[Sentential]

Originally Posted by Randyman...

Does seem a bit strange IMO. Could you ever imagine Intel branded RAM?

Sure! Why not they are already the leading manufacturer of NAND flash ram

[I.M.O.G.]

Yes Patriot manufacturers the RAM. That doesn't mean AMD has to straight buy it from them - these are huge corporations, there is a lot to trade. AMD could subsidize the cost of manufacturing, and eliminate Patriot's overhead... Meanwhile, AMD increases Patriot's efficiency to near 100% as they no longer have excess fabrication capacity, and Patriot slaps stickers onto the sticks that say AMD. Marketing and distribution to retailers for the product is then managed by AMD - so all Patriot has to do is fab the memory, slap the sticker, and send it to retailers on 200 trucks instead of 150 along with the same products with their own branding.

Patriot reaps the benefits of the market saturation and reputation of their cobranded products. AMD gains better control over the pricing and distribution of RAM their products rely on. How much is paid for and how much is taken in trade or written off on the balance sheet somewhere? Dunno.

I'm not saying this is exactly how it goes. But I think its easy to oversimplify corporate treaties and characterize them to look ridiculous.

... Or it could be another idiotic move by AMD. Time will tell I guess.

I just don't think it makes sense to think of the stupidest thing they could possibly do, say that has to be what they are doing, then call it stupid. There could be some mechanics of the situation that is mutually beneficial for all parties.

[Randyman...]

Originally Posted by Sentential

Sure! Why not they are already the leading manufacturer of NAND flash ram

And the difference? Intel makes their own NAND chips in their own Fabs - and the quality shows IMO (they aren't re-branding someone else's chips).

I could see if AMD wanted to do that as they would have complete control over the entire process - manufacturing to binning to making the sticks themselves (still probably not a smart business move considering the very stable competition which is already solidly in-place).

RE - I.M.O.G. - Points taken - but still seems like an odd deal overall from where I sit (and I'm certainly not a corporate suit! just a simple end-user)...

[I.M.O.G.]

I agree, looks odd to me... Plenty of people thinking worst case (and probably most likely), so trying to think of something best case (and probably less likely).

[Woomack]

I saw news some weeks ago about AMD memory with timings like 11-11-11 for 1600. I'm not expecting much from these series especially that there are not many good IC available and their series are supposed to be cheap ( maybe except Radeon series that I saw 1st time maybe yesterday on the same slides as in this news ).

[Janus67]

Pretty old news to be honest
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ght=AMD+memory

Was posted in August. Pretty horrible timings for 1600 RAM.


edit: looks like the timings have improved


still nothing special, but I guess if it helps them attempt to stay competitive?

[EarthDog]

Quite interesting... I agree with IMOG in that where is the money in this move? Maybe its cheaper to make as they have their own fabs?

EDIT: <- needs to read the whole thread before posting.

Originally Posted by Tech Tweaker

I fear they may be pushing it too far with this move. Wouldn't that put them close to having a monopoly with having CPU's, GPU's (and their multi-card technology), and now Memory?

Bit of an unexpected move though, at least in my opinion.

Nope.

A monopoly is defined as: exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service.

Arent there other memory manufacturers out there? CPU manufacturers? GPU manufacturers?

[hokiealumnus]

Originally Posted by Janus67

Pretty old news to be honest
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ght=AMD+memory

Was posted in August. Pretty horrible timings for 1600 RAM.

Those would be the "Entertainment" model. Performance will be 1600/CL8 & CL9 and Radeon will be 1866 (unk CL) to (eventually) 2133 / CL9.

I'm told there is a 1600 / CL9 kit on the way.

