Probably looking at 9xxx parts if you're looking for an actual upgrade over 7xxx. AMD recently announced 8xxx would be "OEM-only" rebrands, but I suspect they will trickle down into the retail market as well and replace the current 7xxx line-up.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6570/amds-annual-gpu...

I doubt we will see Sea Islands in the next quarter or so, if Sea Island launch was imminent I think AMD could've convinced their OEM partners to hold off.

We will probably know more in a month or two as rumor has it Nvidia is gearing up to launch their Kepler refresh headlined by the long-awaited BigK (GK110). If AMD isn't ready to counter with actual product, I'm sure we'll start seeing leaked specs instead.

AMD announced the OEM 8xxx parts, not the retail ones. There will be a non-OEM 8xxx series launch, the higher up models being based on GCN2. From what I've heard, and it could be wrong, the OEM parts were launched a couple of weeks back and the retail parts will arrive in Q2. The new codenames on the desktop are Oland (85xx and 86xx), Bonaire (87xx), Hainan (88xx) and Curaçao (89xx) if the following link is to be believed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_gra...

It's certainly possible AMD names the next-gen Sea Island parts 8xxx, but I highly doubt it. That would only cause significantly more confusion in the market to have completely different ASICs behind the same-named OEM and retail parts.

Maybe if the 8xxx was mobile-only would this possibly make sense to have different ASICs behind the same SKUs since this occurs now, but the 8xxx rebrand is top-to-bottom and both desktop and mobile on the OEM-side.

I think it's much more likely that we see a full re-brand on the OEM side for 8xxx, a partial re-brand on the retail side. Then with Sea Islands, a jump up to 9xxx on the retail side with the OEM side following shortly after.

"That would only cause significantly more confusion in the market to have completely different ASICs behind the same-named OEM and retail parts."

You must not have been paying much attention to the graphics market the last years, they've done this many times before.

"they've done this many times before"

Uh, no they have not.

OEM in the past has just used retail SKUs in *addition* to some OEM-specific SKUs (ie. GTX 555, LE or SE parts). The exception has been in the mobile space where "M" parts are almost always a different SKU than the desktop counterpart for obvious TDP reasons.

But there has NEVER been a time where the OEM lineup top-to-bottom has used the same product numbers on a completely different ASIC as the desktop counterparts. I doubt that this will change with OEM using 8xxx series numbering with older Southern Islands parts and the desktop parts using the same 8xxx series numbering but Sea Islands chips. That's pretty much the only way AMD could make this situation more embarassing, anyways.

This is what happens when fanboys are also extreme tightwads and scream for years best bang for the bucks, whilst worshipping the company as "good above all !"

It sends their master to the poorhouse, because the millions of amd penny pinching lying tightwads took it down.

It's too late for the amd fanboys to "start putting their money where their mouth has been".

When AMD was performance competitive or ahead of Intel, their pricing was accordingly.

After Core hit, AMD could only compete on price and they did. For a couple of years. Until they'd fallen so far behind, that even price couldn't help them anymore.

Nothing to do with "fanboys", you fanboy.

Wrong you are, blind and angry, likely guilty, hence the denial.

You're both right in some respects, imo.

When AMD had the performance crown for long periods while Intel and Nvidia stumbled, they charged a premium for their products (Athlon 64 and 9800Pro to X1950XTX). So there was certainly a time AMD/ATI products commanded hefty price premiums.

The problem on the CPU side has been obvious. Ever since Core 2 launched, AMD has been running a performance deficit and could never compete in performance so they were forced to compete on price.

The problem on the GPU side has been less obvious, because AMD has been for the most part, very competitive in terms of performance. AMD's mistake, imo, was their pricing of the HD4850/4870, something I've been very critical of. The 4870 was very competitive with the much pricier GTX 260/280, and despite launching after the 280, AMD cut Nvidia's pricing by more than half.

AMD claimed they had to price it so low to regain market share after the failed HD 2900 and 3800 series, but they priced the 4870 so low that made AMD GPUs synonymous with value brand. Since then, they've never been able to recover from this price mistake, as subsequent generations have been good improvements but not enough to justify the type of premium to significantly shift the pricing structure set by the 4870. Making it even harder is the fact Nvidia has generally held the single-GPU crown in each generation since.

All you have to do is look at AMD's recent attempts to jump up their pricing with the 7970 to see what the 4870 did to their long-term outlook.

We've all been hoping for recovery for 6 years now. Hasn't happened. Won't happen.

