GF 104 is 366mm2

[Scali]

And there you go talking about GTX 470 and 465 (and btw GTX 465 launched 2 months ago at $279 and while you can see some in newegg at $234, many are still at $250+ not the <$230 of the GTX 460).

The exact same goes for the competing 5830/5850 cards though.
Before GTX460 arrived, the competition was more expensive aswell, so even though GTX465 was initially more expensive than it is today, its price/performance was in pretty much the same spot as it is today.

I already said power consumption is a factor!

Then we agree.

But power consumption of a GTX 460 isn't a factor compared to the 5850 or 5830! Is this so hard to grasp?

But that's not the point, is it?
My point is that the GTX465 has pretty much the same price, performance and features as the GTX460, yet the GTX460 is a better choice.
The GTX465 was NOT good enough to make me buy one and get rid of that flaky Radeon, but the GTX460 takes power consumption out of the equation, so it's the perfect card for me at this point.

 

[Keysplayr]

Your advocacy is showing pretty strongly here, keys.

You're right that 32mm2 by itself isn't going to make or break Nvidia. It is going to hurt them though. It's not just the slightly bigger die, it's also coupled with the somewhat lower yields. Based on the fact that GF104 has only shown itself in a moderately harvested version, the default assumption has to be that yields aren't that great right now. I love how you just assume GF104 is going to be a higher volume part than Cypress with nothing to back it up. Fact is, cypress is a smaller die, covers a larger range of the market, has significant market penetration according to the steam hardware surveys, and is already very mature with very good yields, and ATI now has more marketshare than Nvidia as well. Nvidia has a lot of work to do if they want to catch up to cypress-level volume.

The significant thing about the GF104 die size is that it means Nvidia is pricing a more expensive part (and yes, it is obviously more expensive right now vs. the smaller more mature more mass produced cypress core. In the future that may or may not change, but right now it is undeniably more expensive) significantly below what AMD is pricing their stuff at. This isn't a part that is going to make huge amounts of money, it's positioned as a marketshare bandage part. The only issue is that soon enough GF104 is going to be the only competitive part Nvidia has left and it isn't going to be a cash cow. Southern Islands is probably going to obsolete GF100, and CPU-integrated graphics in SB and Fusion is going to instantly evaporate Nvidia's low end. That leaves them stuck in the middle with GF104, and at that time they'll need to sell the fully enabled part at $200 because of pressure from SI and derivatives. They still have the pro market, but if the rumors of AMD coming out with much better performing drives for firepro are true, that might start eroding as well.

So, the point is that Nvidia is going to be locked out of the high and low ends fairly quickly, and their mid-range card, while priced and positioned well for consumers, probably isn't going to be enough to stop Nvidia from losing a lot of money.

Don't kid yourself Hurl. I could post the word "the" and you'd find advocacy in it where there is only my opinion. You'll never be able, nor will you try, to know the difference.
Now, back on topic if you please?

 

[BenSkywalker]

nV investors would have LOVED to know about the size of GF104 before their revised revenue estimate came out. You would have seen people dumping that stock sooner.

I give up- why would the die size of the GF104 encourage anyone to dump nV stock?

 

[OCGuy]

This information is important to me.

I invest in tech stocks and in the past I have owned both AMD and nV shares (presently, I hold neither). Knowing the approximate cost of materials for nV's $200 video card vs AMD's $400 is certainly going to have a bearing on which company is going to make money. I like companies that make money because they make me money.

nV investors would have LOVED to know about the size of GF104 before their revised revenue estimate came out. You would have seen people dumping that stock sooner.

Didnt they revise the revenue forcast AFTER GTX460 was out in the wild?

So WTF are you talking about?

 

[tincart]

Didnt they revise the revenue forcast AFTER GTX460 was out in the wild?

So WTF are you talking about?

Almost sad to have to explain this. Let me simplify a little bit:

Many companies make money by selling products at a higher price than the cost of producing them.

If the cost of making a product for company A is very high due to some feature of that product (oh, I don't know, maybe a large die size) it might have a bearing upon the margin which a company is able to make off that product and THAT might create problems for revenue.

If I know that a competitor, Company B, is selling their product with about the same cost of materials for twice the price, I may suspect that the revenues of company A will not look so rosy.

You seem to think that people invest by looking at financial releases from the companies they invest in. If you know something about the business, you can make your investment decisions BEFORE a revised revenue report and avoid the stock you hold losing $1.00 per share.

 

[Tempered81]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3809/nvidias-geforce-gtx-460-the-200-king/17


Looks to be better on idle and basically equal on load.

edit: basically equal on both.

ROFL, a 25 watt difference in furmark is 'basically equal'. Hahah. You realize what percentage of the 5850's loaded power consumption this is?

 

[Voo]

ROFL, a 25 watt difference in furmark is 'basically equal'. Hahah. You realize what percentage of the 5850's loaded power consumption this is?

Well 4.7% more power draw for crysis (furmark? Didn't know someone played that) really isn't that far from "basically equal"...

 

[Skurge]

Well 4.7% more power draw for crysis (furmark? Didn't know someone played that) really isn't that far from "basically equal"...

