[EDIT]hmmm.....whats going on at AMD? (and history of 3Dfx Rampage)

[SteelCrysis]

The cheapest locked Skylake i5 on Newegg is the i5-6400 at USD 190.

[SickBeast]

Thanks. It will be interesting to see if Asrock really did pull this one off.

[SteelCrysis]

AMD has officially added support for external Radeon cards: http://techreport.com/news/29834/amd-xco...eon-easier

[RolloTheGreat]

AMD has officially added support for external Radeon cards: http://techreport.com/news/29834/amd-xco...eon-easier

I saw something like that with Alienware, could see it being nice for people who don't want a desktop.

[SteelCrysis]

GP104 reportedly will use GDDR5X instead of HBM2: http://www.techpowerup.com/220823/nvidia...rface.html

[BoFox]

GTX 1080, for 1080p only.  Probably just GDDR5 rather than GDDR5x, as it seems late too (like HBM2). 

Milking the $799 cow, since 8GB isn't enough for that $1000 cow (where the Titan X is at, sucking with its own 12GB teeth).

[SteelCrysis]

AMD announced Radeon Pro Duo, a dual Fiji card, launching at USD 1499: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/22472...on-pro-duo

[SteelCrysis]

Polaris might not have HBM2: http://www.techpowerup.com/220892/amd-un...emory.html

[RolloTheGreat]

AMD announced Radeon Pro Duo, a dual Fiji card, launching at USD 1499: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/22472...on-pro-duo

Bad timing there.

Crossfire isn't exactly the solution of "plug and play" and $1500 to get what is likely the same performance as two air cooled Furys you can buy for $1000 is a tough sell.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product

[SteelCrysis]

AMD could get money from GPU patent licensing by Intel: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/224...-licensing

[ocre]

So AMD would sell graphics IP to their direct competitor? What a joke!
AMD buys ATI at a price that cripples their company, with this "it will give us an edge" justification. They bragged and bragged about how they were so much better positioned, that the future was fusion....only we all seen Intel come out with "fusion" CPUS first.
As time passed on, Intel CPUS had gained on AMD apps and surpass them in all metrics

And now today, AMD is in talks to sell this IP to intel, probably for pennies on the dollar when you look at how much they paid for ati.....
If AMD is really looking to cut a deal with Intel for graphics IP, they have all but given up

Is this part of their exit strategy? I mean, this is pretty huge if you ask me

[SickBeast]

If AMD doesn't licence their technology to Intel then nVidia will. AMD needs the cash badly so they have probably undercut nVidia.

[BoFox]

So AMD would sell graphics IP to their direct competitor?  What a joke!
AMD buys ATI at a price that cripples their company, with this "it will give us an edge" justification.  They bragged and bragged about how they were so much better positioned, that the future was fusion....only we all seen Intel come out with "fusion" CPUS first.  
As time passed on, Intel CPUS had gained on AMD apps and surpass them in all metrics

And now today, AMD is in talks to sell this IP to intel, probably for pennies on the dollar when you look at how much they paid for ati.....
If AMD is really looking to cut a deal with Intel for graphics IP, they have all but given up

Is this part of their exit strategy?  I mean, this is pretty huge if you ask me

  Exactly!

WTF, AMD?  Why can't AMD just go their own HBM2 route and also implement some sort of L4 eDRAM cache like Intel's Iris Pro iGPU's, and then put Intel's graphics to shame in laptops and PC's?

I seriously hope it's not their exit strategy - given that AMD is launching Polaris, Zen, and all, on a massive leap to 14nm from 28/32nm. 

Perhaps this is AMD's revenge to Nvidia for helping Intel against AMD's Fusion (by trying to offer Intel a good bid that forces NV to have to lower its bid)?  Still, it would be stupid if AMD actually glued a deal with Intel.  Maybe it includes some cross-licensing of Intel's stuff like 3DXpoint?

