Nvidia Reports Positive Q4 Results on GPU Sales

What I am more interested in learning is, when will the first Fermi cards be released?

Have ya read this ?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video [...] vidia.html

hmm... that is interesting....

when I saw this news... there were about 4-5 posts... and when I refreshed it... I only saw 3 left..... and now... only 2....

Have my eyes gone crazy?... or this is some kind of Tom's hardghost thing?

hmmm... interesting...

anyway... back to the news... I will just have to wait and see the final product when it is really available (paper lunch does not count).

Have ya read this?

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/0 [...] unfixable/

Why would people buy current Nvidia cards when ATI DirectX cards are already out and Nvidia's Fermi cards are just around the corner?

I meant DirectX 11.

"Fermi - A unit of length equal to one femtometer (10e15 meter)."

"Fermi energy- is often, confusingly, used to describe a different but closely-related concept, the Fermi level (also called chemical potential).[1] The Fermi energy and chemical potential are the same at absolute zero"

Potentially a 10 to the -15 sales this year, or absolute zero sales...

Most people don't even know what directx is. Besides, high end graphics card are only a small fraction of those sold. Nvidia/intel have much better oem support than AMD, so i'm not surprised at this really.

yes around the corner, hopefully....

Tired of hearing about Fermi. Come out with it already! And release a model around $200.

Fanboyism, and the fact that the name "Nvidia" is more widely known. The only people who have good reason to choose Nvidia are Linux users but they only make up 1% of all users. I find that when I help people pick a card or a pc they've often only heard of Nvidia, not ATI, but once I explain to them that ATI delivers more bang for buck I can usually convince them to go for ATI, saving them money.

ATI should really do more about PR (and Linux drivers).

That's probably not gonna happen. Btw, if all you want is a $200 card then why would you wait for Nvidia when the HD 5xxx series has been available for months? I'm pretty sure a $200 Geforce 3xx or 4xx series card won't perform better than a $200 ATI card, probably worse.

So many people have been critisizing Nvidia for lackluster sales and no next gen GPU to counter the radeon 5xxx's and DX11 chips but i always new Nvidia had an ace up ther sleeves and were focusing on their mobile and ion counterparts to hit onboard laptops and desktop components which make up a huge segment of NON gamers.... smart marketing tactics to make ATi and its fanboys/kids thing Nvidia will lose in BUSINESS but rather they will have the upper hand in mobile and the onboard market over ATi which has a smaller market segment in that arena.

Seeing as how Nvidia's GPU prices for midrange cards jumped 30 or so bucks these past few months, I don't think this is a surprise.

True. The hardcore gamers for whom max performance and DX11 is important only make up a small percentage of the market. Still though, it looks good for the company to be faster than the competition, even if it is just a PR stunt (think Lexus LFA; doesn't make money but it makes Lexus look good).

I'm sure Nvidia is doing just fine with Tegra, ion and all their other technologies.

no, ur not seeing things...

On Topic: the sales result is possibly due to the shortages of the 5000 series chips, that and nvidia doesn't just sell graphic chipsets, but motherboard (nforce, ion) chipsets and mobile graphic cards as well.

Damn right, I love my 4850 on windows, but i primarily run debian x64. Nvidia has excellent linux support, while ATI still doesnt support (ie doesnt work with) xserver 1.7x which has been stable since *october* and 10.2 broke way too many things to count; Nvidia already supports 1.8! I just wish nvidia was a bit cheaper :|

Well this is a good news. Fermi is late, but Nvidia still has income from other sectors, if Fermi is not very good economically to them. They can release small number of them, sell those old cheaper card to most people and stay in competition untill Ferni II or what ever the next version of their Flagship GPU will be.
After Ati 2900 series it did not take too long until they solve their problems. If Nvidia has problems with Ferni, as it seems to be, they have allready the next GPU in line, like every other GPU maker.
It would be really bad, if Nvidia would be economically in trouble because of Ferni. But it seems to be that we will see some fierce competition in GPU market allso in the future, when lookin these revenues.
As big ape has said in other forums. This is a race where one manufacturer leaks so time and then the situation normally shift to other direction. So, situation seems to be ok. The better would be at least to very good GPU at the same time, because it would mean cheaper prizes, but this situation that we have now, will not last too long time.
ATI and Nvidia are egual enough, when Intel and AMD are not because of the size and money they can spent. I am much more conserned CPU situation than GPU situation from the point of competition and customer prizes.

