If they keep up this burn rate, the cash will only last 1 to 2 more years. They better decide what segment they are going to stay with.

We need Zen and we need it 3 years ago.

We need Zen and we need it 3 years ago.

Yes and it better be damn good or else. Same with Polaris.

If they keep up this burn rate, the cash will only last 1 to 2 more years. They better decide what segment they are going to stay with.

That "if" is important here. They became quite small company. Yes, troubled from its past mistakes. But in moment they'll gain market share anywhere You can expect skyrocketing.

http://seekingalpha.com/news/3174884-amd-soars-q1-beat-strong-q2-guidance-chinese-licensing-deal-jv-updated

http://seekingalpha.com/news/3174884-amd-soars-q1-beat-strong-q2-guidance-chinese-licensing-deal-jv-updated

hehe lol, work's blacklist filter warned me about malware... talking about false positives I guess. I'm not so much worried about AMD's graphics department (yes I know it's now Radeon Tech Group), but Zen really needs to shine for them to sell the tech in server products / other fields than consumer CPUs. And for months and years now all I see with AMD's business results are losses... you don't have to have a PhD in economics to realise that's not the way to run a business in the future. It needs to pay off before the end is nigh.

I don't think zen will have a great impact, even if it best it can match Skylake, no one will upgrade, only very few AMD users who been waiting for zen solo. People with intel won't have any zero to upgrade, in fact everyone who got the mighty Sandy bridge cpu don't need to upgrade(not in the cpu department at least).

Strong Q2 guidance bs. It's back at Q4 levels which is far from "strong". Not to mention Q1 is traditionally slow, so going up is expected. They've burned through 1/3 of the cash that Chinese joint venture is supposed to bring like its nothing Polaris perf/W re-evaluated: from 2.5x down to 2x, compared to current mainstream.

I don't think zen will have a great impact, even if it best it can match Skylake, no one will upgrade, only very few AMD users who been waiting for zen solo. People with intel won't have any zero to upgrade, in fact everyone who got the mighty Sandy bridge cpu don't need to upgrade(not in the cpu department at least).

Man, I am waiting for upgrade. Not to i7 as I still do not have practical (meaningful) use for HT. And i5s still have only 4 cores. AMD is to bring us 8C/16T. If that's anywhere near to current intel's IPC and has reasonable clock to deliver total performance per core... I am bound to move before xmas to fully AMD system. Otherwise I'll be waiting for intel to give us 6-core i5. Intel made improvement that can be felt already, but Still total gain per cost of entire new CPU+RAM+MB combo does not justify such improvement. If AMD can get Zen to perform between Skylake and Sandy + deliver 8Cores with HT... OC Skylake vs my OC system. OC Skylake vs random OC FX-8350 system. People with FX chips who have use for all those cores definitely have no reason to move to intel. Gaming? Yes. Applications utilizing all cores? No. Now, if Zen moves to inte'ls level IPC, what will even 4C/8T do to market? I do not know how big Zen cores are, but Carrizo has so small cores that AMD could give us Carrizo without iGPU and with 12 cores easily. Locked Carrizo on desktop (Athlon X4 845) does not look like winner at all, right? Wrong. It is locked with 3.5GHz base and 3.8GHz turbo. And its geekbench performance matches my i5-2500k without OC (3.3GHz base + 3.7GHz Turbo). And does that without L3 cache. Now look at price that Athlon X4 845 comes at. Multiply its multi-threaded performance and cost by 3 and see where it land on intel's pricing list. You would need to have i7-6700k and be able to reach top 5% OC for same total performance. But that chip costs nearly 6 times as much. Yes, purely fictional thing to show where actually AMD is (ignoring that AMD would need much better memory interface to feed such 12-core Carrizo). Non-fictional comparison would be with i3-6100 which costs nearly twice as much. AMD bringing even 30% IPC upgrade... Where does that land Zen?

Strong Q2 guidance bs. It's back at Q4 levels which is far from "strong". Not to mention Q1 is traditionally slow, so going up is expected. They've burned through 1/3 of the cash that Chinese joint venture is supposed to bring like its nothing

I would fix it for you a bit. That $293 million is for designing chip to do what is required. On top of that AMD will have additional funds for every chip made based on that design. Now, what does that do for AMD? Upon completion it will negate one year loss (one time $293 million). And practically opens new market without competition (money as chips roll out of fabs). At this point, Zen is complete (big amount of work), Polaris is complete (small amount of work from GCN). Semi-custom engineers who worked on consoles have only PS4.5 to work on (maybe it is even finished as there are very few changes). What would you do with all those engineers with main skill in tailoring chips to exact needs of client? Hey, everyone: "Go and bring next thing to replace GCN or not even released Zen?" Why not to let them work on Deal like this?

