ATI still hurting AMD

[ronnn]

Originally posted by: nRollo




I don't work for NVIDIA.

I've always supported AMD and still do.

Mods I need a ban!!!!!

 

[taltamir]

1. you don't request bans, thats against the rules.
2. he did nothing justifying a ban.
3. He doesn't work for nvidia, he gets free hardware to beta test.

 

[ronnn]

I meant me

 

[Pantalaimon]

Originally posted by: nRollo


I don't work for NVIDIA.

Your sig says NVIDIA Focus Group member. That comes pretty darn close to being a representative of NVIDIA, especially if the job description of a focus group member is to promote and market NVIDIA and their tech on forums.

 

[shangshang]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1

Originally posted by: Wreckage
The Phenom II does well against the Core 2. But not against the i7.

Which sucks because the cost of a Motherboard+i7 CPU is very high right now.

Sorry for inferring you were a foolish little boy. I didn't know if you were man or boy. I assumed you were a boy because ya don't understand the tax system .

I'll just quote that for how it makes you look.

Nemuhsis1 might not get it.

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: taltamir
3. He doesn't work for nvidia, he gets free hardware to beta test.

Whether he's receiving thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment or cash, it's still payment. So yes, he does work for Nvidia.

 

[SlowSpyder]

^*edit - What Creig said.

Originally posted by: Pantalaimon

Originally posted by: nRollo


I don't work for NVIDIA.

Your sig says NVIDIA Focus Group member. That comes pretty darn close to being a representative of NVIDIA, especially if the job description of a focus group member is to promote and market NVIDIA and their tech on forums.

Not to mention you are compensated with hardware. I'd say you pretty much work for Nvidia.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: taltamir
3. He doesn't work for nvidia, he gets free hardware to beta test.

Whether he's receiving thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment or cash, it's still payment. So yes, he does work for Nvidia.

Peace be with you brother Creig, and thank you for your apparent appreciation of my gaming hardware!
:beer:

 

[JACKDRUID]

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: taltamir
3. He doesn't work for nvidia, he gets free hardware to beta test.

Whether he's receiving thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment or cash, it's still payment. So yes, he does work for Nvidia.

I work for my company but I hated it...

it doesn't matter who he works for, he is entitled to his own opinion.

ATI was a good buy, but AMD paid too much for it... but it does look like ATI is the only profitable part of AMD as of now.... AMD really need to get their act together on their CPUs...

 

[bradley]

I agree. AMD buying ATI was the right move, it was the only move. I shudder to think where they might be today without the acquisition. Vastly overpaying for ATI was the real problem.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: bradley
I agree. AMD buying ATI was the right move, it was the only move. I shudder to think where they might be today without the acquisition. Vastly overpaying for ATI was the real problem.

I disagree. They took on a massive amount of debt with the purchase and have yet to see any tangible benefit.

A simple licensing agreement (like several other companies were smart enough to do) would have been the best choice.

Saying buying ATI was the right move but they paid too much is actually still saying buying ATI was the wrong move.

Sure if they bought ATI for $5 it could be seen as a good move by any company. They have several billion to make up for somehow and it looks like they are doing that by selling off the company piece by piece.
http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16261

 

[taltamir]

blame hecktor ruin.

 

[chizow]

The fact the AMD is now worth less than what they purchased ATI for just a few years ago should tell you it was a mistake. Strategically it made sense, but financially it did not and we're seeing the continued repercussions of that mistake now. The continued write downs are hurting AMD though, as they've been significant enough in some quarters to turn a potential profit into a loss. Although small profits won't solve their debt overnight, it goes a long way towards regaining investor confidence.

I think one of the major problems for AMD has been the execution of their vision for acquiring ATI, while taking away focus from both companies core businesses. I guess their ultimate goal was to produce a complete CPU/GPU platform to compete against Nvidia/Intel simultaneously. I guess that was supposed to be Fusion, which has kept getting pushed back on roadmaps. Now Fusion is tied to a gaming utility. As a result of the shuffle both AMD and ATI fell behind the competition in their core businesses and have only recently caught back up in terms of performance.

