Jen-Hsun Huang (NVIDIA): ''We Underestimated RV770''

[btarunr]

NVIDIA suffered its first red-quarter in five years. There are several contributors to this, namely an up to US $200M write-off to cover expenses in recalling and restoring faulty mobile graphics processors.

Another factor has been a replenished product lineup from competitor AMD/ATI that is taking on NVIDIA products at mid thru high and enthusiast segments of the market, in essence ATI now has products to counter NVIDIA at every possible segment, with more dressing up to go to office.

Seeking Alpha spoke with CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, he was quoted saying:

We underestimated the price performance of our competitor's most recent GPU, which led us to mis-position our fall lineup. The first step of our response was to reset our price to reflect competitive realities. Our action put us again in a strong competitive position but we took hard hits with respect to our overall GPU ASPs and ultimately to our gross margins. The price action was particularly difficult since we are just ramping 55-nanometer and the weak market resulted in taking longer than expected to work through our 65-nanometer inventory.

Huang says that with their transit to the 55nm silicon fabrication process, they hope to do better.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[wolf2009]

Now they will come back more strongly, hope they learned their lesson .

But they have lagged behind now in the technological race. ATI was first to 55nm and GDDR5 .

By the time NVIDIA gets to that ATI will have moved onto 40nm while NVIDIA will still have 55nm power hungry parts compared to ATI's 40nm power efficient design.

 

[btarunr]

Two ways: Rush in things slated for much later , shrink everything there is to 55nm, raise their MHz. 9800 GTX+ met with stiff resistance from non-reference HD4850 that came in by the dozen, strategically timed.

 

[candle_86]

Nvidia will have a response they always do. And GDDR5 is pure marketing, a 4850 with the core running same speed as the 4870 is freakishly close to it in scores that that point, the GDDR5 has to much latancy to be useful. GDDR3 is still more efficent untill they fix the high lat of GDDR5. I have a good idea though Nvidia will launch an anwser to the HD4870x2, most likly a dual GPU G200B based card.

 

[johnnyfiive]

NVidia WILL come back strong like they always do. ATi played the market perfectly.

 

[WarEagleAU]

yes, its about time they took some kind of blow to wake them up. Im glad to see ATI do so well, I even underestimated how good the HD 2xxx, 3xxx and 4xxx series is/was. I hope ATI continues to turn the screws on price/performance.

 

[selway89]

yes, its about time they took some kind of blow to wake them up. Im glad to see ATI do so well, I even underestimated how good the HD 2xxx, 3xxx and 4xxx series is/was. I hope ATI continues to turn the screws on price/performance.

I agree, and I am still very happy with my 2900XT even though they got slated still a good card. I wounder if intels new gpu will kick nvidia where it hurts just as ati have?!

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

Nvidia will have a response they always do. And GDDR5 is pure marketing, a 4850 with the core running same speed as the 4870 is freakishly close to it in scores that that point, the GDDR5 has to much latancy to be useful. GDDR3 is still more efficent untill they fix the high lat of GDDR5. I have a good idea though Nvidia will launch an anwser to the HD4870x2, most likly a dual GPU G200B based card.

Do you honestly believe what you typed?

 

[HousERaT]

Do you honestly believe what you typed?

You know what they say "fantasy can be fun."

Most tests show at least an 8% difference between the 4850 and 4870 clock for clock. I don't know where that latency issue came from.

 

[mlupple]

It takes some balls to say that. I actually like NVidia now for not being pussies about it. ATI vs NVid = FTW!

 

[INSTG8R]

Well being a long time "Red Team" man(I bought a FX5200 and owned it for about 1/2 an hour and never looked back)In the past year I was firmly convinced my next upgrade would be on the other side. the 4xxx series restored my faith and I hope it continues to do so. Im not for either side, my Laptop has an 8400M in it and I'm very happy with it.
It just nice to see ATI pull it out finally and get back into being competitive.

 

[CDdude55]

Nvidia will come back with something. This always happens Ati comes out with something powerful and people say ''OMG!! Teh Nvidia is teh died!!1 Ati fuor teh win!11 and then Nvidia comes out with something great and vice versa with the OMG*insert ati or nvidia here* is dead.

At least they admitted that they underestimated Ati, and there working on the prices and there GPU's to bring some good competition to the market.

 

[R_1]

... I don't know where that latency issue came from.

Some NVIDIA marketing guy come up with the idea.
I am thinking if someone have managed clocked GDDR5 so high, that it can't produce more additional game power. That may be above 5000Mhz DDR.

 

[Megasty]

Bah, so he finally admits the obvious. I think they should have stuck to working together Cheers to fastass cards @ great prices

Just remember that hype is stupidity & results are everything

 

[newconroer]

Meh, Nvidia isn't in as much trouble as people think, and ATi isn't doing as well as people think.

The problem is that we'd forgotten for a while what some competition felt like, that's all.

Nvidia could be blamed for resting on their laurels, but what good would it have served to put out newer architecture GPUs, when their competitor was struggling? Also notice what Huang said, "weak market."

We should also never forget that ATi ditched their whole 'power/heat/efficiency' forte, in order to catch up to Nvidia in performance, and when they did, Nvidia ironically was the one with the better power/heat/efficiency' ratings, while still maintaning performance.


Personally I find the X2 just a publicity stunt; for all it's horsepower it's not impressive, and looks to just rope people into being ATi customers.

However the 4850 and 4870 are respectable cards, if nothing else, for how much more effective they are then their most recent predecessors.


Either way, both Nvidia and ATi have been at a bit of a roadblock, putting out more and more cards that are more or less 'suped' up versions of the previous ones, and don't have any real architectural changes.

