This is some great news! After the current economic stall there will be a new expansion, as it is always the case. I just hope AMD will be in a better position to explore the new expansion and keep competition in check. We don't want a single CPU or GPU or SOC vendor.
BTW, Qualcomm is winning a lot of mobile design wins this cycle. They could become the next unexpected player over the next few years...Reply
I don't feel like it's unexpected. I personally thought the time to market advantage for Krait was going to be near-insurmountable, and given how tough A15 was to bring (as it turns out), Qualcomm has it rolling to the point that TI is flat-out gone, Samsung is riding on international sales and tablet sales, and Nvidia has few design wins with the T4. And the core of ATi's mobile has done great work with graphics as of late. Qualcomm's set for success right now.Reply
This is how you start rebuilding a company. Hire the best engineers and pay them what they're worth so you have quality products to start from. Its how Samsung started its resurgence, focusing on quality. Once quality is back in place, then you let the marketing department go to work, but only once they have something good to sell.Reply
AMD need to replace their marketing department before asking them try and sell anything. The current crew are not interested in real marketing, just padding their mates pockets.Reply
hope this really helps AMD. I used to think the hype about such people is idiotic because in the end it's the "normal workers", in this case engineers, that do the job and not the managers. However considering how a high ranked manager at my workplace is screwing up everything he possibly can, I reconsidered the terrible effect just 1 single manager can have...and the opposite probably holds true too...even if the workers are the exact same people!Reply
Whoa, do I work with you? This is happening where I work, too, and it's eating the company from the inside out.
This is big news for AMD. While I'm an NVidia sort myself on the graphics side, I have only used AMD CPUs for many, many years. Anything that helps AMD stay afloat is excellent, to my mind.Reply
Bad or even mediocre managers can screw up a company quite easily, and they're pretty common, so if a company can find a good one and hold on to him, they should.Reply
AMD builds a powerful Jaguar APU based on a 1.63mm x 1.90mm core size with design wins from Sony and Microsoft for next gen consoles. Major Taiwan ODMs are showcasing AMD Jaguar-based tablets running the latest apps and games at 1920x1080 res and 8-10 hour battery life while Intel designs struggles with games at half-HD resolutions.
AMD with 1/10 the resources, delivered compelling gaming console, tablet and hybrid notebook solutions for the second half of this year. Meanwhile Intel with half empty fabs, has a buggy, bigger Haswell and promises of a better Baytrail Atom "real soon now"... (meaning samples at end of 2013 and shipping well after 2014...)
With this in mind, I think most people would congratulate AMD for what they created and for what is yet to come. Reply
I really think the fact that they have at least one chip in all three of the next gen consoles is a huge sleeper hit for them. It is really not talked about much other than a side comment. Considering each gen sells more than the previous and the current gen is sitting at around 250 million consoles since 2005, a conservative estimate (Wii U GPU + PS4 CPU + PS4 GPU + 720 CPU + 720 GPU) * 250 million = 1.25 billion AMD chips sold in the next ten years or so. That's crazy.Reply
I initially thought the same thing, it looks like AMD is ready to cash in no matter who wins the next console round. Do we know what the margins are on console hardware though? My guess is it's pretty low. If the entire console sells for about the same as one normal GPU or CPU, they can't be getting to much.Reply
That's because the console OEMs (Sony & MS) take a hit on the first couple million units, until economies of scale kick in, betting long - that they'll make it up in ecosystem (read game) purchases.
Doesn't mean AMD and other parts vendors are super discounting their hardware. They'll just batch price by volume based contracts.Reply
AMD more or less won the consoles by default though. nVidia decided the margins weren't high enough to justify pulling people off their other projects. Intel's GPUs are still no-shows for anything beyond casual gaming; and I doubt they'd be overly interested in a low margin market segment either.Reply
Buggy Haswell? Its perfectly fine. Why do people exaggerate the minor chipset errata? Its not smart of you to start knocking intel like that with their great R&D which contribute to the industry, however i agree that AMD's win in mobile and consoles is great and yes under appreciated/recognized. They needed to shed the resources to become a more focused/efficient company even according to this article which Raja mentioned. It will just be a good day when AMD can again really impress with the desktop CPU, unless thats not on their radar anymore.Reply
Core 2 had shedloads of bugs, but they still worked round it. The original Phenom had one bug blown totally out of proportion which affected very few home users (and had a workaround - 10% performance drop on Windows, 0% on Linux), so in reality, the only bad things about Phenom were the process and hence the inability to clock it high or keep power under control.