We'll see what happens with AMD despite the bad outlook. I suspected federal regulators would step in before bankruptcy or buyout but I'm not so sure now as they've allowed foreign investors buy up over 50% of AMD. Plus the government has their plate full with the financial and automotive industries.....

 

[JaBro999]

Originally posted by: chizow
I think one of the major problems for AMD has been the execution of their vision for acquiring ATI, while taking away focus from both companies core businesses. ... As a result of the shuffle both AMD and ATI fell behind the competition in their core businesses and have only recently caught back up in terms of performance.

I strongly suspect that both AMD and ATI were heading for trouble before the buyout, as it takes years to bring a new CPU or GPU architecture from conception to market and both companies' product lines seemed to run out of steam around the time of the merger.

AMD has not delivered a fundamentally new CPU core architecture since it brought Opteron onto the market (though it has make quite a few changes leading up to Barcelona / Shanghai). On the other hand, Intel has delivered two significantly new CPU architectures since P4 - Core 2 & Core i7 (not including Pentium M/Core Duo). AMD's CPU business would be in serious trouble regardless of purchasing ATI. The result of the ATI purchase is that it has saddled AMD with an unbearable amount of debt, making it even harder for AMD to make the investments in R&D that are necessary to compete with Intel.

As for ATI, the R600 & RV670 were both underwhelming when compared to nVidia's GPUs, especially the G80. Regardless of the purchase by AMD, ATI was in for several years of punishment by nVidia.

 

[imported_Asianman]

I wish they survive, without them, both Intel and NV would be without competition. ATI merger was shortsighted, AMD didn't realise the difficulty of staying ahead in both sectors with only twenty percent of the market share. Still, help them, otherwise we'll be stuck with nehalem for the next ten years

 

[RallyMaster]

Originally posted by: ronnn
Amd will go bankrupt, as the economy will get worse and may never return to same type of consumer toy driven model. Nvidia will last a bit longer, but awaits the same fate. Outside of Intel, the tech industry is awash in red ink.

That could be cool, maybe. My family owns stock in Intel.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: RallyMaster

Originally posted by: ronnn
Amd will go bankrupt, as the economy will get worse and may never return to same type of consumer toy driven model. Nvidia will last a bit longer, but awaits the same fate. Outside of Intel, the tech industry is awash in red ink.

That could be cool, maybe. My family owns stock in Intel.

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16264

 

[ronnn]

Intel may lose money sounds good compared to this. Looks like only the strong one will survive, but US did vote for hope.

 

[dingleberrydorkbutt]

Originally posted by: Zstream

Umm, management rarely has any clue as to what AMD TLB bug is or even know what TLB stands for. This is what the Sr. Technical Architects are for and then they rarely know.

The point of the story is that a company will go to HP/Dell/SUN/IBM for a system. They evaluate that system mainly on price. They might finish evaluating all the systems but price/performance is what gets a contract. Nothing more and nothing less.

If you get 80% of the performance at 40-70% of the price then you bet they will go for this.

VMware is now getting very large in the corporate IT world. AMD does quite a bit better in this segment.

Sounds like you know business. Especially in this type of economy, contracts go to the lowest price component. If prices are the same, they'll look at performance stats.

Of course , spintel kept a large portion of the market through "perks" given to buying-decision-makers. That happens in every industry. I'm in the trucking industry. I used to be an on-the-road salesman for truck parts with a large OEM dealership. For one example, I used to sell a brake shoe that was superior in quality and CHEAPER than a competing salesman (who was also a friend of mine) from another company. I couldn't sell them to most of the customers that he and I both frequented for one reason. He would take the person who made the buying decisions out to lunch regularly, plus other things. The person making the buying decisions didn't care that he was spending more of his boss's money for an inferior product. All he knew was that he was getting perks by buying from my competitor, and my company wouldn't allow the budget for these perks, so we lost out. Plain and simple.

So, all in all, I guess what I'm trying to say is that bottom line price will be king, unless perks are being passed around

Now, I'm sorta what you'd call an AMD fanboy, because they always offered the best price/performance ratio, and oftentimes, the best performance period. Not to mention, I always root for the underdog, no matter what situation. I actually caught myself thinking about going to a core2Duo setup for my upcoming upgrade (I'm on a s939 Athlon 64 3000 system right now). I was pricing MB's and procs and everything.

