market share has plummet so much? There was a serious shortage on amd cards for so long that I cannot fathom where all those cards went?

To the thrash? Or doesn't miners play games and because of that steam HW survey isn't very reliable place to get definitive numbers?

Because the mining craze was massively overhyped. AMD had a component shortage. Not a massive sale.

 

[Ramses]

After all these years with the mining craze, I can't understand how amd's market share has plummet so much? There was a serious shortage on amd cards for so long that I cannot fathom where all those cards went?

To the thrash? Or doesn't miners play games and because of that steam HW survey isn't very reliable place to get definitive numbers?

I have a hard time wrapping my head around the scale of some of this stuff. Those steam #'s just seem.. Odd. I maintain my stance that we lack proper data to make definitive conclusions about a lot of this stuff. Lot of leaps and extrapolating going on. Which is OK, but still.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

After all these years with the mining craze, I can't understand how amd's market share has plummet so much? There was a serious shortage on amd cards for so long that I cannot fathom where all those cards went?

To the thrash? Or doesn't miners play games and because of that steam HW survey isn't very reliable place to get definitive numbers?

Most mining systems are headless and nobody installs steam on them, so naturally AMD cards used for mining will not be present on the Steam list. They aren't used for gaming. Expect in 6 months-2 years the amount of "old" amd cards on this list are going to jump.

Because the mining craze was massively overhyped. AMD had a component shortage. Not a massive sale.

Once again you can't imagine something not right in your face exists. GPU mining is still growing. The pay to play is getting bigger though.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Once again you can't imagine something not right in your face exists. GPU mining is still growing. The pay to play is getting bigger though.

So tell me why this crazy mining didnt show up on AMDs financials.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

So tell me why this crazy mining didnt show up on AMDs financials.

It did. It enabled them to start charging higher when retailers found the demand was much higher than expected. The negative side is that marketshare for gamers was reduced by people being priced out.

A company and all of their partners selling all of their products from MSRP to up to 70% higher is a positive thing, no matter the spin you could put on it. With all the time you spend on this forum, are you willfully oblivious of what's going on around you?

 

[ShintaiDK]

It did. It enabled them to start charging higher when retailers found the demand was much higher than expected. The negative side is that marketshare for gamers was reduced by people being priced out.

A company and all of their partners selling all of their products from MSRP to up to 70% higher is a positive thing, no matter the spin you could put on it. With all the time you spend on this forum, are you willfully oblivious of what's going on around you?

No, your link doesnt concern AMDs financials. And also you forgot in how much of the world the cards costed the same all the time.

Those that made money on this is companies like Newegg, retailers.

AMD showed no benefit in their financials from this.

And in terms of marketshare:

 

[TurtleCrusher]

No, your link doesnt concern AMDs financials. And also you forgot in how much of the world the cards costed the same all the time.

Those that made money on this is companies like Newegg.

AMD showed no benefit in their financials from this.

Selling all of your products produced is never a bad thing. It's clear you've never worked in the middle of a supply chain. Once high demand is established, the price to retailers is variable. It is never static. Bolded is completely wrong.

And even it what you said was true, the logic behind it being negative or that it didn't help them financially is baffling. It is a horrible thing to sell all of your products then to have a stockpile of hardware waiting to be sold at a lower pricepoint. Yep, that makes sense!

Edit: Posting market share numbers? Talk about a red herring. Because AMD had high demand, that doesn't mean nVidia didn't either. Cryptocoin is a new market that nVidia didn't have the hardware to compete it. It doesn't mean they didn't sell a ton of video cards to gamers and professionals. Also, that market share graph is incredibly misleading as it doesn't account for APU graphic cards, as they are around the same power as most discrete cards sold. Again, more red herrings to support your flawed logic.

 

[AtenRa]

No, your link doesnt concern AMDs financials. And also you forgot in how much of the world the cards costed the same all the time.

Those that made money on this is companies like Newegg, retailers.

AMD showed no benefit in their financials from this.

And in terms of marketshare:

Do you know how many R9 280/X and R9 290/X were sold at that time (Q4 2013) ???

