On the eve of the 500-series chipset announcement on January 6, 2021, 7:05 17 comments
What just happened? Intel has announced the discontinuation of its 300 series chipset motherboards, including the H310, H370, Z370, and Z390. Production will end this July, while sales of the mobos, including mobile chipsets such as the QM370, will halt in January 2022.
Intel isn’t slow to pull the curtain down on its products when replacements are waiting in the wings. Last month, the company discontinued its entire 9th-gen Coffee Lake Refresh line, including the still-excellent Core i9-9900K. Its predecessor, the 8th-gen Coffee Lake CPUs, were discontinued in June 2020.
AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) have been two of the hottest semiconductor stocks of 2020. Both stocks more than doubled, and easily outpaced the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index s gain of roughly 50%.
But should investors expect NVIDIA and AMD to continue outperforming the broader semiconductor market next year? Let s take a fresh look at both chipmakers, and see if one is a better buy than the other.
Image source: Getty Images.
The key differences between NVIDIA and AMD
NVIDIA and AMD both sell GPUs and CPUs. NVIDIA generates most of it revenue from discrete (add-in) GPUs for PCs and data centers.
A smaller percentage of its revenue comes from its Tegra CPUs, which power connected vehicles, its Shield gaming devices, the
Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) was once considered a stable tech stock that generated reliable returns. Its position as the world s largest manufacturer of x86 CPUs for PCs and data centers gave it a wide moat, and its robust cash flow growth comfortably funded its big buybacks and dividends.
However, Intel s stock declined about 15% this year as the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index surged 50%. Let s look back at why Intel underperformed the broader industry, and see if it might fare better next year.
How Intel lost its mojo
For decades, Intel led the CPU market by following Moore s Law, a prediction set by its co-founder Gordon Moore to double the number of transistors in the same area of silicon every two years. This was the foundation of the two-year tick-tock cycle that drove Intel s business for half a century.