Would Have AMD Survived without Having Taken Over ATI Technologies?

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: drizek
It is true that ATI was headed for a fall when AMD purchased it. However, they are back in the game in a big way now. They are shipping 40nm DX11 parts and Nvidia isn't. Thats going to be a big boost for both profit margins and market share.

And were shipping 40nm DX10.x parts before NV too. They've clearly stepped up their priorities in terms of time to market this round. Hopefully that translates into better margins or cashflow or something.

 

[drizek]

You mean 55nm, right?

Nvidia had a bit of a head start against the 4800 series, and so was able to juice some money out of the GTX 280 at the ridiculous MSRP before the 4870 came out. They won't have that advantage this time around. The 5870 is the undisputed king and AMD can charge whatever it wants for it until Nvidia get their kit together. I think AMD is also going to be very competitivel for value enthusiast cards this time with their mini-me die. I don't think their profit margins on the 4830 selling for under a hundred bucks were very good at all(not that I'm complaining ).

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: drizek
You mean 55nm, right?

Nvidia had a bit of a head start against the 4800 series, and so was able to juice some money out of the GTX 280 at the ridiculous MSRP before the 4870 came out. They won't have that advantage this time around. The 5870 is the undisputed king and AMD can charge whatever it wants for it until Nvidia get their kit together. I think AMD is also going to be very competitivel for value enthusiast cards this time with their mini-me die. I don't think their profit margins on the 4830 selling for under a hundred bucks were very good at all(not that I'm complaining ).

I'm thinking you were thinking I was thinking about Nvidia when I made that post

I was actually talking about AMD there, adding to your statement regarding them being first this round on 40nm and DX11...they were also first this round on 40nm and DX10.x.

AMD had their 40nm RV740 chip out in April 28th, 2009 whereas the first Nvidia 40nm chips to make it to the consumer came out in June 15, 2009.

 

[imported_Lothar]

Originally posted by: drizek

What was Hector Ruiz thinking?

That the profits from ATI would exceed the interest payments on the debt, and that the value of ATI as a company would not go down. This alone is probably not reason enough to buy out ATI, but then there is the matter of Fusion, as well as the ability to custom tailor chipsets and CPUs.

There was also the possibility of fabbing ATI parts in house, helping to prop up the company as a whole(now GF). It still seems pretty likely that the 7000 series cards will be done on GFs 28nm. There is some good money to be made there, particularly if GF one ups TSMCs equivalent. At that point Nvidia will have to either manufacture their GPUs at their competitors fab(possibly as a second class citizen) or put up with using an inferior process. Meanwhile, TSMC loses a huge bulk of revenue, making RnD harder, potentially making it fall further behind.

You missed my point entirely. Read the few sentences above that quote.
My point entirely was "What was Hector Ruiz thinking in acquiring ATI in an almost all cash transaction instead of paying all stock?"

Do you catch my drift?

 

[Jovec]

Originally posted by: drizek
I don't think their profit margins on the 4830 selling for under a hundred bucks were very good at all(not that I'm complaining ).

Better profits than throwing those partially defective cores in the trash. I'm sure AMD was glad as hell to offload them.

ps. Cash vs Stock - what makes anyone think ATI would have accepted a large stock deal?

 

[imported_Lothar]

Originally posted by: Jovec

Originally posted by: drizek
I don't think their profit margins on the 4830 selling for under a hundred bucks were very good at all(not that I'm complaining ).

Better profits than throwing those partially defective cores in the trash. I'm sure AMD was glad as hell to offload them.

ps. Cash vs Stock - what makes anyone think ATI would have accepted a large stock deal?

What makes anyone think they wouldn't?

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Jovec
ps. Cash vs Stock - what makes anyone think ATI would have accepted a large stock deal?

Or ATI's shareholders for that matter.

Pretty sure all options were thoroughly explored, vetted, weighed, and what we see is exactly what the numbers at the time said was the lowest cost, lowest effort path to getting the job done.

 

[geok1ng]

AMD is dead on the CPU market already: it took them 3 and a half years to put a chip that can fight C2D Conroes clock for clock: the Phenom II. They abandoned the mobile market without a fight, even when AMD/ATI had the better integrated GPU by a large margin, but the entire netbook market was delivered on a silver plate to Atom, a great CPU paired with a jurassic chipset - now any hope is lost; Intel will sell a 32nm CPU in a real chipset capable of good video playback. I dont see any way for AMD survive much longer outside the GPU market: the chips are bigger and slower than Intel's AND cost more to produce, and to make matters worst AMD destroyed the human resources of ATI, and now ATI cards have a deserved fame of being great pieces of hardware with inferior driver support. Most game developers are beguiled by NVIDI's "the way it was meant to played" program, something without ATI equivalent to date. I love my 4880X2. an epic GPU, the very first one capable of gaming on my 30 inches LCD, but i simply dont see me using an AMD system on the next upgrades, not even on my netbook.

 

[drizek]

AMD had their 40nm RV740 chip out in April 28th, 2009 whereas the first Nvidia 40nm chips to make it to the consumer came out in June 15, 2009.

I totally forgot about those. I was thinking the 5870 was hte first retail 40nm part.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: drizek

AMD had their 40nm RV740 chip out in April 28th, 2009 whereas the first Nvidia 40nm chips to make it to the consumer came out in June 15, 2009.

I totally forgot about those. I was thinking the 5870 was hte first retail 40nm part.

4770.

 

[imported_Lothar]

Originally posted by: geok1ng
AMD is dead on the CPU market already: it took them 3 and a half years to put a chip that can fight C2D Conroes clock for clock: the Phenom II. They abandoned the mobile market without a fight, even when AMD/ATI had the better integrated GPU by a large margin, but the entire netbook market was delivered on a silver plate to Atom, a great CPU paired with a jurassic chipset - now any hope is lost; Intel will sell a 32nm CPU in a real chipset capable of good video playback. I dont see any way for AMD survive much longer outside the GPU market: the chips are bigger and slower than Intel's AND cost more to produce, and to make matters worst AMD destroyed the human resources of ATI, and now ATI cards have a deserved fame of being great pieces of hardware with inferior driver support. Most game developers are beguiled by NVIDI's "the way it was meant to played" program, something without ATI equivalent to date. I love my 4880X2. an epic GPU, the very first one capable of gaming on my 30 inches LCD, but i simply dont see me using an AMD system on the next upgrades, not even on my netbook.

Intel doesn't make that much profit from Atom.

I don't see that to be such an important program.
That's one stupid program ATI/AMD can do without.