News - AMD sued by investors as Llano APU made a whimper not a bang

[HEXUS]

Stock purchasers say AMD made “false and misleading” statements about Llano prospects.

Read more.

[Smikis]

you would think that investors would know that no-one give a **** about apus, I really dont get the market for it and drive towards them. This "media" centre nonsense is so 2005 and even those noone made pc just for that. Now just take any mobile device and plug it into big screen= same
Those Apu`s cant play game anyway, sure they can run them, but thats different

[crossy]

Do readers think AMD wilfully mislead investors/the public or was just overly optimistic about its new APUs in the face of the PC market downturn at that time?

I'd say it was definitely a case of the latter - and let's be honest, AMD aren't the only tech company to get burnt by the downturn in the PC market.

As to this case - if there's anything to it then shouldn't the SEC be investigating with a view to a federal prosecution. Otherwise this looks like sour grapes by a load of greedy b's who figured on making a killing and then got a rude reminder that the stocks can go down as well as up.

[crossy]

you would think that investors would know that no-one give a **** about apus, I really dont get the market for it and drive towards them. This "media" centre nonsense is so 2005 and even those noone made pc just for that. Now just take any mobile device and plug it into big screen= same
Those Apu`s cant play game anyway, sure they can run them, but thats different

Sorry that's just wrong.

1. APU's are a great solution for system builders who need to target the lower end of the price bracket. So you get your cpu and gpu in a single SKU, while still offering the opportunity for a discrete graphics card if you need it later. Where I have a difference of opinion with AMD is that they seem to want to focus on APU's only, so no fancy new AMD processor to replace the FX's;

2. Media centre's "nonsense"? I think there's a LOT of folks on Hexus that have built MC's or HTPC's so that statement doesn't hold water. Heck, talking to a colleague last week and he's just built a second MC for his kids;

3. APU's can't play games? Hexus beg to differ AMD A8-7600, Benchmarks: Gaming "The graphically-heavy BioShock Infinite is run at medium-quality settings. Smooth at 720p but becoming a little choppy at the full-HD resolution" and "GRID 2 looks rather nice at high-quality settings, used in the benchmark above. ... What's more important is the knowledge that the game is nice and playable at 1080p.". Sure, I wouldn't like to throw BF4 at it (although maybe Mantle might make a difference?), and this is definitely a no-Crysis zone;

4. Mobile device+tv = APU for gaming? Arguable. After all, there's some mobile games that are pretty spectacular, (Deadtrigger2 etc). On the other hand the APU has access to the massive armada of Windows (and Linux?) games.

The gaming issue I really think it depends on what you're running. From what I've seen the midrange APU's are slightly better than the typical gaming tablet, while still able to access that wealth of titles. And of course, you can always shoot off to the shop and put in a low or mid-range graphics card (R9 270, 280?) and get something pretty decent.

Like you, I'd prefer a discrete processor and graphics card, but there's an A6 powered desktop in the house and that seems to do pretty well on the price/performance stakes. So I'm willing to admit that there's definitely a niche for APU's. Especially as more and more folks seem to buy these AIO PC's - in which case there's usually not the space/budget for a discrete graphics card. In that usage, what's the alternatives if you need to run Windows? As far as I can tell it's Intel's IGP, which seem to be better on the compute, but the AMD APU pull back a big lead in the graphics side.

[scaryjim]

Those Apu`s cant play game anyway, sure they can run them, but thats different

Funny, my review of the A6-3670k would beg to differ. Skyrim's very playable at 1080p low details on an A6-3670k - 24fps may not sound much, but in a third person RPG it's enough. Torchlight screams along at around 60fps with max IQ, and Torchlight is a hugely popular game. Dungeon Siege 3 runs nicely on it too, as does XCOM. Not everyone needs 60+fps with all the eye candy turned up to enjoy a game, you know... That machine was built specifically for media duties and occasional gaming, and an APU fits the bill perfectly - even a 3 generation old Llano APU (you know, the one the investors are actually complaining about). I'd love to see you play XCOM on a smartphone, I really would....

[eatonm62]

APUs are not for the type of PC gamer who wants something special, but they are good for getting new gamers onto the PC platform on a budget.

[mudpie]

APUs are for laptops/notebooks. I would not buy one for my desktop.
But for people that just surf the web and watch movies, it's ok I guess. Question is, why not buy Intel for the same purposes? Cause it runs marginally better 3D games? Marginally better is not enough for me.
I think, in due time, Intel will catch up in the graphics department. I don't want them to, but they will. Then what will AMD do?

