AMD RX-480 and ZEN - AMD's come back move

[brandonkick]

I'll say this, the 1700X (I hate their naming schemes BTW) seems to be
very close to intel's 6900K for around 1/3 of the cost. IF these numbers
(both price and performance) are in the ballpark of what we will see in a
few weeks then I'm sure things will get very interesting.

I'm much more curious to see how their lower cost offerings perform
against intel's 6900K. Again though, this all hinges on the final retail
price and how exactly they perform against Intels offerings. Even having
said that, if Intel were willing to agressively discount parts of their current
lineup... I may be incline to go with an intel chip in my next build. As I
have said before.. I'm a person who cares little about brand name, and
mostly about what I can get for my money.

 

[phaZed]

Wrong my friend. Guess again. Back when the Pentium D was out, and AMD came out with the Athlon 64, they caught intel napping and were the performance leader for a little while there. Only when Intel caught up and brought out the Core 2 Duo chips did they begin to dominate again. Here's an old Forbes article from 2014 that tells about it.

You will have to point that out in the article. I don't see it, less a 2-liner paragraph that mentions 'something' only barely relevant.

Sorry, you are playing a bit of revisionist history here..
AMD Athlon 64 came out September 23, 2003
Intel Pentium D came out May, 2005
and Core 2 Duo chips came out July 2006

As an aside - AMD Athlon 64 x2 dual cores came out May 31, 2005

So you see, "Back when the Pentium D was out(2005), and AMD came out with the Athlon 64(2003), they caught intel napping and were the performance leader for a little while there." makes no sense when dealing with actual dates.

If you want to proclaim that the Athlon 64 was handing Intel's Pentium D its hat on the way out, then why was the Pentium D outperforming the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 x2 in many cases?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/1676


At any rate, perhaps you are meaning to compare the AMD Athlon 64 x2 to the release of the Core2Duo's?
Well, if that's the case then please refer to this 2006 CPU performance review:
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/50878-intel-core-2-duo-vs-amd-x2-am2top-to-bottom/5
Of which they say:

It’s no surprise that Intel consistently outperforms AMD across the board in these benchmarks. The low-end Core 2 Duo E6300 even outpaces the pricier Athlon 64 X2 4600+.

So, no, I feel you are mistaken. AMD may have been experiencing surging sales for a short period during that time... but it was not performance based, it was cost vs. performance based.

The issue was that AMD is a smaller company.

"The issue was that AMD is a smaller company." - Well, OK, but why?
2003 -

AMD loses marketshare to Intel - market analyst firm mercury research claims that amd's share has slipped to 16.6% of the total cpu market for q1 2003, down from 18.2% for the same quarter in 2002. at the same time, intel's marketshare increased from 80.8% in q1 2002 to 81.7% for q1 2003, showing that intel is picking up customers from amd.

2004 -

AMD market share hits two-year peak - AMD's share of the x86 processor market reached the highest point it has attained in the last two years - and a year after it fell to its lowest point in the same period.

2005 -

AMD chips away at Intel - AMD has gotten a lot of attention for its technological advances, and market watchers say it's trouncing Intel in new technology for the corporate market

2006 -

Intel Wipes Out AMD's 2006 Marketshare Gains in One Quarter - The price war that is waging between Intel and AMD paid off handsomely for Intel in the first quarter, according to the latest numbers from Mercury Research. Intel managed to capture 80.5 percent of the PC processor market for Q1 2007

I guess the lackluster performance, bad business deals and failure to compete with Intel by AMD has nothing to do with their 'size' then? Seems to me that if AMD were competitive, made good deals and competed with Intel then their size would increase... let the markets decide and all that stuff, right?

Or, perhaps it stems from the fact that AMD has always lead from behind. Here's a good summary of how AMD basically stole Intel's chips:

AMD began life as a second-source supplier for companies using Intel processors. Companies like IBM didn't want to rely solely on Intel for one of the primary components in their computers, so they licensed AMD to produce versions of processors like the 8088 and 80286. While these CPUs were manufactured by AMD (and, in some cases, AMD was actually able to clock the CPUs higher than their Intel counterparts), almost everything about their designs came from Intel.

