Quote Originally Posted by Smartidiot89 View Post
I've thaught about AMD having smaller dies for their GPUs but I don't think it necessarily meens better yields...

While Nvidia have the uberhuge die, they have lower clock frequencies but looking at AMD we see the opposite, a small die and really high frequencies. I might actually go as far as saying the yielddifference between AMD and Nvidias topmodels at negligable?
Until you actually figure it out.I went old school and drew it out on graph paper.(The guys with CAD can confirm this.)

With ATI Cypress at 334mm^2(18.2mmx18.2mm plus .8mm border for cutting(19mmx 19mm)) I get 164 canidates per wafer (41 per quarter).

I took Nvidia's smallest estimated measurement floating around the web at 467 mm^2 (21.4mmx21.4.mm plus .6mm for border cuttting(22mmx22mm))30 per quarter . I get 120 canidate per wafer .

Now even with 10% defect rate added only to ATI you still get 148 ATI to Nvidia's prefect 120 canidates per wafer.The number of gets smaller over 22mm x 22mm

So ATI's faulty yield is 23% greater than Nvidia's perfect yield.

I have no doubt Fermi is an awesome card.

This may work for Tesla at $2000 a pop vs Firestream, but Geforce380GTX against Radeon 5870 the math for Nvidia's partners isn't so good.

It'll come down to profit margins if Fermi will survives.
Basicilly if you make Telsa cards you will be okay, selling GeForce will squeeze margins too tight.

My question is what does BFG,eVGA,XFX and Zotec think Fermi will do for their profit margins.

Nvidia's partners may have the world most powerful GPGPU lying at their feet, but if the partners can't profit from it,well?.

That was an example of smallest Nvidia prefect yield against ATI imprefect scenario

The real question is if Nvidia's partners will profit from this beast.
I think Fermi to Geforce will hurt somebody's profit margin.