Just asking

Also, at Q4 2013 Graphics and Visual Solutions had its highest Revenue and Income since today. Granted it combines both GPUs and Console chips but non the less they had 865M of Net Revenue and 121M of Operating Income.
That means they increased their Net Revenue by ~29% but increased Operating Income by 53% from Q3 2013. I wouldnt count the consoles for this

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MjY3MjMyfENoaWxkSUQ9LTF8VHlwZT0z&t=1

 

[ShintaiDK]

Do you know how many R9 280/X and R9 290/X were sold at that time (Q4 2013) ???

Just asking

Also, at Q4 2013 Graphics and Visual Solutions had its highest Revenue and Income since today. Granted it combines both GPUs and Console chips but non the less they had 865M of Net Revenue and 121M of Operating Income.
That means they increased their Net Revenue by ~29% but increased Operating Income by 53% from Q3 2013. I wouldnt count the consoles for this

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MjY3MjMyfENoaWxkSUQ9LTF8VHlwZT0z&t=1

So you know the number is useless, yet you post it?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Selling all of your products produced is never a bad thing. It's clear you've never worked in the middle of a supply chain. Once high demand is established, the price to retailers is variable. It is never static. Bolded is completely wrong.

And even it what you said was true, the logic behind it being negative or that it didn't help them financially is baffling. It is a horrible thing to sell all of your products then to have a stockpile of hardware waiting to be sold at a lower pricepoint. Yep, that makes sense!

Edit: Posting market share numbers? Talk about a red herring. Because AMD had high demand, that doesn't mean nVidia didn't either. Cryptocoin is a new market that nVidia didn't have the hardware to compete it. It doesn't mean they didn't sell a ton of video cards to gamers and professionals. Also, that market share graph is incredibly misleading as it doesn't account for APU graphic cards, as they are around the same power as most discrete cards sold. Again, more red herrings to support your flawed logic.

The mining craze only affected a few countries. And plenty of cards in stock around the rest of the world.

Those that capitalized on endusers wasnt AMD, it wasnt AIBs. It was retailers, specially US retailers to be more precise.

So you cant show in AMDs financials they benefitted. No CEO/CFO statements about higher GPU ASP. No unexpected increase in marketshare either.

 

[AtenRa]

So you know the number is useless, yet you post it?

So what made the Revenue to increase by 29% and the Income by 53% from Q3 2013 to Q4 2013 ???

 

[TurtleCrusher]

So what made the Revenue to increase by 29% and the Income by 53% from Q3 2013 to Q4 2013 ???

He'll just dodge the question again with red herrings.

 

[mrmt]

He'll just dodge the question again with red herrings.

There was some impact from the mining thrill but by no means close to 29% increased revenue:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MjE3Nzc5fENoaWxkSUQ9LTF8VHlwZT0z&t=1

• GVS segment revenue was up 29% sequentially, primarily due to sales of semi-custom SoCs to Sony and Microsoft for their next-generation game console offerings.
• Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) revenue increased sequentially, driven by sales of our next-generation AMD RadeonTM R7 and R9 series GPUs.

 

[AtenRa]

There was some impact from the mining drill but by no means close to 29% increased revenue:

And since you have said sooooo many times how low margins those Consoles have, it is only logical that the higher Income (53%) came from the High end GPUs.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

And since you have said sooooo many times how low margins those Consoles have, it is only logical that the higher Income (53%) came from the High end GPUs.

To quote mrmt

" the console APUs have ridiculously low margins."

 

[monstercameron]

Lol the 1-2 combo., in fairness mrmt has stated mid teens margins for console apus.

 

[mrmt]

To quote mrmt

" the console APUs have ridiculously low margins."

I'm not sure why you are bringing this. AMD executives themselves have stated that the console margins are around mid-teens and that there's no OPEX and almost no SG&A to offset it, so the margins are really low.

But despite its low margin and relatively low volume the business does generate operating profits, and as a consequence it will generate a positive effect in AMD operating results, especially because AMD operating line is really peanuts. Give or take 50MM and it's a big deal for AMD. In that quarter, the extra 200MM in sales should have provided an impact of 30-35MM on the quarter, with the rest due to GPU sales.

