AMD Ryzen: Good For Enthusiasts, Bad For Investors

[It's me!]

There's no doubt that AMD has margin problems, a big portion of the investment community dumped their stock due to the reduced margins. It's apparent that part of the problem stems from the unlocked multi's, though. AMD is slashing prices on high end models because everyone is jumping on the cheap models.

 

Quote

That's where unlocked multipliers present an issue. We love the fact that all of AMD's processors feature unlocked multipliers, but it also means that many reviewers (us included) suggest that you simply purchase the Ryzen 7 1700 instead of the more expensive "X" models (Ryzen 7 1800X and 1700X). For instance, the Ryzen 7 1700 is AMD's most popular Ryzen processor on the Amazon Best Sellers list, although that isn't entirely unexpected given its lower price point.
The "X" and non-"X" processors feature similar overclocking headroom, so for enthusiasts, you can gain quite a bit of extra value by eschewing the more expensive top-end variant. We've also seen similar recommendations for the Ryzen 5 series.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-stock-slump-ryzen-cpu,34318.html

[Spork829]

Shouldn't AMD have seen this coming? If you can OC a 1700 to basically the same performance as an 1800X, you would think they would have planned for people to recommend not going above the 1700, same with 1500X and 1600X vs their non-X models. Should have added some more features to the X models or just cut them out entirely if they didn't want this to happen...

[goodtofufriday]

IMO as time goes on there will be more aparent binning. 

[Notional]

How is it bad for investors? Ryzen hit every target set by AMD.

[Taf the Ghost]

"Buy the Rumor; Sell the News". Get worried if it gets below $5 per share.  The average valuation, minus massive stock bubbles, is around $10 per share over the last 30 years.

 

It's also called Profit Taking.  AMD was up around 900% from it's low in 2015.  Ryzen is selling well, but it's not, yet, a huge amount of profit.  This is a time for all of those Investors that bought it at $2 per Share to unload.  500-700% return ain't exactly a small one.

[Misanthrope]

So investors want AMD to be like intel even though not being like intel is the only fucking thing that brings them any money in...fantastic.

[kiska3]

OP please, night theme users

[AntonChigurh]

3 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

So investors want AMD to be like intel even though not being like intel is the only fucking thing that brings them any money in...fantastic.

AMD looking at their stock prices plummet

[Taf the Ghost]

4 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

So investors want AMD to be like intel even though not being like intel is the only fucking thing that brings them any money in...fantastic.

"Investors" don't unload that much on a news release.  That's all intra-day traders and HFT firms.  That's why prices tend to normalize after news events. It's not Investors that are capitalizing on the news.

 

Now, if a company declares bankruptcy, that'll cause Investors (especially the big players) to exit their positions.

[Misanthrope]

Just now, N1ghtshade said:

AMD looking at their stock prices plummet

 

Here is something that many might not like: It's not due to their strategy or pricing it's simply due to their tech not being up to par. Workstation level they're competitive and low end midrange they're competitive but they are just not there on IPC and it shows for most consumers.

 

Now I know that you all will say that what they accomplished is remarkable and what not, sure. But they're not gonna take market share away from intel overnight and investors know that this struggle on the high end consumer market is kind of pointless for their bottom line since AMD relies on other stuff like APUs and console chips and it has relied on those segments for so fucking long due to Ryzen taken so long to develop that Ryzen needed to catch up far more.

 

Honestly I think these investors could be quickly appeased with Ryzen based APUs being released and new deals with them being laid down. That plays more to AMD strengths than over hyping consumer desktop chips that still come short of intel in key areas like IPC.

[PlayStation 2]

As I said in another thread, hitting expectations wasn't going to be enough in terms of stocks for AMD.

[AntonChigurh]

2 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Here is something that many might not like: It's not due to their strategy or pricing it's simply due to their tech not being up to par. Workstation level they're competitive and low end midrange they're competitive but they are just not there on IPC and it shows for most consumers.

 

Now I know that you all will say that what they accomplished is remarkable and what not, sure. But they're not gonna take market share away from intel overnight and investors know that this struggle on the high end consumer market is kind of pointless for their bottom line since AMD relies on other stuff like APUs and console chips and it has relied on those segments for so fucking long due to Ryzen taken so long to develop that Ryzen needed to catch up far more.

 

Honestly I think these investors could be quickly appeased with Ryzen based APUs being released and new deals with them being laid down. That plays more to AMD strengths than over hyping consumer desktop chips that still come short of intel in key areas like IPC.