Beginning with Intel’s 80386 in 1985, Intel stopped giving AMD access to its designs. AMD had to forge its own way, soon producing 386 and later 486 CPUs that were essentially reverse-engineered versions of Intel’s parts.

In 1990, a Merrill Lynch analyst called AMD “dead,” largely because of the time needed to reverse-engineer the chips, just one of many times an analyst would say this about the company. Intel’s 386 was released in 1985, for instance, but AMD’s didn't appear until 1991; Intel’s 486 was out in 1989, while AMD’s wasn't on the market until 1993. The increased complexity of Intel's CPUs made the reverse-engineering process more difficult: Intel's 486 had 1.18 million transistors, and the original Intel Pentium chip had 3.1 million in 1993. The Pentium line quickly grew more complex, leading to the 5.5 million transistor Pentium Pro in 1995 and the 7.5 million transistor Pentium II in 1997. Compared to the 134,000 transistors in the 286, these were enormously difficult chips to replicate, and though AMD sold millions of its versions through aggressive pricing, the strategy wasn't viable in the long term.

Buying ATI a few years back nearly did them in with all the debt they took on, but I think now it's paying off. In fact, AMD is eating Intel's lunch in graphics. Intel recently licensed AMD graphics to use with their chips.

Intel isn't in the Graphics business. So what's AMD eating? A brown bag full of nothing is what. Intel graphics were and still are and will continue to be for at least another 20 years (Patent Wise) from NVIDIA. Intel pays NVIDIA for each chip they make that has NVIDIA's IP tech inside.
Intel's Licensing Agreement With Nvidia Will Continue Well Beyond 2017

The deal between Intel and AMD is still just a rumor anyways. But even if true, it's not hurting Intel! Lol. It's HELPING Intel as they will get a Video/CPU SOC for cheaper which equates to cheaper CPU's for Intel.

So how was it that AMD has not been competitive?

For the last ~15 years AMD has been in the hole without a product that competes on anything but initial cost and there was ZERO innovation until ~6 months ago. 15 freaking years dude. That's how AMD has not been competitive! How much more proof pudding do you need? 25 years of non-competition finally = "not been competitive"?

 

[coffee]

For the last ~15 years AMD has been in the hole without a product that competes on anything but initial cost and there was ZERO innovation until ~6 months ago. 15 freaking years dude. That's how AMD has not been competitive! How much more proof pudding do you need? 25 years of non-competition finally = "not been competitive"?

Ill chime in here. But I want to go over something that everyone seems to be missing.

Every time someone responds to "AMD making a come back" they are making some basic mistakes. Not in logic but in a business sense.

1. Its not how fast the processor is. Its at what price. The Athlon came close to performance but at a much cheaper price. Thats what sold it. For the same reason thats why we have really cheap laptops (299 vs 1000). The majority of sales are in the lower to mid range for electronics. The buyers that want the high end are a much smaller crowd. You make more money on the low end and middle ground. Thats where AMD is aiming.

2. AMD is not the same company before 2014. Much has changed but everyone keeps comparing them to their old history. The old history has no bearing on todays AMD.

As a side note, Intel has come out with the new "Crabby Lake" processor. This is just a "Old processor" clocked higher. No real improvements for graphics or anything like that. This is what they are pushing up against the Ryzen. The Ryzen, If it even comes close to performance will be a win because of the price point. Its going to be half of what intel wants.

Keep in mind also that all engineering benchmarkings are the 1700 model. The 1800 has not been benchmarked as far as I know of. The 1700 comes close enough to Intel - keep in mind the price difference too.

