Originally posted by: Andres3605
Originally posted by: TStep
unlikely, not when your loosing $$$ financially and just got done spending a ton of R&D $$$ on a late product line.
But we all forget that the money is in the low and midrange sectors, high end are use as a publicity model with low demand i.e. Mustang cobra
Absolutely, I agree with that, but that has no bearing on the following:
-sales may be there, but at lower margins
-availability across the board is 6-8 months out of cycle, for all classes of card
-gen to gen comparison is: high end equal, mid and low favoring nVidia
-6 month delay plus millions of tapeouts, unanticipated
-coming off of a fair showing against 6800 series, but availablity was an issue there
-just moved to 90nm who everyone had problems with
-working on XBox, so that has got to be costing a ton in R&D
Now, throw all the other factors away and remember business is business. Cost v. Revenue, plain and simple. ATI, responsible to shareholders, which has the sole purpose for selling widgets to increase the bottom line. Investors are not interested in playing cat-and-mouse to lose months worth of sales.
If you are two product generations ahead of the competition, and make the financial decision to slow down R&D thereby saving money or milking your current line for additional $$$/unit sold right up to the point of your competion's release of a comparable product, yes it feasible ATI is holding back.
ATI is losing money, scrambling to make product available, moving there line across a known 90nm hurdle, having to provide a future XBox product to a monster that will not play nice if ATI does not deliver, and only matching a product line already available for 6 months now. You decide.