Then PHII came out. I can see now that AMD is getting back on track. It's not the best, but they're back to being the best price/performance choice and getting closer in just performance. I'm going with a Kuma 7750 with thoughts of PHII when they come down a bit. I also see a good upgrade path as AMD refines the process.

Now are there enough people out there like me that AMD can win back over and turn this thing around? I don't know, but at least they're going in the right direction. (With money tight, even a few folks that always go with best performance might cut back a little bit to get best bang for the buck)

Someone mentioned "bailout". I'm all for it, provided that all current upper level management is forced out. Heck, we're giving $700 billion + to the banks so they can give $200 million dollar bonuses and buy up other banks. Why not give AMD a couple billion to keep them alive and giving Intel fits? That would actually be cheaper in the long run than letting AMD go under and leaving intel a monopoly where they can charge $750 bucks a celeron and make you like it. Even Intel fanboys should want to keep AMD around so their beloved intel stuff will stay reasonable.

If AMD can just hold out over the next year, I think the ATI acquisition could prove to be a good thing. Hindsight is always 20/20, so saying it was a bad idea after a recession kicks in is just hindsight. I do think they paid too much, though.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: chizow
The fact the AMD is now worth less than what they purchased ATI for just a few years ago should tell you it was a mistake. Strategically it made sense, but financially it did not and we're seeing the continued repercussions of that mistake now. The continued write downs are hurting AMD though, as they've been significant enough in some quarters to turn a potential profit into a loss. Although small profits won't solve their debt overnight, it goes a long way towards regaining investor confidence.

I think one of the major problems for AMD has been the execution of their vision for acquiring ATI, while taking away focus from both companies core businesses. I guess their ultimate goal was to produce a complete CPU/GPU platform to compete against Nvidia/Intel simultaneously. I guess that was supposed to be Fusion, which has kept getting pushed back on roadmaps. Now Fusion is tied to a gaming utility. As a result of the shuffle both AMD and ATI fell behind the competition in their core businesses and have only recently caught back up in terms of performance.

We'll see what happens with AMD despite the bad outlook. I suspected federal regulators would step in before bankruptcy or buyout but I'm not so sure now as they've allowed foreign investors buy up over 50% of AMD. Plus the government has their plate full with the financial and automotive industries.....

intel's fusion is almost ready actually. it will be a CPU with a larrabee core thrown in.

 

[heyheybooboo]

I believe what was called AMD Fusion was first targeted for a laptop platform called "Shrike". The processor is called "Swift" and initially slated for 45nm 2 cpu cores and 1 gpu core. It was Q409, but I believe it's been pushed all the way back to 2011 at 32nm.

The primary issue (among all of AMD's other issues) as I understand it is SSE5 adoption. Without the added instruction sets a gpu core on-die for parallel processing tasks is pretty much useless.

 

[ViRGE]

The Q4 financials are in; the graphics division lost 10mil on 270mil in revenue. This compares to a profit of 15mil on 295mil in revenue on Q4 last year, and a profit of 47mil on 385mil in revenue last quarter (Q3). This does mean that the graphics division was profitable for the year; 12mil profit on 1.165bil in revenue.

 

[Wreckage]

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16277

In both cases, a big portion of the figure came from AMD writing off "impairment of goodwill and acquired intangible assets" related to the ATI acquisition?non-material losses, in other words. Those ATI write-offs worked out to $684 million last quarter, to which AMD added an "incremental write-down of inventory" for $227 million and a handful of other charges.

As a result, AMD says it suffered comparatively smaller net losses of $418 million and operating losses of $260 million if one overlooks U.S. accounting guidelines. According to the Wall Street Journal, AMD has now written off about $3.2 billion in ATI-related impairment charges?that's over half of the $5.4 billion it paid for the graphics firm in 2006.

I think ATI killed AMD

 

[Tary88]

If AMD dies it's Intels doing. It has very little to none to do with ATI.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: Tary88
If AMD dies it's Intels doing. It has very little to none to do with ATI.

If they had the $6 billion+ they wasted on ATI they would be doing just fine. They could have even kept their fabs. :|