Nvidia GTX 690 = 2 x Nvidia GTX 680!!

[SirPauly]

In any competitive industry, if you are producing something thats "worse than expected" or your production capability is "lower than expected", it's pretty damn terrible. Unless you don't like to make $$.

Plus, he's in an official presentation, the CEO of a large company even saying such words like "yields lower than expected" is already a giant hint that things are doing bad. BAD.

If you want to call me extremist (lol) for stating the blatant obvious so be it. But you can believe NV PR all you like, all these "high demand" not being met = $$ not being earned.

Can you find me a quote where the CEO said terribad? Really curious how you make things up out of thin air. When you can find it - we can have a discussion.

 

[SirPauly]

I'm sure it's point 4 though. Explains everything because they are always right, failing substrate was all due to people holding their cards/laptops wrong and anyone who says otherwise is part of wide-reaching conspiracy...

I don't think nVidia is always right and have made mistakes -- what company or person hasn't?

 

[Silverforce11]

Can you find me a quote where the CEO said terribad? Really curious how you make things up out of thin air. When you can find it - we can have a discussion.

Was I QUOTING or was I paraphrasing or summarizing?

I'm gonna post this again because you obvious are too thick:

"In any competitive industry, if you are producing something thats "worse than expected" or your production capability is "lower than expected", it's pretty damn terrible. Unless you don't like to make $$.

Plus, he's in an official presentation, the CEO of a large company even saying such words like "yields lower than expected" is already a giant hint that things are doing bad. BAD." - TERRIBAD.. BADDER THAN BAD!!

 

[SirPauly]

Was I QUOTING or was I paraphrasing or summarizing?

Inventing is more like it, imho. How is guidance of 49 percent margins terrible?

 

[Silverforce11]

Yes I am inventing NV's terrible yields because obviously its not terrible since their only ONE card aimed at enthusiasts which comprise the LEAST amount of GPU sales has GREAT stock... yeah..

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Silverforce, why do you feel the need to personally attack another member over a hardware discussion?

 

[Silverforce11]

Silverforce, why do you feel the need to personally attack another member over a hardware discussion?

Hey, i'm just such an extremist, remember?

If you can't fathom why the leader of a huge company openly admitting yields are lower than expected .. then even a few months after release their only ONE low-volume card is out of stock.. is a terrible situation for any company to be in, then we have nothing further to discuss. You obviously seem to take PR's word for the gospel truth and cannot be convinced by logic.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I've seen reports stating yields are quite high, however Nvidia is simply unable to keep up with demand since they have a superior product on the market.

 

[blastingcap]

Last year's chips at 2/3rd the price, on a process that is so mature that the yields allow such a high margin compared to the crappy yields on the new node, is not a bad business model. It is not ideal, as I am sure nV wishes they had a full range of 28nm parts on the market, but they are far from hurting in that regard.

This.

And according to the guy on OcUK the old 40nm NV GPUs are still selling well, even the GTX 570 is doing pretty well after discounts.

Plus, remember that NV rakes in more profit selling the same GPUs in HPC and pro graphics cards. Even stuff like the flagship gtx 580 680 690 etc. are low-margin compared to what NV can sell the GPUs for elsewhere. We are the low-margin, high-volume segment. Even those of us who buy two gtx 690's to quadfire.

 

[SirPauly]

Hey, i'm just such an extremist, remember?

If you can't fathom why the leader of a huge company openly admitting yields are lower than expected .. then even a few months after release their only ONE low-volume card is out of stock.. is a terrible situation for any company to be in, then we have nothing further to discuss. You obviously seem to take PR's word for the gospel truth and cannot be convinced by logic.

How terrible of a situation can there be when guidance for the margins are around 49.2 percent?

Logic isn't about extreme views, imho.

 

[Arzachel]

Imho,

I don't remember nVidia saying that at all. I do recall lowering margin guidance from around 51 percent to 49 percent. Also recall them saying that 28nm as a whole may be constrained and have a desire for many more wafers. This is probably why there may be a mix of 40nm and 28nm product sku's 'till maybe the third or fourth quarter of this year -- that is probably the time-line, where margins may be back up to 51-52 percent and maybe a complete line of 28nm product as 40nm may be phased out or EOL.

"The gross margin decline is contributed almost entirely to the yields of 28nm being lower than expected. That is, I guess, unsurprising at this point,” said Jen-Hsun Huang

Bear in mind that he has to bring the news over as "nicely" as possible or risk being lynched by investors. Also bear in mind that Nvidia is the only company using TSMC's 28nm node that is complaining about yields.

Last year's chips at 2/3rd the price, on a process that is so mature that the yields allow such a high margin compared to the crappy yields on the new node, is not a bad business model. It is not ideal, as I am sure nV wishes they had a full range of 28nm parts on the market, but they are far from hurting in that regard.

