6 ms·

AMD over $10 a share today, price last seen back in 2007

45 points by martell 10y ago

webaholic 10y ago
Everyone is expecting Zen to perform well. AMD also has been hyping it up a lot. I hope it doesn't turn out to be a pile driver kind-of architecture. Intel needs competition to keep prices sane, which currently they are not.
- theandrewbailey 10y ago
  AMD is going to have a live stream next Tuesday to show off Zen, but it's more gaming oriented. https://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/new-horizon https://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/new-horizon
pastullo 10y ago
Looks extremely overpriced due to lots of investor hoping to get similar gains as the one from NVIDIA stocks. Without starting a flame war, i personally think AMD is lagging way behind NVIDIA, which lately has been releasing incredible products. They have been expanding in both the gaming market as well as gained a strong foothold in emerging B2B markets such as the automotive industry and virtual reality. Sure both AMD and NVIDIA will keep growing but now they really feel overpriced.
- webaholic 10y ago
  I don't think AMD is that far behind Nvidia. They Fury series is on par with the latest Nvidia products if they use the Vulkan API. The upcoming Polaris is supposed to be using HBM2 which should give it a boost.
  - jdietrich 10y ago
    AMD are in a death spiral. In the gaming market, AMD have completely lost the high-end and are barely managing to keep a foothold in the mid-range. The RX480 is just barely competitive with the GTX 1060 in gaming, performing worse in DX11 and edging a marginal (~5%) lead in DX12 and Vulkan. The R9 Fury has been all but abandoned by card partners, because it's barely faster the GTX 1060 or the RX 480 while costing 50% more. None of that really matters, because AMD are absolutely nowhere in the GPGPU market. The market for consumer video cards doesn't have much room to grow, but there's exponential growth potential for GPGPU compute in server and embedded applications. Nvidia are selling rackloads of premium-priced cards to data centers and increasing quantities of chips to the automotive industry. They're in a virtuous circle of economies of scale, with the video and GPGPU markets supporting each other. AMD have gained some market share in terms of unit volume, but they're in deep trouble when it comes to margins. Nvidia can afford a price war in the mid-range, because they've got a monopoly on the high-end. Nvidia could do to Radeon what Intel did to Opteron. I like AMD. I particularly like AMD's support for open standards (Freesync, Vulkan etc), but I think that this is a desperation move. Polaris has been a massive disappointment, at least in comparison with Pascal. Unless Zen turns out to be spectacular, AMD are in deep trouble.
- chc 10y ago
  AMD is lagging on CPUs for sure, but most of their GPU offerings seem pretty competitive. There are a couple of segments where they're behind, but more where they're even or ahead, so I don't see how you'd figure they're way behind overall.
  - EpicEng 10y ago
    Care to give some examples? As someone who has been building gaming rigs for some time, this flies in the face of ally experience. NVIDIA always has the best performing GPU each generation, has better drivers, and better support for most AAA games. Where is AMD winning?
    - chc 10y ago
      From what I've seen, the entire RX lineup appears to be as good or better than Nvidia's offerings at the same price points. Also, "support for AAA games" isn't really a graphics card feature, per se. AAA development studios choose what hardware they want to support, and many choose to target Nvidia technologies (e.g. HairWorks).
      - EpicEng 10y ago
        >Also, "support for AAA games" isn't really a graphics card feature, per se. AAA development studios choose what hardware they want to support, and many choose to target Nvidia technologies (e.g. HairWorks). Yes, but who cares? If NVIDIA beats AMD for the games I want to play, the why completely irrelevant. Games run better on NVIDIA. I buy games and want them to run as well as possible. Sold.
        chc 10y ago
        The topic under discussion is whether "AMD is lagging way behind NVIDIA." If some games run better on Nvidia not because AMD is lagging, but because those developers are choosing to make them run better on Nvidia cards, the why is very relevant to the topic at hand. What isn't relevant is which brand of video card you choose to buy.
johngalt 10y ago
It all depends on Zen providing real competition to Skylake. I am skeptical. Even if zen is a killer chip, it will land is a sparse environment. AMD needs a win on CPU and chipset. Most likely outcome: Zen is decent but not enough to make a dent in intel. At most it pushes Intel's prices down a little. ARM is the real competitor to Intel not AMD.
- martell 10y ago
  Unfortunately ARM was bought out so we can't buy shares in them any more. With news of the windows x64 emulator for aarch64, 2017 should be a very interesting year on the x86 arm battle for sure. Might be worthwhile picking up qualcomm shares or stock in some other companies that license from ARM.
  - johngalt 10y ago
    I expect ARM to be a threat more as a scorched earth commoditization manner. It's not that ARM chip manufacturers will take over Intel's billions, but instead they will deflate the CPU balloon by allowing cheap and ubiquitous devices that have 'enough' CPU.
spikengineer 10y ago
This is because of the rumors that Intel is going to cross license AMD GPU patents for use in their integrated GPU's as the intel-nvidia gpu cross license agreement is going to expire next year.
- snotrockets 10y ago
  Wasn't their agreement long term, until patent expiry? (http://investor.nvidia.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1193125-11-5134&cik=1045810 http://investor.nvidia.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1193125-11...) Or am I missing something?

