"Nvidia Admits to Underestimating AMD"

[thilanliyan]

http://seekingalpha.com/articl...to-underestimating-amd

 

[Janooo]

NV is in trouble. They have to fight back. That's a fact.

 

[BFG10K]

I think we all underestimated ATi. Even a week before launch I still had doubts the 4870 will have 800 shaders and 40 TMUs. That board was a real rabbit out of the hat and it's done wonders for competition. :thumbsup:

 

[Aberforth]

That's one thing NV ever admitted truthfully, the board elections must be coming soon I guess (usually in the month of august)....maybe that's why.

 

[Hauk]

I wonder what he's thinking, does he still have vision or are things spiraling. Somewhere, home or office, there's a framed cover he's looking at daily... Forbes Company of the Year

 

[thilanliyan]

Lol never seen that before. Shouldn't he be holding a can of whoopass?

 

[geokilla]

Nvidia's doing the exact same what AMD did with their CPUs when they were dominating with their Athlon series. Now that Intel has Core 2, AMD has no respond except for making them better bang for buck when comparing CPUs at stock speeds and stuff. NVIDIA was killing ATI with their 8 series and potentially their 7 series. Now their 9 series are more or less the same as 8 series GPU, while ATI's 4000 series is destroying NVIDIA in both performance and pricing. Way to go NVIDIA. If ATI can keep this up for the next two years like what Intel did to AMD, AMD might be back in the green next year.

 

[Aberforth]

Just for the addition, AMD stocks went up by +6.42%

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: geokilla
ATI's 4000 series is destroying NVIDIA in both performance and pricing.

Huh? The 4870X2 is the fastest single card now, but this isnt true by a long shot.

The 4850 wins over the 9800GTX+ due to the price, but I wouldnt call the 4870 over the 260 "destroying". Also, the 9800GX2 smokes a 4870 and 260 and is around the same price now.

And $449 (or less) for the top single-gpu is awesome.

ATi came back and took the single-card crown this round, but I dont think NV is being "destroyed". In an ATi fanbois wetdream, yes. In reality, no.

What it did do is make NV go back to the drawing board and realize they cant keep making bigger and bigger chips to = performance. The fact that they cant make a sandwich card like the X2 is telling. Maybe its the wakeup call they needed.


You have to also remember as far as the stock is concerned, they took a fat hit because of the mobile f*ck up too, it wasnt all because they had to drop margin on GT200. Or even maybe a loss actually.....we wont know for a couple months.

 

[ronnn]

Nvidia has gone from cans of whoopass and trash talking intel to - we underestimated. This all started well before the 4800 series - something rotten is happening there. They are acting like a company in trouble, but I still can't figure out why? As ocguy31 said - they have competitive products.

 

[tuteja1986]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: geokilla
ATI's 4000 series is destroying NVIDIA in both performance and pricing.

Huh? The 4870X2 is the fastest single card now, but this isnt true by a long shot.

The 4850 wins over the 9800GTX+ due to the price, but I wouldnt call the 4870 over the 260 "destroying". Also, the 9800GX2 smokes a 4870 and 260 and is around the same price now.

And $449 (or less) for the top single-gpu is awesome.

ATi came back and took the single-card crown this round, but I dont think NV is being "destroyed". In an ATi fanbois wetdream, yes. In reality, no.

What it did do is make NV go back to the drawing board and realize they cant keep making bigger and bigger chips to = performance. The fact that they cant make a sandwich card like the X2 is telling. Maybe its the wakeup call they needed.


You have to also remember as far as the stock is concerned, they took a fat hit because of the mobile f*ck up too, it wasnt all because they had to drop margin on GT200. Or even maybe a loss actually.....we wont know for a couple months.

Err not many people is saying Nvidia is destroyed... No one with knowledge of how AMD is just barley surviving is saying thing like that. Nvidia didn't let AMD win this round either, they reduced the price of their offering to crazy low level. Now they are loosing money on every GT2XX card sold.

