News Nvidia cuts 4Q18 revenue guidance

Hitman928

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https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/28/nvidia-shares-tank-after-chipmaker-cuts-guidance.html

The company lowered its revenue guidance for the fourth quarter citing "deteriorating macroeconomic conditions, particularly in China."

Nvidia reports earnings on Feb. 14, and now expects quarterly revenue of $2.20 billion, down from previously stated guidance of $2.70 billion. The company also said quarterly margin will be impacted by charges related to "current market conditions."

In addition, sales of certain high-end GPUs using NVIDIA's new Turing™ architecture were lower than expected.

So Apple, Intel, and Nvidia all have lowered revenue expectations and cited China as a main source of lowered revenue. AMD reports earnings tomorrow, it will be interesting to see where they end up in terms of revenue guidance and the 'China problem' as well.
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
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In addition, sales of certain high-end GPUs using NVIDIA's new Turing™ architecture were lower than expected.
I'm shocked, I tell ya. Shocked!

I guess the market is just a bunch of "entitled SJWs", as certain individuals were claiming. Yeah, that's all it is. No siree, no blame with nVidia whatsoever. o_O

This is what you get when you try to pass off a $350 card as "mid-range", and at every bracket downgrade VRAM while raising prices. Also pimping a technology when your sole software launch partner can't even write a basic DX12 path properly.

These products deliver a revolutionary leap in performance and innovation with real-time ray tracing and AI, but some customers may have delayed their purchase while waiting for lower price points and further demonstrations of RTX technology in actual games.
They left out "also waiting for the bundling of Space Invaders to end". Brand new cards are still shipping with the defect, months after launch. I'm surprised a class action lawsuit hasn't begun yet.
 

Dribble

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Aug 9, 2005
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2.7 to 2.2 is a very big drop! Going to be some worried looking employee's as the bean counters demand a head count reduction.
 

lane42

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I like the way they say " but some customers may have delayed their purchase while waiting for lower price points".
It should say, " but MANY customers may have delayed their purchase while waiting for lower price points".
 

Wall Street

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Mar 28, 2012
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There were several missteps by Nvidia:

1. Telling investors that crypto mining was barely impacting their business then getting caught in the following glut with excess Pascal inventory.

2. Spending too much die area on Turing in tensor and RT cores which won't impact the huge catalog of legacy games without RTX or DLSS support.

3. Failing to get dozens of game developers on board with RTX and DLSS. There are only two games with support for these features and I don't even like either of those games (Battlefield V is a flop and Final Fantasy XV is not one of the better in the series). Nvidia was probably hoping for 5-10 games to support RTX features by the six month mark, with hopefully one of those games being an RDR2 / Fortnite level of success thus justifying the prices to gamers. Maybe Anthem will be the big hit RTX game to kick off 2019, but I am not holding my breath. It also doesn't help that BF5 is PvP multiplayer which relies on good frame rates.

4. Not using 7 nm, which would allow the traditional generational performance leap. 12 nm is meh, especially for NVidia who was able to achieve 2 ghz clock speeds on 14 nm. Perf per watt and transistor density also have not made a generational improvements.

5. Stepping up the branding by a level and thinking that they could only release $500+ cards initially. The market up there is small. Hard to justify these prices for what in the end of the day is video gaming hardware which will be far surpassed in the next 24 months. I get that some people need the best, but all of today's games can be played on GTX 1060 - 1070 or RX 580 level hardware, and the market for $100-300 cards is much larger.
 

sontin

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Sep 12, 2011
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4. Not using 7 nm, which would allow the traditional generational performance leap. 12 nm is meh, especially for NVidia who was able to achieve 2 ghz clock speeds on 14 nm. Perf per watt and transistor density also have not made a generational improvements.
[

7nm costs around 50% more than 12nm and it only improves perf around 25%. Nothing would have changed for customers. Moores Law is coming to an end. Which means improvements outside of special cases are slowing down.
 
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PeterScott

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I like the way they say " but some customers may have delayed their purchase while waiting for lower price points".
It should say, " but MANY customers may have delayed their purchase while waiting for lower price points".

This is slow gaming card sales after a terrible year for gaming PC purchases (Mining and high RAM prices). You would think there would be pent up demand.

I start to wonder if between Mining and high priced new generation GPUs, that is driving people away from PCs to Consoles.

With Xbox supporting KB/Mouse that is another objection to consoles going away.
 
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Jaskalas

Lifer
Jun 23, 2004
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I'm in camp "wait for lower prices".

The decision to get a new GPU rests almost entirely on the price / performance comparison to my current card. And at the $200-$250 price point, my 1060 is still king. I feel like I have a wait on my hands, and that doesn't bother me one bit.
 

Mopetar

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This is slow gaming card sales after a terrible year for gaming PC purchases (Mining and high RAM prices). You would think there would be pent up demand.

There likely is, but NVidia priced almost all of their cards at the existing performance/dollar curve so unless you really want ray tracing (which only exists for a small number of titles at this point) or a 2080 Ti to have the best possible performance you're not better off upgrading.

I think that their sales will improve once they release the 1660 Ti and cards below that level, but as of now all Turing cards are $350+, which is a tiny part of the market. If you look at the steam hardware survey, ~90% of people are using something at or below $300.
 

PeterScott

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There likely is, but NVidia priced almost all of their cards at the existing performance/dollar curve so unless you really want ray tracing (which only exists for a small number of titles at this point) or a 2080 Ti to have the best possible performance you're not better off upgrading.

I think that their sales will improve once they release the 1660 Ti and cards below that level, but as of now all Turing cards are $350+, which is a tiny part of the market. If you look at the steam hardware survey, ~90% of people are using something at or below $300.

