AMD's quarterly earnings report - operating loss of 49 million and net loss of 102 million USD

[LokiFire]

All my beans are in for ZEN to be a success.

 

Good luck AMD, the market is a battleground, your Army is the smallest, train hard and make some seriously powerful chips.

[Elapo]

Idk about that. I really liked Lara Crofts hair in Tomb Raider, and looking at the tech demos from Rise Of the Tomb Raider, it looks even better now, as it can get wet, have snowflakes in it, etc. I also really like WaveWorks in Watch Dogs, as that looks really nice (ironically the low WW setting looked more natural than the high end setting). I think these effects looks very good. We've also seen how it is implemented in Deus Ex MD on both Adam Jensen, but also NPC's/enemies. And those demos are on a PS4.

 

I mean just look at Adam's hair in the beginning here:

 

 

I think it looks a thousand times better than mesh hair. In the first gameplay trailer we ever saw, Adam takes down an enemy with neck long hair. Looked really good too. The problem as I said are not how advanced their are, but how ressource wasteful their are. GW tends to be extreme wasteful even on 980ti's, whereas the new versions of TressFX with it's master/slave strand principle seems to be much easier to run. It also has scalability when it comes to distance, etc.

 

Of course it's a subjective thing what to prefer, but I think it's objectively more natural looking.

Oh Btw RotTR also had tressFX hair on the XBone. See here:

 

https://youtu.be/IlUxKO5zYOA?t=162

 

look from 2:42. Especially when snow and water gets on the hair. Might not look like real life (what does), but it does look better than any other hair tech on the market (and this is on low setting for the Xbotato).

 

Well investing a lot of money on high end effects can be a marketing ploy in and of itself. GameWorks is a testement to that, despite it's horrible performance. But other games has used their graphics quite well as a marketing point.

 

As for Frostbyte, idk. Afaik it works equally well on everything from Battlefront to Command&Conquer to Plants vs Zombies. Again, you have a dedicated team, who knows everything about their engine, and thus easily add new features and optimizations for the game dev creating the gameplay/graphics. I would definitely recommend Ubisoft to go this way. Maybe base it on the Snowdrop engine from the Division, which looks insanely good.

 

Not sure about that example. Localization are paid for by the locations they are sold in. If lets say the Danish gui/subtitle translations that Ubisoft is so good at doing, would not pay off in Denmark, they wouldn't do it. Translations also don't make my gaming experience visually worse or my gameplay for that matter. Neither does it come with strings attached to a specific hardware vendor.

 

Let's leave tech demo's and trailers out of this - they're fake, and specifically made to showcase a certain feature. They're supposed to look good. Lara's hair in TR (and in the RotTR video) looks like straw to me, and, to be fair, so does adam's. Same goes for Geralt. They only have a very limited amount of hair strands, and it certainly looks that way to me too. At least the polygonal hair looks like it covers the entire head. The hair getting wet and snowy is an effect that exists separately from TressFX, and one I really like. It's used in TW3 when it's raining, too, for entire characters. It's also in arkham knight IIRC

 

The benchmark of CGI hair for me is Tangled. I love the way Disney animation made the hair move, the way it looks, ... Sure, we can't have that in games (yet), but until we get even remotely close, I won't ever turn on any of the hair things. The hair looks like it's made of straw, has a limited number of "hinges"(this seems to be less of an issue in hairworks, but still noticeable),and the movement is usually greatly exaggerated (though the movement looks better in the new tomb raider, and some of the things I mentioned are less noticeable on shorter hair.)

 

I really don't think ubi needs to consolidate yet. With the amount of sequels they're pumping out, their approach seems to work best. If you were to merge all engines, you'd have a year without sequels, and we can't have that.

 

Really, you can say localization is paid for by the people in that location, but I can just take that argument and do this: Gameworks is paid for by Nvidia users. If there were none, no one would bother. I mean, some devs actually put money and resources in implementing mantle in their games, something that didn't benefit Nvidia cards either. 

[Demonking]

You can turn off all GW effect in those games.

And even in non-GW titles, AMD doesn't manage to get a big enough lead (if any at all) to where we can say "hey, you know, get an AMD because it's MUCH better". The 980Ti and the Fury X have the same price in Belgium, but why would anyone go through the hassle of using that AIO thing that might not even fit because you already have an AIO for your CPU, or even because your case is too small.