 

[phaZed]

1. Its not how fast the processor is. Its at what price. The Athlon came close to performance but at a much cheaper price. Thats what sold it. For the same reason thats why we have really cheap laptops (299 vs 1000). The majority of sales are in the lower to mid range for electronics. The buyers that want the high end are a much smaller crowd. You make more money on the low end and middle ground. Thats where AMD is aiming.

So, then business as usual for AMD? That was their strategy all along, capture the low-end market and price cut everything. How's that worked out so far?
I don't believe that the majority of sales are in the lower range... maybe the mid to high range, but not low range. I stand to be corrected and have searched for some comparison of sales of low vs high end computers but came up with nothing. I base my assumption that low end sales are not leading because:
2015 - https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS40909316

2016 - http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3474218

In those you will see that the "leading cheap manufacturers" Acer and Asus are at the bottom of the list. If what you say is true, "The majority of sales are in the lower to mid range for electronics" - well, those sales figures don't seem to back your claim.

Also, when looking at only processors as a sales benchmark why did Intel's flagship Core i7-6700K's dominate Newegg sales?

Intel Core i7-6700K dominated CPU sales for Newegg B2B customers in the first half of 2016. It outsold the next most popular desktop processor, a Haswell Intel Core i5, more than four times over in sales volume.

https://blog.neweggbusiness.com/components/10-best-selling-cpus-2016-first-half/

Well, I guess price didn't matter after all. Where are all of those cheap AMD's that must sell better because they are cheaper and "Its not how fast the processor is, Its at what price."? Hmm.

Once again, there's this:
http://wccftech.com/intel-sells-most-cpus-this-quarter/

Additionally, the world’s leading processor maker also mentioned that desktop platform volumes were up 8 percent, and desktop platform average selling prices were up 2 percent compared to Q2, 2014. Coming to the notebook segment, platform volumes were up 9 percent, while notebook platform average selling prices were down 7 percent compared to Q2, 2013. Compared to Q2, 2014, PC client group’s revenue was up 9 percent, with platform volumes up 12 percent, and platform average selling prices down 3 percent.

The date center group was able to generate a revenue of $3.5 billion USD, up 19 percent compared to the Q2, 2014. With Windows 10 PCs and tablets gearing up to be released as soon as the platform has been officially, Intel will be looking at yet another revenue generating stream, particularly when it comes to Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4 slate, which will be running Intel’s Skylake processors.

So, I'm gonna hazard a guess and say that low priced, low performance options from AMD are not in demand and that your thesis is flawed.

2. AMD is not the same company before 2014. Much has changed but everyone keeps comparing them to their old history. The old history has no bearing on todays AMD.

And yet today's AMD has no History, Present, or Future... are we supposed to base the title "AMD RX-480 and ZEN - AMD's come back move" on purely nothing then? "Come back move" would imply that there is a past to come back from.

As a side note, Intel has come out with the new "Crabby Lake" processor. This is just a "Old processor" clocked higher. No real improvements for graphics or anything like that. This is what they are pushing up against the Ryzen.

I think you are missing how business works. Why would Intel push out something that truly competes with Ryzen until Ryzen actually comes out and we know what it can really do? You would hold those cards close to your chest and release a competing product after you know the bar you need to rise to. Intel can say whatever they want right now as to what is going to "go against" Ryzen.
Now, what I do know is that most desktop tech comes from server tech and Intel has plenty of goodness in their server lines that can filter into the Desktop CPU's at will. Look at the Xeon E7 and Phi - AI and all that kind of stuff that AMD is now talking about was already coming out of fabs at Intel 2015-2016. Will AMD supersede Intel in these areas regardless? Maybe, maybe not.

It's getting tiresome hearing how Intel doesn't innovate and makes these small improvement releases. Yes, Kaby Lake isn't a revolution - it wasn't supposed to be. It was never touted as that. A 12-19% performance improvement from just minor tweaks and whatnot is still nothing to sneeze at, I mean, it's a good thing we haven't been waiting for the last 15 years for AMD to come out with something revolutionary or something other than mediocre/incremental.... Shall we go back to 2003? Seems to me that Intel has been the only innovator for more than a decade.

