In the first quarter of 2014, struggling chip company AMD reported a loss of $20 million on revenue of $1.40 billion. Compared to the same quarter a year ago, this is a 28-percent increase in revenue and an 87-percent reduction in losses.

The increased revenue was driven by the Graphics and Visual Solutions division, which saw a 118-percent increase in year-on-year revenue, from $337 million to $734 million. Operating income for the group was up over five times, from $16 million to $91 million. Graphics and Visual Solutions includes both AMD's GPU sales and also its semi-custom systems-on-chips. With Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4 both using semi-custom SoCs from AMD, this division should continue to see healthy revenues for some years to come.

The Computing Solutions group, which is where AMD accounts for its standalone CPUs—both with and without integrated GPUs—saw a 12-percent decline in revenue, from $751 million to $663 million. This is due to lower shipments of its processors. However, the division also saw a substantial 93-percent reduction in its losses, from $39 million to $3 million, attributed to lower operating expenses.

The quarter also saw AMD make its final $213 million payment to chip foundry GlobalFoundries stemming from the contract renegotiation in 2012. AMD had to pay up to break an exclusivity agreement and enable it to use TSMC to build some chips. Perhaps surprisingly, since then AMD has moved much of its manufacturing back to GF.

After some painful years, AMD's prospects seem a little more stable than they once did. The console design wins are providing substantial revenue, and the strong performance of the R7 and R9 GPUs will also help the company's graphics segment. But the processor problems are continuing: AMD's products in both the desktop and server markets are relatively uncompelling when compared to Intel's, and there's nothing on the horizon that will fundamentally change this.