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Dr. Lisa Su graces the opening of Micro Center's new Austin store
AMD says that it's a data center first company, though.
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It looks like AMD is trying to get back into the good graces of gamers, with its CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, joining the grand opening of Micro Center Austin. The company shared official photos of AMD’s chief executive cutting the ribbon to mark the store’s opening on its Instagram page, while a Redditor shared a short clip showing her making the rounds among the people waiting to get inside the shop and signing a Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU, one of the best gaming GPUs you can buy today.
AMD has been saying that it is a data-center-first company repeatedly since 2024. Dr. Su reiterated the stance in an interview earlier this month, at which point some in the press finally decided to notice. The reporting naturally enraged gamers who supported AMD and Nvidia for decades and are now feeling left behind as these companies pivoted towards more lucrative AI hardware. This has become apparent with the paper launches of Nvidia’s latest RTX 50-series chips in 2025 and the purported production cuts of powerful RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 GPUs, even as demand for Nvidia’s AI GPUs continues to rise.
However, it seems that this outrage has been drowned out by the unfolding scandal at Nvidia, which saw the dramatic fall from grace of the company’s legendary founder. It’s unclear if this plan to have the AMD chief at the Micro Center Austin’s grand opening has been in place for some time or if it was an attempt to smooth the ruffled feathers of the gaming community, but Austin is home to one of AMD's largest hubs, so it's likely an organic and planned event. But whatever the case, it was a treat to the people who were on the ground during the event — Micro Center said that AMD gave away 300 swag bags and had a couple of prizes for the people in the store.
The opening of Micro Center’s Austin brick-and-mortar store is actually a good sign for the people in the area, especially now that we’re at the age where almost everything can be bought online. While the AI shortage has made RAM, GPU, and many other things more expensive, physical retailers remain one of the best places where PC builders can find deals on parts and components. We even saw Walmart honor a $2,299 CyberPowerPC mistakenly displayed for $1,099 each, allowing a Redditor to secure two relatively powerful gaming PCs for more than half off.
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Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.