As you can imagine AMD CEO Rory Read is busy meeting with partners these days, and with the most recent Bulldozer launch that went anything but smooth, confidence in AMD is not at the highest level.

When it comes to graphics, Nvidia has a lot of market share that it gained in 2011 especially in notebook graphics. However, this might change in 2012 as it looks like AMD will be the first with next generation Radeon HD 7000 graphics and Read is telling partners that this can make a vital difference.

We don’t know how Southern Islands will compete against Nvidia’s Kepler in this 28nm faceoff, but all reports indicate that Nvidia’s Kepler comes a bit later, quite a bit later. On the other hand Nvidia claims record Ivy Bridge design wins, which should translate into more than 200 notebook design wins with new Kepler chips. This means Nvidia should continue its dominance in notebook market for the time being.

When it comes to desktop graphics, many AMD partners believe that they have a good chance against Nvidia and they are being assured by AMD that they should be able to get enough 28nm chips. This was a problem for Northern Islands, people wanted to get the cards, but they were hard to get at launch and by the time supply issue was solved, Nvidia came into play and prevented AMD from capitalizing on its first-to-market advantage.

Let’s see how Radeon HD 7000 plays out, as this will be the first significant move for Read and AMD and it could give as an idea of what to expect in 2012.