While AMD was busy buying one of the hottest properties in the server scene, its sales stagnated at $1.59bn, a fraction lower than in the same period last year, while it recorded a $580m loss.

Despite AMD's eye-watering $580m loss, the firm's CEO Rory Read said the financial results were solid. "AMD delivered solid results in the first quarter as we remain focused on improving our execution, delivering innovative products, and building a company around a strategy to deliver strong cash flow and earnings growth. A complete top-to-bottom introduction of new APU offerings, combined with ample product supply resulting from continued progress with our manufacturing partners, positions us to win and grow," said Read.

Although AMD will claim that revenues would be slightly higher than a year previously if it was a 14-week quarter, the fact is that for much of the quarter the firm's hottest product, the Radeon HD 7970 graphics card, was in limited supply. Such were AMD's supply problems that the firm said revenue from graphics was down seven per cent from 2011, not a good sign given that it was top dog until Nvidia's Geforce GTX 680 launched at the tail end of the quarter.

the firm's CEO Rory Read said the financial results were solid.

AMD said it paid $703m to Globalfoundries for limited exclusivity on its 28nm process node for accelerated processor unit (APU) chips.

Minus the payment to GF, there results weren't terrible. But what is telling is that ASP's for the graphics chips went up while revenue went down. That means not only did they bring in less revenue in their GPU division, they also sold fewer GPU's all around. Not exactly a winning combination. Nvidia's results should be interesting. I imagine their ASP will be down from a year ago (due to Fermi price drops), but depending on how well that drove their sales AND depending on how many GK104 chips they were able to ship in the quarter, they could have anywhere from OK to decent revenue and earnings.

Minus the payment to GF, there results weren't terrible. But what is telling is that ASP's for the graphics chips went up while revenue went down. That means not only did they bring in less revenue in their GPU division, they also sold fewer GPU's all around. Not exactly a winning combination. Nvidia's results should be interesting. I imagine their ASP will be down from a year ago (due to Fermi price drops), but depending on how well that drove their sales AND depending on how many GK104 chips they were able to ship in the quarter, they could have anywhere from OK to decent revenue and earnings.

On the mobile front, it does not seem like Tegra3 is getting the same adoption that Tegra4 had. I don't know for sure, but if I am right then that could be bad news for Nvidia. They need to transition to 28nm for Tegra STAT.

If the goal is making money AMD's stratagy is definitely broken, but I do give them credit for there execution on how swiftly they released there 28nm line up, except for pricing it was pretty flawless. Nvidia on the other hand has only released one kepler card and were almost half way through this year, but luckily for them there fermi cards can hold there own against amd's midrange 28nm offerings.

AMD needs to cut $50 or so from their GPU prices in the midrange and high end. They would be cleaning up right now if they did that. Right now they're giving people plenty of reason to wait for the GTX 660/670.