Man, I am waiting for upgrade. Not to i7 as I still do not have practical (meaningful) use for HT. And i5s still have only 4 cores. AMD is to bring us 8C/16T. If that's anywhere near to current intel's IPC and has reasonable clock to deliver total performance per core... I am bound to move before xmas to fully AMD system. Otherwise I'll be waiting for intel to give us 6-core i5. Intel made improvement that can be felt already, but Still total gain per cost of entire new CPU+RAM+MB combo does not justify such improvement. If AMD can get Zen to perform between Skylake and Sandy + deliver 8Cores with HT... OC Skylake vs my OC system. OC Skylake vs random OC FX-8350 system. People with FX chips who have use for all those cores definitely have no reason to move to intel. Gaming? Yes. Applications utilizing all cores? No. Now, if Zen moves to inte'ls level IPC, what will even 4C/8T do to market? I do not know how big Zen cores are, but Carrizo has so small cores that AMD could give us Carrizo without iGPU and with 12 cores easily. Locked Carrizo on desktop (Athlon X4 845) does not look like winner at all, right? Wrong. It is locked with 3.5GHz base and 3.8GHz turbo. And its geekbench performance matches my i5-2500k without OC (3.3GHz base + 3.7GHz Turbo). And does that without L3 cache. Now look at price that Athlon X4 845 comes at. Multiply its multi-threaded performance and cost by 3 and see where it land on intel's pricing list. You would need to have i7-6700k and be able to reach top 5% OC for same total performance. But that chip costs nearly 6 times as much. Yes, purely fictional thing to show where actually AMD is (ignoring that AMD would need much better memory interface to feed such 12-core Carrizo). Non-fictional comparison would be with i3-6100 which costs nearly twice as much. AMD bringing even 30% IPC upgrade... Where does that land Zen?

We will find out soon, hopefully that and Polaris will be good as competition is non exist atm.

@Fox2232 Hey I'm not against this Chinese venture! It's a GREAT deal. 300M is SUPER NICE. There is little doubt about that. Negate one year loss? You mean one good year loss 🙂

I am really surprised that everybody expects the Chinese to pay by the rules too. Would not be surprised if it does not turn out all well and uncomplicated.

I am really surprised that everybody expects the Chinese to pay by the rules too. Would not be surprised if it does not turn out all well and uncomplicated.

Why wouldn't they? They're not pirates, are they 😀 More likely first hurdle is United States Department of State!

Why wouldn't they? They're not pirates, are they 😀 More likely first hurdle is United States Department of State!

I do not think U.S. Export Regulations are there to cause problems to China. It mainly stands to prevent support of terrorists and countries hostile to U.S. http://www.standardsportal.org/usa_en/prc_standards_system/key_information.aspx This deal can do pretty smoothly. And be executed within a year. Edit: Back to my CPU vs CPU post (not to spam with so many posts). I forgot to place here Athlon X4 845 (3.5/3.8GHz) vs FX-8350 (4.0/4.2GHz). Both without OC.FX chip now costs 2.5times more than that Athlon. And Athlon X4 845 (3.5/3.8GHz) vs FX-4300 (3.8/4.0GHz). Really? Bit lower clock. No L3 cache. Only 1/2 of L2 cache and still... And cost for CPU is bit lower for Carrizo as it is smaller + MB required is again in other price range.

I should have invested more =(

Man, I am waiting for upgrade. Not to i7 as I still do not have practical (meaningful) use for HT. And i5s still have only 4 cores. AMD is to bring us 8C/16T. If that's anywhere near to current intel's IPC and has reasonable clock to deliver total performance per core... I am bound to move before xmas to fully AMD system. Otherwise I'll be waiting for intel to give us 6-core i5. Intel made improvement that can be felt already, but Still total gain per cost of entire new CPU+RAM+MB combo does not justify such improvement. If AMD can get Zen to perform between Skylake and Sandy + deliver 8Cores with HT... OC Skylake vs my OC system. OC Skylake vs random OC FX-8350 system. People with FX chips who have use for all those cores definitely have no reason to move to intel. Gaming? Yes. Applications utilizing all cores? No. Now, if Zen moves to inte'ls level IPC, what will even 4C/8T do to market? I do not know how big Zen cores are, but Carrizo has so small cores that AMD could give us Carrizo without iGPU and with 12 cores easily. Locked Carrizo on desktop (Athlon X4 845) does not look like winner at all, right? Wrong. It is locked with 3.5GHz base and 3.8GHz turbo. And its geekbench performance matches my i5-2500k without OC (3.3GHz base + 3.7GHz Turbo). And does that without L3 cache. Now look at price that Athlon X4 845 comes at. Multiply its multi-threaded performance and cost by 3 and see where it land on intel's pricing list. You would need to have i7-6700k and be able to reach top 5% OC for same total performance. But that chip costs nearly 6 times as much. Yes, purely fictional thing to show where actually AMD is (ignoring that AMD would need much better memory interface to feed such 12-core Carrizo). Non-fictional comparison would be with i3-6100 which costs nearly twice as much. AMD bringing even 30% IPC upgrade... Where does that land Zen?