[sirtrouserpress]

Frankly my Llano A6 has been a life saver in may situations and I don't see how APU's seem to get such a bad rep. As I student I can't afford a powerful processor but I knew I wanted a quad core (WIN), I was also working on a budget and wanted maximum graphic potential for around £60 (back in 2012). So I got a 6670 that crossfired with the APU's on chip graphics giving me the graphics potential of a much more powerful card.
At a later date, still being a student and all, I needed to upgrade, but ideally I needed to sell my 6670 to help fund this new graphics upgrade however with an APU in the system I could still play, admittedly on quite reduced quality, some great games, even the likes of ARMA II! Come the graphics upgrade I decided to overclock (from 2.7 GHz, to 3.2 GHz) the little APU and it still offers me great performance and it cost me only £65ish, possible my most wise purchase in a long while...

[scaryjim]

... I think, in due time, Intel will catch up in the graphics department. ...

Everyone said that about GT3e (Iris Pro), but once you step up to a decent resolution and image quality, Iris Pro falls behind AMD's latest APUs by a margin - even the cheapest version. And processors with Iris Pro cost hundreds of dollars and can't be upgraded - they only come soldered on to motherboards, not in a traditional socket. Intel's stopped improving its mainstream processor graphics to concentrate on mobile - just like AMD - and in lower TDP settings they can't clock their graphics high enough to compete (if you read the reviews you'll notice that the GPU clock speed for Kaveri doesn't change when you go from 95W to 45W, which means kaveri laptops should have very similar graphics performance to Kaveri desktops...).

And if Intel do catch up in graphics? Firstly, AMD will benefit a lot more from the shift to DDR4 in the next couple of years, and secondly AMD can just throw more silicon at it. Their die size is the same as quad core GT3. The Iris Pro implementations - which are still slower than Kaveri at real world game settings - add a big slice of off-chip DRAM cache to that - and so are hugely expensive. GT3 without the DRAM cache is (afaik, anyway) just plain slower than AMDs APUs. Graphics isn't AMDs worry.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Frankly my Llano A6 has been a life saver in may situations and I don't see how APU's seem to get such a bad rep. As I student I can't afford a powerful processor but I knew I wanted a quad core (WIN), I was also working on a budget and wanted maximum graphic potential for around £60 (back in 2012). So I got a 6670 that crossfired with the APU's on chip graphics giving me the graphics potential of a much more powerful card.
At a later date, still being a student and all, I needed to upgrade, but ideally I needed to sell my 6670 to help fund this new graphics upgrade however with an APU in the system I could still play, admittedly on quite reduced quality, some great games, even the likes of ARMA II! Come the graphics upgrade I decided to overclock (from 2.7 GHz, to 3.2 GHz) the little APU and it still offers me great performance and it cost me only £65ish, possible my most wise purchase in a long while...

I was quite impressed with the A6 3670K I got in 2012:

http://forums.hexus.net/reader-revie...ml#post2548989

Like you said it was only around £60 to £70 at the time too. Its know nicely ticking over in a relatives PC.

BTW,I actually tested the A6 3670K with an HD5850,and it didn't do too badly TBH.

The A8 5600K is around the same price now and ups CPU and GPU performance a decent amount too.

[Smikis]

some valid comments to my initial post ( wish i could edit all those typos ),
I said it ran run games, not be playable at, yes I saw those benchmarks, half of what you are pointing is new 2014 apus , not old 2012 which is discussed here, benchmarks in 1280 rez, can you say that you still run resolution that was used in 2002?, bioshock isnt heavy game to begin with, try any new games coming out, let a lone next console generation games.

I never said people were smart, building media centres, whats purpose of those, watching youtube and movies? **** get yourself tablet with a dock station and any random screen = same/cheaper/mobile

I am not against apus, I am again mindless push towards them, sure those are good in office and for people without a clue, but abandoning desktop market for a market that never took off and never will. Its that segment between performance and mobility, a desktop and a mobile device, its not what todays society wants or needs

But amd keep pushing for it, heck they pretty much dropped desktop market for next generation, but at least they dont put gpu into every cpu the way Intel does , why would you put gpu into performance oriented cpu, knowing that your market will never use it.. especially into K models

ps 24 fps in Skyrim is definitely not playable by any stretch of imagination, dungeon siege is 4~ years old title now? torchlight was always light title, and its been ran on tablets for a year, probably ran on mobiles as well, hardly proves any merit in those apus

Each its own, but writing off 100mln of stock, indicates that there are few others who share my opinion on apus and how useful they really are...