The Ryzen, If it even comes close to performance will be a win because of the price point. Its going to be half of what intel wants.

I suppose it's impossible that Intel can't change their own prices. I hope they don't or else there could be trouble, overnight, for AMD.


So, let us put away the pom-poms until we actually know something. Let us keep in mind that even if Ryzen is fully awesome and competes with Intel 6900K's, all Intel has to do is change the price by $300-400. AMD has a hard road to climb and a lot to prove.

As I have said before, I hope that AMD does shove a big phallic object into Intel with the release of Ryzen - I'm all for it. But what I'm not going to do is espouse falsehoods and rumor as fact before release. I am also not going to discount the fact a lot can happen on both AMD's and Intel's side, good and bad. I'm also not going to take AMD's 'word' on Ryzen (Bulldozer anyone?). I'm also not discounting history before there is something to replace it.

So please, I'm trying to be reasonable and logical about the outcome of this tech event - it is not to be construed as being in opposition to AMD (or you guys here in TN) or fanboying for Intel... It's, what I feel to be, a logical and cautious approach to the whole ordeal.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

I'm sorry, my mistake, some of my timeline may have been off. Here's a thread from tomshardware that talks more about when AMD had a lead.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/301758-28-looking-abridged-history-intel

I think this thread dates to 2011 keep in mind, but here's part of what one guy said.

"AMD took lead for the first time with the K7 (Athlon) which was better clock per clock than the Pentium 3 and scaled better to higher speeds. AMD reached 1Ghz first and the P3 was having a hard time past 1GHz. Intel Introduced the P4 and even though it had crappier IPC than the K7 it was made to get to real high speeds and basically beak the K7 that way. I mean really, it took a 3.2C Pentium 4 to definitively beat a 2.2GHz Athlon 3200+, a whole extra Gigahertz.

Finally AMD released the K8 Athlon 64, which we've been basically using since. At it's heart the Phenom II still has roots in the original Athlon 64 design. It pretty much crushed the P4 especially as the P4 started to hit thermal limits running at 3.8Ghz single core (3.73 EE dual core) running at over 90C. While AMD made a true dual core CPU (the athlon X2) while dual core P4s were basically two P4 dies on the same package, which did have advantages as far as yields for those high clock speeds.

Finally Intel released the Core 2 Duo which ditched the P4 netburst architecture in favor of one that had it's roots in the old Pentium Pro architecture released back in the late 90s. You can thank the Israeli team for keeping the pro architecture alive. From there I'm sure you know the more recent history and now AMD pins it's hopes on Bulldozer to be another K8 (to be the fastest), or at least K7 (to compete and hopefully scale better and last longer)"

Read through that though, it's a bit interesting. Does intel have the current performance crown now? For sure. But to me, the AMD is a better value if it comes close and saves enough money.

 

[brandonkick]

Lets not steer this towards a pissing match between camps... that is only going to get this
thread locked.

I've said it enough times, that I could care less what brand of anything I use. AMD hasn't
been as relevant because even though they were providing "value" oriented options before
where the cost was a lot lower, the performance of said options were a lot lower as well.

IF the expectations come to fruition, the 1700X CPU trades blows very well with Intel's
$1000 + offerings. A near $400 CPU isn't exactly in the value market so to speak, but at less
than half the cost of something like a 6900K I really don't know why anyone would pick the
offering that is $600 more expensive. That's what was missing before. A processor that is
less than half the price, and offers half or less the performance is not a big deal. One that is
less than half the price and is just about as powerful IS a big deal.

What I'm really interested in is the cheapest 95W offering which "SHOULD" be about $260.
If they can get 3.9ghz out of a chip with a 65W TDP, then 5GHZ + should not be unreasonable
on a 95W TDP chip with some good aftermarket cooling. If I were to go with Ryzen when I
rebuild my machine next... There are some very decent 3x120 mm water cooling closed loop
systems out there that offer killer cooling performance. I would love to see what these chips
can do, using the "auto overclock" xfr functionality when paired with aggressive water cooling.

