AMD Have a Chance?

Blake · Posted: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:33:19 Post Subject: AMD Have a Chance?

It is no secret that AMD has been in a hurt locker for some time, only reinforced recently when they made the list of â€œTen Big Companies That Are Veering Toward Bankruptcyâ€ on Yahoo Finance HERE. The understanding is that AMD needs to have a strong 4th quarter to keep their financial heart beating or Intel and NVIDIA may go unchallenged for a bit.

With that said it does not look good to see that reports show Intel has taken over 80 percent of the CPU market share (HERE) providing AMD with what can only be described as a CPU â€œBeat-downâ€. With their processors not helping AMD needs a stellar performance from their GPU side, ATI to keep abreast during these competitive times and initially this looked very possible. With NVIDIA playing stingy with high end parts ATI has had a chance to overtake a good portion of the GPU market topped off with great reviews of their newest 5870 and 5850 products, it looked like a possible light at the end of the tunnel. Is this light too far away to be helpful at this point? Quick visits to many etailers show these high demand products a little tough to get your hands on sometimes. Could there be a shortage on these items? If so will the older ATI products be enough to keep the vast amount of AMD employees employed?

acruxksa · Posted: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:10:01 Post Subject:

There's no doubt ATI beat Nvidia to DX11. Last I heard, Nvidia won't have a DX11 card in meaningful numbers until early 2010, meaning ATI has 3 months with virtually no competition for their new 58x0 line. The reviews are definitely glowing for the new ATI cards and there seem to be more and more of them available everyday. I think this will be enough to keep AMD going in the short term, but they are going to need some good news on the cpu front eventually because video cards can't keep the entire company going for long.

My next video card will be a 5850. Seems like a great boost in gaming performance for a reasonable price. Just wish they'd get with pande group at stanford and figure out how to boost folding@home performance.

djw746 · Rated R Joined: 30 Mar 2009 Posts: 74 Location: Virginia

Another thing to keep in mind beyond AMD/ATI is that although they do not OWN globalfoundries, they do own a very large stake in the company that should help subsidize AMD/ATI as well (given how many commitments they already have). And to be honest, I am not sure that Intel wants to see AMD collapse since that would mean Nvidia would finally have a shot at the proper CPU licenses. (Imagine 90% of Video cards coming from one company also.)
But this won't happen, as mentioned, AMD will not fold, but I agree with your worry for AMD employees. If I were an employee, I would not feel to comfortable with my job. AMD, like most other hybrid or conglomerates, usually tries to have each segment fund itself and adjust each accordingly. (this is not always true... I mean look at things like Youtube that depend on other's resources)

should be interesting to see where all the cards lie in 2011 (I doubt anything huge will happen before then)