HEXUS.sharewatch: AMD/NVIDIA surge continues

The news about Intel relegating its Larrabee discrete graphics project to the status of testing platform broke after the markets stopped trading on 4 December. So the good showing by AMD and NVIDIA's shares we told you about last week ago didn't even factor in that news.

Unsurprisingly, it has done the only two producers of discrete graphics no harm at all for Intel to struggle to take them on in this area. Both AMD and NVIDIA's shares opened markedly up last Monday and more or less held onto those gains over the course of the week.

Looking at their respective share prices over a longer period, AMD is the real performer of the two. NVIDIA's share price topped $16 as recently as last September, and was consistently higher than that until Connectorgate in the middle of 2008.

AMD's shares, however, are trading at their highest level since late 2007 and, if you had bought and in late January 2009, you would have quadrupled your money by now. Gutted.

A combination of its ‘asset smart strategy' - which involved spinning-off its manufacturing operations - the popularity of its graphics products and the relatively benign competitive environment created by its two biggest rivals - Intel and NVIDIA - being distracted by the low power processor/SoC market, have allowed AMD to recover from its profound nadir.