NVIDIA partners in big trouble?

[GheeTsar]

Taken from a usually pro-NVIDIA site too:

Nvidia's partners are in trouble, and it’s not an isolated case. They depend on good sales of high-end cards and this part of the market is nonexistent at this time. You simply cannot buy any high-end GT200 based chips from Nvidia and this is something that is going on since August time.

Selling cards such GT210 and GT220 is not something that most of people can make money off. Partners make pennies on such cards and these cards also don’t do particularly well as they are competing with 9500GT and 9400 cards that usually end up cheaper on the market.

Geforce GT240 is selling at acceptable levels, but again partners don’t have GT260, GT285 and GT295 cards, something that would help them make some profit.

Some partners might actually go under. We don’t want to name any names at this point, but at least in Europe some big names might disappear waiting for Fermi.

Any guesses on who they could be referring to? BFG perhaps, although they are an American company.

[matty-hodgson]

i can imagine this is why XFX decided to start selling ATi cards as well as nVidia.

not good news though, i'm waiting for these "Fermi" cards as well.

[Pob255]

Yes I don't know of any big names left in europe, unless they are just talking about the support side?

XFX's shift to make both nvidia & ati cards is looking very sensible now.

[shaithis]

XFX's shift to make both nvidia & ati cards is looking very sensible now.

Not so good for punters though

I always thought that most money was made from the mid-range.....but I guess not if that article is correct.....Just seems odd, I would have thought that making a small amount on a huge quantity would be preferable to making a wedge on a very small quantity....

[matty-hodgson]

Not so good for punters though

I always thought that most money was made from the mid-range.....but I guess not if that article is correct.....Just seems odd, I would have thought that making a small amount on a huge quantity would be preferable to making a wedge on a very small quantity....

i would've thought that the midrange keeps them afloat and in the black, then the high end stuff adds the profit.

[Rollo]

i can imagine this is why XFX decided to start selling ATi cards as well as nVidia.

not good news though, i'm waiting for these "Fermi" cards as well.

I don't think Fermi launching after the 5XXX series was the whole reason XFX switched, product lines don't launch simultaneously often as not.

E.G. HD2900 six months after 8800, HD1800 five months after 7800GTX, FX5800 five months after 9700Pro.

There was no mass exodus of OEMs for any of these, and no companies assumed room temperature because the delay. The 5870s only launched 2.5 months ago, and for most of that time the top 3 models have been largely unavailable due to TSMCs 40nm issues.

So while it makes for gossip speculating "ZOMG! NVIDIA and all their partners will go bankrupt this week!" because ATi launched their DX11 parts first, it's pretty much business as usual taken in a historical perspective.

People always seem to forget these things are basically inventions that can't really be timed for launch, and that they're worked on for years in advance. It's not like McDonalds where they can say,"It's 4pm now, by 5pm we can make 100 burgers to sell.".

A lot depends on how the samples come out and if respins are required to get to working silicon, and in this case likely how many per wafer TSMC can produce.

[aidanjt]

So while it makes for gossip speculating "ZOMG! NVIDIA and all their partners will go bankrupt this week!" because ATi launched their DX11 parts first, it's pretty much business as usual taken in a historical perspective.

People are talking bankruptcy because there's neither 2xx nor 3xx parts in the mid-high range, where the sweet cash is made.

[ta2]

Bad news for us as ATI will be able to charge more for their products whilst there is no competition on the market.

[scaryjim]

i would've thought that the midrange keeps them afloat and in the black, then the high end stuff adds the profit.

Sounds about right to me - while the top end cards aren't the ones that support the company, they do provide all the icing to go on top of the cake. If you look at the 5850 and 5870, for instance, they are ostensibly the same card with just a few blocks of shaders turned off on the 5850, but the 5870 commands a 50% premium! If 5850s are profitable at £200, then 5870s would presumably be profitable at not much more than that, since the components / BOM should be basically the same (aside from whatever price difference ATI charges for the GPU die itself, of course).

