Nvidia 270, 290 and GX2 roll out in November

[PBS Poll-435]

Why you shouldn't get too excited

By Charlie Demerjian: Thursday, 09 October 2008, 10:01 AM


IF YOU WERE wondering why Nvidia put out the GTX260-216 with a stupid-sounding name instead of the saner 270 moniker, here is your answer. There is a 270 coming, it will have a big brother called the 290, and a dual card code named "China Syndrome"(1).

Yeah, NV is in deep doo-doo right now. The card that was meant to power its way to profits, the GTX280, went from $649 at launch to $499 a few weeks later. A quarter or so on, it is selling retail for sub-$400 prices here and there. AIBs tell us that the 260 costs an ironic $260 to make, which closely matches the teardown numbers we have seen. Toss in the mandatory 15 per cent markup at the retail level, and if you see one for sale at under $300, someone is eating money. Basically, if you can make money on these parts, something is wrong.

On the up side, the 280 is the single fastest GPU on the market. On the down side people don't buy GPUs, they buy graphics cards, and the 280 is not the single fastest graphics card on the market. That honour goes to the ATI 4870X2 by a large margin. With the new-gen GT200 parts, Nvidia loses on all fronts, performance, performance per dollar, and performance per watt, they simply aren't competitive.

That brings us to the new parts, the 270 and 290. They popped up on a PNY price list a few weeks ago, and then were pulled off immediately. This part is what we were calling the GT200b in May, but the public code name is GT206. It is simply an optically shrunk GT200, so clock for clock, you won't get any speed boost out of it. It is meant to fatten up the margins by reducing cost. If the GT200 is a 576mm^2 die, and the 206 is around 460mm^2 (~21mm*21mm die), even with the more expensive 55nm process, NV should save some money.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/10/08/nvidia-270-290-gx2-roll

In about three months, Nvidia has gone from performance leader and a respected company to the Sarah Palin of the technology world.

[grannie4peace]

1. i like your closing comment!

[Lance_Boyle]

2. NVDA shares trading in the low 7s today

I've been following off and on, and I damn sure wish I could afford some now while it's near the bottom. NVidia will take the performance lead again someday, but it may be a little ways off. And depending upon AMD/ATI's luck with Fusion, discrete graphics cards may be relegated to gamers and teens with too much money... no longer a growth market. I'm not one to predict the future in tech, but I do like the sound of a single chip with 4 processing cores and two graphics cores on the same die. If AMD pulls it off it could be a game-changer.

[PBS Poll-435]

5. The fusion project sounds very interesting,

Gonna need water cooling or a killer fan to handle that kind of heat even at 45nm or 32 nm.

[EOTE]

3. They're still doing pretty well in the mid-range market.

The 8800GT, 8800GTS and the 9800 series still do very well in their markets. And any two of them in SLI will tear up any single card out there. Market dominance in GPU manufacturing never lasts terribly long. ATI's 4800 architecture is awesome, no doubt. And if I were looking to spend $250 on a GPU right now, I'd definitely get a 4870 (my 8800GTs in SLI are doing me fine now). However, Nvidia will constantly be coming out with new fabrication processes and new architectures, so I'm guessing it won't be too long until they have a GPU that will dominate the 4870 in terms of both value and performance. Then ATI will in time do the same. I've owned a number of cards from both Nvidia and ATI. They both have their strong points and will continue to advance the market for some time to come.

[PBS Poll-435]

4. Nvidia's problem is that they had assumed that the GTX series

would be providing massive revenue.

Instead, they are selling the GTX260-216 at a loss just to compete with the ATI4870.

[EOTE]

6. Their problem is that they're stuck with the product line they have.

Nvidia has traditionally catered to the hard core gamer and right now the GTX series is the best they've got (with the possible exception of the current, bug laden 9800GX2, which is basically two 9800GTXs on a single card). The 4870 is just a better card with a better architecture. Even though it's got much faster DDR5 memory, it can be produced cheaper because of not only a smaller fabrication process than the GTX series, but it can match or exceed the performance of the GTX260 with around half the memory. ATI scored a home run with the 4800 series, and frankly, they needed one. I'm really looking forward to Nvidia's first use of DDR5 memory. I think it can provide a similar leg up to Nvidia that the 4870 provided for ATI.

[PBS Poll-435]

7. TSMC is moving to 40nm next year.

They produce both Nvidia and ATI's chips.

A 40nm GTX280 would be fast, cool, and cheap to produce.

[EOTE]

8. A die shrink alone isn't going to be enough.

Die shrinks are always good for making a cooler, more stable product for cheaper, but Nvidia is going to need an entirely new architecture soon to strike back against the 4870. Even with a full gigabyte of frame buffer, the GTX280 often times has trouble keeping up with the texture capabilities and bandwidth that the much cheaper half gigabyte 4870 provides. ATI demonstrated very well with the 4870 that combining an efficient architecture with a smaller amount of crazy fast memory is a more cost efficient way of producing a GPU than the brute force technique that the GTX series uses. Don't get me wrong, that extra frame buffer is coming in handy with texture hungry games like Crysis, but DDR5 is a fantastic benefit for the 4870 and as the drivers mature for the card, I think we'll see the 4870 pull further ahead of the GTX260. I should also note that the last ATI card I've owned was a Radeon 9800 Pro (awesome card at the time), so I've had a good deal more Nvidias. I like both companies, but it's now time for Nvidia to step up to the plate.

[PBS Poll-435]

9. Oh yeah, a die shrink will not be enough.

But it will help them make a little bit of cash off of these chips. As far as GDDR5, ATI seems to be buying it all up. I remember a delay in the launch of the 4870 simply because of a shortage from Qimonda

They are already attempting to move the GTXs to 55nm from 65nm.

Nvidia, it seems, is really banking on matured drivers and their CUDA for the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA