nVidia Conference Call Tomorrow [Archive]

Typedef Enum

12-Feb-2003, 15:55

Man...

I can honestly say that this is one conference call I won't miss! LOL.

IE:

"Question: Jen, can you give us a status on that chip you said was the most significant contribution to 3D in the history of nVidia?"

"Jen: Sure, Bob. It has been decided that demand was FAR too high than our current supply; therefore, we have decided not to sell it! You see Bob, I don't believe in leaving any one customer out of the loop...and if there's just one guy that can't have it, than nobody can. Next question?"

Arun

12-Feb-2003, 16:14

Actually, I doubt it'll be all that fun for investors :D

Let me imagine it...
"Question: You recently said you were confident future products would take the performance crown back from ATI. Any information on those products?
"Jen: I'm sorry, but we can't give information on unannounced products."
"Okay, so, how many ASICs are you going to release this year?"
"Jen: Including NV30 and our next nForce, about 7"
"Great. But aren't you worried so many ASICs are going to reduce the profitability of each ASIC, thus making it harder to cover R&D expenses?"
"Jen: Well, we'd need that many ASICs to stay competitive with ATI anyway. And we probably aren't going to be anyway, and... Damn! Kill this guy! Kill EVERYONE WHO HEARD ME!"

"But sir, there are about a thousand listeners to the conference call..."
"Would you dare disobey direct orders, Kirk?"
"Of course not, sir. It'll be done, sir!"

Uttar

Freak'n Big Panda

12-Feb-2003, 17:01

ROFL! God thats sooo funny :)

JF_Aidan_Pryde

12-Feb-2003, 17:11

Kirk is in Australia attending the Graphite conference. (Essentially Siggraph for Asia Pacific) :)

Arun

12-Feb-2003, 19:02

Kirk is in Australia attending the Graphite conference. (Essentially Siggraph for Asia Pacific) :)

Yeah. Nobody would suspect nVidia is hiring Australian mass murderers :D

More seriously, anyone wanna take bets on what nVidia Q4 earnings will be?
Analysts average supposition is of 0.06/share , or about $10M
My bet is 0.13/share, or about $22M

Uttar

Chalnoth

12-Feb-2003, 20:21

"Great. But aren't you worried so many ASICs are going to reduce the profitability of each ASIC, thus making it harder to cover R&D expenses?"
Actually, I think a good explanation of this particular one is:

"We believe that we will sell more products total by maintaining a diversified set of products. At the same time, all of these products will be using the same core technologies, significantly reducing the costs of R&D. So no, I don't believe it will reduce the profitability of each ASIC, as each will sell more and adding, say, a 7th on top of a 6th will just not require much more money."

But yeah, I'll be interested in getting the transcript of this one. More than anything, I want to see some questions about FSAA. Primarily: is nVidia focused on actually improving their FSAA beyond that which is offered in the GeForce4 currently (specifically gamma-correct FSAA, non ordered-grid 4x, higher than 4x pure multisampling)? Will an improvement in FSAA come before the next major generation (presumably to be released in 2004)?

Joe DeFuria

12-Feb-2003, 20:43

But yeah, I'll be interested in getting the transcript of this one. More than anything, I want to see some questions about FSAA.

Heh...I think you are dreaming if you think Analysts would even think about asking that quesiton. ;) (Not that I wouldn't like to know the answer to that too....)

TheMightyPuck

12-Feb-2003, 22:06

Analysts are gonna want to know about high to midrange chips and an intel license for an integrated chipset.

MatrixShark

13-Feb-2003, 01:40

Intel might be a little bit selfish (or wise in some regards) about not letting nVidia produce a P4 chipset. With the nForce2 reputation and momentum, nVidia could grab a big bite of market share over night.

stevem

13-Feb-2003, 03:40

...With the nForce2 reputation and momentum, nVidia could grab a big bite of market share over night.

Possibly, but @ this stage they're not prepared to do so at Intel's price...

Nagorak

13-Feb-2003, 04:06

epicstruggle

13-Feb-2003, 06:18

Joe DeFuria

13-Feb-2003, 17:42

More seriously, anyone wanna take bets on what nVidia Q4 earnings will be?

I'm actually expecting mild losses....

Anonymous

13-Feb-2003, 18:20

How seriously will you take the conference call. I am not sure how much ill believe what is said on it. They havent delivered as promised from the last call. Didnt he (CEO) promise the products by January.

anyways, Ill not take the call as seriously,

later,

He didn't promise anything in January.
He promised NV30s for the January *quarter*
That's from the mid January to mid April, IIRC...

Uttar

Joe DeFuria

13-Feb-2003, 21:11

OK...so I was wrong. ;)

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030213/sfth076_1.html

For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2003, revenues were $469.0 million, compared to $503.7 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2002. Net income for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2003 was $50.9 million, or $0.30 per diluted share, compared to net income of $76.0 million, or $0.43 per diluted share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2002.

Joe DeFuria

13-Feb-2003, 21:16

He didn't promise anything in January.
He promised NV30s for the January *quarter*
That's from the mid January to mid April, IIRC...