CPUs always launch with bugs and they're generally caught and bypassed. However, I suppose AMD did deserve the flak for Phenom's TLB bug after saying Phenom would bury Core 2...Reply
you are correct theres bugs, but often i dont hear of mass recalls or they affect only some, but that is expected. Haswell isnt even out yet, but im assuming the OP was saying haswell is buggy just because of the Z87 chipset USB problem. Intel has said the CPU itself has no major bugs. So i dont see the need to worry so much.Reply
Yeah, what has Apple really done with gpu ?. Zero, none zilch!. They still license Imagineering PVR cores and using Nvidia discrete cores for laptops. Producing nothing in gpu area themselves. So who is impressed ?.Reply
He is an American citizen (of Indian origin). Do you rather prefer certain origins/races? Can you enumerate? And what is your own origin if may ask.Reply
Err, not that I am in any way endorsing the appalling comment you're responding to, but: "Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE: AMD) or AMD is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California."Reply
Yes, but be that as it may, ATI hasn't existed since 2006, and the ATI name was completely retired in August of 2010. In effect, there is not such thing as ATI and there hasn't been since 2010 at the latest. It's AMD, even the graphics division in Markham, and AMD is headquartered in the United States.Reply
He is American, maybe this concept is foreign to you but you can be of a different descent and still be American. In fact unless you're native American, that's your case too. Reply
Blame the demise of the American education system. In many of the top educated countries, kids go to school 6 or 7 days a week and have no summer breaks. Additionally, under performing teachers are fired, and the education system evolves based on studies of how to best train groups of students. In America, none of this happens in public schools, and some of it happens in private/boarding schools. Reply
I'm sorry but quality of education is not measured in the number of school days per year. Quality teachers, good material and curriculum and small classroom sizes are *much* more important than how much you're going to make your students hate school by forcing them to be there for all their waking hours.Reply
And we have the other things you mentioned? There are schools in Thailand or Vietnam, I forget which, teaching their kids algorithms and real math in 5th grade. Sorry, you don't get it.Reply
Let's bring the topic home please. Any serious opinions on AMD's chances of a meaningful and competitive future against Intel and Nvidia? Fanboys need not join to this conversation.Reply
I have respected ATI/AMD for their amazing hardware capability and Nvidia for their software stack. I wont say Nvidia s hardware is too inferior but they do compensate it well with their software. AMD has failed miserably at that. Having known Raja in person, he is a visionary and I ll closely watch what he does with the APU product line to ensure better performance. AMD has all the ingredients except the software now but Intel lacks in the gfx part while Nvidia does not have x86 license.Reply
http://www.bugmenot.com/view/anandtech.com - I was able to log into this account and type this comment. It is possible someone used the same access to post the previous racist/ignorant comment. In any case, it should be deleted.Reply
Rule #1 - never hire back people who've left you for a better offer. They have shown their true colors. AMD must be really desperate to ignore this basic HR rule and grasping at 'how things once were' with these hires.Reply
Jim Keller and Raja Koduri probably didn't leave AMD for 'a better offer', they probably left because they didn't see a management team that would move the company in a direction they wanted to go it in their respective fields. AMD's management has been terrible since Jerry Sanders left in 2003. Dirk Meyer, although a brilliant engineer, apparently rubbed a fair number of key employees the wrong way. The fact that Keller has returned as head of CPU development and now Koduri is back as 'Corporate Vice President of Visual Computing' (essentially in charge of the graphics division) is an exceptionally auspicious sign. These two must have seen something in Rory Read's plans for the company that attracted them back to the company.Reply
A one page love fest over a hire after cutting off 30% of the engineers? One or two people won't fix those kinds of layoffs and even in your own words won't mean a thing until 2015-2016 (if they survive that long). Are you planning on analyzing them losing their butts again this Q? They're showing 146mil loss but reality is it was around $310mil if you take out the one-time sale for $164mil of the Austin property.
Regarding the MULTI-GPU driver issues, it only took you a year and 7 months to mention it and I'm sure we won't hear another thing about it until AMD has it fixed. It’s no surprise AMD talked to this site ONLY directly and even then didn't discuss the REAL multi-gpu issues...LOL. So basically you wrote 7 pages of CYA direct from AMD. Why not just let them write it for you? Whatever...But still, these are the cards Anandtech has been recommending for basically a year now; runt frames, stutter etc all included for your enjoyment :) Enduro still sucks too says notebookcheck (and others look around some forums): http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Update-Radeon-... 80 pages of complaining can't be wrong :) That's on just ONE site. "Although AMD promised optimizations, the improvements were only small. Despite several performance gains and bug fixes, the graphics card never worked completely as it was advertised. Only since Catalyst 12.11 Beta, which brought some innovations, did it begin to function reasonably well, but still not without its problems." Well, shucks...So still not working YET as advertised. Hmmpf...
"Although Nvidia's Optimus technology still performs better (Optimus is more reliable and features more visual notifications and comfortable functions), Enduro is now fairly useful." Well, at least its "FAIRLY USEFUL" and functions "REASONABLY WELL" after a year...ROFL. But they still note problems they had previously in FarCry3, Modern Warfare3, F1 2012, Borderlands 2 and Assassin's Creed 3. I guess that's why other than farcry3 these aren't in your gaming suite?
I can't wait to see Ryan's take on Adobe's OpenCL additions while leaving out the comparisons to Cuda in CS6 or Premiere Next (anandtech already ignores Cuda). No doubt he'll fan the OpenCL flames that are barely burning vs. Cuda, while acting like Cuda doesn't exist. Only an idiot buys an NV card and tries to do ANYTHING in OpenCL. You should seek CUDA apps for the same jobs and avoid OpenCL at all costs on NV hardware. I'm not quite sure why AMD was using a Xeon5530 @2.4ghz from 2009 for their tests on a 2013-2014 Adobe product...Fishy at best there? Why wasn't this a 3.5ghz+ I7 or something? Did they use a notebook driver 311.35? I'm thinking NV suddenly works better if using an actual state of the art cpu vs. a 2009 4yr old tech. Amazon recommends a i7-3930K 6 core with 12mb cache to go with the K5000 Quadro they sell, not some chip from Q1'09. Also note AMD hasn't been left in the cold all this time, OpenGL even according to NV's own site says any card that supports it would be accelerated in Adobe CS6: "However, all OpenGL 2.0 graphics cards including NVIDIA GeForce, NVIDIA Quadro, AMD Radeon and AMD FireGL will accelerate Adobe CS6." https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_i... Straight from NV site, even AMD works in opengl already
For a real read of AMD's gpu problems, start reading RYAN SHROUT at pcper instead of Ryan Smith here. All you get from here is a 7page AMD excuse in the form of an article supposedly covering stuttering. "They’re already working on changing how they do frame pacing for multi-GPU setups, and come July we’re going to have the chance to see the results of AMD’s latest efforts there." http://www.anandtech.com/show/6857/amd-stuttering-... Translation: We'll put this talk off until AMD fixes it, then boast about the hard work they've done (at fixing a problem NV already fixed, hence FCAT). Scott Wasson reported on this stutter etc issue sept2011. So it only took you a little over a year and a half to catch up. WOW. So in July we'll finally get to see what our cards should have been doing all year (MAYBE?)?? Thanks for recommending these works in progress for a year over NV :)
"There are tools in development that meet our criteria for better measuring frame intervals, and hopefully in the not too distant future we’ll be able to discuss those tools to a much greater degree, and to use those tools to go about measuring frame intervals in the manner we’ve always wanted to. But that is a story for another day, so until then you’ll have to stay tuned to find out."
