Rolland said that the “setup” for Thursday’s Q1 report is “interesting,” given trends have improved in the personal computer market even if the expectations of investors are “weak”.

“While we acknowledge that our 1Q17 estimate is one of the highest on the Street, we believe Intel could see upside in its PC business driven by better product mix and a slightly better than expected PC environment,” he wrote.

Rolland did trim some of Chipzilla’s numbers because AMD is making progress with its newer “Ryzen” PC chips.

But he said that Intel will benefit from an improving PC backdrop and better CPU mix.

Notebook ODM shipments, which we anticipate to have been down -14.7 percent which was better than expected are now are tracking down -2 percent year on year for 2017.

Core i5 and i7 usage in desktops and laptops was increasing, which likely have a beneficial impact on overall client ASPs

For Q1’s results, he sees $14.9 billion in revenue, slightly ahead of consensus for $14.808 billion. For Q2, he models $14.65 billion in revenue, still above the consensus $14.34 billion, though he cut his EPS estimate to 68 cents from 71 cents, though that is still above the average 64-cent estimate.

Rolland did have some kind words to say about AMD:

“While Ryzen is still early in its launch, we acknowledge that AMD has gained some mind share from both consumers and Intel. In response, we have seen Intel accelerate Coffee Lake (a third 14nm tock) and media speculation that Intel is lowering prices.”