[BoFox]

CONFIRMED (hopefully) -

AMD will be using the GloFo-Amkor Duo to also package their next-gen Raven Ridge APUs that will utilize the next generation of HBM standard to deliver higher bandwidth to the faster discrete-class graphics chip featured on the SOC.


Read more: http://wccftech.com/amd-raven-ridge-apu-14nm-glofo-amkor/#ixzz43ansQxxs

Hallelujah!!!!!!  Although it apparently won't be until sometime in 2017.  But this is a nice step forward, especially for AMD!  An APU that outperforms the PS4's graphical processing power!

With the 28nm process being one of the longest plateaus ever, we're probably headed for a revolution like from 286 to 386 or 386 to 486 PC's, during this time of the decade.  We haven't seen much of a revolution in computer tech for a while except for smartphones that have ultra-efficient CPUs beating the crap out of the PS4's CPU, but nothing else much really.

sixteen Zen cores, 32MB of L3 cache, 16GB of HBM, quad channel DDR4 memory interface and an integrated GPU based on the flagship Arctic Islands graphics chip “Greenland”.

Yep, Intel, time to quit stagnating!

[SteelCrysis]

AMD Vega GPU details released: http://www.techpowerup.com/221269/amd-gr...ssors.html

Socket AM4 details released: http://www.techpowerup.com/221270/more-a...merge.html

[SteelCrysis]

And ASRock has possibly admitted that Intel forced them to remove base clock overclocking: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/inte...,4498.html

Not long after ASRock announced these boards, the company contacted Tom’s Hardware to let us know it abandoned their development under pressure from Intel. It was also forced to remove the Sky OC feature from its Z170 motherboards.

The quote went a little something like, “ASRock has decided to remove SKY OC technology from these motherboards’ feature lists since it is not compliant with Intel Skylake CPU specifications.”

We expected that to be the end of ASRock’s venture into overclocking non-K-series CPUs and overclockable non-Z170 chipsets, but then the company released its cancelled C232 Fatal1ty E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC board. It also announced its new “Hyper” family of non-Z170 motherboards able to overclock non-K-series processors using BCLK manipulation. Currently, the C232 Fatal1ty E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC is the only one of these boards available for sale online. The others may materialize in time, but it's also possible that Intel again applied pressure to stop their introduction.

[SickBeast]

Wow that's really underhanded on behalf of Intel. We really need some competition in the CPU arena. That type of behavior is completely unacceptable. They are arrogant because they are the only game in town right now. This is really bad.

[SteelCrysis]

Radeon Pro Duo rumored to be released April 26: http://www.techpowerup.com/221567/amd-ra...ailed.html

[SteelCrysis]

R9 470 and 480 are rumored to be arriving at Computex: http://videocardz.com/59065/amd-radeon-r...t-computex

[SteelCrysis]

AMD continues to lose money: http://www.techpowerup.com/221891/amd-re...er-results

[RolloTheGreat]

AMD continues to lose money: http://www.techpowerup.com/221891/amd-re...er-results

When the market cap gets to $10,000, I'm going to buy AMD and:

A. Fire the PR dept guys for siccing their lap dogs on me when I was in the Focus Group
B. Rename the GPU lineup the Rollo-5000, Rollo-6000, Rollo-7000, etc
C. Rename the CPU line the GStan-13a, GStan-13b, Gstan-13c, etc
D. Diversify into the toilet paper and feminine hygiene markets with a cheap tp named "Creigwipe", a cut rate tampon called the "Aten-Rapon", and an adult diaper made of recycled newspapers called "Wavey Dave's Britches".