They lost when they decided not to allow custom fury X coolers. Meanwhile the 980Ti is getting a billion versions with custom PCB's, better power delivery and all that great stuff. It's a fucking high end card, why would you not have custom PCB's (and yes, I'm aware the titan X doesn't have custom coolers either, and yes, the same applies there, but Nvidia has another card with nearly the same performance whereas AMD does not)

you can fit a titan X in unlike the fury x i have no need for an extra AIO.

[MageTank]

Pentium is definitely a budget gamer CPU. Especially the G3258. No business overclocks (except LMG).

As a man that owned both the G3258 (4.2ghz) and G4400 (4.75ghz) I can easily say they are NOT for gaming. Sure, they work perfectly for MMO's, MOBA's, and some older AAA titles, but most recent AAA titles has not been a pleasant experience. Even if they are used for gaming, that does not mean that is what their intended market segment is. Look at Xeons. People use those for gaming, and Intel clearly did not intend for them to be used for gaming.

 

The G3258 was released as an anniversary gift to overclockers that missed the old pentium OCing days. It's a toy for those people. People buying the G3258 specifically with gaming intentions in mind, are eventually going to have a bad time. 

 

Gaming on dual cores is being kept alive strictly by MMO's and MOBA's. The genre's that cater to the lowest common denominator of hardware to reach the broadest audience possible. After all, they make money by selling game copies/cash shop items, so having more people able to play it regardless of their hardware configuration, will result in more potential profits. Without these 2 genre's, gaming on dual cores would be pretty much obsolete as AAA titles are becoming increasingly difficult to play on dual cores without patching and capping FPS.

 

Nothing lasts forever, and Intel knows this. It's why they are not going to waste time and money on a stronger graphics solution for a weak processor. If AMD's quad core APU's start posing a threat to the budget market, Intel will probably respond in kind, by pairing Iris Pro with an i3 or i5. We are starting to see it in the mobile segments, so hopefully we see the same changes in the desktop SKU's. 

[RagnarokDel]

Welp, there goes my AMD stock

actually it should improve if next quarter improves too.

[Marinatall_Ironside]

I can, but I as a customer pay for this crap to be implemented in the game.

Really? You are against newer and better technologies to be implemented into games? Since when did you become against TressFX (HairWorks contender) being implemented in Tomb Raider 2013? The devs fucking chooses to implement them, not AMD, not Nvidia. Only devs. And if I was developing my own games, I would very well implement those technologies for a more realistic-looking game.

 

I couldn't run HairWorks on my GTX 970 and I can't run in on my 290X due to framerates dropping too low, I mean I can run it but this overtesselated piece of garbage from NVIDIA is not worth the hassle.

Do you know how TressFX and HairWorks works? (Ha, get it?)

[Morgan MLGman]

Do you know how TressFX and HairWorks works? (Ha, get it?)

Hmmm, I'm not sure exactly, but HairWorks in The Witcher 3 look less natural than TressFX in 2013 Tomb Raider...

[Marinatall_Ironside]

Hmmm, I'm not sure exactly, but HairWorks in The Witcher 3 look less natural than TressFX in 2013 Tomb Raider...

TressFX, like HairWorks, renders the thousands of strands of hair on a character model with thousands of sections which reacts with different physical forces, such as inertia, gravity, wind, and the movement of the character itself. This is computationally intensive to achieve, which is why you would see large framerate drops when you enable it (Like what happens to me in Tomb Raider 2013 on a GTX 670M, I benchmarked it with TressFX ON and I saw a ~10 FPS difference compared to it with it OFF).

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TressFX

 

Remember, HairWorks works just like TressFX, just with different algorithms to render the hair physics.

[Trik'Stari]

 

Enough said?

 

It is a shame though. The more AMD fucks around going in a thousand different directions, the more Nvidia can act like Apple, Microsoft and Sony and be completely asinine in their behavior towards the consumer.

[VanayadGaming]

 

Enough said?

 

It is a shame though. The more AMD fucks around going in a thousand different directions, the more Nvidia can act like Apple, Microsoft and Sony and be completely asinine in their behavior towards the consumer.

 

And how is it a sinking ship if we can see an improving trend ? Please stop spreading bullshit. 

[Prysin]

Pentium is definitely a budget gamer CPU. Especially the G3258. No business overclocks (except LMG).

