News NVIDIA limiting GeForce 7800 GTX 512 supply

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/11/25/nvidia_limiting_geforce_7800_gtx_512_supply/

 

Ok, pass on the blame... Should've stocked up before releasing the card.

But I suppose nVidia is benefiting with high prices due to limited stock.

 

Not really. No matter what the availability, NV will have contracted prices out, you can be sure. So they're stuck getting what they get for each board that goes to a retailer. It's the retailers that get a little boon...NVidia just gets the press of a sold out unit.

 

But nvidia is probably still selling high for now and will lower prices eventually. It's basic economics really. I may be wrong, but I think that is the likely scenario.

 

You mean lowering the prices they demand from r/e-tailers? Maybe but I don't think so too. And even if they do what effect will this have on the price WE have to pay? Will r/e-tailers lower their prices instantly? Nope.

 

I'm betting they cancel production of the 110nm 7800 512, while Samsung catches up with their memory surplus nVidia will be working on the 90nm 7800 512.

 

Little boon? They're making an extra $200 or so per card!

Not really nVidia's fault. If they had stocked up for a short while and sold them all at once, we'd still see the same shortages; the cards are selling like hotcakes regardless of the price. A lower price due to higher supply (for a very short while) would only increase demand, and potentially drive price up that much higher!

I think I'll keep my hopes set on a 7800GT. Considering they're available for $100 less per card than I paid for my 6800GTs, they really bring high-end cards (not top, but right up there) to a more midrange price, all thigns considered.

 

At least they are having weekly shipments of 4000. That's every week, without fail, from what I understand.

 

dammit....

i wouldnt mind one if they were quite a bit cheaper, say 300-400 per card, instead of 500 per card!

until prices drop i cant consider it relaly

 

hmm the x1800 xt is in stock at lots of places, could this be an opportunity ati shud be capitalising on...

for about £100 less, its not such a bad compromise.

 

problem is, i dont want an x1800 because i want to run SLi in the future, if i were to get a 512mb i would get one now and one later, where as with the x1800 i'd have to get a different motherboard, say a dfi crossfire, which ive heard arent the best in the world at hte mo' so im sticking with my sli board (will be getting a dfi sli-d/r)

its just i can get 2x 7800gt's, or get a single 7800gtx 512mb and get another later....

 

You mean like MS with XBox 360?

 

I'd prefer to get my news from place other than the inquirer. Is it starting to become a trend here that the inquirer serves as the basis for 'inside' knowledge on the tech scene. Kinda sad really.

 

Hmm... The world's most powerful video card coming to shortages, because of a lack of the appropriate-speed GDDR3 from SamSung? Sounds awfuly familiar to the X800XT PE, if memory serves me correctly; I recall they got to being called the "Press Edition" due to limited supply to anyone not actually reviewing the card, and ATi eventually making the split and CREATING the PE in the first place because of this shortage... The X800XT PE, which had originally planned as the X800XT, was shipped with cheaper 20ns RAM instead of 18ns stuff, and the core was clocked down from 520 to 500MHz so there'd be some sort of difference present. Then again, my memory of the incident may be faulty, but at any rate, I DO recall that nVidia was able to capitalize heavily on this, and won back the high-end range that was gone since the 9700pro, and win it back with the 6800GT.

Now all that remains is to see what ATi does here, and how long nVidia's dry spell lasts. However, if that's true, the 4,000 cards a week isn't too shabby, though obviously it's only a tiny fraction of what's necessary to keep up with demand; remember that most people will likely be buying them in pairs, so that means a pair will only be availible, worldwide, every 12 or so minutes. That's for all counties, all stores, all brands. Not very good, and perhaps enough to almost qualify as vaporware, though not quite.

I wonder if they sell that cooler seperately, and I could attach it to one of my cards... It seems that only the 7800 has the right PCB for it anyway, but I must say it's quite impressive, and the second dual-slot cooler I've ever forgiven. (the first went to the X850XT's cooler, only because it was the first to actually use that extra back-plate slot for exhaust) And building heat-pipes as stock for the card... Just amazing.

 

Yea but at least nVidia CAN deliver 4000 units a week. And ATI? Did they deliver their cards that fast and continously? Not in this century iirc.

 

If memory serves me correctly, they had no problem with the launch of any of the 9700 and 9800 lines, which is what largely led to nVidia's big tumble from their GeForce 4 Ti heights. To be truly fair, the ordinary X800XT was a fair competitor for the GeForce 6800ultra, and unlike the Platinum Edition, was in quite good supply.

And as for the Radeon X1800XT, it did take a while, but once the supplies actually arrived, they've been availible ever since. Of course, it's still a point that one has to note the times that ATi didn't botch a launch; as far as I can see, the only other visible time that nVidia had something as bad as the 7800GTX 512 launch was the FX 5800ultra, which was simply pulled for reasons entirely unreleated to the supply, and more to do with the fact that nVidia simply was quite a ways from able of introducing a card whose specs (500MHz core, 1000MHz RAM, two-slot cooler) are now so commonplace, if you neglect the fact that the cooler was noisy, to say the least.

 

Wasn't it the fact the Ti's were slower?

But availibility a different story in Germany... unfortunately.
Normally you gotta wait 2 weeks longer than UK or US to have the chance of getting your hands on a new gfx card. Sucks.
Alternate.de, one of the biggest hardware etailers over here has one GTX availible and few GT. Of course no GTX 512.
Alternate's nVidia listing.
But ATI listing is better: here . So maybe you're right... at least a bit.

 

ATI also had yield issues on the cores too - they even stated that themselves when R480 was released IIRC.

 

Gah, I should've perhaps written in a way less confusing... I did mean that it was the cards and their power, not their lack of availability problems, that were what punched a hole in nVidia's reign. More specifically, it was that the GeForce 4 Ti had only 4 pixel pipelines in the NV25 GPU, as well as a 128-bit memory bus, compared to 8 pixel pipelines and 256-bit memory bus of the Radeon 9700 series.

With the R480? I didn't get much of an opportunity to actually take much of a look at the history of that. For some odd reason, the whole X850 line seems to have mysteriously appeared at a time to a point where I can't even say when it debuted! However, now that you mention it, I do vaguely recall something about yield problems, though I think that such would be pretty odd, given that I can't see more than only minor differences between the R423 and the R480, and I'm not even certain on those differences. Was perhaps the R480 a move to the 110nm process, like the X800XL's R430 was? If so, I would've thought that a much higher clock speed jump than 20MHz over the R423 would've been possible, but then again...