But again, if Intel were willing to play ball and slash prices.. I may just stay with Intel. All depends
on which camp makes my dollar go further.

 

[phaZed]

Well, we'll see eh?

Shares of AMD fall after gaming performance of new processors disappoints

AMD stock sell-off sparks surge in options trading - shares sliding for second straight session

I Was Wrong About AMD's Ryzen

AMD: Ryzen Doesn't Quite Live Up To The Hype

Not the chart you want on launch day:

 

[coffee]

Retailers are just starting to restock now. Most all motherboards are sold out.

AMD stock has a high beta and it swings wildly. Im not worried a bit. Really. When first quarter earnings are announced its going to be a really nice run. It will recover probably before that too.

AMD provided over 1 Million chips for the release date and they all sold out. The Motherboards for the Ryzen are still sold out in a lot of places.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_...yzen+mother,electronics,227&crid=6P1V0T352R31

This pull back is temporary and the stock will go even higher. Just remember - We still have the release of Vega chipset, Server chips to go this year.

AMD's agreement with Global Foundries states that if they cannot keep up with demand then the further demand will be made up for from other foundries. So, There is no problem keeping up with demand.

Lisa Su in her address today at the convention said that as software starts to be tweeked towards the Ryzen and the video chipsets there will be additional performance boosts.

and lastly, Stocks do not go straight up. What drives stocks is emotion.

 

[phaZed]

Ah well, catch me over in BTCUSD where I just quadrupled my $2000 investment in 12 months. BTC hit parity with gold so I expect it will fall back a bit and I'll buy back in and day trade.

I'll wait on AMD and let it stabilize (news wise/emotion wise/sales wise) and buy in on the lower 1/3 of the up swing if it goes that way.

 

[Diggs]

Real-world programs/tests/results seem to be middle of the road to almost disappointing for the Ryzen so far -

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3176...ming-pc-or-why-you-should-never-preorder.html

 

[coffee]

Real-world programs/tests/results seem to be middle of the road to almost disappointing for the Ryzen so far -

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3176...ming-pc-or-why-you-should-never-preorder.html

suppose they are if you want to play games all day on unoptimized software. Especially since its optimized for intel.

 

[Diggs]

suppose they are if you want to play games all day on unoptimized software. Especially since its optimized for intel.

That IS the target market ? That's all they care about (7 million copies of Titanfall sold, 14 million sold of Mass Effect, etc.) which is why they are now working to seed developer kits and work with the developers. The gamers have the numbers, are willing to pay and most aren't that brand picky.......

 

[phaZed]

This looks ominous:
http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2...der-sale-as-ryzen-launch-meets-mixed-reviews/

Filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sometimes contain information that shareholders need to know about. A filing with the SEC on Friday showed that Mubadala Development Company PJSC registered to sell some 45 million shares of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD).

The form 144 filing showed that these shares, which were held through West Coast Hitech, date back to 2007. What matters here is that this stake sale was from the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, and Reuters had noted that the Abu Dhabi investment fund will retain 97 million shares. Subsequent SEC filings show that stake to be just over 96.9 million shares. The date of the sale was listed as March 3, 2017, via Goldman Sachs, and the price per share was listed as block sale at $13.63 in a subsequent 13D filing.

While AMD share price has been an exponential gainer over the past 12 months or so, this was listed as a stake sale worth more than $613 million. Even for a $12 billion market cap, that is a substantial stake.

Mubadala is an investment and development company that was designed to support the growth of the economy of the United Arab Emirates. The company deploys capital in multiple sectors, and its interactive portfolio shows a 100% ownership in GlobalFoundries.