I think the thing is to him a 2W difference at idle is is a difference, but a 6W difference under load is equal. :hmm:

 

[golem]

I think the thing is to him a 2W difference at idle is is a difference, but a 6W difference under load is equal. :hmm:

I think it was edited to be basically equal on both.

 

[Cookie Monster]

That leaves them stuck in the middle with GF104, and at that time they'll need to sell the fully enabled part at $200 because of pressure from SI and derivatives. They still have the pro market, but if the rumors of AMD coming out with much better performing drives for firepro are true, that might start eroding as well.

So, the point is that Nvidia is going to be locked out of the high and low ends fairly quickly, and their mid-range card, while priced and positioned well for consumers, probably isn't going to be enough to stop Nvidia from losing a lot of money.

What rumours? The recent quadro 6/5/4000 reviews show that they absolutely hammer down firepro counterparts. The only time they lose is in synthetic benchmarks which isn't really meaningful if your getting hammered in real world apps.

You mention how fusion will be the end of nVIDIA's low end, but what about AMDs low end? AMD clearly said that the low end discrete cards will still coexist because even if both products cater toward the low end, they are aiming at different markets within the low end.

With TSMCs 28nm process isn't ready for prime time, the next generation AMD GPUs will still be using the 40nm process. This means that these will be bigger than cypress in terms of die size because of the re-vamped architecture (it would be interesting to see what kind of work they did here especially in geometry performance). Recent reviews show GF100 pulling ahead of Cypress in terms of performance by a bigger margin that it did before especially in DX11 apps. So NI or SI will have to be atleast 30 percent faster than a full fledged cypress inorder to really make sense.

 

[OCGuy]

Almost sad to have to explain this. Let me simplify a little bit:

Many companies make money by selling products at a higher price than the cost of producing them.

If the cost of making a product for company A is very high due to some feature of that product (oh, I don't know, maybe a large die size) it might have a bearing upon the margin which a company is able to make off that product and THAT might create problems for revenue.

If I know that a competitor, Company B, is selling their product with about the same cost of materials for twice the price, I may suspect that the revenues of company A will not look so rosy.

You seem to think that people invest by looking at financial releases from the companies they invest in. If you know something about the business, you can make your investment decisions BEFORE a revised revenue report and avoid the stock you hold losing $1.00 per share.

Huh? What did that have to do with you making a completely inaccurate statement about the timing of GF104 hitting the wild and nV revising it's revenue forcast?

And how do you know what nV pays V AMD? You assume they pay the exact same per wafer?

 

[OCGuy]

Not really. HD 5850 outperforms GTX 460 with lower power consumption. Perf/watt is still very much in AMD's favor... but compared to GF100 Nvidia has taken a significant step forward.

What most people care about: Performance/$. And actually a good chunk of people just care about performance, period.

Performance per watt, much like die size, is e-nerd enthusiast chat. We know about these specs, but the vast majority of people who buy video cards do not. And in the long run it really does not matter, unless it is a huge discrepency between competitors. GF104 pretty much lowered that gap for the mid-range. We will see what 475 does for the higher end.

 

[HurleyBird]

Don't kid yourself Hurl. I could post the word "the" and you'd find advocacy in it where there is only my opinion. You'll never be able, nor will you try, to know the difference.

Well, you could start by explaining why you automatically assume that GF104 will be a higher volume part than Cypress.

 

[Skurge]

Well, you could start by explaining why you automatically assume that GF104 will be a higher volume part than Cypress.

Don't hold your breath on that one dude.

 

[Cookie Monster]

One could guess that the GF104 has more wafer orders than cypress because of their intended market targets. Sure Cypress is cheaper to manufacture, but the GTX460 is probably being moved faster across the channels because of their pricetags.

AMD also has the problem of filling the $200 segment with a castrated cypress. If yields are really good on cypress parts, then the HD5830 is actually hurting them because they are intentionally fusing off parts not because it was bad to start of with.

They however could price the HD5850 accordingly, but they wont do it.

 

[ronnn]

it's almost impossible to knock the 460. It's a great GPU all around.

edited the hate charlie graffiti.

Its what the 4th fasted gpu? Nice deal, but not exactly great.

 

[Keysplayr]

Well, you could start by explaining why you automatically assume that GF104 will be a higher volume part than Cypress.

GF104 seems to have everybody excited. I'm thinking that while this won't be as big of a hit as the 8800GT was (more for timing than anything else), it will be a close runner up over time.
Good card, good price, good all around. All those people who bought ATI cards during that period when they were the only DX11 player in town and were left choiceless, may try and get the Nvidia card they were waiting for. And when I say "All those people", I don't mean every single person who bought a DX11 ATI card. I mean the ones who really wanted Nvidia but bought ATI out of lack of option. I think a good portion would return to the brand they wanted in the first place. You may have noticed the large amount of 5xxx cards in FS/FT forums across the web? Little tell tale signs is all. And who knows how many different skus there will be for the GF1xx series. It's a wait and see.

 

[Keysplayr]

edited the hate charlie graffiti.

Its what the 4th fasted gpu? Nice deal, but not exactly great.

