Its either demand or yield problems. But looking at this article, NV produces WAY more GPU dies per wafer compared to ATI and infact cheaper to produce each GPU die due to decreasing unwanted transistors and smaller GPU die to boot. I dont think yields are a problem. Simply demand for the card.
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Not only the cheaper to make but they are selling at a higher price!
That said, ATi's only option is probably to reduce price on existing cards. The X1900 series look really nice at those pricepoints but why arent they the ones going out of stock every hour compared to the 7900 series which are selling so fast its a matter of how fast you could click on the buy button.
I guess NV made a great impression through better marketing to the average joes but this sort of reminds me of intel/amd couple of years back. AMD had a great product but the pentium always outsold its competitor by quite a margin thanks to its much more effective and better marketing.
The thing is when you OC X1800/X1900 series, you have to deal with increased power usuage and increased heat as well. Some rarely OC at all, while others OC mad. But to most people the cards itself reaches 70~80C at load. Imagine what would happen by increasing the core clock? In case of a 7900GT it consumes 47~W at load. Compared to 120~W of the X1900XTX. A 7900GTX reaches 80~90W at load. So even with mad OCes on the 7900GT, the card is still cooler and consumes less power to boot as well.
Anyhow increased power usuage does infact mean more money toward your electricity bill. Sometimes its not good idea to have a power hungry card when your playing oblivion 24/7 at almost max settings
. But this is another matter.
IQ is really subjective and i agree with others who say this. You can barely notice the differences unless you play the game JUST to find the differences. However one thing that i have to note is that NV looks better on LCDs while ATi looks better on CRTs. Dont know why, but also NV cards get rid of LCD ghosting which is pretty good.
But at the end of the day, the card you buy is normally the better performer in the games you play. Im anticipating for Prey/Quake Wars/RTCW2 which are all openGL titles so i guess if i was to buy a card i would be looking at NV cards. Shader intensive titles? I would be looking at ATi cards especially the R580 core based cards.
edit - to Ackmed. You know why? we all know the G70 core is the NV47. The NV47 "was" supposedly the refresh of the NV45 to counter the R480 which was the X850 series refresh. However there was no need as the NV45 was neck to neck with the R480 and the "nv47" wouldve killed the idea of SLI at that time. (We all know a 7800GTX can kill a 6800GT SLI setup most of the time). NV had lots of time stocking "nv47" cores all over the place. This is why i am led to believe that NV had never faced any supply problems. but we also have to remember that most were waiting for the R520 to compare.
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