Pentiums are to gaming what FX is to hard core PCMR enthusiasts.

absolute horseshit.

[Sakkura]

As a man that owned both the G3258 (4.2ghz) and G4400 (4.75ghz) I can easily say they are NOT for gaming. Sure, they work perfectly for MMO's, MOBA's, and some older AAA titles, but most recent AAA titles has not been a pleasant experience. Even if they are used for gaming, that does not mean that is what their intended market segment is. Look at Xeons. People use those for gaming, and Intel clearly did not intend for them to be used for gaming.

 

The G3258 was released as an anniversary gift to overclockers that missed the old pentium OCing days. It's a toy for those people. People buying the G3258 specifically with gaming intentions in mind, are eventually going to have a bad time. 

 

Gaming on dual cores is being kept alive strictly by MMO's and MOBA's. The genre's that cater to the lowest common denominator of hardware to reach the broadest audience possible. After all, they make money by selling game copies/cash shop items, so having more people able to play it regardless of their hardware configuration, will result in more potential profits. Without these 2 genre's, gaming on dual cores would be pretty much obsolete as AAA titles are becoming increasingly difficult to play on dual cores without patching and capping FPS.

 

Nothing lasts forever, and Intel knows this. It's why they are not going to waste time and money on a stronger graphics solution for a weak processor. If AMD's quad core APU's start posing a threat to the budget market, Intel will probably respond in kind, by pairing Iris Pro with an i3 or i5. We are starting to see it in the mobile segments, so hopefully we see the same changes in the desktop SKU's. 

 

It's only a handful of games that don't run well on the Pentium G3258. Far from enough to disqualify it as a budget gaming processor. It was clearly aimed at gamers, specifically those playing less threaded and/or less demanding games. MMOs and MOBAs are great examples, and just those two genres are PLENTY big enough of a market.

 

The assertion that Pentiums are for business is obviously completely wrong with regard to the G3258. Business users do not overclock. Overclocking is associated primarily with gaming, if only for historical reasons.

[eLucid]

They're a penny stock. Why are people surprised?

[PCBjon]

Damn, that sucks. They really need to hike prices if they want to stay afloat.

If there cant make profit on the prices they have at the moment what makes you think hiking prices will turn them a profit?

[Doobeedoo]

Oh wow, they need to make a huge impact on market this year.

[MageTank]

It's only a handful of games that don't run well on the Pentium G3258. Far from enough to disqualify it as a budget gaming processor. It was clearly aimed at gamers, specifically those playing less threaded and/or less demanding games. MMOs and MOBAs are great examples, and just those two genres are PLENTY big enough of a market.

 

The assertion that Pentiums are for business is obviously completely wrong with regard to the G3258. Business users do not overclock. Overclocking is associated primarily with gaming, if only for historical reasons.

You are ignoring the context within my posts. You are picking one pentium out of many (The only one that can overclock in recent years) and saying the entire pentium lineup is one made for budget gamers. It's not. It's called the Anniversary Edition for a reason. They made it an unlocked pentium and sold it as a niche overclocking toy. People are using it for gaming, yes. However, that does not change the Pentium branding's intended use scenario. You act like every business is buying the G3258 when you say "Businesses don't overclock". The G3258 is NOT the only pentium in the world my friend.

 

Like i said before. I owned the G3258 and had it overclocked. I also owned a G4400 which i had overclocked even higher at 4.75ghz. Both ran fine for MMO's/MOBA's, However, some MMO's still were difficult to play when even doing any slight multi-tasking. Elder Scrolls Online would stutter if i had music or a podcast playing in the background in a web browser. Many newer AAA titles would stutter so much that it was not worth playing. This was with 3200mhz memory too, which was aiding in keeping minimum FPS under control. 

 

My point still stands. One overclockable pentium out of the entire lineup is not going to classify the entire brand as a budget gaming segment. Stop pretending that every business is buying G3258's over other Pentiums, it's just not happening. If you were around to see Intel advertising it as the AE edition and their reasoning behind unlocking it, you would know exactly why it was created. It's a throw-back overclockable pentium, nothing more. Can you game on it? Yes. Is every game playable? No. Will every game in the future be playable? Most likely not. 

[MonkeyFace]

Posts a quarterly report with a 1 month graph...the most volatile month in stock exchange history.