Man, no offense but I really didn't understand the basis of your justification at all. First off, you compared a stock 6600k to an overclocked FX-8350 and said that there's no incentive to upgrade for people who need those cores? What exactly are you comparing? Multicore? http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/6184264?baseline=6185954 Because a stock 6700k absolutely murders an FX-9590, which is just about the best case scenario you could possibly get from an FX-8350. And I don't know what you're referring to as 'top 5% OC', but the 6700k is more or less the new Sandy, it overclocks like a madman and it laughs like one while doing it. Two examples: http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/overclocking-intel-core-i7-6700k/ http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_6700k_processor_review_desktop_skylake,18.html However what we can agree on are the ridiculous pricing Intel practices atm. Just another example of how lack of competition is bad for the consumer in these markets.

I should have invested more =(

Yup my thoughts exactly. So better Q1 then last year. AMD doing ok going towards profitability.

Man, no offense but I really didn't understand the basis of your justification at all. First off, you compared a stock 6600k to an overclocked FX-8350 and said that there's no incentive to upgrade for people who need those cores? What exactly are you comparing? Multicore? http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/6184264?baseline=6185954 Because a stock 6700k absolutely murders an FX-9590, which is just about the best case scenario you could possibly get from an FX-8350. And I don't know what you're referring to as 'top 5% OC', but the 6700k is more or less the new Sandy, it overclocks like a madman and it laughs like one while doing it. Two examples: http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/overclocking-intel-core-i7-6700k/ http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_6700k_processor_review_desktop_skylake,18.html However what we can agree on are the ridiculous pricing Intel practices atm. Just another example of how lack of competition is bad for the consumer in these markets.

To the "First off", both are OC results. Neither is close to top OC as I post only things achievable by masses. - Then WTF!?! is that your comparison based on? - > Did you really stated that 2439 ST / 12937 MT is best case scenario 8-core FX chip can do? FX-8350 has best case 3000+ ST / 16000+ MT (Not that many will reach that) - > And even then FX-8350 costs less than 1/2 of i7-6700k (Some of us can actually do comparison based on price relevance. Instead on basing everything on ePen) The Rest of your comparison... I must say HH did not do i7-4770k in that review any justice. He used Stock 3.5/3.9GHz i7-4770k and it looked naturally weaker pitted against 4.0/4.2GHz base i7-6700k. And then only i7-6700k got OC results. I am not saying it OCs badly or worse than i7-4770k. But best of each is not saying that it is that drastic upgrade over i7-4770k. http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/2941440?baseline=6165912 And finally, post was to show that there are still many users who decided not to upgrade for many reason like performance per $ of new system versus keeping their old system at no additional cost. And later part is to show how much AMD improved CPU cores since Bulldozer/Piledriver. Hell, here you can see worst ever measured score for Carrizo based Athlon X4 845 vs best ever measurement of Bulldozer FX-4100. Think about clock.

Man, no offense but I really didn't understand the basis of your justification at all. First off, you compared a stock 6600k to an overclocked FX-8350 and said that there's no incentive to upgrade for people who need those cores? What exactly are you comparing? Multicore? http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/6184264?baseline=6185954 Because a stock 6700k absolutely murders an FX-9590, which is just about the best case scenario you could possibly get from an FX-8350. And I don't know what you're referring to as 'top 5% OC', but the 6700k is more or less the new Sandy, it overclocks like a madman and it laughs like one while doing it. Two examples: http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/overclocking-intel-core-i7-6700k/ http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_6700k_processor_review_desktop_skylake,18.html However what we can agree on are the ridiculous pricing Intel practices atm. Just another example of how lack of competition is bad for the consumer in these markets.

bear in mind those were mostly ES chips that OC'd high, then only with really high voltages virtually at maximum recommended limit. Plus the one Retail chip I saw mentioned made only 4.5GHz. I love overclocking, but in my experience (with older gen chips) there is a steep power usage increase at higher voltages that can double idle PC power draw. For 24/7 on machines this adds a lot of extra running costs. Most CPUs (GPUs too) seem to go a fair way with little or no voltage bump, but that last couple of hundred MHz can cost a lot of extra vcore that is not worth it for anything but benching and bragging rights.