AMD Now Almost Worth A Quarter of What it Paid for ATI

[Arjai]

I am gonna look into buying some AMD stock. Long term, I think they can't possibly sink much lower, without going away. Which at current pricing means a small loss if they do die off.

If they weather the storm, I think a pretty penny can be had in say, 5-10 years time?

I will discuss this with my Broker, Tuesday. He's the smart one with the money. I come up with ideas and he figures out how to make me money. I didn't do what he said, once. Lost my hat.

Since then, he's made me some money back. I will let you all know, perhaps, what he says.

 

[Assimilator]

AMD Reportedly Making Nintendo NX Processor



Do da...do da...

Game over is it? Time to get that stock while it's still affordable is more like it.

Sigh. There are only 2 reasons why AMD is manufacturing console hardware:

1. it gives them a steady income source so their bottom line doesn't look as horrible as it actually is
2. it gives AMD's directors something to distract shareholders with when the hard questions about profitability start coming in

Neither of these imply that the console deal is anything but barely profitable. That is why nVIDIA told the console companies to take a hike - because nVDIA knew it could make more money selling discrete graphics cards. And they have.

AMD on the other hand, were essentially forced to take the console deal to stay in business - in exactly the same way they had to sell their fabs to stay in business. Neither of those decisions were best for the business long-term, but they were required if there was to be a business at all.

 

[Shambles1980]

AMD needs to make products people want to buy....

And processors that can perform well and are priced well....

The Athlon 64 was released over 10 years ago It was a Pentium 4 killer...

AMD needs another Athlon 64.... Or they could go the way of mips and SGI

lets be fair here..
A pentium 3 was a pentium 4 killer..

 

[FordGT90Concept]

In the form of Core, yeah. While Intel USA was focused on Pentium 4, Intel Israel was working on Pentium M which was based on Pentium 3. Core was a direct descendent of Pentium M then they brought it back to desktops as Core 2.

The first generation Core i7 was a hybrid of both (had longer pipes than Core but not as long as Pentium 4).

 

[john_]

Sigh. There are only 2 reasons why AMD is manufacturing console hardware:

1. it gives them a steady income source so their bottom line doesn't look as horrible as it actually is
2. it gives AMD's directors something to distract shareholders with when the hard questions about profitability start coming in

Neither of these imply that the console deal is anything but barely profitable. That is why nVIDIA told the console companies to take a hike - because nVDIA knew it could make more money selling discrete graphics cards. And they have.

AMD on the other hand, were essentially forced to take the console deal to stay in business - in exactly the same way they had to sell their fabs to stay in business. Neither of those decisions were best for the business long-term, but they were required if there was to be a business at all.

3. Most important. It keeps Nvidia out of the consoles, and considering that many top games are ports from consoles, it keeps AMD's gpus alive.
That's also the reason why Nvidia would kill to be able to supply an x86 APU like chip, even with zero margins. But they can't.

We can all see the effects of PhysX and GameWorks on AMD GPUs. We can even see the effects of GameWorks on older Nvidia GPUs. If Nvidia was controlling GPUs in consoles, then it's proprietary techs would have been already a de facto standard. Every game programmed on consoles would have PhysX and GameWorks in it's core. It would have been close to impossible for AMD to create drivers that would be performing without problems and bad performance even on the simplest console game ports. Every game would have been a Project Cars AT BEST.

PS Freesync support in the next Nintendo console? I believe so.

 

[Aquinus]

I would personally like to see a less restrictive X86 license. That could mean very bad things for AMD but, if another company can put Intel in its place, I would like to see it happen.

 

[john_]

Intel gave x86 license at Chinese Spreadtrum to make cheap x86 SOCs, so it can compete with cheap ARM SOCs. Other than that I don't think they will be willing to give an x86 license to anyone with deep pockets like Samsung, or huge ambitions like Nvidia.

 

[Aquinus]

Intel gave x86 license at Chinese Spreadtrum to make cheap x86 SOCs, so it can compete with cheap ARM SOCs. Other than that I don't think they will be willing to give an x86 license to anyone with deep pockets like Samsung, or huge ambitions like Nvidia.

Of course not. It would only hurt Intel. My point is that such a move would be good for the market if it were forced through legal action for whatever reason may come to light. They're stifling competition and that isn't good for the free market.

 

[Agentbb007]

Long term, I think they can't possibly sink much lower, without going away. Which at current pricing means a small loss if they do die off.

Definitely speak to a broker before buying this stock, analysts ratings have it at .4 out of 10... Amd could easily drop under $1 once rates rise and you would be out 50% of what you invested. Doesn't matter if the stock is cheap, losing 50% of a cheap stock is the same as losing 50% of an expensive stock, the money is gone.
If you want to gamble go to Vegas, if you want long term stability buy index funds.