 

smh.

[Sakkura]

You are ignoring the context within my posts. You are picking one pentium out of many (The only one that can overclock in recent years) and saying the entire pentium lineup is one made for budget gamers. It's not. It's called the Anniversary Edition for a reason. They made it an unlocked pentium and sold it as a niche overclocking toy. People are using it for gaming, yes. However, that does not change the Pentium branding's intended use scenario. You act like every business is buying the G3258 when you say "Businesses don't overclock". The G3258 is NOT the only pentium in the world my friend.

 

Like i said before. I owned the G3258 and had it overclocked. I also owned a G4400 which i had overclocked even higher at 4.75ghz. Both ran fine for MMO's/MOBA's, However, some MMO's still were difficult to play when even doing any slight multi-tasking. Elder Scrolls Online would stutter if i had music or a podcast playing in the background in a web browser. Many newer AAA titles would stutter so much that it was not worth playing. This was with 3200mhz memory too, which was aiding in keeping minimum FPS under control. 

 

My point still stands. One overclockable pentium out of the entire lineup is not going to classify the entire brand as a budget gaming segment. Stop pretending that every business is buying G3258's over other Pentiums, it's just not happening. If you were around to see Intel advertising it as the AE edition and their reasoning behind unlocking it, you would know exactly why it was created. It's a throw-back overclockable pentium, nothing more. Can you game on it? Yes. Is every game playable? No. Will every game in the future be playable? Most likely not. 

 

I'm picking the Pentium G3258 because it's by far the highest-profile Pentium in recent years, and I expect sales figures reflect that. All my points regarding it still stand.

[MageTank]

I'm picking the Pentium G3258 because it's by far the highest-profile Pentium in recent years, and I expect sales figures reflect that. All my points regarding it still stand.

I did not even mention the G3258 until you did. The entire point was putting an expensive iGPU on a cheap dual core CPU would be pointless. Your entire logic is "G3258 is budget gamer CPU". Guess what? It's the only one that is officially unlocked (excluding the ancient ones). You honestly think they are going to make another unlocked Pentium? Let alone make one with an Iris Pro series iGPU on it? Context my friend.

 

Your point does not stand. You singled my Pentium remark out, said that Pentiums are budget gamer CPU's because of one overclockable Pentium. 

 

Pentium is definitely a budget gamer CPU. Especially the G3258. No business overclocks (except LMG).

 

This statement means every pentium is a budget gamer CPU. "Especially" the G3258. You also neglect the fact that the only overclockable Pentium out of all of those Haswell Pentium's, was the one labeled "Anniversary Edition". This means it was a special niche product. Out of the several Haswell Pentiums released, only one could OC. Yet you kept bringing up the fact that "businesses don't OC". You honestly think businesses paid the initial $70 price for the G3258? When $50 pentiums were out on the market with the same (or even higher) base clock speed for less money? I bet you no business upgraded from their current dual cores to the G3258, so your overclocking logic still does not apply. Pentiums (As a whole, not the single Pentium you have in your head) are designed for business/HTPC markets. Just because one pentium was designed outside of that role, does not mean the ones in the future will be too (And they were not, the G4400 was locked when i got my hands on it).

 

Putting an expensive iGPU on a weak dual core CPU just won't cut it. They are not marketed as gaming CPU's, so pairing them with gaming class iGPU's would make no sense.

[Sakkura]

 

I did not even mention the G3258 until you did. The entire point was putting an expensive iGPU on a cheap dual core CPU would be pointless. Your entire logic is "G3258 is budget gamer CPU". Guess what? It's the only one that is officially unlocked (excluding the ancient ones). You honestly think they are going to make another unlocked Pentium? Let alone make one with an Iris Pro series iGPU on it? Context my friend.

 

Your point does not stand. You singled my Pentium remark out, said that Pentiums are budget gamer CPU's because of one overclockable Pentium. 

 

 

This statement means every pentium is a budget gamer CPU. "Especially" the G3258. You also neglect the fact that the only overclockable Pentium out of all of those Haswell Pentium's, was the one labeled "Anniversary Edition". This means it was a special niche product. Out of the several Haswell Pentiums released, only one could OC. Yet you kept bringing up the fact that "businesses don't OC". You honestly think businesses paid the initial $70 price for the G3258? When $50 pentiums were out on the market with the same (or even higher) base clock speed for less money? I bet you no business upgraded from their current dual cores to the G3258, so your overclocking logic still does not apply. Pentiums (As a whole, not the single Pentium you have in your head) are designed for business/HTPC markets. Just because one pentium was designed outside of that role, does not mean the ones in the future will be too (And they were not, the G4400 was locked when i got my hands on it).

