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Old 24th September 2008
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Default are you worried about amd?

from what i have read so far, it looks like nehalem is going to be another solid launch for intel. do you think amd is in a precarious position? are you worried about amd?
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Old 24th September 2008
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I'm worried, a little... but recent news claims they might sell off their chip manufacturing operations, I assume they would still be owners, but they wouldn't be actually building the chips they design.. AFAIK.

Even though they're hurting financially, they still are contributing.. more GPU docs are on their way.
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Old 27th April 2009
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Default Heck no

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.../04/23/1948204

Lots of companies are having a bit of a hard time right now. But AMD has done wonders, and I believe will continue to do wonders, for the CPU market. They're no Cyrix/6x86 ^_^

The biggest drawback that AMD has going against them right now is that they have to pay Intel for the i386 architecture license. If they can find someway around that, they'd be golden.
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Old 27th April 2009
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No, I am not. AMD is not going anywhere. It is true that AMD64 has to pay for for i386
license but it is also true that Intel has to pay for 64 bit license to AMD64. It is assured mutual destruction policy.

Intel could buy out AMD but that can not happen because of the anti-trust regulations.

The only really possibility for AMD to get out of the business is if Intel actually
can complete Itanium processor and ditch 32 bit architecture all together. In that case they will not need AMD for 64-32 bit compatibility and AMD will go down the drain.

I just do not see Itanium happening any time soon in any reasonable shape so AMD lovers you are safe.
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Old 27th April 2009
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Before AMD has been cut into AMD and GlobalFoundries I was little worried, but not right now:
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Old 27th April 2009
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I took a very quick look at their recent balance sheet (which is considerably more than I'm competent to do ... ). It shows slightly negative shareholder equity, and taking out goodwill and intangibles about -1 U$ / share on a $3.5 stock. Forward earnings estimates (for what they're worth) are negative. Overall, not particularly reassuring to me, but (a) the future is unknown and (b) WTFDIK .

ADDED: Disclosure: I don't have any direct position (long or short) in AMD.

Last edited by IdOp; 27th April 2009 at 05:30 PM. Reason: add link and last bit
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Old 27th April 2009
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Not worried in the least; although in some ways, I think I wish I had some AMD stock while the getting may be good lol.
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Old 27th April 2009
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While Intel may have the upper-hand in pure performance at the high end (Nehalem), it comes at a huge price: new motherboard/chipset, new CPU(s), new RAM. The "upgrade" path is (as is usual with Intel) to buy all new hardware.

AMD may not have the fastest CPU architecture out there, but it's not horrible either. When it comes to performance/watt, price/watt and other similar metrics, AMD is doing quite nicely. They also have a very nice upgrade path. You can use Phenom IIs in AM2 or AM3 motherboards, you can use them with DDR2 or DDR3 RAM. IOW, you can actually upgrade the hardware as opposed to just replacing it.

AMD also has an easier to understand model numbering scheme, and it's very easy to figure out which CPU features are supported by which CPUs. It's next to impossible to know, just by the model numbers, which Intel CPU is better than which other Intel CPU (especially when it comes to CPU features like Intel VT). I swear, Intel just rolls a bunch of ten-sided dice and uses that for the model numbers.

Until you can buy a Nehalem-based server with 2x quad-core CPUs, 8 GB of RAM, 4-port gigabit NIC, 2 RAID controllers, 24 SATA harddrives, and redundant PSU in a hot-swappable rackmount case for ~$10,000 CDN, AMD has nothing to worry about. At least where we are.

Same for desktops. Until they have a box equivalent to ours (onboard nVidia graphics, gigabit NIC, 2+ GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, onboard sound, etc) for < $250 CDN, we'll continue buying AMD.

So, no, we're definitely not worried about AMD.
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Old 27th April 2009
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Another thought that I had that puts my trust still with AMD:

Check out the new Gigabyte boards for the AM3 architecture. They're AM2+ compliant, so you can buy one and use your current proc, and when the prices on the AM3's drop, you can swap it out no problem. Supports DDR3 RAM and everything.

It's unprecedented backwards compatibility that hasn't happened before. The ability to use either old-gen or new-gen CPU's on the same Mobo slot is just beautiful IMHO.
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Old 28th April 2009
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The Phenom II and Shanghai Opteron CPU's are a good competition for the Intel Core 2 and Xeon CPU's, and usually at a cheaper pricetag too.
If I would buy a new PC, I would probably buy an AMD.

However, AMD has nothing even close to the i7, and I don't expect they will have anytime soon (And by that time Intel is faster again, tick/tock).

Half a year ago we were still selling a few AMD desktop systems, now we are selling almost none. For server systems it's even worse, almost like Opteron doesn't even exist.

I'm not saying one computer store is representative for the entire world, but from where I'm sitting, it doesn't seem to go very well with AMD...

As a general note, I think more competition on the CPU (And GPU) market would be a (very!) good thing ...
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Old 28th April 2009
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> Half a year ago we were still selling a few AMD desktop systems, now we are selling almost none.

You pretty much echoed the scene at my place - it's all Intel.
I buy Intel too. For laptops they are an obvious choice and for desktops it's simply that I can't find a motherboard I like for AMD.

I guess AMD could do better by improving their marketing / PR or something.
As the reviews from the links in Vermaden's post show, AMD is competitive in the low/mid price range. The Phenom II 955 looks pretty good too.
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Old 29th April 2009
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ephemera View Post
...it's all Intel.
When the marketplace only has one vendor, we are completely at their mercy in terms of both pricing & willingness to innovate.

Just remember that a decade ago we had DEC, HP, & Motorola in the chip business, but Intel's predatory practices were major factors in the demise of these companies by hiring key developers away. Now, even the future of Sun is in question.

While AMD has had a checkered history in offering solid competition to Intel, at least they were providing competition, & competition helps keep the market players honest.
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Old 29th April 2009
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There is also this supid attitude to AMD processors (chipsets and so) on some companies, for example my previous boss thought that AMD processors are shit and we were Intel all the way, what a lack of competense :/
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Old 29th April 2009
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There is an old theory, some thing like people get promoted until they reach a point at which they are incompetent for the job ;-)
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Old 29th April 2009
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I had a customer today who wanted to buy a new system, I mentioned AMD.
His response:
``Bleh, that's a dirty word''

:-/
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Old 29th April 2009
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So how well are the recent AMD and nVidia chipsets supported in FreeBSD? That is, the consumer ones, and not the server ones. Traditionally I've found the Intel chipsets just to work better, but most of those supporting the AMD platform have been out for a while now.
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Old 30th April 2009
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ocicat View Post
When the marketplace only has one vendor, we are completely at their mercy in terms of both pricing & willingness to innovate.
Speaking of which, Intel is getting spanked in Europe:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/te...chip.html?_r=1

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