Opinion: You think ATI is...

[error8]

Originally posted by: Pelu
I hope I am wrong... but something i get a feeling that in 2 or 3 years there isnt going to be any more high end card at all.. just a bunch of midrange.. because the manufacture costs... I know you can sell it for more.. but in an economy that is about to break into pieces... people is kinda afraid of investing a bunch of money on a card... the only ones that will still get it no matter what are those with no live.. and no love to anything at all... aka.. me... lol

I guess that you are wrong. High end cards will always be on the market, even if it costs a lot to make them, because there will always be people that will invest into them, no matter the price.

And sometimes, a high end card is really worth every cent, like the 8800 GTX, which was Nvidia's flagship in 2006 and still is now ,in 2008, one of the most powerful cards from the market. So those that made a big effort back then to buy it, are still very happy today playing every game on highest settings ( except Crysis ).
Of course that mid range cards are the best sellers always, but high end is a profit maker too so it still has a bright future.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: golem

Originally posted by: Dadofamunky
After all, they have the edge on NVidia in the process department; the R770/48xx looks to be a potentially huge winner;

I'm not sure if this can be considered an advantage. If your chips at a more advanced process are still generally slower and roughly just as hot, when your competitor goes to the same process you'll be even further behind.

In any case, since both ATI and Nvidia contract out to 3rd parties to build their chips, it's not really an ATI process advantage anyway. It might be a design advantage to be able to migrate your designs to a smaller process, but it's not a process advantage since it's third party fabs.

Yeah, but remember that the engineers have to make sure to fit the entire package in the manufacturing process, It is not like they throw the design to TSMC and they do the rest, nVidia also uses TSMC and is always behind against ATi in that discipline. And even though ATi's card performance is not the best, it's performance per watt, lower heat dissipation, lower transistor count and power consumption is better currently. In the end, ATi is having a higher profit for each GPU sold than any nVidia chip.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: Lithan
ATI's high end card is a dual gpu card.

That's hardly a high end card, they are two midrange GPU's glued together, the 9800GX2 is a true dual high end card with two high end GPU's.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: golem

Originally posted by: hooflung

Then they will start massive price cuts to drop the prices of their products which in turn limits the commercial success of their competitors. Remember, if AMD/Nvidia/Intel sell a product for 250 dollars and slash prices to 150 dollars the next month its easy to see they built acceptable return + a buffer to cover future price slashes. If AMD can push Nvidia to keep prices low on new to market goods then Nvidia cannot recoop that buffer.

Both Intel and Nvidia are profitable at current price levels. ATI is bleeding money at current price levels. If AMD slashes prices, they increase their losses while causing Intel or Nvidia to be less profitable. How is this a sustainable business practice for ATI/AMD?

ATI slashing prices hurts Nvidia, I'm not denying that. But the pain ATI inflicts on itself, is way beyond the pain they cause Nvidia.

That's half true, ATi's RV670 is cheaper to manufacture than any nVidia GPU in it's class, so it can slash the prices and will not affect considerably the profits margin.

 

[Pelu]

I am kinda mad on my CF because all the trouble they really toss on me...

 

[Lithan]

Originally posted by: error8

I have to disagree with you: 7600 GT was faster then 6800 GT in about any game and resolution even if, on paper, looked inferior.

http://penstarsys.com/reviews/...ga/7600gtco/index.html

I'll be damned, I went from 6800gt to ultra to 7800gt to 7800gtxand didn't feel that any of them were a huge step up... and my 7800gtx destroyed my buddies 7600gt. I guess spacing those four cards out kind of masked the performance difference.