The GT300/Fermi Thread - Part 2!

[saaya]

It's just too bad Carmack is so busy with his aerospace stuff, or Doom 5 would probably be out by now!

aerospace stuff? :o
like what? didnt know he was into that...

and carmack... his genius is completely wasted on getting "ok-good" graphics on consoles... im not even sure hes good at that, hes good at pushing graphics to the limits, not on getting the job done with the least possible resources...

Fermi GPU costs more than a 5870 (price can be anything)

yes, but depending on yields it kinda doesnt matter anymore...

rv870 = 100% yields
150/150 = 25us$

GF100 = 33% yields
33/100 = 100us$

GF100 = 50% yields
50/100 = 70us$

GF100 = 66% yields
66/100 = 53us$

at 50% yields the difference in chip cost is already acceptable... 50$ isnt much, and consiering that fermi is 50% bigger and SHOULD be at least 20% faster, nvidia can easily charge 50$ more for fermi than an rv870 part... so that means if fermi hits 50% yields AND perf is 20% better or even more, nvidia will make as much money selling GF100 as ati does selling rv870...

nvidia clearly never aimed for high yields with fermi, they knew it wouldnt be good, but they didnt expect the claimed single digit yields, which is a huge deal breaker for them...

40% more Transistors, ~64% more die size.
Yields aren't comparable between two differenz chip designs, so costs are also not comparable. Different contract details with TSMC.

why arent costs comparable?
you take the amount of money transferred from nvidia to tsmc and divide it by the functional parts nvidia received, and the same for ati... and voila... was it that hard?

and different contract details... afaik thats not true, both nvidia and ati buy wafers and not functional chips. at least thats what an article i read mentioned... was it anandtech?

[speculation] about the manufacturing contracts, i have a feeling that tsmc is giving nvidia a better deal per wafer than it's giving amd. tsmc knows that amd will be going to gf fairly soon, so there is no insentive to lower it's prices to retain the customer. nvidia however, has the option to go either way, so i beleive it's safe to assume that nvidia is getting some good prices in an attempt to keep them happy with tsmc. [/speculation]

yeah but how much of a difference would that make? lets say tsmc gives them 50% off, which is a huge discount, even then they need ~20% yields to get to a point where they can get the same margins as ati... (again, assuming GF100 is at least 20% faster than rv870 so they can sell GF100 for 50$ more)

if the rumors of single digit yields are true, then even a massive discount of 50% wouldnt help nvidia...

Given my background is in competitive first person shooters...

...I actually play them with a 360 controller

0_o mmmmkaaaaay... hehehe