45 points by martell 10y ago

Everyone is expecting Zen to perform well. AMD also has been hyping it up a lot. I hope it doesn't turn out to be a pile driver kind-of architecture. Intel needs competition to keep prices sane, which currently they are not.

theandrewbailey 10y ago
AMD is going to have a live stream next Tuesday to show off Zen, but it's more gaming oriented. https://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/new-horizon https://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/new-horizon

pastullo 10y ago

Looks extremely overpriced due to lots of investor hoping to get similar gains as the one from NVIDIA stocks. Without starting a flame war, i personally think AMD is lagging way behind NVIDIA, which lately has been releasing incredible products. They have been expanding in both the gaming market as well as gained a strong foothold in emerging B2B markets such as the automotive industry and virtual reality. Sure both AMD and NVIDIA will keep growing but now they really feel overpriced.

webaholic 10y ago
I don't think AMD is that far behind Nvidia. They Fury series is on par with the latest Nvidia products if they use the Vulkan API. The upcoming Polaris is supposed to be using HBM2 which should give it a boost.
- jdietrich 10y ago
  AMD are in a death spiral. In the gaming market, AMD have completely lost the high-end and are barely managing to keep a foothold in the mid-range. The RX480 is just barely competitive with the GTX 1060 in gaming, performing worse in DX11 and edging a marginal (~5%) lead in DX12 and Vulkan. The R9 Fury has been all but abandoned by card partners, because it's barely faster the GTX 1060 or the RX 480 while costing 50% more. None of that really matters, because AMD are absolutely nowhere in the GPGPU market. The market for consumer video cards doesn't have much room to grow, but there's exponential growth potential for GPGPU compute in server and embedded applications. Nvidia are selling rackloads of premium-priced cards to data centers and increasing quantities of chips to the automotive industry. They're in a virtuous circle of economies of scale, with the video and GPGPU markets supporting each other. AMD have gained some market share in terms of unit volume, but they're in deep trouble when it comes to margins. Nvidia can afford a price war in the mid-range, because they've got a monopoly on the high-end. Nvidia could do to Radeon what Intel did to Opteron. I like AMD. I particularly like AMD's support for open standards (Freesync, Vulkan etc), but I think that this is a desperation move. Polaris has been a massive disappointment, at least in comparison with Pascal. Unless Zen turns out to be spectacular, AMD are in deep trouble.
chc 10y ago
AMD is lagging on CPUs for sure, but most of their GPU offerings seem pretty competitive. There are a couple of segments where they're behind, but more where they're even or ahead, so I don't see how you'd figure they're way behind overall.
- EpicEng 10y ago
  Care to give some examples? As someone who has been building gaming rigs for some time, this flies in the face of ally experience. NVIDIA always has the best performing GPU each generation, has better drivers, and better support for most AAA games. Where is AMD winning?
  - chc 10y ago
    From what I've seen, the entire RX lineup appears to be as good or better than Nvidia's offerings at the same price points. Also, "support for AAA games" isn't really a graphics card feature, per se. AAA development studios choose what hardware they want to support, and many choose to target Nvidia technologies (e.g. HairWorks).
    - EpicEng 10y ago
      >Also, "support for AAA games" isn't really a graphics card feature, per se. AAA development studios choose what hardware they want to support, and many choose to target Nvidia technologies (e.g. HairWorks). Yes, but who cares? If NVIDIA beats AMD for the games I want to play, the why completely irrelevant. Games run better on NVIDIA. I buy games and want them to run as well as possible. Sold.
      - chc 10y ago
        The topic under discussion is whether "AMD is lagging way behind NVIDIA." If some games run better on Nvidia not because AMD is lagging, but because those developers are choosing to make them run better on Nvidia cards, the why is very relevant to the topic at hand. What isn't relevant is which brand of video card you choose to buy.

johngalt 10y ago

It all depends on Zen providing real competition to Skylake. I am skeptical. Even if zen is a killer chip, it will land is a sparse environment. AMD needs a win on CPU and chipset. Most likely outcome: Zen is decent but not enough to make a dent in intel. At most it pushes Intel's prices down a little. ARM is the real competitor to Intel not AMD.

martell 10y ago
Unfortunately ARM was bought out so we can't buy shares in them any more. With news of the windows x64 emulator for aarch64, 2017 should be a very interesting year on the x86 arm battle for sure. Might be worthwhile picking up qualcomm shares or stock in some other companies that license from ARM.
- johngalt 10y ago
  I expect ARM to be a threat more as a scorched earth commoditization manner. It's not that ARM chip manufacturers will take over Intel's billions, but instead they will deflate the CPU balloon by allowing cheap and ubiquitous devices that have 'enough' CPU.

spikengineer 10y ago

This is because of the rumors that Intel is going to cross license AMD GPU patents for use in their integrated GPU's as the intel-nvidia gpu cross license agreement is going to expire next year.

snotrockets 10y ago
Wasn't their agreement long term, until patent expiry? (http://investor.nvidia.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1193125-11-5134&cik=1045810 http://investor.nvidia.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1193125-11...) Or am I missing something?