The Business of Tech: NVIDIA Q3’08

by Ryan Smith on 11/10/2008 12:00 AM EST
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  • kilkennycat - Monday, November 10, 2008 - link

    nVidia is sitting on roughly $1.2 billion cash with ZERO debt: AMD has roughly $3 billion NET debt. So....nVidia is far more in control of their own future in recessionary and credit-crunch times than AMD. The debtor plays the tunes its lenders want to hear, which is usually very short-term-profit oriented. Plus the interest-cost on that huge debt is an unwelcome sponge for scarce profits.

    Btw, at the current depressed stock prices AMD (including ATi) has a market value of $2billion, nVidia has a market value of $5billion. That debt sure is pulling AMD to its fiscal knees.
  • verd14 - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    Shouldn't AMD's retreat from the FAB bizz free up some capital for their debt payments?
  • Shmak - Tuesday, November 11, 2008 - link

    "If you ever wanted an example of equality in the graphics market, this is pretty much it; in the consumer space both are roughly tied in performance, and in the financial space both are slightly profitable."

    The author is not talking about equality between the financial situation of these companies, he is talking about the equality of their offerings in the market right now. Does every article need to state the obvious financial disparity? I think most readers are well aware of it.
  • Casper42 - Monday, November 10, 2008 - link

    Ryan, I have been holding off on an upgrade to the GTX 260/280 as I heard they pull alot of power and put out alot of heat. I figured with the 9800 GTX+ being released, it was only a matter of time before the GTX Cards got a fab refresh as well.

    So where the heck are they?

    I had originally heard maybe Sept but we're way past that point and I am getting an itchy trigger finger to start putting together an X58 machine to replace my aging Tyan K8WE based gaming rig. I was considering a pair of 9800 GTX+ cards previously, and now they are way down in price, but I would rather get a single GPU card with similar performance so that even games that don't do well with SLI will still perform well.
  • Zillatech - Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - link

    I think they will be out very soon! Here is a link to some current news on the lower power draw ~

    http://theovalich.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/55nm-gt...">http://theovalich.wordpress.com/2008/11...powers-b...

    Sounds good to me :)
  • AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, November 11, 2008 - link

    You heard they pull a lot of power? Why don't you see the data and judge for yourself:

    http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3340...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3340...

    At idle they are super low, and even at load the 260 is less than the 9800+. If I remember right, don't expect 55nm GT200 until 1Q09, and if it's like the 9-series, don't expect any noticeable speed increase. The $200 that a 260 costs today won't go much lower 3 months from now, even with 55nm parts out.
  • 9nails - Wednesday, November 12, 2008 - link

    Those numbers are still pretty hefty. Not a good comparison, but an ASUS eee Box PC's total system power needs just 22 watts with an Intel Atom CPU.

    In the benchmarks that you present, I would guess that if I had a motherboard with an integrated GPU instead of the discrete graphics card, keeping all the other components the same, it would consume about 70 - 90 watts at idle. That's the figure that I'd want to compare an add-on GPU card against at idle. Again, it's not apples to apples since an integrated GPU lacks dedicated memory, and they can't come close to the resolutions and performance a 9800 GTX can offer. But on the other hand, I would expect Nvidia to engineer a solution able to turn off power through under clocking or turning off additional cores in the GPU based on task when it's not needed. Green computing is our future and I know at least that 100 watts of additional power is not needed as I sit here and type!
  • AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    Your integrated graphics estimate is correct (85W for an Intel Quad core: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?.... But it's no wonder since integrated graphics can't perform worth crap.

    GTX280 numbers impress me greatly. Idle power usage is 75% of the 9800GTX+, while having DOUBLE the transistors and 65nm vs 55nm.

    Who cares if your monster gaming PC consumes 74W more than your mother's web box? And who cares about "green computing"? Low-power servers matter, and replacing street lights with LEDs would be nice, but who cares about high end video cards conserving a few watts!

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