Nvidia GeForce GTX 400 Yields Are at 20% - 30%, Further Delays Possible

[gurusan]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/...t_20_30_Further_Delays_Possible_Analysts.html

Analysts: Nvidia May Have Less than 10 Thousand of Fermi Graphics Chips
[04/21/2010 12:29 PM]
by Anton Shilov

Even though Nvidia Corp. commercially released its GeForce GTX 400-series roughly six months after the first public demonstration and had to disable parts of the chips to ensure higher supply, financial analysts from Needham and Company claim that Nvidia only has about ten thousand of Fermi-series chips on the market at the moment and that the yields of Fermi chips is between 20% and 30%.

“We are downgrading Nvidia to a “hold” and removing our 12-month price target (was $22) after a series of channel checks indicating that Fermi is not ramping well and there could be further product delays. Based on our findings, Nvidia has very limited supply of Fermi desktop/notebook parts and yields remain poor at around 20-30%,” analyst Rajvindra Gill wrote in a note to clients.

In a bid to improve yields of the code-named GF100 chip (NV60, GT300, G300), Nvidia disabled 32 out of 512 stream processors even on flagship GeForce GTX 480 graphics board, however, after the product was formally launched on the 12th of April, it is still rarely available and where it is in stock, it costs much more than its recommended price of $499.

Considering the fact that Nvidia GF100 chip – which powers both GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480 graphics boards and will eventually power the Tesla C2000-series computing cards – consists of 3.1 billion of transistors and is made using TSMC’s 40nm process technology known for its insufficient yields, it is not a surprise that Nvidia cannot ship enough modern DirectX 11-supporting graphics processing units (GPUs) to compete successfully with its arch-rival ATI, graphics business unit of Advanced Micro Devices. Since Nvidia’s top-of-the-range GeForce GTX 480 has not managed to recapture performance leadership from ATI Radeon HD 5970 and is also not widely available, the halo effect of the advanced product launch will not be significant

The analyst from Needman believes that the potential delays of other chips from the Fermi family will inevitably mean additional design wins for ATI, which will lead to further market share loss by Nvidia. Recently ATI already announced that it had shipped over six milion DirectX 11 graphics processors since late September, meanwhile, according to Rajvindra Gill, Nvidia has supplied less than ten thousand of its GF100 chips.

“We believe Nvidia could lose market share starting in [the second half of 2010], face a more challenging pricing environment and/or experience potentially lower gross margins,” said the analyst.

Nvidia declined to comment on the information.

 

[Greebo]

Oops again. Not good news for both camps.

Nvidia cards in short supply and premium prices not good for Nvidia fans.

Equally, no chance of a 5 series price drop

 

[Rroff]

Not looking good at all

 

[RavenXXX2]

Nvidia has supplied less than ten thousand of its GF100 chips

Ouch...

 

[Locky]

Tbh just scrap fermi and cut losses, it's just fail at the moment and won't get much better.

 

[The Running Man]

scrap fermie and do what? stick with the current gen while they develop another architecture over the next 3 years?!

 

[Greebo]

scrap fermie and do what? stick with the current gen while they develop another architecture over the next 3 years?!

Why not? Anybody for a rebadged gtx285 as a gtx 465?

|Seriously though they will sell as many as they can make and try and get the next generation out as soon as possible. And it's not 3 years. It's normally just a year and they will be well on with the next gen.

Smacks of ATI and 2900xt all over again.

 

[TheRealDeal]

Why not? Anybody for a rebadged gtx285 as a gtx 465?

|Seriously though they will sell as many as they can make and try and get the next generation out as soon as possible. And it's not 3 years. It's normally just a year and they will be well on with the next gen.

Smacks of ATI and 2900xt all over again.

The main difference is that fermi is actually pretty fast but on the right 40nm process where as the 2900 was slow and on the wrong 80nm process. Nvidia can't run anywhere like ati could with the 3870 and 65nm as there is only the 40nm process atm and its not getting any better. Fermi at its original spec would have been another 8800gtx but it was far to adventurous from what we have heard.

 

[Greebo]

That is true. If Nvidia had delivered the gtx480 with 512 cores and a 800 clock speed, it would indeed have lasted well and would have being an awesome card and probably faster than a 5970 which would have been impresssive indeed.

 

[Rroff]

That is true. If Nvidia had delivered the gtx480 with 512 cores and a 800 clock speed, it would indeed have lasted well and would have being an awesome card and probably faster than a 5970 which would have been impresssive indeed.

Original 750MHz 512SP spec wasn't _that_ far behind 5970 performance so it would have been close behind, maybe matching it at 800MHz but I doubt it would have been faster except where crossfire scaling didn't work so well.

 

[Scougar]

Just blame it on the ash cloud....

Not good news (again ) for Nvidia it seems.

That's the trouble with tech, you kinda have to go balls deep... and once your in there, you can't really back out once you're are that deep.

TheRealDeal> At it's original spec I doubt the 480 would have been another 8800gtx, because A) it was one hell of a card B) it had no competition. I'm gutted I never got to have one before it became defunct (generally speaking).

 

[Raikiri]

That's the trouble with tech, you kinda have to go balls deep... and once your in there, you can't really back out once you're are that deep.

nVidia - The contraceptive equivilent of pulling out?


Not looking good, which is a shame. Even if I'm not going to buy a Fermi competition is never a bad thing.

 

[jigger]

Original 750MHz 512SP spec wasn't _that_ far behind 5970 performance so it would have been close behind, maybe matching it at 800MHz but I doubt it would have been faster except where crossfire scaling didn't work so well.

How do you know how fast it was ?

 

[Freddie1980]

I wonder what of sort of yields ATI are getting with 5870 on 40nm?

 

[kylew]

How do you know how fast it was ?

He's got his GPU Engineer hat on today, do I don't think you can argue with him on that...

 

[JediFragger]

How do you know how fast it was ?

Theoretical numbers I'm guessing, but it does sound about right tbh. Pity we won't see it for a year+ (if at all!)

 

[Greebo]

How do you know how fast it was ?

I actually agree with Rroff on this. If you look at the performance difference between the gtx470 and gtx480 and the difference in the number of cores and also add 10% to the gtx480 performance due to the faster core speed (it scales pretty linearly in benchmarks) you can make a very good educated guess as to how powerful the originally planned gtx480 would have been.