Well if they're making money (unlike most of us who are just spending trying to make ends meet) then they should share the wealth, pass on down some of that cash, show loyaly back, and treat their loyal customers with lower prices. But if the don't, then ATI will keep gaining market share since their cards give more value, Listening NVidia?

I clicked through and read the full report. Looks like gaming is not where the money is at.

People would buy nvidia, because they have software applications, many of the professional applications that are designed around CUDA and not OpenCL and Direct Compute.... yet. So a cheap graphics card is nothing compared to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on professional applications. Besides I've used ATI cards, and they were kicking it to the early days of 3D graphics before Nvidia at least around Canada, since ATI was a Canadian Company. However, I personally like the Nvidia software interface (Nview) and the Desktop Manager better than ATI's offering, even though ATI, until Fermi is released and tested independently offers seriously more Floating Point performance compared to what Nvidia currently has in the channel. Is anyone noticing that 295 GTX's are getting scarce... perhaps GT100 is getting close to release after all?

The EOL notices went out in October last year, so lack of availability now should not really be a suprise.

I love it. You claim 'Fanboyism' is the only reason for buying nVidia and then go and demonstrate pure 'Fanboyism' for ATi. As mentioned so often on here, gaming based GPUs are only a small percentage of either companies revenue income, so there are still plenty of reasons to be with nVidia. It also depends on the companies support to large scale business customers and not just on the latest serial number and supposed DX11 support. I wish people would just shut up about DX.. support. Developers are consistant stating that support for current consoles is massive and they have to support DX9. DX10 and DX10.1 both failed to move things forward and DX11 will still be minimally supported for at least another year or two.

@hannibal
Fermi is not late. nVidia claimed it would be released in Q1 2010 with an estimate of March. But even if they don't hit March they are still on time as they use the Fiscal year which gives them until the end of April before thigs are actually late.

I really want Fermi to release already. I'm glad that they aren't having financial issues though...

Gulli: ATI has done something about Linux drivers, they released documentation to x.org. Try the Ubuntu 10.04 alpha CD, the stock X11 radeon open-source driver runs Compiz better than the ATI proprietary driver, with far better 2d performance(and this on a mobility Radeon 880g IGP).

Nvidia has always been financially stronger than AMD/ATI and seems to have more coherent management team.

I am also glad AMD’s new management is turning the company around after years of mismanagement.

Okay, so what if financially Nvidia has a stronger history. Look what happaned to GM and the huge banks that went under. There's no guarantedd that Nvidia will be the GPU leader 5 years from now. I'm all for fair healthy competition because when that happens, the consumers win. But on seeing that AMD beats Nvidia at performance per price points, I'm going with the trend that AMD's future keeps looking while Nvidia is often more looking over their shoulder as the competition closes in.

Yeah, who cares about new technology and R&D, Fermi can wait. Investors come first, consumers second. Just rebadge, rebrand and reep the profits; thats nvidia's slogan.

that's what happens when a company doesn't charge an arm and a leg for a video card, trying to compete with cheaper consoles. I purchased 2 video cards in the last 2 years and sold one of them long after. they even retain their value for a long time these days. I'd never spend $600 on a video card, mine were both under 160 bucks each and they work great.

Fermi is HUGE - it won't hit the $200 price point any time soon. Too expensive to manufacture. Eventually they'll release a cut-down version to reach lower prices.


After reading Anand's story on the background of ATI/AMD's Cypress (RV870) chips, that makes a lot of sense. Particularly this page:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3740&p=8

ATI figured out how to cope with TSMC's new process with the RV740 (4770). They still didn't have everything perfect for the Cypress launch, but it was a lot better and now they are pumping out tons of working Cypress parts.

Nvidia is going to run into the same issues ATI did (defective vias, excessive transistor channel length variation), only its going to be even worse with a larger chip. They're going to have a hard time getting heat and power consumption under control, at least in the short term.

But why do companies support a brand that is more expensive for them and the customer? That's what my post was about, you didn't answer that, you just stated a lot of people and companies support Nvidia, not why.