So what does that mean? I saw a survey that the 200.00 price point is where most gamers, on average, spend their money for a new GPU. GTX460 kinda has that locked up right now.

When looking at the pricing of all the cards above the 460, it does kind of look like a great deal. GTX470 and 480 have come down quite a bit and that may be what you're paying attention to. Some great Bing cash back deals and rebates for the 470.

 

[HurleyBird]

It's a wait and see.

That's better, but not exactly what you said before

Really though, biggest thing is how it lines up against SI derivatives, whether AMD improves their perf/mm2, or it stays the same... or it could even shrink, wouldn't be the first time.

But if it does improve, GF104 is going to be a non-starter. If AMD drops the 5850 to $200 GF104 will be a non-starter. There are a lot of things that can go wrong. If AMD leaves Nvidia that niche, GF104 may end up selling very good (but still might not make that much money). All that being said Nvidia is still in imminent danger of losing the high end for at least another six months, and the low end altogether.

They are very strong in the pro market (pretty much have it locked up), but I don't think they can survive holed up there forever. With the FTC ruling against Intel, I'm thinking they need to expand into x86 by buying Via, or they will slowly get squeezed out of the market by AMD and Intel.

 

[Keysplayr]

That's better, but not exactly what you said before

What differs from what? Let me know.

 

[HurleyBird]

What differs from what? Let me know.

How much more could it cost than a cypress core? Sure, multiply that by millions, but also consider how many more Nvidia will sell, and how many more they purchase from TSMC.

Sounds like you're saying that GF104 will be able to compete on price against Cypress because Nvidia will simply order more wafers and enjoy economies of scale in their favor. Obviously, there is no real evidence on that point and it seems more like a statement of faith. The only thing that we can really conclude is what you said later -- that we need to "wait and see"

Let me know if I misunderstood you.

 

[Will Robinson]

GF104 has only 15.5million cards to go to catch up to Cypress.
Let me know how that works out for you and the rest back at Headquarters.^_^

 

[SlowSpyder]

What rumours? The recent quadro 6/5/4000 reviews show that they absolutely hammer down firepro counterparts. The only time they lose is in synthetic benchmarks which isn't really meaningful if your getting hammered in real world apps.

You mention how fusion will be the end of nVIDIA's low end, but what about AMDs low end? AMD clearly said that the low end discrete cards will still coexist because even if both products cater toward the low end, they are aiming at different markets within the low end.

With TSMCs 28nm process isn't ready for prime time, the next generation AMD GPUs will still be using the 40nm process. This means that these will be bigger than cypress in terms of die size because of the re-vamped architecture (it would be interesting to see what kind of work they did here especially in geometry performance). Recent reviews show GF100 pulling ahead of Cypress in terms of performance by a bigger margin that it did before especially in DX11 apps. So NI or SI will have to be atleast 30 percent faster than a full fledged cypress inorder to really make sense.

I think SI will be fine, it's more of a question of how aggressive AMD wants to be with their GPU size than what Nvidia will have at that time, I think. Remember, AMD has 200mm2 of die size they can tack on before they reach Fermi's GPU size. So if AMD does make a 430mm2 part (just pulling a number out of my ass) there shouldn't be any reason they can't 'tack on more stuff' to reach Fermi's performance and still have the smaller GPU. Just like the 5870 vs. the GTX460, when we are talking about GPU's of a near equal size AMD just has an advantage right now. With a slightly revised and tweaked SI part and more silicon I'm sure they can match Fermi.

With the 4890 they made a different chip, but it was really the same architecture and they kept the part very close to the same size. Unless AMD can unlock a lot of performance through architecture enhancments, I see them adding more silicon to make sure they are able to out perform Fermi.

But then, with 40nm still being the only process for a while yet that makes sense for high end GPU's, where does this leave Nvidia to turn to when SI is out? An even bigger GPU? A 4890 type of part of their own?

Interesting times coming up.

 

[golem]

edited the hate charlie graffiti.

Its what the 4th fasted gpu? Nice deal, but not exactly great.

Is that how you rate greatness? So the GTX480 would be the greatest?

 

[golem]

I think SI will be fine, it's more of a question of how aggressive AMD wants to be with their GPU size than what Nvidia will have at that time, I think. Remember, AMD has 200mm2 of die size they can tack on before they reach Fermi's GPU size. So if AMD does make a 430mm2 part (just pulling a number out of my ass) there shouldn't be any reason they can't 'tack on more stuff' to reach Fermi's performance and still have the smaller GPU. Just like the 5870 vs. the GTX460, when we are talking about GPU's of a near equal size AMD just has an advantage right now. With a slightly revised and tweaked SI part and more silicon I'm sure they can match Fermi.

With the 4890 they made a different chip, but it was really the same architecture and they kept the part very close to the same size. Unless AMD can unlock a lot of performance through architecture enhancments, I see them adding more silicon to make sure they are able to out perform Fermi.

But then, with 40nm still being the only process for a while yet that makes sense for high end GPU's, where does this leave Nvidia to turn to when SI is out? An even bigger GPU? A 4890 type of part of their own?

Interesting times coming up.

But if they increase the die size too much, won't they come across the problems of the gtx470/480 of heat?