 

Putting an expensive iGPU on a weak dual core CPU just won't cut it. They are not marketed as gaming CPU's, so pairing them with gaming class iGPU's would make no sense.

 

 

I singled out the poster boy for Pentiums, you're instead focusing on other versions that likely sell in much lower quantities. Why do you exclude the most important Pentium? Why do you mislabel a prominent product as a "niche product?"

 

Pentiums at stock clocks can be used for gaming too, they're just less popular and offer that much less performance.

 

Pentiums as a whole are not designed specifically for business. They generally don't support business-oriented features like VT-d or even Small Business Advantage. And plenty of consumers buy Pentiums too.

[MageTank]

I singled out the poster boy for Pentiums, you're instead focusing on other versions that likely sell in much lower quantities. Why do you exclude the most important Pentium? Why do you mislabel a prominent product as a "niche product?"

 

Pentiums at stock clocks can be used for gaming too, they're just less popular and offer that much less performance.

 

Pentiums as a whole are not designed specifically for business. They generally don't support business-oriented features like VT-d or even Small Business Advantage. And plenty of consumers buy Pentiums too.

I just showed where you generalized all pentiums as budget gamer CPU's. They are not. A budget gamer CPU is a CPU that can play all games while being cheap. The Pentiums are cheap, but they cannot play all games. Budget GPU's (Sub $150) can still play the latest AAA titles at playable Framerates. You cannot say the same about the G3258. 

 

I am starting to think you have not owned a Pentium. As a man that has owned two, both overclocked, I can tell you that they were not designed for gaming tasks.

 

When i say business, i mean word documents and excel spreadsheets. Data entry and web-browsing. Even then, these are entry level business SKU's, as you yourself stated, they lack VT-d, and most prolific instruction sets.

 

You think this one pentium that released 1.5 years ago, completely changed the entire Pentium market? Made all other pentiums obsolete and re-defined the market design of these Pentiums? I honestly do not know what you are thinking, but I can tell you it has absolutely nothing to do with my point. You are not going to see another unlocked pentium any time soon. Let alone one with an iGPU worth more than the CPU itself. On your holy crusade to defend the G3258 as a budget gamer CPU, you completely forgot that the CPU fails to deliver a smooth gaming performance across all titles. Therefore, it is not a gamer CPU. Currently the G3258 is listed at $65. $5 more could get you an Athlon 860k, which is where the "budget gamer CPU" market starts.  

 

"It's good at playing some games though!". Yeah, some games, not all. Let's call it a "Budget Light-Gaming CPU". Now if only you could tell me how your points had any relevance to my original statement of "Putting Iris Pro series GPU's on a Pentium is a waste of money". 

[AlwaysFSX]

If there cant make profit on the prices they have at the moment what makes you think hiking prices will turn them a profit?

Do you understand how money works?

[patrickjp93]

Do you understand how money works?

Do you understand economics? AMD cannot price current products higher because their demand is fixed. Assuming they haven't massively undershot on the optimal price (where marginal cost and marginal revenue curves cross), increasing the price will lose sales and profits.

[PCBjon]

Do you understand how money works?

 

Very much so! They may price hike on their up and coming gpus etc (if it performs amazing) but not on their current line up. It would be insane and a ridiculous business move if they price hiked now.

[AlwaysFSX]

Do you understand economics? AMD cannot price current products higher because their demand is fixed. Assuming they haven't massively undershot on the optimal price (where marginal cost and marginal revenue curves cross), increasing the price will lose sales and profits.

I understand that but there's very few things AMD can do besides cheaper production costs or raised prices and hopeful marketing.

 

Very much so! They may price hike on their up and coming gpus etc (if it performs amazing) but not on their current line up. It would be insane and a ridiculous business move if they price hiked now.

Then you would know it's the only way they can recoup money. Selling products at a loss is no bueno. They need to make their next generation cards a little bit more expensive otherwise they're just going to go out of business from bankruptcy.