[SteelCrysis]

Rumor says AMD is going to move to a smaller HQ: http://techreport.com/news/30031/rumor-a...rporate-hq

[RolloTheGreat]

[quote='SteelCrysis' pid='8757' dateline='1461596105']
Rumor says AMD is going to move to a smaller HQ: http://techreport.com/news/30031/rumor-a...rporate-hq
/quote]



http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/creati...2ff0e.html

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R...iew/4.html

The Radeon Pro Duo is threatened with a similar marketing problem. It's really cool today, but the lure of next-generation "Pascal" and "Polaris" GPUs being literally around the corner could keep buyers away. Dual-GPU cards, if launched early enough in the life cycle of a GPU's architecture, could present buyers with genuinely good future-proofing options. One can still find R9 295X2 users getting lucky with playable 4K Ultra HD performance. As if "Fiji" and the R9 Fury X weren't late enough, the Pro Duo is grossly mistimed. AMD's 2015 reveal of the "Fiji" GPU by company CEO Lisa Su could have been a better time to come up with this card. Even a month after the R9 Fury X's launch could have been fine.

The other dimension of the marketing problem, and one AMD learned absolutely nothing from with its Radeon R9 Nano launch drama, is putting the card in the hands of reviewers with hundreds of data points. There's a reason why our test-bench consists of such a vast diversity of games and game-engines. It gives you an idea of what kind of games aren't ideal for the graphics card being tested.

We don't have a card yet, and we aren't getting one. Almost as if a repeat of the R9 Nano PR trainwreck, there is a surreal celebration of cluelessness among AMD and its marketing partners responsible for Germany. Last week, we asked AMD's German PR agency on what the plan was regarding sampling and scheduling and received a "no idea on timing." We also checked with AMD, and they didn't know either, giving us a "will keep you updated" response. We've been reviewing Radeons for over a decade now, and if AMD does not want something to be reviewed, a "no" goes over better than flat-out denying the very existence of an upcoming product's launch (one that has already seen a paper-launch).

At its press-briefing for the Radeon Pro Duo, and even briefly at its "Capsaicin" event, AMD saw the need to tease its future "Polaris" and "Vega" architectures and upcoming GPU product stacks. AMD itself wants you to hope for the next-generation. This is hype more than a tease on AMD's part.

[ocre]

I did a little reading around forums and truly believe that things are gonna be real real bad for amd.

The next gen paets launching first, Polaris 10 and 11, these cards are not gonna be performance cards. They will be more like 750ti of the day, or slightly above. Yet their fans are hyping them to the sky, claiming huge huge massive things. Putting them up against gp104, even saying that Polaris 10 will be faster.

It's omg insane.

AMD is launching the dual Fiji because their next gen cards are not performance cards.

Things are adding up very very bad right now. The gp104 is looking to be blistering fast. I mean, pascal is gonna be clocked at around 1.5 ghz, and that is for their Tesla cards. The demo polaris, we here its about 850 mhz.
I think amd may have messed up big time. I am not sure how their 14nm will compare to the 16nm nvidia went with. This time, amd and nvidia are not even on the same fab. So any issue one may have with the node, the other won't.

AMD will get great performance per watt, but I don't think the performance bar will be very high at all with Polaris. Yet it's hyped to the moon and back

[SteelCrysis]

Wow, you weren't making up this hype: http://www.techpowerup.com/222007/amd-po...0-ti-rumor

[SteelCrysis]

Radeon Pro Duo is apparently aimed at professional users and gamers: http://techgage.com/news/amd-isnt-sampli...od-reason/

In a recent partner training email AMD sent out, it calls the Pro Duo “a powerful merging of AMD FirePro and Radeon capabilities into a single graphics card”. That message is hard to confuse, but the problem is, AMD hasn’t communicated that message too well to third-parties – namely, gamers.

The confusion stems from the fact that this dual-GPU Fury was revealed at the same time as the rest of the gaming lineup. Naturally, anyone who watched the announcement was led to believe that the product could become the ultimate gaming card (which it still could be). Since AMD has kept somewhat quiet between then and now, it’s not hard to understand why some are now baffled at the fact that AMD isn’t going to be sampling the cards to websites like ours.