Yeah, AMD really has never been able to compete in the high end gaming range. They've always been the more reasonably priced low to midrange option, and that's what they relied on. Unfortunately, when they tried to break into the high end market with Ryzen, they generated a hype train that created unrealistic expectations and ended up wrecking their sales.

[Misanthrope]

1 minute ago, N1ghtshade said:

Yeah, AMD really has never been able to compete in the high end gaming range. They've always been the more reasonably priced low to midrange option, and that's what they relied on. Unfortunately, when they tried to break into the high end market with Ryzen, they generated a hype train that created unrealistic expectations and ended up wrecking their sales.

One comment I heard from a video Wendell from Level1techs did about his talk with AMD executives is that apparently they want to break intel's paradigm of pushing for 4 cores on consumer applications.

 

So basically the same mistake all the way back to excavator: they want to convince devs to leverage more cores and threads. That's just not going to happen since it's both complicated (and thus expensive) and intel has a foothold on them big time there is little incentive to invest a lot of money so their apps and games run really well on Ryzen even though the people with 6 cores or 8 cores will be a tiny minority.

[Valentyn]

11 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

 

Honestly I think these investors could be quickly appeased with Ryzen based APUs being released and new deals with them being laid down. That plays more to AMD strengths than over hyping consumer desktop chips that still come short of intel in key areas like IPC.

AMD are doing that, it was discussed during their earnings call. In fact all the investors that participated in the call and Q&A either kept their share Price Targets, or increased it.

 

AMD's Q1 Gross Margin was 1% down from 2016 Q4, which is remarkable honestly. Q1 is the worst quarter for tech companies with Q4 usually the highest.

They also increased EPS.

 

Funny thing is Apple, Tesla, Intel, and more all missed their Q1 targets and yet their Share Price was mostly unaffected. Some crazy high standards for little AMD.

 

The last time Goldman drastically lowered their PT of AMD, the shares dropped; and then they brokered a buy of millions of share. They're really good at playing the market with AMD's volatile stock. 

 

According to Passmark's little data, AMD's market share has also increased by 2%. That's not bad considering Ryzen was only available for a single month in Q1.

 

Although We won't really know the impact of Ryzen R7 sales until Q2's earnings reports. Hopefully by then we have some proper marketshare information.

[AntonChigurh]

Just now, Misanthrope said:

One comment I heard from a video Wendell from Level1techs did about his talk with AMD executives is that apparently they want to break intel's paradigm of pushing for 4 cores on consumer applications.

 

So basically the same mistake all the way back to excavator: they want to convince devs to leverage more cores and threads. That's just not going to happen since it's both complicated (and thus expensive) and intel has a foothold on them big time there is little incentive to invest a lot of money so their apps and games run really well on Ryzen even though the people with 6 cores or 8 cores will be a tiny minority.

Yeah, Intel's got such a hold on the industry that there's no way AMD's gonna convince people to leverage their software for high core count CPUs. Maybe if the positions were reversed and AMD had an unlimited budget and a huge hold on the industry we'd see applications being leveraged to work well with stuff like Ryzen. But unfortunately Intel's been the king for so long that it'd take nothing short of a miracle for devs to start making programs that put Ryzen on par with Intel competition.

[Valentyn]

1 minute ago, N1ghtshade said:

 But unfortunately Intel's been the king for so long that it'd take nothing short of a miracle for devs to start making programs that put Ryzen on par with Intel competition.

There a was also the issue of developers using Intel's own compiler for years when doing development; and it ran like rubbish on anything not Intel. So AMD and VIA suffered.

Took a long time before a better overall one came about, and that was thanks to Microsoft.

Even so, developers have over a decade of simply squeezing the best they can out of Intel hardware. Since Nehalem the architecture has been evolutionary, with a few big jumps like Sandy-Bridge. Still their fundamentals mostly stayed the same.

It's a good thing AMD has been trying to foster developer partnerships, and getting here and there with their Open-Source libraries; but it's one hell of an uphill battle.

 

Also Bethesda as the first major partner...who knows what the Fallout and Elderscrolls developers can manage, even with help.

[AntonChigurh]

Just now, Valentyn said:

There a was also the issue of developers using Intel's own compiler for years when doing development; and it ran like rubbish on anything not Intel. So AMD and VIA suffered.

Took a long time before a better overall one came about, and that was thanks to Microsoft.

Even so, developers have over a decade of simply squeezing the best they can out of Intel hardware. Since Nehalem the architecture has been evolutionary, with a few big jumps like Sandy-Bridge. Still their fundamentals mostly stayed the same.

It's a good thing AMD has been trying to foster developer partnerships, and getting here and there with their Open-Source libraries; but it's one hell of an uphill battle.

