Are AMD shareholders 20% better off? no

Shares in Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD) are up 20% in five days. That means its market cap is up about $1.5 billion.

ThinkEquity did raise the shares to a "buy" because the research firm believes that orders from Dell (NASD:DELL) are strong. But, Dell is not doing all that well itself. American Technology Research also raised its rating on the theory that AMD will sell some of its operations and pay down part of its very large debt load. But, that is speculation.

AMD also came out with two "Intel (NASD:INTC) killer" chips earlier this week. One is a high end graphics chip for PC gamers. The other is a quad-core chip that delivers more computing and eats less energy.

All of the news is thrilling. But none of its means a thing.

AMD is still being thrashed by Intel. It appears that the larger chip company now has 80% of the x86 market for PCs and servers. This would mean that it took back all of the gains that AMD made in 2006, plus some.

GAAP gross margins at AMD were 28% in Q1. The same quarter a year before, they were 58%.

There is more evidence that things are getting worse at AMD than there is that they are getting better.

Douglas A. McIntyre