Sunnyvale (CA) – A massive impairment charge AMD took during the fourth quarter forced the company to report a record loss of $1.77 billion for the period.

Without the charge, AMD came close to breaking even in the quarter, listing an operating loss of $9 million. Revenue for Q4 was $1.77 billion, up 8% sequentially and virtually flat compared to Q4 2006. The ATI write-down resulted in a total loss of $3.38 billion for the year, with total non-cash charges adding up to $2.0 billion. 2007 sales were $6.0 billion, up 6$ from 2006.

“We were close to break-even operationally for the quarter, reducing our fourth quarter non-GAAP operating loss to $9 million,” said Robert Rivet, AMD’s chief financial officer. “We improved gross margin by three points sequentially, driven by increased shipments of new products, higher average selling prices and cost containment actions.”

During the Q3 earnings conference, CFO Rivet noted that AMD may have a shot a breaking even in Q4. Interestingly, at a more recent analyst conference Rivet and CEO Ruiz were more pessimistic and actually said that they never had made a promise that the company would break even in Q4.

AMD said that it shipped a “record number” of microprocessors during Q4, including “nearly” 400,000 quad-core CPUs.

AMD’s computing solutions segment was responsible for $1.4 billion or 79% of the company’s revenues. Sales were up 9% sequentially for the period. The former ATI graphics division reported sales of $259 million, up 3% from Q3. 

AMD’s stock was up $0.11 or 1.7% in after hour trading on Thursday. The stock closed at $6.34, down 3.5% for the day. AMD currently has a market capitalization of $3.52 billion.