 

Also Bethesda as the first major partner...who knows what the Fallout and Elderscrolls developers can manage, even with help.

Exactly. Intel is basically sitting back and not giving a fuck while the cash rolls in, watching AMD try frantically to break into the market and get devs to use their products

 

Yup, good old MS giving us a better compiler

 

Yeah, most would probably do a lot better with AMD hardware with higher core/thread counts, but because they've been using Intel for years and years they're not gonna change

 

An uphill battle is an understatement. Intel is at the top of the hill kicking AMD back down the second they get up, and AMD has a bank vault attached to it's back while trying to run up the hill.

 

And Bethesda games was where we first saw a real leaning towards AMD. Especially with Doom. Who know what they'll do in the future...

[Notional]

24 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Here is something that many might not like: It's not due to their strategy or pricing it's simply due to their tech not being up to par. Workstation level they're competitive and low end midrange they're competitive but they are just not there on IPC and it shows for most consumers.

1

 

19 minutes ago, N1ghtshade said:

Yeah, AMD really has never been able to compete in the high end gaming range. They've always been the more reasonably priced low to midrange option, and that's what they relied on. Unfortunately, when they tried to break into the high end market with Ryzen, they generated a hype train that created unrealistic expectations and ended up wrecking their sales.

 

None of these things bear any meaning in share prices. Shareholders care about profit margins, and revenue. They don't give 2 shits about where on the market segments the products lies, as long as they provide high profits and high revenues. The fact of the matter is that the 480, being mid end, regained double digits of market segments in percentage points. Sadly on forums like this, 1080/ti's are the norm, so "our" views on the market is completely skewed and disproportionate to the real market.

 

The high end market is simply a very small part of the revenue and marketshare for these companies. NVidia makes money on the pro market, as well as Intel. If AMD wants to grow hugely, a super high end GPU on the consumer/gamer market is completely irrelevant. Gaining marketshare on the pro market is where the profit margins are interesting.

 

Ryzen should do very well in racapturing a huge marketshare in the server/pro industry, but these products aren't even available yet. 

 

You are both focusing on the smallest, least interesting point for these companies, and are ignoring the bigger (and relevant) picture.

[Valentyn]

7 minutes ago, N1ghtshade said:

Exactly. Intel is basically sitting back and not giving a fuck while the cash rolls in, watching AMD try frantically to break into the market and get devs to use their products

 

Yup, good old MS giving us a better compiler

 

Yeah, most would probably do a lot better with AMD hardware with higher core/thread counts, but because they've been using Intel for years and years they're not gonna change

 

An uphill battle is an understatement. Intel is at the top of the hill kicking AMD back down the second they get up, and AMD has a bank vault attached to it's back while trying to run up the hill.

 

And Bethesda games was where we first saw a real leaning towards AMD. Especially with Doom. Who know what they'll do in the future...

 

Big issue with Bethesda is the separate development teams. IdTech are still league ahead of the rest; which explains why Doom was such an optimised marvel in this day and age.

 

The rest...not so much; especially since they're using the Creation Engine, and GameBryo. Both things are are terrible performance wise; and simply cannot use multiple cores.

Hopefully AMD and help them with Vulkan with what ever new engine their using. 

The next Fallout or Elderscrolls with a brand new engine, even 70% as optimised at IdTech 6 could change so much.

As for Intel at the top, and AMD slowly chipping away at that vault..everyone has forgotten about little VIA. They stopped trying and are at the bottom of the mountain eating paste playing with the Embedded Nanos.

I shudder to think if AMD goes belly up and it's just Intel and VIA left in the x86 world.

[AntonChigurh]

10 minutes ago, Notional said:

 

None of these things bear any meaning in share prices. Shareholders care about profit margins, and revenue. They don't give 2 shits about where on the market segments the products lies, as long as they provide high profits and high revenues. The fact of the matter is that the 480, being mid end, regained double digits of market segments in percentage points. Sadly on forums like this, 1080/ti's are the norm, so "our" views on the market is completely skewed and disproportionate to the real market.

 

The high end market is simply a very small part of the revenue and marketshare for these companies. NVidia makes money on the pro market, as well as Intel. If AMD wants to grow hugely, a super high end GPU on the consumer/gamer market is completely irrelevant. Gaining marketshare on the pro market is where the profit margins are interesting.

 

Ryzen should do very well in racapturing a huge marketshare in the server/pro industry, but these products aren't even available yet. 

 

You are both focusing on the smallest, least interesting point for these companies, and are ignoring the bigger (and relevant) picture.