Phenom was a little behind, Bulldozer is lot behind. The trajectory is clear. Turning things around doesn't get easier when you're in all kinds of financial troube and have to split the company up five ways and sell for parts.
I think AMD is only kept alive to figure out what to do with "ATI".

I mixed AMD and Intel between '95 and '99, went AMD exclusive between '99 and '06. Haven't even considered them for my own machines since then. Last time I used AMD in a build for someone else was in 2010.

Sad story this.

OTOH Intel has been pricing their stuff decently in the absence of competition. Their 200$ parts are worth the money, I think.

That's a good point, but the Wii U hasn't sold huge quantities yet, and the xbox 720 and ps4 don't exist yet - if those do turn out to sell like hotcakes, then I agree, that could be very good for AMD.

They were already in 2 of the 3 seventh generation consoles. Unless Durango sells in huge numbers on day one, I don't think it will really help in terms of quarterly reports, just more long term steady revenue.

It won't matter, the GPU licensing agreements AMD has for their console chip designs pays them peanuts, pennies per console sold. It's similar to ARM's licensing of their chips, the main difference is ARM sells a lot more chips but also has a lot less overhead and operating costs. But in the big picture, ARM is still a tiny company in terms of overall revenue, a couple dozen million in revenue per quarter is not even going to be a blip on AMD's financials and certainly not enough to pull them out of the red.

I suspect that's why Intel and Nvidia haven't cared too much about getting their ASICs into the next-gen consoles, there's simply no money in it. It's like giving away the tech for free, and in some cases, directly supporting indirect competitors.

I forget the exact numbers but last I checked it was pretty insignificant. Ryan or some other interested party might be able to pull them out of the financials but I believe in years past AMD made ~20M annually on their XBox 360 liensing fees. Double, even triple that and it's still not going to make much dent in that operating deficit.

Yeah, I think it's clear that the ATI part is the one that will survive, the CPU division needs to go.

ATI must also love that AMD execs sold off Imageon, the company's handheld chip, to Qualcomm. They call it the Adreno.

AMD must be the worst managed company in IT. The engineering dept. clearly was industry competitive, but the suits always made the wrong decisions.
Both ATI and AMD would probably be better off today if the companies had stayed seperated. All the time and money that was wasted on that merger...

Yeah it's really amazing what happened with some of the mistakes AMD made, SnapDragon/Adreno one of many. It's no wonder many in AMD's graphics division are making a mass exodus to Qualcomm.

I agree the merger was a huge waste of time and money and while ATI may be the only division in AMD worth anything at this point, it's really the biggest reason for AMD's problems, a point that's typically overlooked.

AMD paid 6B for ATI when they merged, many at the time thought they overpaid, and that's clearly the case today as AMD's graphics division while outperforming the rest of the company is still clearly underperforming it's price expectations. 300-500M in revenue and <25M in profit per quarter simply does not justify a $6B acquisition price. The interest and hefty write-offs attached to the acquisition alone attest to this fact.

If and when AMD spins off ATI for peanuts (maybe even to Qualcomm, how ironic), it will be a drop in value of historical proportions.

And?

It won't make any difference if they follow the same licensing for the Xbox 360 GPU. AMD didn't manufacture the GPU's for MS, rather they sold the design and allowed MS to shop around for suppliers. Similarly MS got the same deal from IBM for the CPU. Hence MS was not burdened by a vendor who refused to shrink their designs to lower component prices like what happened with the original Xbox (*cough* Intel *cough* nVidia *cough*). This was a one time deal and not something AMD received continual revenue overtime. On that note, reading through MS recently quarterly report you can see some deferred items for the Home and Entertainment division. This my hint that MS hasn't yet paid AMD for next gen parts so it isn't entirely doom and gloom.

The only restriction I can see to his arrangement is if MS and/or Sony went with an x86 CPU. Due to the Intel/AMD cross license, there are some restrictions on who has access to x86 IP. While AMD has sold their fabs, they will likely have a say in where the console chip is manufactured. Being x86 also means that MS and/or Sony cannot purchase the design whole sale like MS did with the Xbox 360's GPU. Though I'm under the impression and contrary to recent rumors that AMD is sticking with PowerPC due to the desire for backwards compatibility.

Richland is just Llano, it's the same chip and chipset. It's just a revision and it's an existing 32nm product.

It isn't just Llano, in fact it isn't even just Trinity. As I understood it will integrate GCN with Piledriver.

Sorry, of course I meant to write Trinity. No there is no indication that it will include GCN. Second generation DX11 is what Trinity (VLIW4) already has. All AMD documents says only this. New chipset and some new software is what Richland is. See it as a platform, the silicon is just a minor revision.

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