AMD’s conundrum, quite simply, is this: few reviewers are going to be able to wrap their head around what this product is all about. The result is that the company doesn’t want to send samples out and have the card projected in an improper light. NVIDIA didn’t send review sites samples of its TITAN Z, either, and I’m guessing it was for the same reason.

[RolloTheGreat]

You guys just aren't well versed in AMD PR speak.

"As fast as a GTX980 Ti" means exactly that......in some benchmark AMD paid the dev to heavily optimize for their arch.

In everything else it will be 10-20% slower.
was
The shill brigade will start creating posts:

"I mainly play (insert heavily optimized game) and have (insert exact cost of Polaris) to spend. What card should I buy??"

This will open the door for the other shills to post the benchmark, preferably from an AMD friendly site, and begin a chorus of "You need a Polaris my friend!".

That is how it goes all over the web, all day long.

They're too stupid to do anything better, just reposting the garbage they're fed by the sub par AMD PR department.

If AMD had any smarts they would have figured out a way to hire me. Back in the day I was able to make make pretty convincing arguments for the FX5800 and the MAXX. Both were "worse" cards, but I was able to point out their positives and debate well enough to make my points.

That was before Focus Group, but AEG recognized my talent for this and sought me out. AMD has always bumbled along with hacks that are mainly annoying. If I actually cared anymore I'd shut them down for the sport of it.

[BoFox]

Damn, AMD - heads up, hire Rollo right now!!!!! RollotheGreat - AMD's executive PR director, fair and balanced!

AMD's stock is trading at around $3.50-ish (went up sharply after an announcement of a joint venture to fab CPUs for the chinese market... UH?
http://wccftech.com/amd-stock-52-highest...n-listing/
That was huge for some announcement that won't bear too much fruition, as China already has access to stuff like this. I'm having a hard time understanding how it really excited the stock traders that much. They've all must been eyeing AMD's stock for quite some time now, I guess, given its low price to begin with along with much potential. Zen and 14nm stuff (along with the console upgrades) got them all anxious, and then once the stock price went up a bit after the announcement, they all jumped on it hoping to get some more shares while everybody were at it, just for the sake of grabbing some before the price went up further.

It feels too much like the Bitcoin trading market - sometimes the price just sharply increases or drops for no apparent reason.

BTW, while the concept of a cybercurrency mainly rocks in my books, I'm starting to dislike the cyber-currencies that are being 98% mined by the corporate-owned mining farms. It only gives further rise to the corporations and not to the individuals who are not owners or executives of such businesses. UGH! *reeks*! How are those cybercurrencies supposed to be viable for the circulation, if 98-99+% of such virtual currency is in the hands of such few businesses?

I know I'm going off a tangent here.. we just need a democracy (per-capita oriented cybercurrency) based currency, that shares most of the perks of BTC - and is work-based in a similar way that computers mine for BTC as an individual works to earn it, but is much much more autonomous and independent from the corrupt grip of a local government and bankers (and corporations as well) -- much like personal, private cash that is yet connected to the global economy rather than being subject to depreciation and losses/theft at large. Like a credit card that has a chip on it, a cybercurrency should be available in physical form, encrypted by the person's eye iris and fingerprint data, if one so desires, as a rule of the thumb.

Then such spineless traditional bankers can go and find more meaningful work that's not merely leeching off the insecurities of the society in general. One of the biggest perks of the cybercurrency - eliminating the middleman (or the banker) would save us trillions upon trillions each year. In other words, everybody gets to be one's own personal banker in the Monopoly game - not just one guy who is authorized to handle everything and actually rewarded for capitalizing upon the banking aspect of it.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R...iew/4.html

The Radeon Pro Duo is threatened with a similar marketing problem. It's really cool today, but the lure of next-generation "Pascal" and "Polaris" GPUs being literally around the corner could keep buyers away. Dual-GPU cards, if launched early enough in the life cycle of a GPU's architecture, could present buyers with genuinely good future-proofing options. One can still find R9 295X2 users getting lucky with playable 4K Ultra HD performance. As if "Fiji" and the R9 Fury X weren't late enough, the Pro Duo is grossly mistimed. AMD's 2015 reveal of the "Fiji" GPU by company CEO Lisa Su could have been a better time to come up with this card. Even a month after the R9 Fury X's launch could have been fine.