 

[DrMrLordX]

What you write about is pretty interesting, but Iris Pro and Haswell-E are at the highest end of the market (where volume is really low).

In contrast, even most people in this enthusiast forum only use a Core i5 (of some type) that they may have been holding onto for quite some time because they haven't found the need any extra CPU performance.

You must concede, though, that the i7-4970k and the i7-5820k are basically the "gamer's choice" chips from the Intel stable right now. By 2015/16, the 5820k will probably have established itself as the chip-to-get for anyone who is serious about high-end gaming (except for the occasional oddball who wants the 5960x, but really now . . . ). Those are the chips people look to when they describe the state of modern PC gaming. If you want to cause an uproar, launch something that beats the day's halo chip and then step back and watch the madness. If you can!

Intel most certainly can beat their own product, and my guess is that, somewhere along the line, DX12 titles will start to show up big on Broadwell Iris Pro or some later Skylake product.

As much as GPGPU will play a bigger role in the future, neither AMD nor Intel sell a CPU today to offer a benefit years down the road

I think Kaveri could have done it had the software stack been in place. Mantle really hasn't made the 7850k shine over, say, the 9590 yet. But if you look at the raw computation capability of the 7850k, you must recognize that its plucky little iGPU can totally smoke a 9590 in 32-bit floating point, 32 bit integer, and 64-bit integer. 64-bit fp is a bit iffy on Kaveri. On my 7700k, my Steamroller cores were putting in significantly higher 64-bit fp throughput @ 4.7 ghz when compared to the 384 shaders clocked at 1028 mhz. I imagine the situation would be a bit better on the 7850k, assuming memory bandwidth didn't mess with that particular bench too much. Hmm, maybe I should test that one of these days . . .

Regardless, show me a high-end DX12 title that can heavily tax single-card and SLI/Xfire configurations just with 3d and load up CPUs with tons of physics calculations and whatever else, and I'll show you something where that iGPU will really help. A lot. What it might not do is correct certain stutter situations perhaps related to the way graphics drivers work.

It will be rather curious if they launch an Excavator die by the time they should have their next wonderchip, designed by the hands of an EE God, rolling out on the market.

Might be a WSA thing, but here's the other thing we need to remember: integrating a particular x86 structure into an APU requires a non-trivial amount of work. AMD is short on R&D resources right now. Launching both a server-level Zen part and a cut-down Zen APU at the same time might be more than they can handle. Remember that doing so would require moving their GCN cores to the 14nm Samsung/GF process as well. Will they even have their flagship dGPUs on 14nm by that time?

It will be cheaper and easier for AMD to modify Carrizo to make Bristol Ridge than it will be for them to make an APU out of Zen. Zen APUs come later.

 

[mrmt]

It will be cheaper and easier for AMD to modify Carrizo to make Bristol Ridge than it will be for them to make an APU out of Zen. Zen APUs come later.

If so, why bother? AMD had a 1.2 billion/quarter CPU business three years ago, now it is a sub-300MM business and if they don't change the product mix it will keep shrinking. By the time this Bristol Ridge arrives I don't think there will be volumes for the chip to pay itself back.

 

[DrMrLordX]

If so, why bother? AMD had a 1.2 billion/quarter CPU business three years ago, now it is a sub-300MM business and if they don't change the product mix it will keep shrinking. By the time this Bristol Ridge arrives I don't think there will be volumes for the chip to pay itself back.

It's just to keep products in the channel, I suspect. Whether or not anyone cares to acknowledge it, there are people buying and using APUs in some non-zero quantity, and now they've got to keep a product on the market for those buyers. Zen isn't going to appeal to everyone.

Bristol Ridge may well be a bone they're throwing to OEMs as a contiuance product to replace BGA Carrizo, though I don't expect OEMs to be all that happy with migrating away from BGA for their AIOs where those chips will be going.

 

[Ramses]

If I were dell or whoever, I'd rather not have a single source of cpu vendors I think.