 

[coffee]

That IS the target market ? That's all they care about (7 million copies of Titanfall sold, 14 million sold of Mass Effect, etc.) which is why they are now working to seed developer kits and work with the developers. The gamers have the numbers, are willing to pay and most aren't that brand picky.......

The gamers were looking at this as an alternative to Intel. While it does perform ok, It does not really beat Intel in every game. This is because the Ryzen is a totally new design and games are not optimized for it like they are for Intel chips. Intel has had over 10 years of code optimization. So, As the code becomes more optimized for new features in the Ryzen chip you will see a lot better benchmarks.

Now, As I have been reading - Basically in single core operations the Ryzen will be just shy in performance of Intel. However, In software that uses multicore processing it does a very good job. Its a toss up right now as Intel is good at some things and Ryzen is better in others. IMHO, A brand new processor design that comes very close or better against an Intel chip is a big win for AMD. Just wait until bios on MB's, Drivers, and microcode is optimized. Then it will become a lot more apparent that Ryzen should beat Intel. At least be extremely competitive to the point that you really do not notice the difference.

If anything, I cannot understand anyone bashing AMD. After all, Even if your a Intel fanboy you get to enjoy better prices curtsey of AMD.

As for the stock dropping - Yes, The large investor drop out did some damage. But I think they were planning this no matter what. There was no big catalyst that pushed them to do it.

IMHO, The first quarter earnings report is going to be absolutely stellar! I have kept track of the availability of Ryzen Chips at Newegg and Amazon. As soon as the release date hit they all sold out immediately. This was due to all the pre-orders. All MB's of course sold out too. Now, They got a restock from AMD and then Totally sold out again. Now there is a bit more stock. All the AM4 MB's are still all sold out. The restock date on a lot of them is 3/8. Now, As far as MB's go - They still have a lot of pre-orders to fill. So, I bet when the MB's do arrive they will immediately sell out again.

There is also a rumor that Apple is considering Ryzen in there new MacBook Pros.

In a few months or so AMD will be releasing:

1. Vega Chipset
2. Server Processors
3. Ryzen 5 processors

Also IMHO, Intel dropping their processor prices is total validation of AMD's performance.

Keep in mind, I am not a gamer. The closest I come to playing games is Warzone2100. I do not play any modern games. I bought the Ryzen because for me, It beats any Intel desktop processor in both price and performance. This shows in compiling a kernel. True, You probably will never compile a linux kernel but what to take from this is of course that running linux with a Ryzen is going to be faster and cheaper than running a Intel processor.

 

[brandonkick]

TL;DR

It's early. Hardware vendors need time to optimize, software needs time to "mature" around Rzyen.

Is it a little disappointing that it "performed so poorly" in the gaming tests? A little, yeah. Is it a huge
difference... no. For right now, if you only care about gaming performance, then yeah Ryzen is a bit
of a hard sell. If you do anything else, especially work with multi threaded apps... Ryzen is a great
option.

I don't know why, but there is a lot of hate towards AMD's new chips. I even wonder if it would have
been received much better if it had flat out beat similar Intel offerings in all aspects? It's strange.....
At any rate, I think in the coming months things will start getting better.

Perhaps AMD's "aim" was a bit off. This chip screams workstation / server type application to me.
Video / Audio work, heavily threaded stuff that really benefits from extra physical cores. Seems that
this demographic just isn't that large, as all I've been seeing and reading about is how "bad" AMD's
new chips perform in gaming benchmarks.

 

[MDD1963]

If we thought 8 Ryzen cores might do nicely in server applications, certainly 32 cores X2 (in a 2 socket build)might be nice, too! (Perhaps this will drop Intel's pricing on it's latest $8900+ Xeons?)

https://www.servethehome.com/amd-naples-competition-re-ignites-zen-hits-server-market/

 

[ohio_grad_06]

This could be part of the issues as well.

http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-performance-negatively-affected-windows-10-scheduler-bug/

 

[phaZed]

Necromancing this thread after 6 months. AMD stock is not doing well, as I predicted. *pats self on back shamelessly*

So please, I'm trying to be reasonable and logical about the outcome of this tech event - it is not to be construed as being in opposition to AMD (or you guys here in TN) or fanboying for Intel... It's, what I feel to be, a logical and cautious approach to the whole ordeal.