The other dimension of the marketing problem, and one AMD learned absolutely nothing from with its Radeon R9 Nano launch drama, is putting the card in the hands of reviewers with hundreds of data points. There's a reason why our test-bench consists of such a vast diversity of games and game-engines. It gives you an idea of what kind of games aren't ideal for the graphics card being tested.

We don't have a card yet, and we aren't getting one. Almost as if a repeat of the R9 Nano PR trainwreck, there is a surreal celebration of cluelessness among AMD and its marketing partners responsible for Germany. Last week, we asked AMD's German PR agency on what the plan was regarding sampling and scheduling and received a "no idea on timing." We also checked with AMD, and they didn't know either, giving us a "will keep you updated" response. We've been reviewing Radeons for over a decade now, and if AMD does not want something to be reviewed, a "no" goes over better than flat-out denying the very existence of an upcoming product's launch (one that has already seen a paper-launch).

At its press-briefing for the Radeon Pro Duo, and even briefly at its "Capsaicin" event, AMD saw the need to tease its future "Polaris" and "Vega" architectures and upcoming GPU product stacks. AMD itself wants you to hope for the next-generation. This is hype more than a tease on AMD's part.

ROFLMAO, TPU having negative words about AMD...  again!!!   TPU, one of AMD's old favorite shill sites!  

[BoFox]

Ugh, that's a lot of shilling for AMD right there, with the Pro Duo's power consumption figures.  

Lucky for AMD, there's a few spoiled mama-boys who actually believe this, and who are still worthy of $1500 of Daddy's money - such mama-boy might be living in an apartment right next to his own college, slightly concerned about electricity usage, so he feels great about this.

[RolloTheGreat]

Damn, AMD - heads up, hire Rollo right now!!!!!  RollotheGreat - AMD's executive PR director, fair and balanced!

Dude, I could have even sold AMD, guaranteed.

Those guys are nimrods compared to me.

[BoFox]

Damn, AMD - heads up, hire Rollo right now!!!!!  RollotheGreat - AMD's executive PR director, fair and balanced!

Dude, I could have even sold AMD, guaranteed.

Those guys are nimrods compared to me.

AMD, did you hear what Rollo just said?!????  

Hurry the heck up and hire Rollo, right NOW!!!!!!!!!!  Rollo can even deliver a successful sales pitch to Microsoft at 2x the current net worth!

[RolloTheGreat]

Damn, AMD - heads up, hire Rollo right now!!!!!  RollotheGreat - AMD's executive PR director, fair and balanced!

Dude, I could have even sold AMD, guaranteed.

Those guys are nimrods compared to me.

AMD, did you hear what Rollo just said?!????  

Hurry the heck up and hire Rollo, right NOW!!!!!!!!!!  Rollo can even deliver a successful sales pitch to Microsoft at 2x the current net worth!

LOL, I'm not looking for a job at AMD. Also, I don't know if PR is where I'd shift my career if I wanted to change.

Now I have some niche market software skills that basically any company in a few related fields almost "has" to look at me if I apply.

PR is more nebulous.

[ocre]

Ugh, that's a lot of shilling for AMD right there, with the Pro Duo's power consumption figures.  

Lucky for AMD, there's a few spoiled mama-boys who actually believe this, and who are still worthy of $1500 of Daddy's money - such mama-boy might be living in an apartment right next to his own college, slightly concerned about electricity usage, so he feels great about this.

Wholly shit!

