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AMD may have revealed Windows 10 launch date in earnings call

by Mark Tyson on 20 April 2015, 12:05

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Windows 10

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Late last week AMD published its Q1 2015 financial results. The official figures and statement showed that while AMD's business is under pressure right now, experiencing a "challenging PC environment," the company CEO is optimistic about upcoming new hardware and the impact of Windows 10 in H2 2015.

As is often the case, some of the nuggets of information gleaned from the post-results investors conference call are as/more interesting than the headline financials. First of all AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su seems to have let slip that Windows 10 will be released at the end of July. Also in the conference call Su confirmed that AMD would be talking about its next generation of GPUs later this quarter.

Windows 10 launches at end of July?

We already knew that Windows 10 with DirectX 12 would be launched "this summer," in 190 countries and be made available in 111 languages. Microsoft confirmed that in March. However 'summer' is rather a nebulous term, even though it feels so short in the UK. Now, thanks to the AMD CEO, we might have narrowed down the launch time considerably.

In the recent AMD earnings call Dr. Su explained some business plans to investors as follows; "What we also are factoring in is, with the Windows 10 launch at the end of July, we are watching the impact of that on the back-to-school season, and expect that it might have a bit of a delay to the normal back-to-school season inventory buildup," reports WCCF Tech.

When Windows 10 launches Microsoft will be allowing users of Windows 7 and newer to upgrade for free. Users will have a year to decide whether to install the free update. An important part of Windows 10 for gamers will be DirectX 12 which is expected to provide a big boost in efficiency and frame rates.

AMD Radeon 300 series

Another nugget from the conference call is that the CEO confirmed that new GPUs will be discussed "later this quarter". We are now in Q2, which ends on 30th June. So the obvious scenario for AMD's next generation graphics reveal will be early June, at the Computex show in Taipei. The product range launch should follow shortly, sometime in the second half of 2015.

Dr. Su said that she expects the "products to take a strong position in the second half of the year," reports Fudzilla. The launch of Windows 10 and DX12 is expected to help the firm too, with people looking to upgrade to new components and systems.

HEXUS Forums :: 14 Comments

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Posted by yeeeeman - Mon 20 Apr 2015 14:20
GTA 5 would benefit a lot from this DX12 goodness. A dual core would become more than capable to keep up with the quads. Only hopes…
Later edit: The confidence of these CEOs is almost always bull****: “products to take a strong position in the second half of the year”. Yeah, if you take into consideration the fact that the target performance they aim has been already ocupied by nvidia with the Titan X and the fact that already a good number of potential customers have bought a Titan, I don't think they will switch to a 390X, if it comes to market 3-4 months later. So, for short, those are lost buyers, doctor Lisa Su.
Posted by GuidoLS - Mon 20 Apr 2015 14:33
It's possible that W10 may show up at the end of July, but I don't think it's likely. It's close - very close, but still not quite there. If I were a betting person, I'd aim more for the end of Q3 (September) than the beginning (July). I could be wrong (it wouldn't be the first time) but so far, Spartan still isn't ready for prime time, and DX12 hasn't seen much, if any, wide spread usage in the wild.

And, as per usual, we'll see what, if anything, AMD pulls out of their hat. Hopefully it's not another incremental GPU advance at the expense of their CPU market. Again…
Posted by Xlucine - Mon 20 Apr 2015 22:14
yeeeeman
GTA 5 would benefit a lot from this DX12 goodness. A dual core would become more than capable to keep up with the quads. Only hopes…
Later edit: The confidence of these CEOs is almost always bull****: “products to take a strong position in the second half of the year”. Yeah, if you take into consideration the fact that the target performance they aim has been already ocupied by nvidia with the Titan X and the fact that already a good number of potential customers have bought a Titan, I don't think they will switch to a 390X, if it comes to market 3-4 months later. So, for short, those are lost buyers, doctor Lisa Su.

There's got to be loads of people put off the titan X with the ~£850 price tag - something with that much performance and a reasonable price tag will sell a lot better than titan does.
Posted by Agrippa - Tue 21 Apr 2015 08:24
Indeed. I'd very much like a card with that kind of performance, and I could also afford a Titan X, but there's no way in hell I'd spend £850 on *any* video card. Particularly one that includes twice as much memory as I will ever need within the time span in which I'm likely to own it, presumably with the sole purpose of inflating the card's price. No thanks, I'll wait for a 980Ti vs 390X shoot-out and decide from there.
Posted by crossy - Tue 21 Apr 2015 09:19
GuidoLS
It's possible that W10 may show up at the end of July, but I don't think it's likely. It's close - very close, but still not quite there. If I were a betting person, I'd aim more for the end of Q3 (September) than the beginning (July). I could be wrong (it wouldn't be the first time) but so far, Spartan still isn't ready for prime time, and DX12 hasn't seen much, if any, wide spread usage in the wild.
I'm with you on the September launch - mainly because launching a new OS for summer seems a little strange. Unless, or course, the CFO's office is getting worried…
I'm not convinced that lack of Spartan would be a show-stopper for a launch anyway. Last time I checked (and I'm quite willing to be wrong about this) it wasn't an essential part of W10 - more a “jam tomorrow” future-face-of-Windows type thing.
Actually on a personal note I'd be happier with a launch sooner rather than later mainly because my Win7 setup is now getting very unstable. So I think time has come for the usual Windows re-install nausea (am I the only one who thinks INI files would be preferable datastores to that damnable registry?). But, I'm thinking that reinstalling Win7 for only a couple of months use is maybe a lot of effort - and maybe it'd be worth holding off and doing a fresh W10 install instead.
And of course getting a copy of W8.1 in the meantime is a distinct non-starter… (before someone suggests it)
GuidoLS
And, as per usual, we'll see what, if anything, AMD pulls out of their hat. Hopefully it's not another incremental GPU advance at the expense of their CPU market. Again…
+1 on this. I'm starting to despair of seeing anything ground breaking in the discrete CPU market from AMD. Heck, I'd even settle for a warmed over FX line at the moment - preferably one that didn't have a sky high TDP. But at the moment, disk space is my big problem (lack of!) rather than cpu horse power.

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