While Intel, Yahoo and Google have all been punished on Wall Street for their fourth quarter earnings results, chip maker AMD capped off a great year.

Reversing its loss in Q4 2004 to get into the black for last quarter the rival to CPU powerhouse Intel showed it can compete across both server and desktop systems. And although Intel stock was hit hard yesterday after the company failed to meet its own revenue estimates for the final three months of 2005, the number one chip maker has a slew of new chips coming off the drawing board this year which could halt AMD’s marketshare growth.

Even though AMD’s revenues jumped 45 per cent from year ago figures (reaching US$1.84 billion) Intel’s own quarter four returned revenues of US$10.2 billion.

AMD reported profit for Q4 at US$95.6 million – half the earnings per share Intel stock holders managed (US$0.40 vs US$0.21 cents per share).

The market looked favourably on the results, pushing stock 7 per cent higher in after hours trading, despite it falling short of estimates. The results included a non-cash charge of US$110 million associated with the Spansion flash IPO without which would have meant a US$0.45 cents a share result.

AMD had a stellar year in 2005 with its Opteron server processors widely seen as outperforming Intel’s offering and in the desktop and (particularly) notebook space,  AMD achieved considerable marketshare growth according to analysts estimates.