spathotan :
It dosent make sence to push out a revision so quickly, at least not to an average consumer. The G200 would be COMPLETELY all for naught, a total waste of time, development, money, resources, EVERYTHING. Not to mention completely pissing on fanboys and consumers by making the cards they paid $600 for obsolete.
Not necessarly.
Do you take all the IP you have and then try to sell cards losing $50-100 per card or do you rush out a refrsh that brings you closer to breaking even or profiting?
If the loses were small and the price drop small, then the benefit of large production to spread costs makes alot of sense, but if you're losing alot of money per card, then allowing it to go on until 2009 when you could've stopped the bleeding now makes alot of sense. The whole thing will be to nail that 55nm refresh. Can't rush it and mess-up yields in the process.
They are going to take such a massive hit in the bank with this whole thing. It would be better to just set the cards at X amount and ride the storm out, there is no way they are gonna beat ATI in the price-performance department this round.
That makes sense to a point, but if you can write off the this round and put it as a $50-100 million dolar hit, and then turn that R&D investment into a money maker and as importantly market share maintainer and buzz-generator then wouldn't you rush to market a replacement like ATi did with the HD3870, rather than sit back clutching yourself rocking and moaning hoping for it to pass, while the competition simply drank more of your milkshake.
😗
I'm surprised that nV would monkey with the FP and a few others things, however likely the design plans were on the wall in March to move in that direction with a G92 style refresh meant to keep the G200 as the industrial/proffesional/workstation part (all the FP bits, etc) which can cost a ton per chip and they will still sell in their $1000-4000/card so fractional savings are less important, then make the 55nm refesh a part to go after those initially not tempted by the GTX280, so you bring out a slightly less robust spec sheet, but faster and better gamer that costs less to make.
The strategy is very sound, and likely was started being put into place long before they knew what the RV770 really was, let alone how well the G200 would match-up against it. The only difference being that it was likely intended to be the Xmas refresh selling in late Oct/ early Nov to make a ton of money, now it'll be the August/September part meant to keep nVidia in the game around back to school time.
Undoubtedly this will be countered with an ATi price drop, to make things competitive.
Overall the best way for nVidia to move forward is to simply move past the GTX280 and focus on the 55nm refresh as if the GTX280 were already in the market 9-12 months and was end of life naturally. If ATi had stuck with the HD2900 the whoe time, they would've been in far worse shape than they ended up. nVidia has to go through that same realisation.
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