Originally posted by: nubian1
Any company survives on renenue ($$$) and if you look at the sales of the 3850 & 3870 ATI is doing very well with these parts. At the end of the day it's not really who has the absolutely fastest part or the most advcanced design, it's who can supply & sell enough of their products to generate a positive cash flow leading to profits.
I went to a popular local computer store yesterday and one of the salesmen check and laughed when he saw that the Asus 8800GT's were back ordered over 1000 units! The BFG model was behind over 800 Units! The 3870 was also back ordered but to the tune of just over 300 units. Are any of these back orders making money for the manufacturer.........nope. Unless they get in the hands of paying consumers it's all smoke & no substance.
ATI is not dead, if they can continue to meet the demand, which at this point they can't, then they will at least for the short term and depending on Nvidia's availability & pricing continue to make good profits off the 38xx sales.
As for AMD I have no such positive feelings. The Phenom is the foundation of the spider platform & in it's present form is not what it could be, at least from a performance & entheusiests point of view. I would guess that AMD will not be making many new converts with this offering even with the promises of the spider platform looming.
Being tied directly to amd I believe that this is the sore spot for ATI not their GPU sales and the main reason why ATI may hurt.