Tools are already developed. It's called FCAT, and I'm sure NV would be glad to get one in your hands for something more than that 3 pager you gave without any data a few weeks back. Was FCAT even mentioned in that glorious 7 page AMD CYA stutter excuse article above?...LOL. I wouldn't have to "stay tuned" if you'd have bothered to tell the truth of AMD's drivers situation for the last year (as hardocp, notebookcheck, pcper etc have pointed out) rather than doing AMD CYA all year. Let me know when their products actually work as sold. You gave a 3 pager on FCAT a few weeks back (mar 27th) but it's really more of the same. Delay until AMD gets a working solution rather than discuss the problems directly NOW before they fix it.
I have a lot of love for AMD too, but not when they suck. They look to be on track for yet another Billion dollar loss this FY ($310mil in the bucket already for Q1 if you add the Austin 164mil sale). I'm guessing you'll be ignoring NV profits again this quarter as usual. AMD still owes 240 mil if memory serves to GF (with 200mil due Q1'14, 40mil next Q I think), and the CFO just said they'll be needing loans to survive this year. No real revenue from consoles until next year, no arm until next year, and more free games to lower what little the gpu division makes even today (you can't give 5 games away and expect profits). Ryan Shrout has done probably a dozen articles on FCAT/Runts etc, but this place? I'm baffled by all the AMD love on this site. What we've been seeing for a year is the results of 30% of your engineers exiting in one way or another. Your drivers basically sucked for a year, finally got decent with never settle in Nov (with the included upping of the clocks to ghz - which NV answered with 4 monthly perf drivers since Dec), but you continue to have driver issues today. Now we're waiting AGAIN for july to get a working product? I'm not saying they don't function at all, but clearly they are not functioning as designed. Pcper just did another article on AMD's useless vsync claim they made at GDC13. It doesn't solve the issue and artificially caps your gpu in some instances. So their solution is to tell me to slow down my cards and pray a real driver fix is around the corner? Yeah ok...Just like Enduro, let me know when it works, maybe then you can justify claiming AMD is a good buy. Until then you've basically been selling a load of BS on anandtech.
At some point don't you have to call a spade a spade? How much longer will you try to prop up AMD with dumb benchmarks like Crysis Warhead, SniperV2 and Dirt Showdown? Nobody plays ANY of these games. Literally NOBODY according to a quick server check of warhead (0 players) and Dirt Showdown + Sniper sales don't even register on VGchartz (because you actually have to sell some units to make the chart-you may have just dropped sniper though from testing). Luxmark for compute? Why don't you run CUDA stuff? Fire up Octane or Iray etc for rendering instead of beating the dead horse that is OpenCL. Can't resists statements like this I guess "Moving on to LuxMark, we quite frankly transition into a more normal compute benchmark pattern for NVIDIA, which sees Kepler flopping." from your 650TI Boost article. Your articles all act like a normal person would fire up OpenCL on NV. That's moronic at best, as I'd find the cuda enabled version of whatever to do the same job. Luxmark is just showing a WORST case scenario for an NV card by forcing it to OPenCL when other options exist that are far better. So you can only say your snide remarks because you're acting like users would actually do something so stupid and NOT seek a CUDA app. For a real test, how about using LUXrender in Blender for AMD, and iray or octane in Blender for NV (or choose another, they both support 3dsmax, c4d, maya etc). That would actually prove something; Who really is the best when using their best scenarios that we'd all seek upon buying. I'd rather jump off a bridge before using OpenCL on NV cards...LOL. Still doing folding@home? Only 165,000 people even have this installed on their machines (350mil pcs sold each year). NOBODY CARES about folding@home. You openCL us to death, without a word about Cuda in every NV article. You should be testing the crap out of cuda vs. an equivalent app for AMD with OpenCL/OpenGL. You keep testing junk nobody uses to make money and saying NV sucks at compute. Total lies. They have CUDA in nearly every pro app for this. If RAYTRACING has become so important, why are you NOT USING CUDA for NV to do it? You are hiding the truth at best, or LYING at worst.
"Wrapping things up, we will be following up this article next week with part 2 in our look at FCAT. " That was March 27 here...Still waiting for part2 nearly a month later...Keep kissing that AMD butt guys :) Just put it off until July, it's all good. Maybe you guys can help them make a profit finally ;)Reply
Sometimes, all it takes to shake things up is hiring a good manager, somebody with drive and the right priorities.
Both Intel and AMD are promoting OpenCL; shouldn't NV try to join the party? I agree that there are viable alternatives but they're usually vendor specific. I think it'd be wrong to assume that AT doesn't run tests using either of those or that neither of them would be valid in any use case. The ideal situation would be to see how different methods work out, time permitting. However, if you don't get that here, you can always check another review to bolster your opinion as to how a specific card or architecture works at a designated task. If I was to make a purchase, that's certainly what my approach would be.
Regarding the FCAT issue... FRAPS was a good indicator but never quite accurate enough to point out exactly what was wrong where. FCAT has only really just arrived on the scene; that follow-up article can't come soon enough.
AMD have set a target of July for significant improvements. I'm not sure there's a lot of point in trying to see improvements until then, however do bear in mind that latency issues are far better than previously for single card users.
You make some very good points, however I'm not sure AT are working a second job as AMD apologists.Reply
"Whether or not the past several high profile hires are enough to save AMD is something we won’t know for sure until 2015/2016."
Ah, yes--you can't be a tech pundit these days unless you have something smarmy and snide to say about AMD. I thinking knocking AMD is the mark of the half-literate tech pundit who is in over his head but desperately trying not to show it. Evidently, the people AMD is hiring feel the company has a definite future--and, obviously, one that goes far beyond 2015.
