It has not been a pretty year for AMD with overall sales of $942m representing 34.6% drop from this time last year and even the graphics portion seeing a 54.2% drop which resulted in loss of $147 million. In part this is because all PC component companies have been suffering recently; in part because of a lack of incentive to upgrade high end components and to a larger extent because the general public is not going to pick up a new machine just before the release of a new Windows version. Lisa Su did have some good news, sales of FX processors and A-series APU have been increasing and the second half of the year is historically better for sales. It was suggested to The Register that AMD is not currently planning on reducing their workforce even more at this time but the possibility of future cuts was not completely ruled out.
"AMD has confirmed it is slipping back into cost-cutting mode after its annus horribilis, caused by tanking demand for consumer PCs in a quarter described by CEO Lisa Su as the “revenue trough” for 2015."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Stephen Hawking and Russian Billionaire Start $100 Million Search For Aliens @ Slashdot
- Microsoft to spoofed Skype users: Change your account passwords NOW @ The Register
- Samsung sets sights on the iPad Air with 5.6mm thick Galaxy Tab S2 @ The Inquirer
- Everything You Need to Know About the Thunderbolt Connection @ Hardware Secrets
- DXRacer OH/IS166/NB Iron Series Gaming Chair Review @HiTech Legion
- Windows 10: Xbox One games streaming now open to all @ The Inquirer
Damn. Who’s going to push
Damn. Who’s going to push Intel/nVidia if it’s not AMD? I really hope they come up with something insanely powerful, even Intel is pretty much giving up on making legitimately faster chips with die shrinks and refreshes
The 3d stacked memory wasn’t
The 3d stacked memory wasn’t the godsend they thought it would be. All I know is I just bought 2 980tis. Might’ve stuck with AMD if they supported HDMI 2.0. I game exclusively in my living room.
My last 3 rigs were AMD, but it’s time to move on.
That’s what I call, “[getting] it done”
Intel has not given up. You
Intel has not given up. You should do some research. They’ve invested billions. The slower than predicted progress is due to the physical difficulties in reliably engineering and mass producing the CPU’s.
Intel is trying to push into the mobile x86 market, however research done there also benefits the desktop.
NVidia is a different story, however they actually do re-invest their money back into research as well.
If AMD fails though it’s going to cause a lot of problems in those areas where Intel and NVidia have no direct competition.
AMD is in a tough spot. Not enough assets to do enough R&D on hardware or software. Basically forced to be superior at pricing to remain competitive, and limp along and likely die a slow death.
Most people likely aren’t aware they were rescued by an infusion of cash years ago, got a lot of money from Intel fairly recently (two years? I forget) which did help but unless something drastic happens they simply don’t have a very diversified portfolio or again ability to compete in a long-term capacity. IMO at least.
Do us a favor and just keep
Do us a favor and just keep up with any Carrizo laptop offerings, and be sure to nag the OEMs to provide options for better than 1366 x768 screen resolutions on the laptops that come with Carrizo a SKU. There will be no valid excuse for not at the lest offering the options of ordering a Carrizo based laptop with a high resolution LCD.
Windows 10 does not look like it can give AMD much of a boost, so I hope that AMD will at least be savvy enough to at least support the version of windows that is on most peoples PCs/Laptops, and I always get the pro OS versions and those have the options of at least downgrading to 7, so keep that driver support for 7 in mind AMD if just for those OEMs that are going to be shipping to windows pro users. That forced install of non security “updates” is going to turn many away from windows 10. I’ll take my pro OS version with a downgrade and most of the graphics software I use utilizes OpenGL/CL anyways.
If you go to the laptops
If you go to the laptops section of the HP website, go to the Pavilion line, and select the 15z or 17z, you can configure it with a full 1920×1080 screen. Starts at $460 for the 15z with that screen, the A8-7410 Carrizo APU, 8GB of RAM. $770 for that screen, the A10-8700 Carrizo APU plus R7 M360, 16GB of RAM. Not bad.
No SSD option, though. I wonder how difficult it is to install your own SSD.
It’s not the top end Carrizo,
It’s not the top end Carrizo, using the full wattage, I need the FX-8800P, preferably in a ProBook with a windows pro version downgrade option to windows 7, I will not have 10 pushing me around and telling me what to install other that security updates. 15 watt parts are castrated, I need the full complement of GCN cores available for the Carrizo line of products at the full wattage. Blender 3d’s cycles rendering pipeline is now supported for AMD GCN graphics, and I’m looking forward to not having to have or worry too much about having quad core an i7 SKU based laptop for heavy render workloads. I am very interested in laptops with the top end Carrizo SKU, that also have a discrete AMD GPU for even more rendering power.
15 watt parts are not an option, I’ll pay more for the full wattage part 35w with, or variable wattage part with no OEM throttling for battery life while plugged in, integrated or discrete graphics. I like the HP ProBook my current laptop is a ProBook with an AMD GPU(Non GCN), so I’ll be looking forward to ProBooks with their downgrade options to windows 7!
Windows 10 will kill the deal, if I cannot get the laptop factory downgraded to 7, and the windows 7 recovery DVDs, Hopefully HP will have a SUSE Linux version of their ProBook like they have had in the past, that or other Linux options. The very reason I purchased the ProBook that I have is that it came factory downgraded to 7, and had the UEFI/BIOS option to turn off M$/WIN Secure Boot! I Hear the secure boot off switch is optional on OEM windows 10 hardware, another reason to be carful what Laptop make/model is purchased.
Another thing that’s not
Another thing that’s not helping is all those high-end AMD cards sold over the last few years to power foo-coin mining rigs. Is mining still a thing?
They bumped up the numbers for a couple of years, but they must now be flowing on auction sites. Sixteen identical “One careful owner, never overclocked” ads.