 

[Aquinus]

Definitely speak to a broker before buying this stock, analysts ratings have it at .4 out of 10... Amd could easily drop under $1 once rates rise and you would be out 50% of what you invested. Doesn't matter if the stock is cheap, losing 50% of a cheap stock is the same as losing 50% of an expensive stock, the money is gone.
If you want to gamble go to Vegas, if you want long term stability buy index funds.

The point is that AMD's stock hasn't been lower. Last time this happen it dipped to 2.00 and 9 months-1year later was up as high as 4.50. I suspect value won't go much lower and there is a high probability that you can make more than 25-50% off AMD when it rebounds like it has in the past. Stocks are always a gamble but there is some level of predictability to certain conditions. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets back up to 4 dollars a share again in a year's time.

 

[TheGuruStud]

The point is that AMD's stock hasn't been lower. Last time this happen it dipped to 2.00 and 9 months-1year later was up as high as 4.50. I suspect value won't go much lower and there is a high probability that you can make more than 25-50% off AMD when it rebounds like it has in the past. Stocks are always a gamble but there is some level of predictability to certain conditions. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets back up to 4 dollars a share again in a year's time.

Wasn't it up to 10 bucks at one point? That's a gamble worth taking.

 

[buildzoid]

If the stock drops you can just wait for it to go back up.

 

[Aquinus]

Wasn't it up to 10 bucks at one point? That's a gamble worth taking.

Not in the last few years. It got a lot higher back when their CPUs could actually compete.

If the stock drops you can just wait for it to go back up.

I suspect Intel would go out of their way to keep AMD afloat just because it's bringing in so much money for them, so investing might not actually be a bad idea. There are very good chances it will go back up if recent (few years,) stock history is any indication.

 

[64K]

If AMD shares fall below $1 for a period of time then they will be delisted from NASDAQ. They can delay it by making promises that they probably can't keep though. On the other hand if you buy some stock now and a Corp like Samsung comes along and scoops them up and pumps some cash into them and properly manages them then your shares will no doubt skyrocket. It's a gamble. I stick with Mutual Funds because I'm risk averse.

 

[HumanSmoke]

Intel gave x86 license at Chinese Spreadtrum to make cheap x86 SOCs, so it can compete with cheap ARM SOCs. Other than that I don't think they will be willing to give an x86 license to anyone with deep pockets like Samsung, or huge ambitions like Nvidia.

That x86 licence was predicated on Intel acquiring a 20% stake in Tsinghua Unigroup - Spreadtrum's parent company. I'm pretty sure that if Samsung or Nvidia were willing to relinquish a major stake in their company to Intel, they might also get some degree of x86 IP licencing.

 

[HisDivineOrder]

3. Most important. It keeps Nvidia out of the consoles, and considering that many top games are ports from consoles, it keeps AMD's gpus alive.
That's also the reason why Nvidia would kill to be able to supply an x86 APU like chip, even with zero margins. But they can't.

We can all see the effects of PhysX and GameWorks on AMD GPUs. We can even see the effects of GameWorks on older Nvidia GPUs. If Nvidia was controlling GPUs in consoles, then it's proprietary techs would have been already a de facto standard. Every game programmed on consoles would have PhysX and GameWorks in it's core. It would have been close to impossible for AMD to create drivers that would be performing without problems and bad performance even on the simplest console game ports. Every game would have been a Project Cars AT BEST.

PS Freesync support in the next Nintendo console? I believe so.

Your argument amounts to, "If you control the GPU in the consoles, you control the GPU tech of PC gaming." An argument that is historically untrue. If what you said were true of nVidia, then when AMD invented Mantle, it would have become the defacto API for all games coming off the fact every current console includes an AMD GPU. Instead, that didn't happen. Money won out.

Money always wins out. Unfortunately, the real problem AMD has it doesn't have the money to outspend nVidia in terms of marketing partnerships. They blew most of their money on an ill-fated Mantle push that should have instead been focused on improving their DirectX 11 drivers in obvious (multithreaded drivers) and not-so-obvious (ShaderCache) ways. Mantle did not make DX12 happen. Windows 10 made DX12 happen. Mantle did help the OpenGL committee speed things along for Vulkan because it is the base of it, but OpenGL would have built something if AMD hadn't. Not sure how AMD wasting money on Mantle to help make Vulkan really helps the AMD customer, though, in the short term with their DX11 deficiency.

And that's the sad part. The early benchmarks of DX11, DX12, etc, have proven the incredible gains that happen when multithreaded drivers happen. Something AMD users could have had for years now had AMD actually bothered to work on it.