[Biscuit]

APUs are commonly found in mobile devices. Admittedly more the lower end of the market (which is a bit of a shame) but hopefully we will see this generation seep into some of the mid-high range devices and tablets.

[this_is_gav]

APUs need a successful open software platform to work where they best should - using the GPU portion to accelerate calculations otherwise done by the CPU. So many tasks, probably most notably video encoding or on-the-fly video editing, could benefit in a large way.

CUDA is all good and well, but only works for Nvidia, and to my knowledge is used for sod all (decent) video editing software, or to a very limited extent. I know Photoshop can use CUDA to apply some filters, but the speed benefits aren't as great as they should be (or even noticeable in my experience, though I only really use PS for photos).

We really need Premiere, After Effects and Vegas to have APUs at the heart of their code, and they won't while there is no suitable platform (and Adobe probably wouldn't anyway). If OpenCL really took off it could be brilliant, but it hasn't gained much traction in terms of software support from what I can see. Microsoft really should push it into DirectX to get the ball rolling on the Windows platform.

[acluacs]

Dear Sirs,
I bought into some marketing hype, please send me some money because I'm not rich enough already.
Thanks.
---
Yes, AMD were not completely honest. I don't understand why Americans don't have to be equally honest in the marketing of products as they are in marketing their shares.

[wasabi]

Remember taking a heap of flak from the fanboyz for saying APUs were bad for AMD on this forum. Seems some investors have the same idea.

[crossy]

some valid comments to my initial post ( wish i could edit all those typos ),

Log back in and there should be an "Edit Post" button to the left of the "Reply" button - job done! (Hope this helps)

I said it ran run games, not be playable at, yes I saw those benchmarks, half of what you are pointing is new 2014 apus , not old 2012 which is discussed here, benchmarks in 1280 rez, can you say that you still run resolution that was used in 2002?, bioshock isnt heavy game to begin with, try any new games coming out, let a lone next console generation games.

Bit of backtracking there? You said "APU's can't play games". LLano (dumb name) probably COULD play games of the time, but you'd have to accept either lower res or lower quality settings. I picked the 2014 APU merely because it was the review I had to hand - apologies if that was wrong of me. The reviews are at 720p and 1080p resolution - definitely not 1280x1024. Oh, and until two years ago my monitor could only do 1280 res.

I never said people were smart, building media centres, whats purpose of those, watching youtube and movies? **** get yourself tablet with a dock station and any random screen = same/cheaper/mobile

Sorry that doesn't wash either. More to a media centre than YT and movies. Heck, most relatively recent TV's can do that with a USB drive slapped in the side. It's not a big deal. But this is heading off topic, so I'm not going to say any more.

I am not against apus, I am again mindless push towards them, sure those are good in office and for people without a clue, but abandoning desktop market for a market that never took off and never will. Its that segment between performance and mobility, a desktop and a mobile device, its not what todays society wants or needs

For someone who'se "not against apus" you've got a darned strange way of showing it.
APU's for "people without a clue" - like Scaryjim, Cat-the-fifth, etc? No, didn't think so. Refer to that post by sirtrouserpress as an example of a smart usage case.
And no-one's saying that AMD HAVE abandoned the desktop market, we don't know. And to say that APU's will never take off is a dangerous prediction, one akin to the "tablets will remain a niche product" that I saw in an old magazine. If you know that APU's are doomed, then I'd suggest putting some cash into competing stocks.

Each its own, but writing off 100mln of stock, indicates that there are few others who share my opinion on apus and how useful they really are...

Each to their own ... totally agree. Some folks can make do with a tablet, others need a low-power desktop, others still need something with a lot more power. But you've misunderstood that bit in the article - it's not a US$100M write-off, it's a write down instead. Roughly speaking AMD have made - for example - $400M of chips (valued at launch prices) expecting to sell those to Lenovo, HP, Acer, Pac-Bell, Asus, etc. But the bust in desktop demand (due to the popularity of tablets?) has meant that the manufacturers have had to revise their production estimates downwards, so need less chips. So AMD sells $200M of those chips at full price, leaving $200M worth left. But those are now old processors (and reduced demand) so AMD decide that they can only sell at half price, so reduce the value of that stock from $200M to $100M. This is not to say that they can't sell them for more eventually, merely that AMD's assessed value of those chips sitting in a warehouse has now fallen by half.

And the reduction in demand for desktops is unarguable - check the press if you don't believe me (who works for one of the manufacturers I named above).