Smaller chips benefit more from a smaller process node at first, because you can get more of them from a single wafer than on a previous node and they suffer less from bad yields because they are, well, smaller and the amount of defects per cm^2 doesn't change much. I'm pretty sure that Pitcarn is cheaper to manufacture than GF110.

That said, I don't think anyone can say that Nvidia isn't having a really rough time.

 

[sontin]

Inventing is more like it, imho. How is guidance of 49 percent margins terrible?

You know:
nVidia has always terrible yields. Even when they announcing that their yields better than expected - i mean you Fermi. D:

"The gross margin decline is contributed almost entirely to the yields of 28nm being lower than expected. That is, I guess, unsurprising at this point,” said Jen-Hsun Huang

Bear in mind that he has to bring the news over as "nicely" as possible or risk being lynched by investors. Also bear in mind that Nvidia is the only company using TSMC's 28nm node that is complaining about yields.

nVidia is the only company which relates to TSMC for the whole business. Neather AMD's or Qualcomm's revenue tooks a huge hit when TSMC's process is not good.

 

[blastingcap]

Nvidia is the only company using TSMC's 28nm node that is publicly complaining about yields.

Fixed that for you.

 

[sontin]

That's wrong. Qualcomm complains about the supply, too.

 

[SirPauly]

"The gross margin decline is contributed almost entirely to the yields of 28nm being lower than expected. That is, I guess, unsurprising at this point,” said Jen-Hsun Huang

Bear in mind that he has to bring the news over as "nicely" as possible or risk being lynched by investors. Also bear in mind that Nvidia is the only company using TSMC's 28nm node that is complaining about yields.

And because of this they lowered margin guidance to around 49.2 -- certainly not terrible but certainly not ideal. nVidia seems to have work to do with TSMC by improving yields and try to eliminate constraints to bring back margins to record territories they enjoyed the past few quarters.

 

[Arzachel]

nVidia is the only company which relates to TSMC for the whole business. Neather AMD's or Qualcomm's revenue tooks a huge hit when TSMC's process is not good.

TSMC is the only fab currently offering a 28nm process so AMD and Qualcomm is affected just the same.

Fixed that for you.

I bet everyone on TSMC's 28nm process would want the yields to be better. That it's bad enough for Nvidia to publicly complain is a bit more damning.

That's wrong. Qualcomm complains about the supply, too.

Yields is the keyword here. Constrained supply and the increase in price per wafer is another thing entirely, but looking back, Nvidia has been TSMC's darling and I'm pretty doubtful they're being treated worse than everyone else.

 

[SirPauly]

Price performance probably wouldn't be the constructive nit-pick if everything was rosy at TSMC, imho!

 

[sontin]

TSMC is the only fab currently offering a 28nm process so AMD and Qualcomm is affected just the same.

No. AMD's graphics revenue is less than 1/3 of the computer solutions. Qualcomm making a ton of selling S3 and other products.

nVidia's geforce revenue is $600 Millions - 2/3 of their company revenue. It's clear that they are much more affected by lower yields than any other company at this time. And so they must talk about the reason.

Yields is the keyword here. Constrained supply and the increase in price per wafer is another thing entirely, but looking back, Nvidia has been TSMC's darling and I'm pretty doubtful they're being treated worse than everyone else.

And Qualcomm complains about TSMC, too. So we have two companies which want more supply and one who said that there is no huge demand for their cards...

 

[RussianSensation]

Yes I am inventing NV's terrible yields because obviously its not terrible since their only ONE card aimed at enthusiasts which comprise the LEAST amount of GPU sales has GREAT stock... yeah..

You do know that GTX670 is launching soon, rumoured around May 10th?

Rumor has it GTX660Ti is delayed until Q3 2012.

Cut the PR crap Nvidia and release the 660ti already so I know if I should skip this gen and wait until winter or not.

Andrew Gibson (Overclockers.co.uk): 660Ti, you have zero chance, its approx 6 months away……..

That just adds to already piling evidence that GK104 was never intended to be a high-end chip. NV has fully working GK104 chips and that's how GK104 was intended to be. How are they going to magically create GTX660Ti with cut down cores when they are pumping GTX680 with full working 1536 SPs and chips with 1 faulty/laser cut SMX cluster will be made into 670s?

It would be laughable to manually laser cut GTX670/680 GK104s to re-release them as GK104 GTX660Tis for $249. It's no wonder GTX660Ti is MIA since NV doesn't have hundreds of thousands of failed GK104 chips. Since GK104 is going to sell for $399 as GTX670 and is already selling out for $500 as the GTX680, there is little to no incentive to repackage them as 660Tis.