Turns out that was the right move so far.

AMD stock has a high beta and it swings wildly. Im not worried a bit. Really. When first quarter earnings are announced its going to be a really nice run. It will recover probably before that too.

1Q earnings were negative, losing $0.08 a share. Still operating the company at a loss. Stock never recovered even after the VEGA launch which has been a disaster. The stock has 'double-topped' indicating a strong correction towards the downside - which is supported by other TA (Trade Analysis) indicators. The stock has just now broken the 6-month upwards trend line and is now following down. I expect a ~$10 price by the end of the year unless something amazing happens during Christmas (Doubt it, but possible I guess).

AMD's agreement with Global Foundries states that if they cannot keep up with demand then the further demand will be made up for from other foundries. So, There is no problem keeping up with demand.

Well, that turned out to be irrelevant. They may have a stockpile of CPU's but because they kept MB manufacturer's in the dark until the last minute and farted around, the end result is the same as having a shortage of CPU's.

Now, with VEGA, you can't get one and they deceptively raised the price $100 on people as they released the cards to reviewers with the tagged, "lower price", to get a better 'Price vs. Performance' rank in said reviews. So while reviewers initially rated VEGA as a good buy for the money, with the extra price, it really doesn't make sense.
AMD keeps blaming cryptominers for the shortage. No way. It's a failure of AMD - anyway you slice it. They should have seen that problem before release with a card that can do 2x compute performance, but they dropped the ball at the most critical time. They act like they don't need the money, lol!

Better get out on the day of release or the day after.. taking a chance on a pump-n-dump once it actually comes out.

Turns out, that was the perfect move as it dumped and never really recovered.

Ah well, catch me over in BTCUSD where I just quadrupled my $2000 investment in 12 months.

Yep, so in the last 6 months Bitcoin has quadrupled, again! March 6th it was $1250. Today, it's $4606! I made almost $28,000 in 18 months, WOOHOO! I'll be sticking with BTC as it's poised to jump to $6000-$6600 in the next 3-4 months! GET IN NOW! ETH and XMR are good buys, too.

 

[coffee]

Im doing very well with AMD stock. AMD is doing very well with their processors and video too. In fact, They are sold out everywhere for the vega video cards.

Also: https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcoc...xt-generation-elitedesk-systems/#18704fe4587e

I got back into the stock at 12 after taking profits before the decline. Now I am up another .70+ / share.

Just wait for Q3 which will be a great ER.

 

[brandonkick]

Just bought and put together an R7 1700x system. Got the chip for $300 on Amazon daily deal.

As I've said before, even if the best thing the Ryzen / Threadripper chips do are to make Intel
play ball..... EVERYONE is better off. Do I give two flying craps that I could be gaming at 115 FPS
with a 7700K vs my R7 chip at 100 FPS? No.. not at all. I'm far past the days where numbers and
benchmarks are king and are used in a wiener measuring contest. All I care about is that this is
the cheapest of the 3 systems I've built for personal usage, and by far the fastest. The SSD has a
lot to do with that, but this chip hands down trounces the relative power of the Opteron 165 I had
12 years ago, and the i7 930 I had 7 years ago.

Do I care that my comcast is currently able to downstream at over 220 Mbps ? Heck no. I'm acutally
in the process of cutting that back and lowering my cable bill, because I'd rather have the extra $20
a month in my pocket since the "advantage" of the higher speed does me no noticeable good.

Before Ryzen came out, the 7700K was nearly $400. Seems to be a bit cheaper these days... imagine that.


Now I haven't been following the GPU stuff, since prices (on both camps) have been somewhat nuts
lately. Vega does seem to have left a bit of a foul taste behind, at least for now.