The press deck was pretty clear in itself, so the conference call didn't really do much to change overall perception. There were some buzz words thrown around but they're generally dismissed in my brain, heh. The takeaways I got from the call:

• Basically AMD wants to be able to give an end-to-end experience for their users. A big focus of this push is likely to be OEM partners, but they will still be available at retail.
• Currently the only partners are Patriot and VisionTek, whose focus will be mainly North America. As they expand the line worldwide, expect more OEMs to be brought in in other regions.
• The Performance line will release in about four weeks, with the Radeon line to follow in the first quarter of 2012.
• Warranty for all of the kits, regardless of OEM will be Limited Lifetime. What's interesting is that the warranty will be handled by the OEM. So if your AMD sticks die, you'll look on the sticker and contact either Patriot or VisionTek for warranty replacement.
  • That's smart from AMD's perspective because they don't have to handle it, but from a consumer perspective it's just silly. If you have to deal with Patriot for AMD's RAM, why not just buy Patriot to start with?
  • If you look at it from the perspective like their GPU line, it sort of makes sense. If your 6970 dies, you go to ASUS or Gigabyte or Sapphire...whoever the OEM was. AMD just made the chip. This is the other way around though, so...yea...

[Janus67]

Yeah I can see that being pretty confusing for the consumer.

[Sentential]

Originally Posted by Randyman...

And the difference? Intel makes their own NAND chips in their own Fabs - and the quality shows IMO

Yep; nail+hammer = win; also emphasised for effect. AMD sold its fabs to glo-fo, why in the hell are they looking to do this? If they want to be a fabless company they ought to look at how successful ones operate and its all about the software. Apple has OSX, Nvidia has CUDA, what does AMD have? Nothing

To be honest it would make more sense if they made monitors or sound cards; but RAM? Really?

[Theocnoob]

They're launching with just 1333....

Don't expect to be at (Still rather pedestrian) speeds until later in 2012? Radeon Edition? That's confusing that's already your graphics card brand.
AMD is making some moves that I personally do not feel are good moves. They don't expect to be at cl9 2133 until Feb 2012.
I don't get it.

[AlabamaCajun]

Among all the deniers, haters and fanboy attitudes, have any of you looked at the business economics side of this. First OCZ, Patriot etc build ram modules, Hynix et-al make chips, Crucial and a few others do both. If this happened a few years back it these would be ATI branded dimms. Now you have GF with the facilities to make the stuff and AMDs better practice of making great video cards and yes, good CPUs. (Don't forget these less than steller Bulldozers hit some gnarly speeds under LN2. If you ask me, intels business model sucks and I don't buy their stuff, why should you. That to is economics 101. Motorola had a much better architecture than intel but in the end it went with economics. That said, AMD products are a much better bang for the bucks you spend on them. I said my piece, now let them fly.

[tangletail]

This really is interesting. Hopefully this will bring AMD more money they will probably need for the Pile driver series. I was kinda hoping they would advance this to ddr4 or 5 maybe because of their GPUs.

Then again, what motherboard could possibly use it?

To the naysayers. As stated plenty of times, this is an economical thing, and a good business strategy. Amd is known for being huge risk takers unlike what Intel has been (I.E. not actually doing their own research for things like 3D dohickies, forgot what it was :/). Some odd number of years ago when AMD bought ATi, they were questioned why they did it. They had a game plan that lead to the AMD Llanos that now exist today, and they had already done all the math for it, it took them four years to develop it, and now it is released. While Intel's processors out performs AMDs, the bang per buck is generally worth it in the end.

What kind of funky plans AMD will have in the future after creating ram, god knows what.

[Sentential]

Originally Posted by AlabamaCajun

Among all the deniers, haters and fanboy attitudes, have any of you looked at the business economics side of this. First OCZ, Patriot etc build ram modules, Hynix et-al make chips, Crucial and a few others do both. If this happened a few years back it these would be ATI branded dimms. Now you have GF with the facilities to make the stuff and AMDs better practice of making great video cards and yes, good CPUs. (Don't forget these less than steller Bulldozers hit some gnarly speeds under LN2. If you ask me, intels business model sucks and I don't buy their stuff, why should you. That to is economics 101. Motorola had a much better architecture than intel but in the end it went with economics. That said, AMD products are a much better bang for the bucks you spend on them. I said my piece, now let them fly.

No offense but lets break it down. Motorola and AMD have one thing in common, a ****ty CEO who ran them into a ditch. Second Intel's business model is working quite well, take a look at their revenues.

They aren't good for consumers in a sense because they tend to be pricey but if they cant turn a profit and put the cash into research what good is it? Look at how many generational changes we've seen from them. Litererly a new chip arch every 2 years. How many has AMD done? Two? Maybe in the last 10 years?