 

[Mopetar]

NV has fully working GK104 chips. How are they going to magically create GTX660Ti with cut down cores when they are pumping GTX680 with full working 1536 SPs and chips with 1 faulty cluster will be made 670s?

Sell the chips with 2 faulty clusters? They probably have some, but I have no idea what % of their dies fall into that category. Perhaps it's not enough to launch a mid-range product or they're still saving up dies and selling their functional high-end chips to make the most money possible.

 

[Silverforce11]

@Russian:

Actually I disagree with your analysis, the reason the gtx660 or gk106 is not out sooner is due to limited 28nm production capability. We can speculate on the reasons why they are struggling with production... yields being a major factor, but not the only one obviously.

Here's the take home message: They cannot even satisfy the demands for LOW-VOLUME (HIGH MARGIN/PROFIT) enthusiast products, there's no point in releasing a mid-range (HIGH VOLUME/LOW MARGIN) card that COMPETES for the same 28nm production. Bolded for emphasis.

Edit: gtx670ti (-1 cluster) and 670 (-2 cluster??)

So again, I have to say they are in a terrible situation. Imagine if they had no yield issues and high production, they could have met demands for high-end cards whilst able to produce masses of mid-range stuff NOW to make even more $$. Day by day they are losing potential sales of mid-range cards when they have no product. If that's not a bad situation, I don't want to know your idea of a bad situation.

 

[RussianSensation]

Actually I disagree with your analysis, the reason the gtx660 or gk106 is not out sooner is due to limited 28nm production capability.

The GTX 660 Ti is rumored to be featuring 6 SMX clusters — thats 1152 CUDA cores.

Detailed specification is as follows:

Transistors Count: 3.5 billions (GK104 not GK106!)
Process: 28 nm
SMXs: 6
CUDA Cores: 1152
TMUs: 96
ROPs: 24
Base Clock: 1006 MHz
Memory Clock: 1502 MHz
Memory: 1536 MB GDDR5 192-bit
Bandwidth: 144 GB/s
Single-Precision Computing power: 2.35 TFLOPS
TDP: 150 W
Estimated Launch Price: $249

Edit: gtx670ti (-1 cluster) and 670 (-2 cluster??)

GTX670 = 1 cluster off. GTX680 = GTX670Ti. But you knew that!

MSI GeForce GTX 670 OC 2GB comes with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory. It features GK104 GPU with 1344 CUDA cores, 112 texture and 32 raster operating units. 670 OCs will prob. sell for $429, leaving stock 670s at $399.

We can speculate on the reasons why they are struggling with production... yields being a major factor, but not the only one obviously.

JHH never mentioned yields being a problem with 28nm manufacturing. In the last conference call he said 28nm yields are better than there were for Fermi. I am not sure why you keep talking about this when it's contrary to facts. He specifically mentioned ramping up capacity at TSMC, not yields.

Here's the take home message: They cannot even satisfy the demands for LOW-VOLUME (HIGH MARGIN/PROFIT) enthusiast products, there's no point in releasing a mid-range (HIGH VOLUME/LOW MARGIN) card that competes for the same 28nm production. Bolded for emphasis.

Ya, NV is unlikely to gimp GK104 into a GTX660Ti. They might release some GTX660 model but I doubt it will be GK104 based. For the foreseeable future, it seems they'll use GTX560 Ti / 448 core / GTX570 to fill $170-260 price bracket, leaving a gap in the $260-$400 space. Odd.

 

[SirPauly]

Will see when market share numbers are released and financial numbers.

 

[Arzachel]

No. AMD's graphics revenue is less than 1/3 of the computer solutions. Qualcomm making a ton of selling S3 and other products.

nVidia's geforce revenue is $600 Millions - 2/3 of their company revenue. It's clear that they are much more affected by lower yields than any other company at this time. And so they must talk about the reason.

You do know that yields aren't dependant only on the foundry side, right? AMD has claimed that 28nm chips are yielding as expected, Nvidia has said that they are below expectations. The process is the same in both cases, so it's pretty easy to see where the problem lies.

And Qualcomm complains about TSMC, too. So we have two companies which want more supply and one who said that there is no huge demand for their cards...

Please point me to where Qualcomm has said that their 28nm chip yields are worse than expected. Otherwise you're arguing a strawman, because I never claimed that they aren't supply constrained. Which makes sense, because they're manufacturing SoCs that have thin margins and are completely dependant on volume, but makes much less sense for Nvidia because GPUs are on the opposite end of the spectrum.

 

[railven]

Woof after the last thread I read - I'm not even going to bother with this one after just reading this most recent page...

I really like the GTX 690's stock design. I wonder what the temps/noise will be on this design. Our GTX 680 still purrs like a kitten.