One way NVidia could help its partners, if this conjecture is true, would be to remove the driver block on PhysX when there's an ATI card in the system. Then they'd be able to sell mid-range cards to ATI users as PhysX cards. In fact, partners could probably remove the outputs from low-end 9-series cards, utilise PCIe x1 connectors, and market them as... Dedicated PhysX cards!!!

Dedicated PhysX cards? What a revolutionary concept!!

[ajones]

So while it makes for gossip speculating "ZOMG! NVIDIA and all their partners will go bankrupt this week!" because ATi launched their DX11 parts first, it's pretty much business as usual taken in a historical perspective.

There's this thing called a global recession going on. Historical perspective needs to be tempered by current events.

Companies are already struggling due to general economic factors. On top of these, we have delays in the release of the next gen and lack of any really outstanding last gen parts when compared to the competition. So yes, it does sound plausible that nVidia's partners are going to struggle in part because ATi launched their DX11 parts first.

[pinocchio]

The landscape is going to change next year anyway.

The new i3 chips with better IGP (the first iteration will be rubbish though) on a H55/H57 mobo could take a lot of the mid ground away from the card makers.

It's interesting to see that dual HDMI output is supported on the chipset, 3D anyone?

[Bugbait]

If you look at the 5850 and 5870, for instance, they are ostensibly the same card with just a few blocks of shaders turned off on the 5850, but the 5870 commands a 50% premium! If 5850s are profitable at £200, then 5870s would presumably be profitable at not much more than that, since the components / BOM should be basically the same (aside from whatever price difference ATI charges for the GPU die itself, of course).

Not quite. The same applies to CPU's and probably every complex silicon die. The less than 100% perfect dies offset the cost of production. If CPU's and GPU's had a 100% or even 90%+ yield then everything would be cheaper. A better way to look at is: 5850 users get cheaper cards since they are buying less perfect 5870 dies. Similarly 5870 owners get cheaper cards because the imperfect dies are reused in 5850's instead of being completely wasted. So it breaks down to cost of making the entire wafer divided by the actual die quality and quantities produced, not the cost of the individual cores.

Of course once yield increases (often the case with mature Intel CPU's) you get fabulous overclocking for less .

[Pob255]

I've heard rumors atm that the name in question is BFG, not going under but will be closeing their european operations.
Which will mean RMA's to the states if they keep selling cards in the EU

[scaryjim]

Not quite... The less than 100% perfect dies offset the cost of production. ...

I understand the way binning and yield works (well, vaguely at least, I am a very long way from an expert on it!) - but ATIs cost / charge / margin / profit for the dies themselves isn't really my point - I'm more interested in the comparitive BOM for the two cards to the card manufacturers. I'm not going to embarrass myself by guessing wildly at the respective margins, cost and BOM for each card, but I'd be amazed if the difference in die cost was sufficient on its own to make up the huge difference in price between the two cards.

Of course, if anyone has any numbers on the respective costs of the dies to manufacturers like Sapphire / XFX etc., I'd be very interested to see them...

[Bugbait]

I'm not going to embarrass myself by guessing wildly at the respective margins, cost and BOM for each card, but I'd be amazed if the difference in die cost was sufficient on its own to make up the huge difference in price between the two cards.

Of course, if anyone has any numbers on the respective costs of the dies to manufacturers like Sapphire / XFX etc., I'd be very interested to see them...

I'd like to see them too, purely for the sake of curiosity. Only the insiders will know I guess. An interview a while back suggested that the higher the card in the range the bigger the mark up as they know enthusiasts (pathetic bunch we are) will pay a large premium for less gains. A fool and his money are soon parted? Then again, I'm one of those fools.

[PeterStoba]

I've heard rumors atm that the name in question is BFG, not going under but will be closeing their european operations.
Which will mean RMA's to the states if they keep selling cards in the EU

It's supposedly a fact now, although they'll probably come back to the EU when the new cards come