As has been noted, most of ill-informed, opinionated tech punditry is loathe to mention AMD's recent console wins except grudgingly, if at all. AMD will survive and prove them wrong once again, to their utter frustration, and it's always gratifying to see the pundits eating crow. Eating crow once again, I should say, for this is surely not an isolated occurrence...;) Reply
I find this article's hero worship (or bromance?) to be a little off-putting. Leaders are important, but when AMD just excised huge portions of its staff, including a lot of its R&D, I think there's a real question of how much talent they still have left and how much of it is quality talent that deserves the big bucks.
I can't help feeling like AMD is hiring these big names to lead their divisions so they can PR spin their talent as better than it actually is. If you had the choice between no-name leaders who are good leaders plus lots and lots of talented engineers or a known name leader and very few engineers of indeterminate quality, which would you choose and why?
If you wanted great products, you'd go for the best combination of engineers, even if they were led by someone who didn't have the reputation for being a big idea guy. If you wanted to convince OTHERS you were fine and everything is great, you'd spend less and still have the big guy to sell the spin you're okay.
Looking at AMD's moves in the broader sense, it seems they're doing a lot of things that have short term spin effects (focus on fixing drivers/bundles rather than launch a refreshed GPU series, release Richland APU's instead of pushing on to Steamroller-based parts, hire two big hitmakers of old to smokescreen the loss of all the talent they've fired over the last year) rather than doing anything much in the mid-term or long term. These guys will have an effect if they can make it to the longest term.
If they can make it. At the rate they're losing cash even in quarters where they aren't even bothering to release new products despite the ones they're selling being long in the tooth, I think they're in real trouble and may not make it that far.
If that's the case, then having these guys come in for some big paychecks until AMD sets themselves up for a capital infusion, a merger, or buyout would make a lot of sense. Later, they can quietly announce these guys have moved on once they get through this rough patch and the positive PR only cost them a couple guy's big paychecks.
That seems much more realistic to me than the idea that one man or two men are going to show up and just magically turn AMD from the Titanic into the TARDIS.Reply
I can't help but think at least one of the reasons for the unbridled optimism is that "we" (as in the computing sector) need AMD to do well so that they don't go bankrupt and leave Intel with no competition. Otherwise, it's an Intel monopoly which is probably not the best for the consumer and arguably not the best for Intel, as well (because the US government may get more interventional in the interests of anti-trust/monopoly concerns).
A healthy AMD is good for all the other markets they compete in, as well (graphics, smartphone/tablet).Reply
I'd disagree, it'd leave it with a desktop monopoly, but what about ARM? The A15-based Chromebook is a good basic platform for computers, and IBM + PPC is good for workstation and server as I understand. The unserved market here is then only gaming and high-end personal computer users, which hopefully ARM's next cores will move towards addressing.Reply
I highly doubt even arm 64 bit processors will come close to intels and even then thats still one whole sector with one cpu company in control of pricingReply
If AMD don't get behind open source multimedia they are not going to progress. Maybe you should ask Raja why AMD are completely unprepared to back open source multimedia solutions and rather spend their rapidly diminishing resources on proprietary competitive solutions using third party companies run by their mates...Reply
Guy has all the hallmarks of a corporate spy. Wants to create a movie studio on the side? Come on... The guy will probably be in the office twice a week, just long enough to assemble a dossier for whatever variety of fruit company he really works for...Reply
Please just make the CCC less clunky and error-prone. To this day I still cannot fix the disappearing OC tab. Is it really that hard to design a GUI for GPU driver settings that matches Nvidia's in terms of usability and reliability??Reply
The December 2005 issue of Maximum PC was the last time they featured an AMD CPU as the top chip in their Gear of the Year roundup. That's a long time ago. Then AMD layed an egg with the Phenom and its infamous TLB bug. How you name and market a product matters as "R/T" with Dodge Challengers or "GTX" with Pontiacs meant you were buying muscle, but Phenom, with artwork suggesting a rocket blasting off, was nothing more than a spoiler and mag wheels are to a six cylinder car; misleading. The Phenom wasn't phenomenal, and it embarrassed me. Then Bulldozer, again suggesting power, was misleading. It was painful to read Maximum PC say that the Bulldozer was as fast as a bulldozer next to a NASCAR (Intel Core i7). AMD was a Macaque thumping its chest next to Intel's Silver Back Gorilla. Embarrassing. This news is welcome and I hope it heralds AMD's sincere intention to reenter the ring for supremacy. Reply
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Filiprino - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
If your business losses the best of your human resources, it's a problem. Replyphillyry - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Is this another sign that Cook lacks both the vision and leadership / talent attraction and retention that Jobs had?Will Apple not still need talent like these guys to continue to iterate and further develop Swift and its successors? Reply
phillyry - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Also, does this mean that AMD will be more competitive in the mobile (smartphone/tablet) platforms? Replymarc1000 - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
This is some great news! After the current economic stall there will be a new expansion, as it is always the case. I just hope AMD will be in a better position to explore the new expansion and keep competition in check. We don't want a single CPU or GPU or SOC vendor.BTW, Qualcomm is winning a lot of mobile design wins this cycle. They could become the next unexpected player over the next few years... Reply
lmcd - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
I don't feel like it's unexpected. I personally thought the time to market advantage for Krait was going to be near-insurmountable, and given how tough A15 was to bring (as it turns out), Qualcomm has it rolling to the point that TI is flat-out gone, Samsung is riding on international sales and tablet sales, and Nvidia has few design wins with the T4. And the core of ATi's mobile has done great work with graphics as of late. Qualcomm's set for success right now. ReplyIkefu - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
This is how you start rebuilding a company. Hire the best engineers and pay them what they're worth so you have quality products to start from. Its how Samsung started its resurgence, focusing on quality. Once quality is back in place, then you let the marketing department go to work, but only once they have something good to sell. Replyzed1 - Sunday, April 21, 2013 - link
AMD need to replace their marketing department before asking them try and sell anything. The current crew are not interested in real marketing, just padding their mates pockets. Replybeginner99 - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
hope this really helps AMD. I used to think the hype about such people is idiotic because in the end it's the "normal workers", in this case engineers, that do the job and not the managers. However considering how a high ranked manager at my workplace is screwing up everything he possibly can, I reconsidered the terrible effect just 1 single manager can have...and the opposite probably holds true too...even if the workers are the exact same people! Replygeniusloci - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Hector certainly fucked AMD. Replyfluxtatic - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Whoa, do I work with you? This is happening where I work, too, and it's eating the company from the inside out.This is big news for AMD. While I'm an NVidia sort myself on the graphics side, I have only used AMD CPUs for many, many years. Anything that helps AMD stay afloat is excellent, to my mind. Reply
silverblue - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Make that three of us in the same position... ReplyET - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Bad or even mediocre managers can screw up a company quite easily, and they're pretty common, so if a company can find a good one and hold on to him, they should. Replyaxien86 - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
AMD builds a powerful Jaguar APU based on a 1.63mm x 1.90mm core size with design wins from Sony and Microsoft for next gen consoles. Major Taiwan ODMs are showcasing AMD Jaguar-based tablets running the latest apps and games at 1920x1080 res and 8-10 hour battery life while Intel designs struggles with games at half-HD resolutions.AMD with 1/10 the resources, delivered compelling gaming console, tablet and hybrid notebook solutions for the second half of this year. Meanwhile Intel with half empty fabs, has a buggy, bigger Haswell and promises of a better Baytrail Atom "real soon now"... (meaning samples at end of 2013 and shipping well after 2014...)
