Quote Originally Posted by Andrew LB View Post
It's well documented that BOTH nVidia and ATi had low yields due to process complications with TSMC's FAB. The vast majority of .40nm production problems at TSMC were during the second half of 2009, and if you recall.... nVidia wasn't mass producing Fermi chips yet. Those 6 months of horrible yields were why HD5xxx cards were almost non-existent until around December. The two stores near where I live which carry high end cards, Microcenter and Fry's Electronics didn't get a single HD5870 until late Nov 2009, some 5 months after release.

And contrary to Charlie's grand predictions pertaining to "incredibly low availability" of GTX480 and 470... both Fry's and Microcenter had these cards stocked, as did almost every e-tailer. I asked one of the sales guys at MIcrocenter about sales and he said customers are buying nV cards over ATi cards by at least a 10:1 margin.
Are you mixing up the 4870/4850 launch, late June 2008, with the late September
launch of 5870/5850?

Should be 2 months, shouldn't it?

FWIW At the 2 biggest, here in Sweden, e-tailers that I usually look at, there was
really no supply of 5850 until Easter this year. 5870, especially XFX, were a little
bit more visible.