But anyway. I just don't think it'd work the way you think. AMD wouldn't be locked out of the game as long as they have money to buy companies to make games with their technology. And they'd probably have more money to do so if they weren't losing money on selling GPU's at far less cost than they wish and making an API that next to no company ever intended to use without being paid.

Money talks. API's or special SDK's don't sell themselves and when they show up in a game, it's because someone paid someone something. It may be marketing. It may be money. It may be swag. Someone gave someone something and if you look at the industry, AMD ain't giving enough people enough stuff.

It's sad because like two years ago they were on top of this and it looked very likely they'd maintain it. But nVidia noticed and corrected the imbalance in a huge way. There's your great conspiracy. It has less to do with who owns consoles. Hell, way back when the 360 reigned as the place to port from, that didn't hurt or help nVidia users (360 had an ATI GPU). Ports were still often focused on nVidia. Why?

Because nVidia paid the publishers more money. That's why.

 

[john_]

Your argument amounts to, "If you control the GPU in the consoles, you control the GPU tech of PC gaming." An argument that is historically untrue. If what you said were true of nVidia, then when AMD invented Mantle, it would have become the defacto API for all games coming off the fact every current console includes an AMD GPU. Instead, that didn't happen. Money won out.

Consoles where not x86 PCs before this generation. Also Nvidia didn't had almost 80% of the discrete graphics cards market on PCs. Not to mention that it was not aggressively pushing proprietary techs like GameWorks, PhysX, GSync etc. as they do today. Games for PCs also where not ports from consoles. All these combined with the deeper pockets of Nvidia and the stronger relations they have with the game developers would give them the absolute advantage over AMD. And Mantle couldn't become the de facto standard for many reasons. No money, no market share, competition had much bigger influence on game developers, I also think consoles don't use Mantle anyway.

Money always wins out. Unfortunately, the real problem AMD has it doesn't have the money to outspend nVidia in terms of marketing partnerships. They blew most of their money on an ill-fated Mantle push that should have instead been focused on improving their DirectX 11 drivers in obvious (multithreaded drivers) and not-so-obvious (ShaderCache) ways. Mantle did not make DX12 happen. Windows 10 made DX12 happen. Mantle did help the OpenGL committee speed things along for Vulkan because it is the base of it, but OpenGL would have built something if AMD hadn't. Not sure how AMD wasting money on Mantle to help make Vulkan really helps the AMD customer, though, in the short term with their DX11 deficiency.

You have to realize something first. Mantle was not meant to give a big advantage to AMD's GPUs. It was made to make that awful Bulldozer architecture look better at games. It was meant to close the gap between Intel cpus and FX cpus. To give an extra push to APU's performance. That's why AMD gave Mantle to Khronos, that's why they stopped developing it when Microsoft announced DX12. The day Microsoft announced DX12, AMD's plan succeeded. Windows 10 could have come without DX12 like Windows 8. You don't know that Microsoft was going to come out with DX12. I don't know that. The only company that needed DX12 yesterday, was AMD, with it's mediocre DX11 drivers and that useless Bulldozer architecture(Thuban at 32nm you morons. Thuban at 32nm). Intel, Nvidia, even Microsoft was happy with the situation. No one from those three cared if DX12 would come out or not. On the other hand AMD was desperate for a low level API. Mantle was the best wasted money AMD had spend.

And that's the sad part. The early benchmarks of DX11, DX12, etc, have proven the incredible gains that happen when multithreaded drivers happen. Something AMD users could have had for years now had AMD actually bothered to work on it.

Those benchmarks did show AMD's problem with the DX11 drivers. But I guess the core of their drivers couldn't change. They should have fixed that problem the day they decided to follow the "more cores" route on the cpu front.

But anyway. I just don't think it'd work the way you think. AMD wouldn't be locked out of the game as long as they have money to buy companies to make games with their technology. And they'd probably have more money to do so if they weren't losing money on selling GPU's at far less cost than they wish and making an API that next to no company ever intended to use without being paid.

Money talks. API's or special SDK's don't sell themselves and when they show up in a game, it's because someone paid someone something. It may be marketing. It may be money. It may be swag. Someone gave someone something and if you look at the industry, AMD ain't giving enough people enough stuff.

It's sad because like two years ago they were on top of this and it looked very likely they'd maintain it. But nVidia noticed and corrected the imbalance in a huge way. There's your great conspiracy. It has less to do with who owns consoles. Hell, way back when the 360 reigned as the place to port from, that didn't hurt or help nVidia users (360 had an ATI GPU). Ports were still often focused on nVidia. Why?

Because nVidia paid the publishers more money. That's why.