With this in mind, I think most people would congratulate AMD for what they created and for what is yet to come.
Reply
THizzle7XU - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
I really think the fact that they have at least one chip in all three of the next gen consoles is a huge sleeper hit for them. It is really not talked about much other than a side comment. Considering each gen sells more than the previous and the current gen is sitting at around 250 million consoles since 2005, a conservative estimate (Wii U GPU + PS4 CPU + PS4 GPU + 720 CPU + 720 GPU) * 250 million = 1.25 billion AMD chips sold in the next ten years or so. That's crazy. ReplyMr Perfect - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
I initially thought the same thing, it looks like AMD is ready to cash in no matter who wins the next console round. Do we know what the margins are on console hardware though? My guess is it's pretty low. If the entire console sells for about the same as one normal GPU or CPU, they can't be getting to much. Replyphillyry - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
That's because the console OEMs (Sony & MS) take a hit on the first couple million units, until economies of scale kick in, betting long - that they'll make it up in ecosystem (read game) purchases.Doesn't mean AMD and other parts vendors are super discounting their hardware. They'll just batch price by volume based contracts. Reply
DanNeely - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
AMD more or less won the consoles by default though. nVidia decided the margins weren't high enough to justify pulling people off their other projects. Intel's GPUs are still no-shows for anything beyond casual gaming; and I doubt they'd be overly interested in a low margin market segment either. ReplyDal Makhani - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Buggy Haswell? Its perfectly fine. Why do people exaggerate the minor chipset errata? Its not smart of you to start knocking intel like that with their great R&D which contribute to the industry, however i agree that AMD's win in mobile and consoles is great and yes under appreciated/recognized. They needed to shed the resources to become a more focused/efficient company even according to this article which Raja mentioned. It will just be a good day when AMD can again really impress with the desktop CPU, unless thats not on their radar anymore. Replysilverblue - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Core 2 had shedloads of bugs, but they still worked round it. The original Phenom had one bug blown totally out of proportion which affected very few home users (and had a workaround - 10% performance drop on Windows, 0% on Linux), so in reality, the only bad things about Phenom were the process and hence the inability to clock it high or keep power under control.CPUs always launch with bugs and they're generally caught and bypassed. However, I suppose AMD did deserve the flak for Phenom's TLB bug after saying Phenom would bury Core 2... Reply
Dal Makhani - Sunday, April 21, 2013 - link
you are correct theres bugs, but often i dont hear of mass recalls or they affect only some, but that is expected. Haswell isnt even out yet, but im assuming the OP was saying haswell is buggy just because of the Z87 chipset USB problem. Intel has said the CPU itself has no major bugs. So i dont see the need to worry so much. Replyrgw46 - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Sorry to pop some bubbles...He was riding on shaky grounds at Apple. Replyfteoath64 - Sunday, April 21, 2013 - link
Yeah, what has Apple really done with gpu ?. Zero, none zilch!. They still license Imagineering PVR cores and using Nvidia discrete cores for laptops. Producing nothing in gpu area themselves. So who is impressed ?. ReplyBMNify - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Why are all these tech companies hiring indians as top executives, can't we get some Americans to do the job? ReplyAmoro - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Why are you so racist? Reply555ccc - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
He is an American citizen (of Indian origin). Do you rather prefer certain origins/races? Can you enumerate? And what is your own origin if may ask. ReplyJahara - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Anandtech is run by an Indian dude too :-) ReplyDonkey2008 - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
It's people like you that make the world think that Americans are stupid Replyglockjs - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
AMD isn't even an american company...you fawking retard. Replylowlymarine - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Err, not that I am in any way endorsing the appalling comment you're responding to, but:"Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE: AMD) or AMD is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California." Reply
Assimilator87 - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
glockjs probably meant to say ATi, a Canadian company, since this article's about the graphics division. Replyanubis44 - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Yes, but be that as it may, ATI hasn't existed since 2006, and the ATI name was completely retired in August of 2010. In effect, there is not such thing as ATI and there hasn't been since 2010 at the latest. It's AMD, even the graphics division in Markham, and AMD is headquartered in the United States. Replysilverblue - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Shame it's not Sunnydale, as that'd explain their horrid luck. ReplyDeath666Angel - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
+1, literally laughing out loud! Good one, mate! :D Replytipoo - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
He is American, maybe this concept is foreign to you but you can be of a different descent and still be American. In fact unless you're native American, that's your case too. ReplyCrazy1 - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Blame the demise of the American education system. In many of the top educated countries, kids go to school 6 or 7 days a week and have no summer breaks. Additionally, under performing teachers are fired, and the education system evolves based on studies of how to best train groups of students. In America, none of this happens in public schools, and some of it happens in private/boarding schools. ReplyFriendly0Fire - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
I'm sorry but quality of education is not measured in the number of school days per year. Quality teachers, good material and curriculum and small classroom sizes are *much* more important than how much you're going to make your students hate school by forcing them to be there for all their waking hours. Replylmcd - Sunday, April 21, 2013 - link
And we have the other things you mentioned? There are schools in Thailand or Vietnam, I forget which, teaching their kids algorithms and real math in 5th grade. Sorry, you don't get it. Replymr_tawan - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
I don't think it's in Thailand, never have heard of it (I'm Thai and living in Thailand).Also our education system is mediocre at best.... Reply
phillyry - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Should companies be hiring by talent or race?Bottom line says talent. Isn't that the American way?