While I agree most people are buying something under $300, starting above $300 is the way the Pascal started as well IIRC(titan,1080/1070 months before 1060/1050).

This time it's starting above $300 and having stagnating Perf/$. The stagnating perf/$ is the big difference.
 
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linkgoron

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Between 2012 and 2014, the performance you could get for $300 doubled. You could buy a 660ti for $300 Aug 2012, and get double the performance from a 290x for $310 in Dec. 2014 (or a 970 for a bit more).

Four years later, For $320 in January 2019, you could buy a 1070 which is around 50% faster (compared against a RX 480 which is around 290x performance). The 1660ti doesn't look like it'll improve anything in that regard. $280 for ~1070 performance.

The same thing happened all around. The price of getting more performance than what you currently have has gone way up. Nvidia didn't even do their usual double dipping 80/Ti this time. i.e. release an overpriced 80 (not too much), release a grossly overpriced Titan and then release a Ti which looks great compared to the Titan.
 
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ericlp

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pretty disappointed in nvidia .... The 20xx series doesn't offer much increase in speed. Last I heard they new cards were supposed to be 4~5 times faster. What the hell happened?

Looking for AMD to step it up and come down with something cheaper and faster... If AMD can push out a card with 2070 speeds, for half the price, I think it will shake up the market. Hopefully Nvidia has a better upgrade path for it next iteration, but from what I've seen they move at Intel speed... Slow and sloppy.

It's like they had a great thing with Volta they made some really good progress, then took 2 steps backwards with Turing that no one wants because it's basically isn't much faster than pascal and at the same stupid prices.

For the average budget gamer... might as well just buy a 2200G / 2400G and kick back to see who ends up on top for better tech at cheaper prices.
 

Guru

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No kidding. They overextended with this RTX crap. Ray tracing is indeed the FUTURE, NOT the present. They made these new GPU's so big to put all that RTX stuff on which is driving the costs absurdly high. I guess there is a limited amount of crazy, way too rich and stupid people to go around buying these overpriced turds.

The only decent card in the RTX lineup is the $350 RTX 2060 as it does make some sense in terms of value if you are upgrading from 2 year older generation of cards or from an entry level card. Other than that the RTX 2080ti is a fast card, but way too expensive. RTX 2070 is essentially an overclocked 1080 for the same price, RTX 2080ti is essentially an overlcoked 1080ti at even higher price.

Why would anyone buy these turds? At least with the 2080ti you get the fastest card ever produced, even if it doesn't present any value.
 
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Mopetar

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pretty disappointed in nvidia .... The 20xx series doesn't offer much increase in speed. Last I heard they new cards were supposed to be 4~5 times faster.

That seems like a bit of an unreasonable expectation. I can't think of any previous cases where the generation to generation improvement was that large.

While the gains haven't been as good as in the past, mainly because both companies saw large gains more as a result of larger and larger dies than through pure architectural or clock speed improvements, expecting more than 50% is a bit "pie in the sky" as far as expectations go.
 

LTC8K6

Lifer
Mar 10, 2004
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Yeah, no one thought any new GPU would be 4-5 times faster than the previous one.

Turing is lots faster than Pascal, but it's a notch too high in price in every bracket.

Thus we have GTX Turing cards coming.
 

LTC8K6

Lifer
Mar 10, 2004
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Should have probably gone with cheaper 1180ti/1180/1170/ etc., without the RT cores.

Then brought out improved RT cores with 7nm later.

Then did a driver release to enable the RT cores on the 1100 series cards as a novelty.
 

linkgoron

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Yeah, no one thought any new GPU would be 4-5 times faster than the previous one.

Turing is lots faster than Pascal, but it's a notch too high in price in every bracket.

Thus we have GTX Turing cards coming.

The 1660TI and 1660 look like they'll be in line with the rest of the Turing family. At $280, depending on clocks, the 1660ti could end up with worse price/perf than the 2060. At $230, the 1660 will almost surely have worse price/perf than the current $200 1060 cards.
 

LTC8K6

Lifer
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The 1660TI and 1660 look like they'll be in line with the rest of the Turing family. At $280, depending on clocks, the 1660ti could end up with worse price/perf than the 2060.
Well, the 2060 seems to throw a monkey wrench into it.

The 2060 should sell pretty well.

Apparently it isn't.
 

Mopetar

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The 1660TI and 1660 look like they'll be in line with the rest of the Turing family. At $280, depending on clocks, the 1660ti could end up with worse price/perf than the 2060. At $230, the 1660 will almost surely have worse price/perf than the current $200 1060 cards.

I did some rough napkin math crunching in another thread and concluded that $280 puts the 1660 Ti right inline with the 2060 as far as value/dollar goes, assuming that clock speeds are the same, etc. Some people were expecting it to cost $300, and I don't think it's been confirmed one way or another, but $280 is where I'm expecting.

Well, the 2060 seems to throw a monkey wrench into it.

The 2060 should sell pretty well.

Apparently it isn't.

The 2060 only appears to be a good value when placed next to the other cards which are a terrible value. A mushy piece of fruit doesn't become more appetizing just because you're holding it up to a piece of moldy, maggot infested bread. If it actually worked that way, companies could always sucker people into terrible deals simply by creating something immensely worse to make it look good by comparison.

If they were selling the 2070 at $350, I'd be people would be more willing to make that purchase. It's also hard to compare sales to expectations without knowing what NVidia expected. If they were thinking that sales would remain steady based on historical trends for a given price point, then maybe they might be off a little bit. If they looked at what Pascal did for particular cards and extrapolated, then obviously they missed by a lot.