I am not going to repeat my self here. We just see a few things complete differently

 

[64K]

Hypothetical situation:

Right now AMD stock is trading for $1.79 If Samsung were to offer between $3 and $5 a share and buy 51% of AMD shares for a controlling interest and either force Lisa Su, or replace her with a Samsung employee as CEO, to give the boot to the street whatever inept managers need to go and then pump a few billion dollars into R&D and marketing over the next couple of years making their APU an incredible buy and making their GPUs beat Nvidia from entry level through high end for the same price and advertising these facts properly to customers and pressuring PC manufacturers to use their chips. That would be an initial investment of between 1.2 and 1.9 billion dollars for the stock (pocket change for Samsung). AMD would still be AMD so the x86 license would not be in jeopardy. Samsung dwarfs Nvidia. There is no way Nvidia could compete. Return AMD to profitability and the stock price would soar well past whatever Samsung paid to gain controlling interest and possibly even partially covering the money spent investing in R&D and marketing. Lay the groundwork right now to compete with Intel's i3 i5 and i7 and though it would take a few years of R&D to achieve that it would make AMD a very profitable company, possibly even regaining their former glory days and maybe that stock could go back up to $40 a share one day. At this point Samsung could sit back and collect the dividends on it's stock or sell the stock for a huge profit.

 

[cyneater]

Hypothetical situation:

At this point Samsung could sit back and collect the dividends on it's stock or sell the stock for a huge profit.

Then Samsung could buy Imagination Technologies and SGI and remake high end graphics workstations and severs....

Anything could happen but there have been so many huge tech companies die lets hope AMD isn't another one...

 

[Aquinus]

Anything could happen but there have been so many huge tech companies die lets hope AMD isn't another one...

I think we can safely say that AMD won't die off. Intel wouldn't allow it because that would mean potentially huge anti-trust litigation against Intel.

Then Samsung could buy Imagination Technologies and SGI and remake high end graphics workstations and severs....

Honestly, I would rather see AMD focus on something. They don't have the money (never did,) to compete with Intel and nVidia at the same time. I personally would like to see a company like Samsung produce GPUs and be able to dump money into GPU R&D while AMD could focus on integrating those GPU cores (as they are now,) into APUs and focus on the CPU R&D. AMD was doing a half decent job until they bought ATI and tried to bite off more than they could chew. We all (hopefully by now,) know that AMD's X86 license isn't transferable in an acquisition and how it plays in the case of a merger is another story as well. I'm not so sure about shader technology though, as AMD bought ATI and all of the IP seemed to go with it.

So I would like to see more focus out of AMD. In all seriousness, I think AMD needs help; a partner that could offer assistance in one market so they can focus on the other and since X86 isn't transferable and shader tech seemingly is. Imagine a world where Samsung has access to shader tech. I think that would make both nVidia and Intel shudder because of the amount of R&D that could get dumped into it.

This is a case where Samsung can't get into x86, but they could partner with AMD to produce and develop the GPU side of APUs which would give huge benefits to both sides I would imagine. I also hear that Samsung's fabs aren't too shabby.

 

[Shambles1980]

amd should probably licence out the gpu part of the company to some one.
Really they should licence out the CPU part but they cant really do that due to x86

but if they found some one that had the money to pay for licencing for the ati stuff. they could recoup what they pay intel for x86 and concentrate on APU/cpus maybe even just for the mobile/console market untill they stabilize

 

[geon2k2]

Shouldn't this x86 license/patent expire at some point. Does anyone know how it works?
We have x86 since 35 years ago.
True its not the same as today, but at least older versions should be public property by now isn't it?

 

[buildzoid]

Shouldn't this x86 license/patent expire at some point. Does anyone know how it works?
We have x86 since 35 years ago.
True its not the same as today, but at least older versions should be public property by now isn't it?

X86 is expired the extensions for it that are necessary to build a modern CPU aren't.

 

[micropage7]

However, reasonably positive earnings put out by Intel disproves AMD's excuse that the market is to blame for bad performance, and the company could slide even further, hitting its all-time-low at the financial markets. The company will host an earnings call later today

^^ this, i dunno, AMD looks like make excuse for their self for that condition
like AMD is drunk, over confidence with their products
they like has no 2nd tier products that could help them to get more market and more money
look at their processor, i dont say their processor is bad but they should realize that they should put something better than adding more cores and more cores
later they pack the processor with better graphic processing, its good but their processor cant fight their competitor

simply, they cant fight in intel arena, if they wanna get something better make their own arena
like mediatek, blackberry

 

[R-T-B]

X86 is expired the extensions for it that are necessary to build a modern CPU aren't.

Which is part of the reason both AMD and Intel are so fond of extending the instruction set regularly. There is absolutely no efficiency reason to do so, it just adds complexity to the chip from a performance per watt perspective.