AMD Posts First Quarterly Profit In Over Three Years

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AMD was once the mindshare leader in the chipset space, but had fallen on hard times in the past few years. The company recently announced their quarterly earnings for Q4 2009 and announced they have made money for the first time in 13 quarters – roughly 3 year and 3 months. This could be a sign that the entire personal computer market is turning around, as competitor Intel also posted a large gain in Q4.

AMD processors were the popular choice with computer enthusiasts in the early-to-mid 2000′s as Intel attempted to compete with the sagging Pentium 4 architecture, but the market suffered a paradigm shift in 2006 when Intel introduced their (still) successfully popular Core architecture and line new processors, which left AMD behind.

AMD purchased one of the big two graphics manufacturers, ATI, in 2006, which has been doing well for them, competing directly with NVIDIA in the consumer graphics space, all the while AMD’s processors have been doing mediocre in sales and reviews. In the past year, AMD’s new Athlon II series of chips has been well reviewed, and while not competing with Intel’s Core i7 at the bleeding edge high-end, the chips have been doing well in the price/performance ratio in the low- and medium-ends of the market.

The worldwide economic recession, combined with AMD’s poor processor offerings contributed to them suffering over three years of losses, but with new Athlon II processors and subsidiary ATI’s gains in beating NVIDIA to market with DirectX 11 cards, as well as the Eyefinity technology have led to AMD’s first positive quarter.

Their rival, Intel, also posted a huge $10 billion gain in Q4 2009, and with both chipmakers posting gains, it could be a sign that the personal computer market, which has been sagging in the recession, is starting to turn around.