Strange...when did quarters start lasting for 4 months.... ;)

In any case, USUALLY, when finance talks about "Quarters" they typically do so in terms of the Quarter Ending. So I would have interpreted his comments the "Quater Ending January '03."

Which would have fit in with nVidia's initial claims about the shipping all allong. But in any case, we all know that all such statements are purposely made as vague as possible such that they can be interpreted in any number of ways to cover their ass. ;) Makes me wonder what "statements of apparent fact" we'll be discussing after today's call because of high ambiguity. (Speaking of which...about 15 minutes from now...)

Anonymous

13-Feb-2003, 21:23

Speaking of which, nVidia just announced the Q4 results slightly before the conference call, as they always do.
It's *significantly* above every analyst's estimates. nVidia earned 30 cents/share, against 43 cents/share a year ago.
Total revenue for the quarter is of $469M, compared to $504M a year ago.
This revenue includes $40.4-4.8M, or 35.6M which comes from settling the lawsuit with Microsoft.

Uttar

nutball

13-Feb-2003, 21:30

It's *significantly* above every analyst's estimates.

And <scrolls back up screen> yours too Uttar? :wink:

Or were you quoting profit?

(Only tugging your tail, LOL).

Joe DeFuria

13-Feb-2003, 21:32

Yes, although as you indicated, $40 million of the revenue is for the late x-box/microsoft settlement. (Did that actually occur inthe Quarter?)

So the Analysts expecting $10 million were spot on, actually. (As I'm sure the analysts were not factoring in the settlement...)

In any case, revenue is revenue. However, their "before one time expenses / winfalls" revenues has been steadily declining the past two quarters...

Anonymous

13-Feb-2003, 21:32

It's *significantly* above every analyst's estimates.

And <scrolls back up screen> yours too Uttar? :wink:

Or were you quoting profit?

(Only tugging your tail, LOL).

It is 5 times higher than the average analyst estimate based on CNN Money.
It is about 2.5 times higher than my estimate.

Uttar

Anonymous

13-Feb-2003, 21:35

Anonymous

13-Feb-2003, 21:43

I think if you exclude the xbox settlement (which I assume is what analysts did when they made their 0.06 estimate), the numbers look more like they at least matched expectations. Not sure how the XBOX settlement would affect the amount of income tax paid. If you assume it doesn't affect income tax paid, then I think their earnings come out at 0.063, slightly beating estimates. If it lowers income tax using the tax rate they provided, then they beat it handily with earnings of around 0.105 (back of the envelope calculation, could be wrong...)

The XBOX thing messes up all sorts of calculations, eg. you can't be sure about the gross margins (although they do appear to be shrinking by 1 or 2% at least since same time last year). And regardless, revenue is decreasing but I don't know offhand whether it is decreasing more rapidly than the overall PC market.

ben6

13-Feb-2003, 22:03

excluding XBOX revenue, NVidia had a EPS of 14 cents, so around 2x what the consensus was. Not that bad a quarter when everything is taken into account, really. They have 1.028 Billion in cash and cash equivalents up over 100 million from last quarter

TheMightyPuck

13-Feb-2003, 22:15

Am I understanding? X-box revenue makes up that big a portion of Nvidia's bottom line? Wow.

cellarboy

13-Feb-2003, 22:27

I'm listening to the Conference Call right now. Jeez, I wish these analysts knew enough about the market and products to actually ask a decent, challenging question.....

Beatles

13-Feb-2003, 22:33

They're getting an easy ride and snowing those guys.

Richthofen

13-Feb-2003, 22:39

This conference call is definetly entertaining.
These Nvidia guys are in a pretty good mood.
With 50 Mio profits i think i would be in that mood too.
:)

cellarboy

13-Feb-2003, 22:40

In response to a question regarding a NV30 refresh, Jensen said, "we are working on something twice as fast as that." No hint at shipping dates. They state that they will be, "shipping the hell", out of the NV30.

They also claim they will have FX-capable parts "in every market segment" before the end of the first quarter.

And yep, these guy's are getting an easy ride. Someone phone in and ask a decent question!

Joe DeFuria

13-Feb-2003, 22:43

Here's my on significant / relevant issues:

* Effect of settlement:
"45 million Relates to sales in prior quarters, 4 million in this quarter." With no settlement, there would be $0.14 per share earnings.
(Nice one Uttar!)

* "Cash" of just above $1 Billion.

* Inventory at 45 days, about where they want to be.

Going forward:
* X-Box revenues will decline. Don't know if other platforms will offset reduced x-box revenues.

* "FX Class" GPUs from $99 and higher are coming...(damn...didn't catch by which timeframe...Q1, H1, or "during the year")

* Envision PCs as the "center of the electronic home."

* Expect XBox (or future X-box devices?) to extend into other non gaming areas over time (metioned TiVo devices prior to this as examples of 'computers' in the home.)

Q&A:

* Mentioned GeForce4ti and nForce2 as still in allocation "due to high demand."

* Overall, anticipate margins on the FX product line should be superior to what "they've been shipping recently."

