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*** AMD "Zen 4" thread (inc AM5/APU discussion) ***

4K8KW10 said:
Call me when AMD's products are so good that the OEMs buy only them. For now, it is not happening.
Yes, Ryzen 9 5950X is twice as fast as the Core i9-10900K but also doesn't cost the same but considerably more.
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What are on about? Why would you expect OEM's to shift to all AMD products? The point would be wanting parity with both companies. Not one much ahead of the other. And we all know the reason for the huge number of OEM Intel compared to AMD came from anti-competitive bribing in the first place forcing AMD in a situation they have been recovering from which ironically led them to where they are now with a great Zen product line-up.

In terms of prices, the 10900K OEM is selling around the £460 mark, the AMD 5950x at retail is £750. So you are getting 100% performance for 63% price increase. However you also have the options for the 5900x with it's 12 cores which still gives a hefty performance increase in performance whilst only being £80 more. Or if you look around some places have them on backorder for £525 at moment. I personally think for the price the 5900x is the clear winner out those two. And ironically even with 2 less cores the 5800x competes in the gaming performance just fine at £420 price point so you can have the same performance for £40 less than Intel currently.

Nothing Intel is releasing is looking to upset this balance either. You also brought up before about more cores from Intel, yeah and how much monies do you think the 16c24t Alder Lake is going to cost? It still only provides the same core count as AMD do currently but with less threads due to it's design setup on BIG-small chiplets, it would need to maintain it's high clock frequency (which they have come out suggesting already it wont) and also gain at least 20% IPC to be competitive still with AMD's next major CPU release if those leaks are correct. That is a tall order and looks like Alder Lake might well struggle with AMD's future release still.
 
humbug said:
Intel's long term debt is a ticking time bomb
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Not really, Intel is still very profitable, their balance sheet looks very good and they issue long-term debt to hoard cash because of the very accommodative interest rate climate of the past decade. This is something all profitable tech companies are doing. If AMD had the same credit rating that Intel does, they'd be doing the same. They'd be insane not to. But AMD's credit rating, which is getting better every year, is still BBB- (junk bond category), and a lot of their current debt is issued when they had a much worse credit rating, so it makes sense for them to buy those back using their extra cash to save in interest payments.
 
HACO said:
Not really, Intel is still very profitable, their balance sheet looks very good and they issue long-term debt to hoard cash because of the very accommodative interest rate climate of the past decade. This is something all profitable tech companies are doing. If AMD had the same credit rating that Intel does, they'd be doing the same. They'd be insane not to. But AMD's credit rating, which is getting better every year, is still BBB- (junk bond category), and a lot of their current debt is issued when they had a much worse credit rating, so it makes sense for them to buy those back using their extra cash to save in interest payments.
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You don't maintain 50% of your annual income of debt just because its cheap, if you don't need the money you don't borrow it. AMD were servicing that debt when they were making a quarter of what they are making now and their credit rating has improved since, they paid it off because they had enough money to do so and it is not a good idea to keep large amounts of long term debt hanging around your neck, no matter how cheap it is.

It the same argument both Labour and the Conservatives make, oh its cheap so lets keep borrowing, you know what's better? Not having large debts. If your economy shrinks you have to put taxes up, that's coming BTW, but its ok, we have a large debt that's cheap. :rolleyes:
 
humbug said:
You don't maintain 50% of your annual income of debt just because its cheap, if you don't need the money you don't borrow it. AMD were servicing that debt when they were making a quarter of what they are making now and their credit rating has improved since, they paid it off because they had enough money to do so and it is not a good idea to keep large amounts of long term debt hanging around your neck, no matter how cheap it is.

It the same argument both Labour and the Conservatives make, oh its cheap so lets keep borrowing, you know what's better? Not having large debts. If your economy shrinks you have to put taxes up, that's coming BTW, but its ok, we have a large debt that's cheap. :rolleyes:
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Unlike governments, Intel and other tech giants are not running on debt, they have very high profit margins and they store that borrowed money via very safe vehicles and carry them as assets, this is the same with Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc...

This cost them nothing and they can release that cash at will anytime they want for investments, acquisitions, etc...

humbug said:
it is not a good idea to keep large amounts of long term debt hanging around your neck, no matter how cheap it is.
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It is a good idea if you don't spend it. Apple has $100b in long-term debt despite being the world's most profitable company. Microsoft has $72b. Google's long term debt is now 6 times what it was 4 years ago. Do you think their CFOs are idiots?

All of them have some of the best credit ratings possible. If rating agencies are not worried, you shouldn't be either. Company finances are managed differently to your Barclays credit card.

humbug said:
It the same argument both Labour and the Conservatives make, oh its cheap so lets keep borrowing, you know what's better? Not having large debts. If your economy shrinks you have to put taxes up, that's coming BTW, but its ok, we have a large debt that's cheap. :rolleyes:
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You're assuming that debt is money that's spent and gone, it's not. It's added as an asset to the balance sheet. Intel doesn't run on debt and is profitable. If both your debts and assets increase (as it did with Intel, Google, Apple, etc) and you're paying no real interest on that debt, you're never in a worse position. This is why you shouldn't just look at one item on the balance sheet, you should look at the other side as well.

