Nvidia has serious yield problems with the GT200.

[highoctane]

It seems that the tables have turned this time around. Nvidia does not produce enough GT200s to meet demand; yields are terrible. Not all second tier AIC (add in card) companies can actually get their hands on the GTX 260 and GTX 280 cards, forcing them to switch to the ATI brand or skip this round and waith for the GT200 successor (die shrink and/or simplification?) that should appear within this quarter (Q3).

With 1.4b transistors on 65nm, the GT200 looks to me like a rushed chip in an effort to keep up with ATI.

Source: Me

Send the 2nd teir AIC companies to Neweggs source since they seem to be loaded with gtx280's. Personally I would say demand or lack of demand is more an issue than supply at the moment.

We all know cards like the 8800gt's sold like hotcakes when they where released, it just hit the right performance/price ratio to be successful considering what the competition was at the time.

Now the tables have turned, ATI has finally delivered something very solid after two product cycles.

As for 1.4b transistor chips, I don't think that is something you can "rush" by any means and poor yields would seem to be directly related to TSMC not yet being able to reliably produce the fully operational dies.

Nvidia is still ahead of ATI so I wouldn't say they're keeping up as far as performance is concerned but their performance per $$$ needs a little work in light of what ATI is delivering in that regard.

EDIT: Is there any solid facts about yields and availability that are verifiable or is this thread another journey into the Xtremetheory/speculation zone.