AMD CPU division is an money sucking black hole that really need to produce something to get the company over the red line.

Nvidia has always succeeded even when ATI had better performance offering with R420 , R580. Its because they have initiated a very successful marketing and pr strategies and also the fact ATI screwed up in little things like noise , heat and mult-gpu.

Also i don't any long time ATI fanboy that has gone with slogan ATI destroyed Nvidia. All them know Nvidia is already planning major offensive early October and is going to pumping in some good amount of R&D for major responsive to Intel threats.

 

[Hauk]

Originally posted by: ronnn
Nvidia has gone from cans of whoopass and trash talking intel to - we underestimated. This all started well before the 4800 series - something rotten is happening there. They are acting like a company in trouble, but I still can't figure out why? As ocguy31 said - they have competitive products.

I'll take a stab, I'd say it starts and ends with Jen-Hsun. Let's not forget his roots:

"Huang received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University in 1984, and his master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1992. After college he was Director of Coreware at LSI Logic and a microprocessor designer at Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD). In 1993, Huang co-founded Nvidia.."

So he jumps ship and co-founds his own company, not a direct threat at first, but with the AMD's aquisition of ATI, he's direct competition with inside information on AMD. Not just inside information, years of high level exposure. Rest assured AMD hates him. Now go piss off Intel. Has he pissed off Microsoft yet? Put these company's decision makers in a room together and align them against you. You'll find yourself fighting windmills a few years later. I'm just thinking out loud here.

"He owns 4.69% stock percent of Nvidia worth about USD $512.4 million as of 2006." Not sure what his stock share is as of today, but say it's under 10%.. If he's perceived as the root of the company's troubles, if it's bad past blood, what do you think the board and major stockholders are thinking right about now?

I'm not a market expert, but I do know business. Let's look at the stock graph found in the OP's link again. Stock is at a high point by end of 2007, Forbes nominates them company of the year for 2007. Look at the hit stock has taken. If your're a CEO with less than 10% stock holdings, would you feel threatened?

Despite their weak financial state, AMD is a big company with a lot of power. So is Intel. Imagine all that power aligned against you. Now imagine the company you co-founded is looking for answers as to why stock is tanking. Poor product positioning? Bad parts from our suppliers? I'd hate to be the CEO providing these answers..

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: tuteja1986

Also i don't any long time ATI fanboy that has gone with slogan ATI destroyed Nvidia. All them know Nvidia is already planning major offensive early October and is going to pumping in some good amount of R&D for major responsive to Intel threats.

nVidia should make sure that their ?offensive? is a good one because if rumours are true they are in big big trouble. It's not just that ATI is killing them with their new product line and aggressive pricing or the hit their stock took as SteelSix mentioned or their problems with bad chips. If nVidia is indeed withdrawing from the chipset market then they will also suffer greatly in the multi-GPU area too (a.k.a. prestige area).

If rumours are true nVidia have come to an agreement with Intel to licence SLI but they are way too greedy to do it the right way. Instead of just licensing the tech as everybody else does they will be selling their no-good-for-nothing nV200 bridge chip as part of the deal. The nV200 runs hot, increases latencies and mobos have to be redesigned in order to incorporate it. On the other hand AMD/ATI have their own chipset line and they have already licenced CF to intel a long time ago. It is clear that ATI's advantage is getting bigger and bigger.

Losing the multi-GPU market is crucial not just because of economics but mostly because ATI will have the performance crown and that will be a great blow to nVidia's prestige and Huang's ego. Talking about irony here. nV introduced SLI a few years ago only to make ATI look good in the end.

I hope that Huang has something really good up his sleeve, for our sake that is. If any one company dominates the market it is us who will suffer because of the luck of competition that will be created. In that aspect it is in our best interest that nV fights back.

 

[MarcVenice]

Originally posted by: ronnn
Nvidia has gone from cans of whoopass and trash talking intel to - we underestimated. This all started well before the 4800 series - something rotten is happening there. They are acting like a company in trouble, but I still can't figure out why? As ocguy31 said - they have competitive products.