We're off topic anyway.
 
What happens if you have a few bad years and your company shrinks by 40% and your outgoings remain high, is that large debt still a good idea?

Yes i think they are idiots. Arrogant. Tax payers always to the rescue...
 
humbug said:
What happens if you have a few bad years and your company shrinks by 40% and your outgoings remain high, is that large debt still a good idea?
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Yeah that's an excellent idea, because the asset is still there and you borrowed it when your credit rating was excellent and don't need to borrow when their credit rating isn't as good anymore.

Scenario 1) You borrow at $20b at 1% when interest rates are low and your credit rating is excellent and keep the asset in IB bond funds and earn 1% on it. 5 years later you need cash, you use the asset.
Scenario 2) You borrow nothing, now interest rates are up and your credit rating is in the toilet. 5 years later you need cash and haven't built up that asset, so you now have to borrow at 8-10%.

Most companies prefer to have interest-free cash and not need it, than need cash and have to pay high interests ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

humbug said:
Yes i think they are idiots. Arrogant. Tax payers always to the rescue...
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CFOs of all tech companies are idiots, sure :D
 
HACO said:
Yeah that's an excellent idea, because the asset is still there and you borrowed it when your credit rating was excellent and don't need to borrow when their credit rating isn't as good anymore.

Scenario 1) You borrow at $20b at 1% when interest rates are low and your credit rating is excellent and keep the asset in IB bond funds and earn 1% on it. 5 years later you need cash, you use the asset.
Scenario 2) You borrow nothing, now interest rates are up and your credit rating is in the toilet. 5 years later you need cash and haven't built up that asset, so you now have to borrow at 8-10%.

Most companies prefer to have interest-free cash and not need it, than need cash and have to pay high interests ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



CFOs of all tech companies are idiots, sure :D
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So your answer is "Borrow more"

Good answer, it solves all problems. its not the definition of a debt spiral or anything.
 
humbug said:
So your answer is "Borrow more"

Good answer, it solves all problems. its not the definition of a debt spiral or anything.
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That's what companies do, but I guess you know company finances better than CFOs of every Fortune 500 and FTSE company out there. I rest my case.
 
AMD's Next-Generation Van Gogh APU Shows Up with Quad-Channel DDR5 Memory Support

"AMD is slowly preparing to launch its next-generation client-oriented accelerated processing unit (APU), which is AMD's way of denoting a CPU+GPU combination. The future design is codenamed after Van Gogh, showing AMD's continuous use of historic names for their products. The APU is believed to be a design similar to the one found in the SoC of the latest PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles. That means that there are Zen 2 cores present along with the latest RDNA 2 graphics, side by side in the same processor. Today, one of AMD's engineers posted a boot log of the quad-core Van Gogh APU engineering sample, showing some very interesting information.

The boot log contains information about the memory type used in the APU. In the logs, we see a part that says "[drm] RAM width 256bits DDR5", which means that the APU has an interface for the DDR5 memory and it is 256-bit wide, which represents a quad-channel memory configuration. Such a wide memory bus is typically used for applications that need lots of bandwidth. Given that Van Gogh uses RDNA 2 graphics, the company needs a sufficient memory bandwidth to keep the GPU from starving for data. While we don't have much more information about it, we can expect to hear greater details soon."
 
makes sense. they couldn't do anything with the APU designs they came up with for consoles last time around because the CPU side was so *******, nothing to stop them this time.
 
4K8KW10 said:
Product segmentation - Van Gogh will be positioned lower than Cezanne.
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Yep and I still don't get it. It is a very odd position where you are getting a slower CPU core compared to Cezanne but with a more powerful GPU in Van Gogh where the better view on a customer side is to have the Zen3 and RDNA2. It is a weird mix there. Move Cezanne to the lower end and improve with Van Gogh to the higher tier.
 
Curlyriff said:
Yep and I still don't get it. It is a very odd position where you are getting a slower CPU core compared to Cezanne but with a more powerful GPU in Van Gogh where the better view on a customer side is to have the Zen3 and RDNA2. It is a weird mix there. Move Cezanne to the lower end and improve with Van Gogh to the higher tier.
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No, Van Gogh will be very low, ultra portable, within 3-5-7 watt TDP, while Cezanne will be up to >45 watt TDP.
 
4K8KW10 said:
No, Van Gogh will be very low, ultra portable, within 3-5-7 watt TDP, while Cezanne will be up to >45 watt TDP.
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Yes I get that, but that is where and why I would be more interested in seeing a Zen3 cores and RDNA2 and covering the market that way. I am not saying that is what. I am saying I don't think this is of much interest because Zen3 would have been worthwhile from a customer view.
 
Curlyriff said:
Yes I get that, but that is where and why I would be more interested in seeing a Zen3 cores and RDNA2 and covering the market that way. I am not saying that is what. I am saying I don't think this is of much interest because Zen3 would have been worthwhile from a customer view.
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This, i think that will come when AMD get more wafer capacity. Right now they are trying to get into new segments with the sub 10 Watt chips
 
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