AMD stock reaches for the stars, climbs 280% in 2016

AMD has had a massive year, starting it off with the push of Polaris - and then the launch of the Radeon RX 400 series in May and June. Throughout the year, AMD launched a new driver initiative - releasing more drivers in the first 6 months of the year, than they did throughout the entire of 2015.

Then the Zen leaks and teases started to flow, teasing Core i7-5960X performance ($999+) for much less (purportedly $499) - and then the Vega 10 graphics card teases began. AMD flew us out to their annual AMD Tech Summit 2016 in Sonoma, California - teasing Ryzen, the new CPU family under the Zen architecture, as well as our first real glimpse of Vega 10.

AMD teased a Vega 10 graphics card with 8GB of HBM2 memory running DOOM at 4K 60FPS+ on Ultra/Nightmare settings, as well as their new Radeon Instinct push that will see AMD technology inside of supercomputers. What has that done for the company? Drive its stock prices up by a mammoth 280% over the year, rising from the sub $3 mark to $10+ right now, settling in at $10.66 at the time of writing.

2017 is going to be AMD's most important year ever, with the releases of both Ryzen and Vega - but then there's also FreeSync, CrossFire, new consoles in Project Scorpio with Microsoft, and so much more. Things are only getting started for AMD, and I couldn't be more excited.