Looking at the 'rumored' specs of each camp's next offering, it doesn't seem like that will change either.



I'm not too sure why Huang even bothered with the statement, but it did raise one question in my mind.. when was the last time ATi made a similar public statement?

 

[Tatty_Two]

Now they will come back more strongly, hope they learned their lesson .

But they have lagged behind now in the technological race. ATI was first to 55nm and GDDR5 .

By the time NVIDIA gets to that ATI will have moved onto 40nm while NVIDIA will still have 55nm power hungry parts compared to ATI's 40nm power efficient design.

I see where you are coming from but not so sure about that.....even with 65nm versus 55nm they still have the fastest single GPU solution that surprisingly produces less heat than it's 55nm competitor so TBH, in my opinion, apart from production costs, performance rather than fabrication process will remain the overiding factor, even if ATi hit the shelves first with a 40 or 45nm GPU, it wont matter much if the 55nm opposition is quicker.

 

[Weer]

Do you honestly believe what you typed?

Technically speaking, GDDR5 is a waste of money when you can get the same bandwidth with a higher bus width.

 

[cdawall]

Technically speaking, GDDR5 is a waste of money when you can get the same bandwidth with a higher bus width.

WRONG its not a waste

for one with the same bus GDDR5 GDDR3/4
for two power usage GDDR5 GDDR3/4

only place GDDR3 leads is latency which doesn't matter when you jump up the clockspeed which GDDR5 does. if you wanted the lowest lats get DDR1!

 

[$ReaPeR$]

all i know is that nvidia was robbing us for years. does anyone here like being robbed? the point is that nvidia wins in the performance war because most of the games are build for their drivers and gpus isnt that right? i say that everything is PR and nvidia for a long time has been on top without doing any real work. taking into account my previous point ati gpus must be twice as fast in order to have the same realworld performance as nvidias and all this due to the software of the games.so this war isnt about hardware but software so stop being such funboys we are the goddamn customers WE PAY so we should worry the best product in the best price and not about their goddamn war unless you are some richboys that have nothing else to do all day but copare who has the biggest gpu. I DO RESPECT THIS FORUM BECAUSE IT IS ONE OF THE BEST I HAVE EVER SEEN but SOME people should try to to think like everyday people and not like techmaniacs and spoilt brats. i do not mean to offense anyone. thank you for being able to post here.

 

[REVHEAD]

I'm not too sure why Huang even bothered with the statement, but it did raise one question in my mind.. when was the last time ATi made a similar public statement?

For the sake of there shareholders thats why.

This is only going to get worse for them , well with them finally giving in on there crappy MB industry we all knew was a fail, over priced under performing boards that you couldnt OC without data corruption. There driver support is some of the worst in the business , using drivers to push the Consumer to newer products , that didnt work correctly in the firstplace.

I dont like Nvidia but we need them, because as a consumer we are the winner.

Nvidia can suck my balls!!

 

[tkpenalty]

Nvidia will have a response they always do. And GDDR5 is pure marketing, a 4850 with the core running same speed as the 4870 is freakishly close to it in scores that that point, the GDDR5 has to much latancy to be useful. GDDR3 is still more efficent untill they fix the high lat of GDDR5. I have a good idea though Nvidia will launch an anwser to the HD4870x2, most likly a dual GPU G200B based card.

20% Perf difference is marketing? Excuse me cut the biased views already?

Nvidia, even though they still have more money, their profits are going downhill. Its not hard to see why when their graphics industry isn't fareing well with AMD's lineup, and the fact that their chipsets are rather unpopular, to both OEMs and Consumers.

 

[candle_86]

I am not a fanboi i am making a statement which is true, clock for clock the HD4850 and 4870 are close the 4870 is slightly faster clock for clock but not much, as said 8% at best and thats above 1680x1050, below that they are rather close, because of the higher latancy associated with GDDR5, this is not my statement this was made in a newspost here on TPU a month or so back. Call me what you want, but im stating facts. The reason the 4870 is faster is its core and mem are clocked higher than the 4850 thats it.

 

[Siman0]

ROFL ok come on guys Nvida was riding its butt on the 8000 series hell the 9000 series is a slightly modified 8000 core. Also honestly who didn't see this coming when DAAMIT released the 3000 series or even the 2000 series for that matter. A hint to the guys that say GDDR5 is not as good as GDDR3 ok, first hint: why is the GDDR3 4850 not as good as the GDDR5 4870 hmm maybe the memory bandwidth had something to do with it. don't know could jest be me. second hint: if its a marketing ploy why is Nvida frantically trying to throw it on there next Grfx core the 300 series... third hint: the Bit rate for GDDR3 is much higher than that of GDDR5 yes but then why is the 200 series still getting its rear end handed to it with a 256 bit GDDR5. fourth and final hint: DDR3 is now coming along for CPUs and DDR5 is coming to GPUs the speed of the DDR3 ram modules are much grater than that of DDR2 time change MOVE ON. Ok with that said yes to the guy you can get the same if you widen the buss but higher the with the more cash it costs and unless you want to pay 800 for 1 card...GDDR5 is a cheaper solution than constantly trying to make the buss width bigger.

 

[candle_86]

the 4870 is slower than the 280, the 4870's compitition is the 260. It took the 4870 X2 for AMD to take a lead.

 

[PCpraiser100]

HA! Another way of persuading customers to come back to the now crippled video card company! I love it! Good job Nvidia, however its not worth it. BTW I hate Crysis anyway so chow...

BTW shiman0, GDDR5 has a lot more bandwidth that Nvidia is planning to put this memory in their GTZ 300 series. Since new technologies mean steep price, ATI will have GDDR5-powered cards in the $100-$200 price range in no time!