Also, aren't all non-Native Americans immigrants?
Thought that was what the country was based on? Reply
honsonic - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Lol anandtech please remove racist comment Replyangrypat - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Let's bring the topic home please. Any serious opinions on AMD's chances of a meaningful and competitive future against Intel and Nvidia? Fanboys need not join to this conversation. ReplyFrank Wolfe - Sunday, April 21, 2013 - link
I have respected ATI/AMD for their amazing hardware capability and Nvidia for their software stack. I wont say Nvidia s hardware is too inferior but they do compensate it well with their software. AMD has failed miserably at that. Having known Raja in person, he is a visionary and I ll closely watch what he does with the APU product line to ensure better performance. AMD has all the ingredients except the software now but Intel lacks in the gfx part while Nvidia does not have x86 license. Replyepoon2 - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
The headline reminds me of Vikram Shankar Pandit. Replytipoo - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Raja = King in Hindi, if anyone missed it :P ReplyBMNify - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
http://www.bugmenot.com/view/anandtech.com - I was able to log into this account and type this comment. It is possible someone used the same access to post the previous racist/ignorant comment. In any case, it should be deleted. ReplyBMNify - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Rule #1 - never hire back people who've left you for a better offer. They have shown their true colors. AMD must be really desperate to ignore this basic HR rule and grasping at 'how things once were' with these hires. Replyanubis44 - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Jim Keller and Raja Koduri probably didn't leave AMD for 'a better offer', they probably left because they didn't see a management team that would move the company in a direction they wanted to go it in their respective fields. AMD's management has been terrible since Jerry Sanders left in 2003. Dirk Meyer, although a brilliant engineer, apparently rubbed a fair number of key employees the wrong way. The fact that Keller has returned as head of CPU development and now Koduri is back as 'Corporate Vice President of Visual Computing' (essentially in charge of the graphics division) is an exceptionally auspicious sign. These two must have seen something in Rory Read's plans for the company that attracted them back to the company. Replyphillyry - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Good to see someone with some sense to interpret the situation. ReplyTheJian - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
A one page love fest over a hire after cutting off 30% of the engineers? One or two people won't fix those kinds of layoffs and even in your own words won't mean a thing until 2015-2016 (if they survive that long). Are you planning on analyzing them losing their butts again this Q? They're showing 146mil loss but reality is it was around $310mil if you take out the one-time sale for $164mil of the Austin property.Regarding the MULTI-GPU driver issues, it only took you a year and 7 months to mention it and I'm sure we won't hear another thing about it until AMD has it fixed. It’s no surprise AMD talked to this site ONLY directly and even then didn't discuss the REAL multi-gpu issues...LOL. So basically you wrote 7 pages of CYA direct from AMD. Why not just let them write it for you? Whatever...But still, these are the cards Anandtech has been recommending for basically a year now; runt frames, stutter etc all included for your enjoyment :) Enduro still sucks too says notebookcheck (and others look around some forums):
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Update-Radeon-...
80 pages of complaining can't be wrong :) That's on just ONE site.
"Although AMD promised optimizations, the improvements were only small. Despite several performance gains and bug fixes, the graphics card never worked completely as it was advertised. Only since Catalyst 12.11 Beta, which brought some innovations, did it begin to function reasonably well, but still not without its problems."
Well, shucks...So still not working YET as advertised. Hmmpf...
"Although Nvidia's Optimus technology still performs better (Optimus is more reliable and features more visual notifications and comfortable functions), Enduro is now fairly useful."
Well, at least its "FAIRLY USEFUL" and functions "REASONABLY WELL" after a year...ROFL. But they still note problems they had previously in FarCry3, Modern Warfare3, F1 2012, Borderlands 2 and Assassin's Creed 3. I guess that's why other than farcry3 these aren't in your gaming suite?
I can't wait to see Ryan's take on Adobe's OpenCL additions while leaving out the comparisons to Cuda in CS6 or Premiere Next (anandtech already ignores Cuda). No doubt he'll fan the OpenCL flames that are barely burning vs. Cuda, while acting like Cuda doesn't exist. Only an idiot buys an NV card and tries to do ANYTHING in OpenCL. You should seek CUDA apps for the same jobs and avoid OpenCL at all costs on NV hardware. I'm not quite sure why AMD was using a Xeon5530 @2.4ghz from 2009 for their tests on a 2013-2014 Adobe product...Fishy at best there? Why wasn't this a 3.5ghz+ I7 or something? Did they use a notebook driver 311.35? I'm thinking NV suddenly works better if using an actual state of the art cpu vs. a 2009 4yr old tech. Amazon recommends a i7-3930K 6 core with 12mb cache to go with the K5000 Quadro they sell, not some chip from Q1'09. Also note AMD hasn't been left in the cold all this time, OpenGL even according to NV's own site says any card that supports it would be accelerated in Adobe CS6:
"However, all OpenGL 2.0 graphics cards including NVIDIA GeForce, NVIDIA Quadro, AMD Radeon and AMD FireGL will accelerate Adobe CS6."
https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_i...
Straight from NV site, even AMD works in opengl already
For a real read of AMD's gpu problems, start reading RYAN SHROUT at pcper instead of Ryan Smith here. All you get from here is a 7page AMD excuse in the form of an article supposedly covering stuttering.
