From Techspot:

“AMD has released its financial results for the second quarter of this year, which not surprisingly, marked their eleventh consecutive loss and third year-on-year revenue decline. Even though it posted a narrower loss of $330 million, compared with a loss of $1.19 billion in the year-earlier period, falling microprocessor sales and lower gross margins overshadowed the news.

Looking at the ongoing quarter, AMD expects revenue to be “up slightly.” The company hopes its upcoming Tigris and Congo platforms will improve their fortunes in the notebook space while Istanbul should give it continued headway in the server market. For what it’s worth, analyst had projected a 7% increase in revenues for AMD this quarter and iSuppli forecasts that PC shipments will rise sequentially by 11%.”
AMD has been declining. I know this, a lot of people know this. Intel is slowly beating them into submission, if they aren’t close to it already. Being in the PC repair business (and until recently, involved somewhat in PC sales as well), AMD chips just can’t hold up to what Intel is putting on the market. It’s not surprising that AMD’s revenue is declining, as their products just can’t seem to hold up to the curve.

While competition is good, if AMD wants to change this they’re likely going to have to have some radical new development up their sleeves to debut to market, and soon. Intel’s Core i7 chipset, and soon their Core i5 chipset, are poised to have a large impact on how consumer-grade PCs operate. Combining multi-core chips with Hyper-Threading technology (in the case of the i7) just means that a PC can operate that much more at once without having to wait for processor bottlenecks to clear up. Combine that with the removal of one of the main roadblocks between the processor and the memory, and you’ve got yourself a speed increase worth gloating about. AMD just doesn’t seem to be able to keep up.

I admit, a long long time ago, I was an AMD fan. I swore up and down that Intel chips were nothing short of the devil. AMD was poised to capture the market and keep it for itself. Having the first consumer-grade 64-bit processor was sure to have quite an impact on the market, and all in AMD’s favor!

Oh, how the tables have turned in my eyes. Yes, the AMD64 chips were the first 64-bit processors on the market. Unfortunately, they were brought out in a time where 64-bit processing just wasn’t done on consumer computers. So much potential went to waste because of the limitations of available software. Now that 64-bit is in nearly everything, that niche has passed its prime, and a new one has awoken: Who can cram the most cores, both physical and virtual, on a single chip?

Like many, I wait to see how this pans out. If AMD can pull back from this and come out with an amazing new technology that turns the processor world on its head, I will applaud it. We need another major jump in advancement, as it seems like the “arms race” of processor speed is panning out and something new must be brought into play to keep the tech world going, at least in the personal computer department, anyway.
So long and thanks for all the fish. Remember, we’re watching you…

MTV To Launch New Track Upload Program For ‘Rock Band’.

This will prove to be nothing short of awesome for those of us who play Rock Band on at least a semi-regular basis. Having artists and labels able to send their music in to be processed, digitized, and tracked directly rather than having to have Harmonix reach out every time it wants a set of tracks will greatly increase the amount of available content on Rock Band’s music store, as well as providing a great way for independent labels and artists to have their music become well-known while at the same time providing a portion of the profits to the content creator.

I forsee this working very well for Harmonix in the future.

So, here’s that update I promised. It’s been a while since I posted about anything besides my new job, so here’s a condensed rundown of the basics that have happened in the last few months.

I’ve started becoming conflicted about D&D 4th edition. While it does make some things simpler it also makes some things more complicated. Combat, in a strange fashion, is both easier and harder at the same time. Tracking each person in combat is slightly easier with things like square-based movement instead of feet-based movement, but that pretty much means you are required to use a battlemat or tiles or some other sort of visual-representation method of keeping track of where your characters are. Combat also seems to take much longer, because while yes, you may be doing some more damage and have more hit points at lower levels, so do the monsters. Normal-sized encounters that used to take 15 minutes or so in 3.5 are now taking 45 minutes to an hour to accomplish.

I’ve also started a D20 Modern/Urban Arcana campaign. This is taking a bit longer to get used to than I remember it taking the last time I tried playing one of these, but that could be because 1) The players are more used to certain styles of gaming, and 2) the pre-gen adventures out of the book are very minimal in terms of details and immersion. I suppose that’s because they’re a little more focused in getting the mechanics of the system into the players’ heads, but they are SHORT. I’m talking one page of text, total. A proper adventure is longer than that. A lot longer.

I’ve started playing in a Call of Cthulhu campaign on Fridays, and I can claim the honored distinction of being the investigator to die in the first session. Great fun though.

Lets see, what else….

Console-wise, I borrowed Fallout 3 off of my brother and it’s actually a rather fun game. I was told that I probably wouldn’t like it since I didn’t like Oblivion, but I think the environment in Fallout 3 suits the gameplay better. Plus, the V.A.T.S. system is awesome. Being able to target specific body parts of an enemy who’s trying to kill you is rather amusing.

Hm. It’s about now I notice a trend….I need to stop playing so many damn games and get out more often. Ah well, to each his own.

Later, y’all. We’re watching you….

So, I’ve now been with C3i for over a month. I’ve been taking live calls for the better part of the last 3 weeks, as well as gotten my final schedule confirmed. I’m actually rather surprised at how relaxed the environment around here has been, and how much besides actual work I’ve been able to accomplish while I’m here between calls. For example, the other day I only took a few calls, but I was able to completely draw up a map for the next session of our D20 Modern game.

I’m sure once I get trained on more clients that it’ll get a bit busier for me, but I can’t imagine it’ll get TOO bad. Nothing I can’t handle, anyway.

Likely to be another post later on about non-work related stuff, and maybe (if I get adventurous) I can post something techworthy as well.