I believe they do now.
I like how some sites are spinning this to: high level staff quits AMD. Abandon the sinking ship! Run for your lives! SELL SELL SELL!
-I thought everyone was fired?
- Abandon burning, sinking ship! SELL MOAR!
The OEMs want as few parts to assemble into a PC as possible for as low a price as possible (these are related). APUs at the higher end are a decent option here - better iGPU performance vs Intel at a lower price point.
Brand labeled keyoards and mice worked out ok for IBM and Microsoft for a lot of years lol...
But yeah, in the very least it's corny. It'd be different if they had some manufacturer contracted to make something different or better. It's something some marketing people dreamed up no doubt.
But with all the neon lights and POS chinese glowing fans and melting fan controllers and endless on list of computer BS marketed to people that know just enough to be dangerous, I'd be afraid to say a majority of people see through it. The vast majority of self built computers I have ever seen, or small pc shop built, on craigslist, etc, etc, have been full of crap. I got zero faith on that score. I didn't even bother looking into them other than to notice their existence, figured if they were awesome I'd see a forum post about it.
But it is trying I guess.
Intel put a skull on an SSD awhile back.
That was edgy and cool right?
Difference is that Intel made the guts of the SSD they put the skull on. Sure, its a little silly, but they have a solid (no pun intended) business within the SSD market.
Sadly, I think things like AMD branded RAM and SSDs just distracted them from marketing and selling their core products more effectively.
I think AMD has been kind of two-faced about their enthusiast marketing. They don't have what enthusiasts want, they went for what the OEMs want.
The OEMs want as few parts to assemble into a PC as possible for as low a price as possible (these are related). APUs at the higher end are a decent option here - better iGPU performance vs Intel at a lower price point.
All these really really cheap / crappy APUs with 3 or 4 different generations being made at the same time confuses that, which is beginning to backfire on AMD and OEMs.
Enthusiasts want none of that. Enthusiasts, even non-gaming types, want CPUs that are distinct from their dGPUs. AMD hasn't done that in what, almost 4 years now?
If AMD wanted to engage the enthusiast market, they needed to introduce a 28nm Excavator core FX series chip. 20% more per core IPC with 8 cores / 4 FPUs would put them back on the map. That's all it would take. But they didn't do that, and it's probably too late now.
They are just going for being a good partner for low end OEMs now. Makes them irrelevant to me and most enthusiasts.
You lost me at marketing. In all seriousness AMD doesn't have marketing to speak of, they just don't.
Do you not remember the AMD portal here on AnandTech?
Now all I see is "mobile news sponsored by Intel".
Used to be when I hit many enthusiast sites, I was deluged with pictures of space aliens, robots, and AMD logos in the ad section. The dearth of AMD ads is a recent event.
Lisa Su is either about to completely re-invent the company image, or she is just another hack-n-slash type CEO with no good ideas. Guess we will see.
Eh, not all of the readers of those sites are going to be enthusiasts (or have friends who are).I think it was smart of AMD to stop paying to advertise on enthusiast sites. Enthusiasts are generally too knowledgeable (or talk to people who are too knowledgeable) to fall for marketing hype.
I'm not sure what AMD was FX'ing thinking spending ad money this way :biggrin:
I can see low end integrated graphics as a cost saver, but not the way AMD is doing it with the 512 stream processor Kaveri.
In the case of Kaveri on the desktop, having the very large iGPU is definitely a cost adder. (re: 1.) due to large iGPU bloating die and reducing yields 2.) lack of performance due to memory bandwidth bottleneck)
In fact, on the desktop a Athlon x4 860K and the R7 250 (admittedly a poor value among AMD dGPUs) is much faster and in most cases cheaper. (re: the A10 cpu throttles under iGPU load and the Kaveri iGPU needs a $11 more expensive 2 x4GB DDR4 2400 memory kit.....which still might not be able to close the gap)
In conclusion, I actually think having cpu and gpu separate (for desktop) is probably a better way to compete with Intel (and their foundry node advantage). At the very minimum having the iGPU much smaller than Intel would be another option.
P.S. With that mentioned, I don't have much against Carrizo (for mobile) at this time. Just keep in mind it is a very niche product meant for very low power gaming needs. For emerging markets on desktop, I think AMD has better options in the tool chest. They just need to figure out a way to deploy them.
At the high end, AMD has good chips for iGPU / casual gamers who have sub $400 budgets for a PC.
Here's an example - try to find an OEM Intel rig from a major retailer that can match up to this $379 box at Best Buy :
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-deskt...&skuId=8074026
As CEO, her top priority should be to get rid of the WSA because that's what killing AMD.
2Ghz processor with 2MB L2 cache. That has to be A6-5200 Kabini in that box --> http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Jaguar/AMD-A6-Series A6-5200.html
Here's an example - try to find an OEM Intel rig from a major retailer that can match up to this $379 box at Best Buy :
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-deskt...&skuId=8074026
(edit: this is the a8-7600 in the $379 PC linked above)
I don't know how to interpret that, other than him being pushed out. You don't really say "Yeah, I'm looking forward to doing xyz for AMD" if you know you're leaving AMD for another company just a few days after. Given that, and the timing of the announcement that two other executives are no longer with the company, it looks like they were all dismissed, rather than it being of their own accord.Wow. Didn't Byrne just give this upbeat interview?
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/11/w...the-internet-of-things-chip-market-interview/