But the thing is, AMD needs to be able to do both well. They need to be able to do high end and low end well to succeed. Look at Nvidia. They have low end and high end cards, and both are very good. Same with Intel. They have low end and high end options, and both of them are viable. But AMD is completely focusing on the mid-to-low range options, and not trying to break into the high end market.

 

And if high end is the least interesting point, then how come companies like Nvidia and Intel spend so much time filling out their high end lines, and make an assload of money off of it? You gotta have options for prosumers and budget spenders.

[AntonChigurh]

Just now, Valentyn said:

Big issue with Bethesda is the separate development teams. IdTech are still league ahead of the rest; which explains why Doom was such an optimised marvel in this day and age.

 

The rest...not so much; especially since they're using the Creation Engine, and GameBryo. Both things are are terrible performance wise; and simply cannot use multiple cores.

Hopefully AMD and help them with Vulkan with what ever new engine their using. 

The next Fallout or Elderscrolls with a brand new engine, even 70% as optimised at IdTech 6 could change so much.

As for Intel at the top, and AMD slowly chipping away at that vault..everyone has forgotten about little VIA. They stopped trying and are at the bottom of the mountain eating paste playing with the Embedded Nanos.

I shudder to think if AMD goes belly up and it's just Intel and VIA left in the x86 world.

Pretty much. Doom is a damn good looking game, and you can pretty much run it on a potato. You can run Doom on iGPU (not even kidding)

 

And yeah, AMD could probably be of some assistance with Vulkan or whatever engine they choose. And dude, a new Elder Scrolls game with a different engine... I'd love to see that, they've been using the same one for so long.

 

And haha that's the best thing i've heard all day  RIP VIA man, RIP VIA...

 

Dude no that'd be shit. Intel would rape everyone on the prices of shit and they wouldn't even make a quality product

[cj09beira]

9 minutes ago, Notional said:

 

None of these things bear any meaning in share prices. Shareholders care about profit margins, and revenue. They don't give 2 shits about where on the market segments the products lies, as long as they provide high profits and high revenues. The fact of the matter is that the 480, being mid end, regained double digits of market segments in percentage points. Sadly on forums like this, 1080/ti's are the norm, so "our" views on the market is completely skewed and disproportionate to the real market.

 

The high end market is simply a very small part of the revenue and marketshare for these companies. NVidia makes money on the pro market, as well as Intel. If AMD wants to grow hugely, a super high end GPU on the consumer/gamer market is completely irrelevant. Gaining marketshare on the pro market is where the profit margins are interesting.

 

Ryzen should do very well in racapturing a huge marketshare in the server/pro industry, but these products aren't even available yet. 

 

You are both focusing on the smallest, least interesting point for these companies, and are ignoring the bigger (and relevant) picture.

if you actually go and look in the past amd slides, they are really aiming at the pro market, look at vega for example: vega will be a 500 mm^2 gpu with better fp16 (for AI) than nvidea's gp100 600 mm^2 gpu and we all know how the Ai market is growing, what is ryzen great at? multitasking, amd is releasing napples with 128 pcie lanes on a single socket motherboard which means you can build compact gpu servers with lots of gpu without needing to have 2 cpus if you don't need them.

now the struggles:

Cuda is still prevalent and a problem for amd, but they now have a tool to convert the code for openGl;

Reliability is still to be determined on ryzen and for server owners thats very important.

 

[cj09beira]

16 minutes ago, N1ghtshade said:

But the thing is, AMD needs to be able to do both well. They need to be able to do high end and low end well to succeed. Look at Nvidia. They have low end and high end cards, and both are very good. Same with Intel. They have low end and high end options, and both of them are viable. But AMD is completely focusing on the mid-to-low range options, and not trying to break into the high end market.

 

And if high end is the least interesting point, then how come companies like Nvidia and Intel spend so much time filling out their high end lines, and make an assload of money off of it? You gotta have options for prosumers and budget spenders.

if i am not mistaken they though it was better to invest in vega instead of making a bigger Polaris chip 

[AntonChigurh]

1 minute ago, cj09beira said:

if i am not mistaken they though it was better to invest in vega instead of making a bigger Polaris chip 

But that's the thing. They've been taking so long to do this sort of stuff, like making higher end GPUs, that it's gonna be a complete uphill battle trying to break into the market. Intel and Nvidia have been making super high end shit for years, and they know how to do it well. AMD is new to it because they avoided it for so long, and it's probably not gonna turn out well for them.

[i_build_nanosuits]

AMD should start a patreon or a gofundme