Originally posted by: Kuzi
Originally posted by: Lonyo
Meh, I said a long time ago that NV would struggle to compete on price with AMD, and now it's happening.
This was the obvious result of NV's big die, big memory bus strategy vs ATIs small die, less complex bus, more flexible RAM strategy (i.e. GDDR3 prices weren't going to change much, but GDDR5 obviously was)
NV can't compete on price without hurting themselves, and that's a fact whatever way you want to look at it. It's been a fact since day 1 when the HD4870 was released with a 256-bit bus and GDDR5.
OK so it's probably being sensationalised, but that doesn't mean that NV doesn't have problems at the moment.
:thumbsup:
As you said competing on price will be a problem (costly) for NVidia. If we look at the GTX285 costing around $320-$350, NVidia would have to lower the price $80-$100 in order to compete well against the HD5850, which costs $270. The GTX285 has a larger die size, 470mm^2 vs. 334mm^2, and the PCB is more complex having a 512-bit MC. So more cost overall.
But I read Charlie's article and I think it's B.S. Why would NVidia cancel their top of the range cards? All they could do is lower the prices a bit, many people would still buy them just because they are NVidia. I can understand if they want to clear the channel in preparation for Fermi, especially if the release is soonish, which seems unlikely though.
The only thing in the article that could be true is the size of Fermi, ~530mm^2 or a bit larger seems probable.