"They’re already working on changing how they do frame pacing for multi-GPU setups, and come July we’re going to have the chance to see the results of AMD’s latest efforts there."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6857/amd-stuttering-...
Translation: We'll put this talk off until AMD fixes it, then boast about the hard work they've done (at fixing a problem NV already fixed, hence FCAT). Scott Wasson reported on this stutter etc issue sept2011. So it only took you a little over a year and a half to catch up. WOW. So in July we'll finally get to see what our cards should have been doing all year (MAYBE?)?? Thanks for recommending these works in progress for a year over NV :)
"There are tools in development that meet our criteria for better measuring frame intervals, and hopefully in the not too distant future we’ll be able to discuss those tools to a much greater degree, and to use those tools to go about measuring frame intervals in the manner we’ve always wanted to. But that is a story for another day, so until then you’ll have to stay tuned to find out."
Tools are already developed. It's called FCAT, and I'm sure NV would be glad to get one in your hands for something more than that 3 pager you gave without any data a few weeks back. Was FCAT even mentioned in that glorious 7 page AMD CYA stutter excuse article above?...LOL. I wouldn't have to "stay tuned" if you'd have bothered to tell the truth of AMD's drivers situation for the last year (as hardocp, notebookcheck, pcper etc have pointed out) rather than doing AMD CYA all year. Let me know when their products actually work as sold. You gave a 3 pager on FCAT a few weeks back (mar 27th) but it's really more of the same. Delay until AMD gets a working solution rather than discuss the problems directly NOW before they fix it.
I have a lot of love for AMD too, but not when they suck. They look to be on track for yet another Billion dollar loss this FY ($310mil in the bucket already for Q1 if you add the Austin 164mil sale). I'm guessing you'll be ignoring NV profits again this quarter as usual. AMD still owes 240 mil if memory serves to GF (with 200mil due Q1'14, 40mil next Q I think), and the CFO just said they'll be needing loans to survive this year. No real revenue from consoles until next year, no arm until next year, and more free games to lower what little the gpu division makes even today (you can't give 5 games away and expect profits). Ryan Shrout has done probably a dozen articles on FCAT/Runts etc, but this place? I'm baffled by all the AMD love on this site. What we've been seeing for a year is the results of 30% of your engineers exiting in one way or another. Your drivers basically sucked for a year, finally got decent with never settle in Nov (with the included upping of the clocks to ghz - which NV answered with 4 monthly perf drivers since Dec), but you continue to have driver issues today. Now we're waiting AGAIN for july to get a working product? I'm not saying they don't function at all, but clearly they are not functioning as designed. Pcper just did another article on AMD's useless vsync claim they made at GDC13. It doesn't solve the issue and artificially caps your gpu in some instances. So their solution is to tell me to slow down my cards and pray a real driver fix is around the corner? Yeah ok...Just like Enduro, let me know when it works, maybe then you can justify claiming AMD is a good buy. Until then you've basically been selling a load of BS on anandtech.
At some point don't you have to call a spade a spade? How much longer will you try to prop up AMD with dumb benchmarks like Crysis Warhead, SniperV2 and Dirt Showdown? Nobody plays ANY of these games. Literally NOBODY according to a quick server check of warhead (0 players) and Dirt Showdown + Sniper sales don't even register on VGchartz (because you actually have to sell some units to make the chart-you may have just dropped sniper though from testing). Luxmark for compute? Why don't you run CUDA stuff? Fire up Octane or Iray etc for rendering instead of beating the dead horse that is OpenCL. Can't resists statements like this I guess "Moving on to LuxMark, we quite frankly transition into a more normal compute benchmark pattern for NVIDIA, which sees Kepler flopping." from your 650TI Boost article. Your articles all act like a normal person would fire up OpenCL on NV. That's moronic at best, as I'd find the cuda enabled version of whatever to do the same job. Luxmark is just showing a WORST case scenario for an NV card by forcing it to OPenCL when other options exist that are far better. So you can only say your snide remarks because you're acting like users would actually do something so stupid and NOT seek a CUDA app. For a real test, how about using LUXrender in Blender for AMD, and iray or octane in Blender for NV (or choose another, they both support 3dsmax, c4d, maya etc). That would actually prove something; Who really is the best when using their best scenarios that we'd all seek upon buying. I'd rather jump off a bridge before using OpenCL on NV cards...LOL. Still doing folding@home? Only 165,000 people even have this installed on their machines (350mil pcs sold each year). NOBODY CARES about folding@home. You openCL us to death, without a word about Cuda in every NV article. You should be testing the crap out of cuda vs. an equivalent app for AMD with OpenCL/OpenGL. You keep testing junk nobody uses to make money and saying NV sucks at compute. Total lies. They have CUDA in nearly every pro app for this. If RAYTRACING has become so important, why are you NOT USING CUDA for NV to do it? You are hiding the truth at best, or LYING at worst.
"Wrapping things up, we will be following up this article next week with part 2 in our look at FCAT. "
That was March 27 here...Still waiting for part2 nearly a month later...Keep kissing that AMD butt guys :) Just put it off until July, it's all good. Maybe you guys can help them make a profit finally ;) Reply
silverblue - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Sometimes, all it takes to shake things up is hiring a good manager, somebody with drive and the right priorities.Both Intel and AMD are promoting OpenCL; shouldn't NV try to join the party? I agree that there are viable alternatives but they're usually vendor specific. I think it'd be wrong to assume that AT doesn't run tests using either of those or that neither of them would be valid in any use case. The ideal situation would be to see how different methods work out, time permitting. However, if you don't get that here, you can always check another review to bolster your opinion as to how a specific card or architecture works at a designated task. If I was to make a purchase, that's certainly what my approach would be.
Regarding the FCAT issue... FRAPS was a good indicator but never quite accurate enough to point out exactly what was wrong where. FCAT has only really just arrived on the scene; that follow-up article can't come soon enough.
