TSMC Says 40nm Issues are Resolved

screw fermi, this is good news for all the people who were going to have to pay the jacked up prices for ATI 5000 cards

So prices for 40nm ATI parts should drop? If the 4770 actually came down to $99, would it still be a good deal?

let the 5890's flow!

+1 5890 please

I was a lucky adopter of the HD4770 for $98.99 back in the day. Too bad it was so quickly beaten in the price/perf when the price shot up. It's still a great card IMO, obvious lack of DX11 technologies aside.

What are TSMC's yields right now anyway? 65nm has been around for quite a while now, shouldn't they have it up past 80% or so? Does that mean 40nm is SERIOUSLY 80%?!?! That would be awesome, 5870 here I come!

hopefully with this the availability of the 5970 will ramp up and the cost can begin to come down, still having trouble finding them in stock. for the most part I'm seeing prices between $650 - $700 for stock cards, when they're available.

yess i knew it!! te hd 5850's are all hovering around $300, we'll be back at MSRP at no time!!!

It will help Fermi, but not really because this also helps the production and price of Cypress. Even more so the latter because of the smaller die. If you know anything about basic statistics you would understand that their significantly larger die size will result in much lower yield than Cypress for the obvious reason of fewer per wafer, and the not as obvious reason which is a higher failure rate as you increase the size.

It is going to be pretty unaffordable to say the least, and on top of that be a power hog. If it performs anything less than 50% better than Cypress, it is a failure in my book and many others.

All of you celebrating lack of Fermi realize the above MSRP prices of the 5xxx series is largely a combination of two things:

1. The supply issues from TSCMC
2. The lack of competition from Nvidia (i.e. the delay of Fermi)

If you think we're going to get miraculous price drops because problem 1 has cleared up, you are mistaken. Lack of competition is still driving the high prices. That's why even the MSRP of the 5xxx is a bit high.

I like both companies, but especially when they are competing and driving down prices. Remember how great the price wars were with the last gen? You can't get that without both Fermi and 5xxx series duking it out at the same time.

my apologies for writing TSCMC instead of TSMC

I find it very odd that TSMC finally resolves the issues (after almost a year) with 40nm production at the EXACT time Nvidia is ready to start production of its new chip. Sounds like Nvidia got a few tips from Intel on how to deal with the competition.

+1 scooterlibby

The prices of the 5000 cards will drop as they start to re-saturate the market (and are currently doing so in fact), but don't expect MSRP prices or lower until there is actual competition from the green team. For the sake of competition, let's just hope Nvidia can actually have something that can be scale to compete well at the lower price points. Only time will tell.

Strikker1- the timing of the manufacturing problems is worth raising an eyebrow over at the very least. But TSMC's production affects all parties who rely on it, not just AMD. It'd be like Nvidia stabbing themselves in the foot in an effort to stab AMD in a slightly more important limb. It probably wouldn't be worth it for them to play dirty in the short run, and especially not worth the risk involved in the long run. Nvidia would know better I would hope, if they saw what AMD just did recently to Intel.

this is related to the yield information in this article its fairly new 01/12/10 so .. basically its placing yields at 60 % for the 40nm processes

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other [...] mours.html

Better yields, bigger supply, lower prices to move that supply and make AMD/ATI more money. Of course, AMD is only going to lower prices so that supply matches demand, and without competition from nVidia they will have good demand for some time. I look forward to seeing some shorter 5850s hopefully . The 5830 will be out soon so I'm also interested to see how that one does

I'm seriously begining to think by the time Nvidia is going to miss this generation even with the chips being more plentiful... either that or they have one hell of a surprise to pull on the market and surprisingly few leaks.

ROFLMAO, I was thinking the same thing when I seen this...

Hopefully this will result in the price of the 5800 series to drop back down to initial MSRP.

$240 for a 5850 would definitely turn some heads.

Can't wait to see what this 40nm process is all about. I want to see Fermi in action, at the same time I can't wait to see core and temp specs.

I wonder if nVidia had anything to do with TSMC's yield issues when ATi would have been the only person with DX11 GPUs out. Now that nVidia is about to release their GF100, it's magically fixed. How convenient!

maybe 58xx cards will come down in price now! my 4890s need to be replaced with 5850s

I got a brand new PS3 for $240. Why on earth would I pay $300 to add a single component to my computer? All of you computer gamers must be loaded. I just can't deal with upgrades and updates anymore. And the fact that the PC market ha been totally neglected by developers because of you idiot pirates.

There are plenty of people in this world who take interest in all things technical .. computers are like cars you can change parts up grade make them good better and work faster but for some one who's boring or has a lack of talent or interest in the computer industry then i feel for you toms hardware is a great site ..

hahahahahaha

good news for us consumers.