It's all about the buzz. I posted a thread where digitimes claimed that AMD said that their marketshare in the discrete graphics card market went up from 30 to 40%. Nvidia MIGHT have competitive products, they pissed of a lot of people with their high prices, and AMD is just receiving a lot of positive buzz right now.

The only thing the nvidia crew managed to do against AMD's positive buzz was claiming that the HD4850 ran hot, which it does ( more or less, the fan just doesn't spin hard enough ) and a new bios fixed the problem. Now, if you look at nvidia, their gtx280 is failing left and right, running as hot as 105c, making it throttle, resulting in a lot of stuttering. More negative buzz for nvidia in the integrated graphics market, and average joe buying a new videocard hears a lot of good things abt ATI, and a lot of bad things about nvidia, the rest is history.

Doesn't mean nvidia is being destroyed hehe, AMD has sucked in the past, Nvidia has sucked in the past, they'll get on top of things again. Buzz, be it positive or negative can dissapear in an instant.

 

[dennilfloss]

People have such short memories. Every 2-3 years, the main companies exchange places and the doom sayers panic. Yet even Matrox still survives.

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: dennilfloss
People have such short memories. Every 2-3 years, the main companies exchange places and the doom sayers panic. Yet even Matrox still survives.

They exist you mean. I wouldn't call that survival. Do they even have 0.5% of the global market ?

 

[unr3al]

Matrox survives... pmsl What is their market cap?

I won't be saying nVidia is going under, but with Intel getting onto the graphics bandwagon in the near future they had better pull a rabbit of their own out of a hat. Otherwise they're going to end up in the same spot AMD has been since Intel released Core2.

And talking about AMD, they had better release something that trumps Core2 or Nehalem is going to have a field day... We haven't before seen clock-for-clock performance comparisons like this since the release of the AMD64 architecture; that was back in 2003! I'm saying that we need something new from AMD, fast. No pun intended...

 

[Nemesis 1]

I don't think NV is going under. But they are going to take a beating in in the area of how games are . Made.

Intels future entrance into the discrete graphics arena is aways off. But it has influence today on how games are being made for tomorrow . Meaning there will be games available when . Larrabee appears that support alot of what larrabee has to offer . Thing is ATI supports those things today. So ya NV CEO did screw up . But its not end of the world.

NV will recover its just how quickly. I believe they have a good chance of recovering performance crown in the short term with games that aren't coded for certain DX models.

 

[geokilla]

Well I'm not a fanboy. It was just my personal opinion on what's going on between NVIDIA and ATI.

Intel entering the discrete graphics area imo is good. With another competitor, we can probably get better pricing for midrange and high-end graphic cards and probably better performance improvements when the respective companies introduces their next generation graphic cards.

What Marc said is true. In the computer market anything can happen. I say give the "economy" a month or two before people forget that NVIDIA had all these problems with their graphic cards, such as G92, G94 cores failing, crazy-hot graphic cards, etc. Plus, there's only so much people out there that are enthusiasts like us. Probably only 10 to 15% of the world's population are people like us, demanding the best of the best for the price that we pay.

 

[unr3al]

I agree that nV will recover, with a larger budget than AMD and a colossal fanbase, they won't take such a big hit that they can't recover. But they will have to start looking at other options. I mentioned Intel earlier. They're a colossal giant; if they get into serious GPU manufacturing, nVidia is definitely going to have a problem.

Look at it this way: nVidia makes chipsets and GPUs (chipsets going to waste soon?). AMD makes CPUs, VPUs, chipsets. And a few other odds and ends (for example, ATi has made PDA VPUs in the past; I'm unaware of current chips, but still). Then suddenly Intel is manufacturing the same range of products that AMD is. Where does that leave a GPU-only company? Somewhere out in the cold IMO. Look at the previously mentioned Matrox for a prime sample...