AMD have set a target of July for significant improvements. I'm not sure there's a lot of point in trying to see improvements until then, however do bear in mind that latency issues are far better than previously for single card users.
You make some very good points, however I'm not sure AT are working a second job as AMD apologists. Reply
Will Robinson - Sunday, April 21, 2013 - link
Is that you Rollo? ReplyWaltC - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
"Whether or not the past several high profile hires are enough to save AMD is something we won’t know for sure until 2015/2016."Ah, yes--you can't be a tech pundit these days unless you have something smarmy and snide to say about AMD. I thinking knocking AMD is the mark of the half-literate tech pundit who is in over his head but desperately trying not to show it. Evidently, the people AMD is hiring feel the company has a definite future--and, obviously, one that goes far beyond 2015.
As has been noted, most of ill-informed, opinionated tech punditry is loathe to mention AMD's recent console wins except grudgingly, if at all. AMD will survive and prove them wrong once again, to their utter frustration, and it's always gratifying to see the pundits eating crow. Eating crow once again, I should say, for this is surely not an isolated occurrence...;) Reply
HisDivineOrder - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
I find this article's hero worship (or bromance?) to be a little off-putting. Leaders are important, but when AMD just excised huge portions of its staff, including a lot of its R&D, I think there's a real question of how much talent they still have left and how much of it is quality talent that deserves the big bucks.I can't help feeling like AMD is hiring these big names to lead their divisions so they can PR spin their talent as better than it actually is. If you had the choice between no-name leaders who are good leaders plus lots and lots of talented engineers or a known name leader and very few engineers of indeterminate quality, which would you choose and why?
If you wanted great products, you'd go for the best combination of engineers, even if they were led by someone who didn't have the reputation for being a big idea guy. If you wanted to convince OTHERS you were fine and everything is great, you'd spend less and still have the big guy to sell the spin you're okay.
Looking at AMD's moves in the broader sense, it seems they're doing a lot of things that have short term spin effects (focus on fixing drivers/bundles rather than launch a refreshed GPU series, release Richland APU's instead of pushing on to Steamroller-based parts, hire two big hitmakers of old to smokescreen the loss of all the talent they've fired over the last year) rather than doing anything much in the mid-term or long term. These guys will have an effect if they can make it to the longest term.
If they can make it. At the rate they're losing cash even in quarters where they aren't even bothering to release new products despite the ones they're selling being long in the tooth, I think they're in real trouble and may not make it that far.
If that's the case, then having these guys come in for some big paychecks until AMD sets themselves up for a capital infusion, a merger, or buyout would make a lot of sense. Later, they can quietly announce these guys have moved on once they get through this rough patch and the positive PR only cost them a couple guy's big paychecks.
That seems much more realistic to me than the idea that one man or two men are going to show up and just magically turn AMD from the Titanic into the TARDIS. Reply
Paulman - Sunday, April 21, 2013 - link
I can't help but think at least one of the reasons for the unbridled optimism is that "we" (as in the computing sector) need AMD to do well so that they don't go bankrupt and leave Intel with no competition. Otherwise, it's an Intel monopoly which is probably not the best for the consumer and arguably not the best for Intel, as well (because the US government may get more interventional in the interests of anti-trust/monopoly concerns).A healthy AMD is good for all the other markets they compete in, as well (graphics, smartphone/tablet). Reply
lmcd - Sunday, April 21, 2013 - link
I'd disagree, it'd leave it with a desktop monopoly, but what about ARM? The A15-based Chromebook is a good basic platform for computers, and IBM + PPC is good for workstation and server as I understand. The unserved market here is then only gaming and high-end personal computer users, which hopefully ARM's next cores will move towards addressing. ReplyFearfulSPARTAN - Sunday, April 21, 2013 - link
I highly doubt even arm 64 bit processors will come close to intels and even then thats still one whole sector with one cpu company in control of pricing Replyzed1 - Sunday, April 21, 2013 - link
If AMD don't get behind open source multimedia they are not going to progress. Maybe you should ask Raja why AMD are completely unprepared to back open source multimedia solutions and rather spend their rapidly diminishing resources on proprietary competitive solutions using third party companies run by their mates... Replylmcd - Sunday, April 21, 2013 - link
Uhh, they just released VDPAU support for their FOSS drivers for all but UVD 1 cards.Try again. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
Guy has all the hallmarks of a corporate spy. Wants to create a movie studio on the side? Come on... The guy will probably be in the office twice a week, just long enough to assemble a dossier for whatever variety of fruit company he really works for... Replycpupro - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
AMD should hire someone as Will.i.am from Black Eyed Peas as Intel did. Replygamoniac - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
I see what you did here, Anand. Raja = King :) Replychrnochime - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
Please just make the CCC less clunky and error-prone. To this day I still cannot fix the disappearing OC tab. Is it really that hard to design a GUI for GPU driver settings that matches Nvidia's in terms of usability and reliability?? Reply7beauties - Saturday, April 27, 2013 - link
The December 2005 issue of Maximum PC was the last time they featured an AMD CPU as the top chip in their Gear of the Year roundup. That's a long time ago. Then AMD layed an egg with the Phenom and its infamous TLB bug. How you name and market a product matters as "R/T" with Dodge Challengers or "GTX" with Pontiacs meant you were buying muscle, but Phenom, with artwork suggesting a rocket blasting off, was nothing more than a spoiler and mag wheels are to a six cylinder car; misleading. The Phenom wasn't phenomenal, and it embarrassed me. Then Bulldozer, again suggesting power, was misleading. It was painful to read Maximum PC say that the Bulldozer was as fast as a bulldozer next to a NASCAR (Intel Core i7). AMD was a Macaque thumping its chest next to Intel's Silver Back Gorilla. Embarrassing. This news is welcome and I hope it heralds AMD's sincere intention to reenter the ring for supremacy. ReplyParablooper - Monday, April 29, 2013 - link
Awesome to hear. Can't wait to see what AMD can produce with these geniuses back on staff. Reply