nVidia:"we have supply constraints"...GTX200 not discontinued?

[thilanliyan]

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/17943

 

[shangshang]

thilan, i'm going to chuck this news up as a "who cares".

edit: 113 views and i'm the only one in here who cared enought to post a "who cares"?

 

[ronnn]

oh well, if the ncix top 10 sellers is accurate - supply won't be a problem.

 

[Idontcare]

GeForce GTX 200 cards haven't quite reached Radeon HD 5800 levels of scarceness, though. Newegg still stocks more than two dozen GTX 200 cards, including over a dozen GTX 260s. That said, prices seem a wee bit higher than in the past, with only three of those cards selling for $170 or less.

Seems a little odd to me that Newegg would only stock a dozen of anything given there size. I would think their ideal inventory levels hovers in the triple digits for this kind of consumer PC DIY stuff.

Could you imagine if Frys or MC only had a dozen GTX260's in stock across their entire north american retail chain?

 

[dflynchimp]

Seems a little odd to me that Newegg would only stock a dozen of anything given there size. I would think their ideal inventory levels hovers in the triple digits for this kind of consumer PC DIY stuff.

Could you imagine if Frys or MC only had a dozen GTX260's in stock across their entire north american retail chain?

no, Newegg actually has to be alot more stingy on their inventory space allotment because stocking your own inventory costs alot of money, which explains Newegg's low profit margins.

They can't afford to maintain a large inventory of GTX200's when the Radeon 5XXX series have hit the market because in the likely event that people start prefering the new hardware N.E ends up with unsold/unwanted inventory = lost money.

Ideally for Newegg they will stock just enough inventory to meet demand, with a small buffer in case of unexpectedly high demand. They won't, however, want to stock more than a few dozen of each listed item at any one time since any unsold product will cost them inventory space.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Seems a little odd to me that Newegg would only stock a dozen of anything given there size. I would think their ideal inventory levels hovers in the triple digits for this kind of consumer PC DIY stuff.

Could you imagine if Frys or MC only had a dozen GTX260's in stock across their entire north american retail chain?

I believe they are meaning different brands, OC products, etc.

I was able to order 49 (place them on the cart, didn't actually buy them) of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127426 alone.

 

[Nebor]

I believe they are meaning different brands, OC products, etc.

I was able to order 49 (place them on the cart, didn't actually buy them) of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127426 alone.

Exactly. They mean two dozen brands or types of GTX 200s.

As to the poster above you, saying why they only have a dozen of a given product, he obviously has no idea of the scale on which newegg operates.

 

[ViRGE]

Of course NVIDIA has supply problems. They ramped down production of GT200, and meanwhile TSMC's 40nm yields would be impacting the production of their 40nm parts.

When TSMC is sucking, everyone has supply problems.

 

[jvroig]

Is there a thread here somewhere that explains the yield problems of TSMC? I'd like to be able to read about why their 40nm process isn't up to par. Is it a problem with people, or the equipment they use, or methodology?

When TSMC is sucking, everyone has supply problems.

Agreed. With GF getting into the picture, hopefully we can avoid scenarios where both video card companies will experience, or are experiencing, supply problems

 

[Dribble]

I think they were worried about everyone buying radeon 5xxx cards so lowered production a bit so not to get caught out with a lot of stock no-one wants. As it happens you can't buy a 5850 so people are still buying GTX 285's. Ati also priced the 5770 pretty high, so people are still buying GTX 260's.

The other rumour is nvidia is using a lot of 200 series chips in to go into much higher profit GPU compute farms so less around for the cut throat high end graphics market.

 

[evolucion8]

But that's weird because in Newegg, you can see up to 41 different GTX SKU's, and 40 different SKU's of the 4800 series. If supply was really a concern because of the high demand, the difference between both series would be greater.

 

[Idontcare]

Is there a thread here somewhere that explains the yield problems of TSMC? I'd like to be able to read about why their 40nm process isn't up to par. Is it a problem with people, or the equipment they use, or methodology?


Agreed. With GF getting into the picture, hopefully we can avoid scenarios where both video card companies will experience, or are experiencing, supply problems

Just a few links to some posts I have made on the topic, if you search you will undoubtedly uncover many more as I tend to address this topic frequently mostly for reasons owing to my real-life experience in this part of the industry.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=28854652&postcount=38

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=28858331&postcount=42

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=329882

If you have any questions feel free to ask, pm or public thread is all the same to me.

 

[jvroig]

Thanks, IDC. Will read up first

 

[MarcVenice]

There's 1 BIG reasos why there won't be many g200b-gpu's out there in the future. Nvidia can't compete with ATI's products, that give better performance at the same price point (HD 5850 = cheaper then GTX 285). AIB's know this, and across they board they lowered/cancelled orders at Nvidia for g200b-gpu's. This means Nvidia can buy less 55nm wafers from TSMC, and waddaya know, TSMC can no longer sell the wafers at a cheap enough price for Nvidia to make any money on the gpu's. Then Nvidia simply had to go and cancel orders for gt200-gpu's and thus no more or very little gtx 260, gtx 275, 285 and 295 will be made.

 

[evolucion8]

There's 1 BIG reasos why there won't be many g200b-gpu's out there in the future. Nvidia can't compete with ATI's products, that give better performance at the same price point (HD 5850 = cheaper then GTX 285). AIB's know this, and across they board they lowered/cancelled orders at Nvidia for g200b-gpu's. This means Nvidia can buy less 55nm wafers from TSMC, and waddaya know, TSMC can no longer sell the wafers at a cheap enough price for Nvidia to make any money on the gpu's. Then Nvidia simply had to go and cancel orders for gt200-gpu's and thus no more or very little gtx 260, gtx 275, 285 and 295 will be made.

That quite proves the point that a lot of guys denied til death. GT200 is an expensive GPU to make which uses also an expensive PCB, and they were selling it with marginal profits, now that they can't get cheap enough wafers, it can not be profitable. If only nVidia made a GT200 based on the 40nm process...

 

[dflynchimp]

If only nVidia made a GT200 based on the 40nm process...

If that was feasible or financially sound I'm sure they would've switched already.

having a smaller process is only part of the equation. Yields are the other multiplier. If you got 80% yields on 55nm that still beats a 50% yield on the new untried 40nm process.

 

[BenSkywalker]

TSMC can no longer sell the wafers at a cheap enough price for Nvidia to make any money on the gpu's.

They pulled 40% margins last quarter, reality is that they can easily make a profit on the parts, just not to the margin levels they want. They also need be careful to not produce too many parts and have overlap with Fermi and create a potential inventory write off.

 

[Idontcare]

They pulled 40% margins last quarter, reality is that they can easily make a profit on the parts, just not to the margin levels they want. They also need be careful to not produce too many parts and have overlap with Fermi and create a potential inventory write off.

Wasn't there a similar situation, large inventory write-down, for Nvidia maybe 2 or 3 years ago? If memory serves and that did happen then those things tend to become over-analyzed and over-mantra'ed in management during subsequent product cycles (the pendulum swings the other way to an equal extreme) and you get these shortages and lost revenue occurs.

Nvidia's shareholders would rather see 35% margins on 10% higher revenue than 40% margins on 10% lower revenue. EPS requires both margins and revenue. (I know I'm not telling you anything new under the sun here, am just thinking out loud as it were)

 

[evolucion8]

Specially when they dumped inventory in the first half of 2009 and counted them as profits, pretty sure most of nVidia's profits comes from their low end and midrange cards based on the G92 which comes even with your french fries as a snack. Plus the laptop market its pretty strong in nVidia.