Are those numbers for real? For such a low clock speed....what?
So estimations of 980ti performance, even if they are true...I mean with that kind of power consumption, you would think I has to be true...at the very least. Using more power than a 980ti wand being as fast as the 980ti....Seems really bad to me

[ocre]

Well, there u have it

"“The reason Polaris is a big deal, is because I believe we will be able to grow that TAM [total addressable market] significantly,” said Taylor.

“If you look at the total install base of a Radeon 290, or a GTX 970, or above, it’s 7.5 million units. But the issue is that if a publisher wants to sell a £40/$50 game, that’s not a big enough market to justify that yet. We’ve got to prime the pumps, which means somebody has got to start writing cheques to big games publishers. Or we’ve got to increase the install TAM.” via Arstechnica

Polaris will not be all that powerful. I really hope those power consumption figures bofox posted are not legitimate. It's looking grim. But here again. We see amd...
Spin spin spin

[ocre]

I am thinking real bad.  Like, not 980ti performance.  I am thinking, less.  I don't think it will surpass the 390x....that is will struggle to match it.  It might be slower than the 390x.

AMD will try to get away with selling them cheap, and since it's a smaller die size they can sell them at a lower price....

But, look how terrible this would be. It's adding up to be really bad.  The clock speed, it's so low.  The power consumption rumor, geez that's got to be wrong.  It's a small chip, it's hard to imagine such a high power consumption.

AMD is spinning this as some advantage when it looks to me that pascal is miles ahead. I mean, a new design on a new node with blistering high mhz.
AMD is trying to say that gp104 will be so limited because it appears to be an enthusiast card. Bla bla bla.

Are the for real?  Don't they know that nvidia builds modular designs which will scale down.  Not only will there be cut down gp104 chips but even smaller pascal babies to boot.

It is clear that the gp104 may be larger than Polaris but we are talking different fabs and different process nodes entirely.  It's not like the days where nvidia and amd used the exact same fab. But even those comparisons were flawed because there were also rumors suggesting nvidia paid less per wafer due to their higher volume contracts.  But regardless of all that, the gp104 is not so huge and there will be cut down versions of it.  

I feel real negative about how things seem to be shaping up.  It's looking like amd will be left far behind this time. Nvidia is pulling away and leaving amd behind....

I want to see it another way.  But I am now pretty convinced.  Geez, I really think there is enough info already out and it all points thus direction

[RolloTheGreat]

Did you expect anything else Ocre?

AMD is operating on shoestring budgets for the tech design industry, they wouldn't be your first choice to work at if you were the top talent in your industry.

It would be kind of a miracle if they DID keep up with NVIDIA.

Fury X and the legion of rebrands was the sign of things to come.

[SteelCrysis]

AMD and Fujitsu announce joint venture: http://www.techpowerup.com/222085/amd-an...sembly-j-v

[RolloTheGreat]

AMD and Fujitsu announce joint venture: http://www.techpowerup.com/222085/amd-an...sembly-j-v

•NFME's affiliates have purchased an 85 percent share of AMD's Penang, Malaysia and Suzhou, China ATMP operations and act as controlling partner for the new joint venture business.
•AMD received from NFME approximately $371 million, excluding purchase price adjustments, with net cash proceeds of approximately $320 million after payment of taxes and other customary expenses. AMD retains a 15 percent ownership of the Penang and Suzhou operations.
•The transaction is expected to be cost neutral to AMD's P&L while significantly reducing AMD's capital expenditures. AMD will account for its 15 percent ownership stake in the joint venture and its results of operations under the equity method of accounting.
•Approximately 1,700 AMD employees transitioned to the joint venture.

Not sure how "joint" losing 85% control and all the employees is.

I would have titled this "AMD sells more stuff".

[SteelCrysis]

Radeon Pro Duo benchmarks are in, it's doing bad in frame times on some games: http://techreport.com/news/30066/pc-pers...on-pro-duo