* Majority of current inventory related to GeForce4 MX.

* Concentrating on building inventory for GeForceFX family...

* TSMC yields on 0.13 are in line with expectations....but would like them to be better, and higher capacity, and lower wafer cost. ;)

* Have 3 GPUs "ramping hard" at TSMC.

* Majority of revenues this quarter came from nForce2.

* FX expectations for Q1: ship more than 1.5 million units. (I assume FX product line...wasn't clear...)

* Still passionate about the enthusiast market. ("More press releases on these products than units sold." ;))

* Sees a lot of momentum against integrated chipsets going forward, due to gap of "DX6" level graphics integration, vs. upcoming DX9 discrete chips. Market will move back to more external GPUs.

* Question about NV31/34 and what they are beyond the fact that they are 0.13. ;). The answer was they want a "High performance FX", and a lower cost, and even a lower cost version of it. Over the coming years...everything over all price points will be fully programmable. (Not clear about NV31/34 actually being as programmable as high-end FX).

* Q: When will NV30 "refresh" be out? Answer: What is that? :D We will "ship the living daylights out of NV30." We are working on something that is "twice as fast as that", as we always are. We don't intend our next generation product to slip "proportionally" to what NV30 did.

* Ah well...I have to turn it off...gotta run...

Beatles

13-Feb-2003, 22:43

Unfortunately the public can't call in. I'd slaughter them if we could.

nutball

13-Feb-2003, 22:44

Ichneumon

13-Feb-2003, 22:44

Interesting... are saying FX tech in their cards covering $99-$399 range by beginning of 2nd quarter.

Thats a lot of cards they need to bring out in a short time.

heh. and the GF4ti is the "perfect product" at the "perfect price point" right now.

It is eh?

Nice sum up Joe.
They were very vague about what was coming on that nv30 refresh question(as you'd expect). There was that bit about different design teams... NV35 or NV40 indeed.

Dave H

13-Feb-2003, 22:56

Confrence call highlights: Jen-Hsun has a raspy throat but enthusiastically insists to everyone he's feeling "just fine". Perhaps he's been smoking something hallucinogenic??
Jen-Hsun confirms Half-Life 2 for 2003 :!: :!: :D then again last time he confirmed GFfx for 2002...
In the opening remarks they really pushed Cg hard. No indications of actual uptake, however, and barely mentioned it in the Q&A part--which is generally where conference calls stop being meaningless fluff.
Nvidia expects to ship 1.5 million NV3x GPUs in Q1. How will they accomplish this with NV31/34 not launching until CeBit? Good question. Jen-Hsun keeps insisting they will ramp and sell NV30s; maybe most of these actually will be GFfx non-Ultras.
OTOH TNT2 "still sells a few million units a quarter".
NV31 and NV34 currently quickly ramping at TSMC. (Actual comment "we have 3 GPUs quickly ramping etc.") (edit: "ramping hard" was the actual quote; thanks Joe)
"We don't intend our next generation to slip proportionally to GFfx, because there are different design teams working on it." The original question was about NV35, but Jen-Hsun gave himself enough wiggle-room that this answer could refer to NV40.In general, a disappointing conference call (and yes, I've listened to good conference calls, they do exist). Then again, good results in the current quarter often lead to the sorts of wimpy questions and evasive answers we got here.

TheMightyPuck

13-Feb-2003, 23:03

He makes an interesting point about add-in cards. If consumers upgrade from onboard dx6 to add-in dx9 that bodes well for gpu makers.

Anonymous

13-Feb-2003, 23:03

* Majority of revenues this quarter came from nForce2.

Hmmm, I think that was a majority of chipset revenues perhaps were Nforce2, as opposed to Nforce1. They stated that Xbox was 20% of sales, GeForce4 family was >>50% of sales. They even shipped a few million units of TNT-2 this quarter.

Anonymous

13-Feb-2003, 23:32

Why do these confrence calls with Nvidia CEO's result in them getting away with lying and misleading people every single time?

1. There is no way they are mass going to ship 1.5million Nv30's this Quarter. Prerders are getting cancelled, and several sites are reporting limited production only.

2. The nv31 does not have even half the functionality of the NV30, neither does the nv34.

3. Their next product the Nv35 is not 2x faster than the Nv30. The Nv40 might be.. but they did not seem to be talking about that.

When will the general public stop giving these guys license to lie, and lie and lie and lie while still inceasing their coffers???

Further, notice their comment about the inventory of GF4mx??? Which are not fully dx8 complient? no wonder they are trying to kill 3dmark03. Instead of releasing a fully DX8 complient vdeo card they continually push non complient cards and then try to destroy anything that shows the emporer has no clothes. The same will be true for the Nv31.

RussSchultz

13-Feb-2003, 23:46

* Have 3 GPUs "ramping hard" at TSMC.

That's interesting. Perhaps the NV31 and NV34 launch won't be paper, but a "suprise" with units shipping at the same time. Or maybe not.

And, getinjiggywithit, please share more. You seem to know everything about their products. We'd welcome your considerable insight.

Doomtrooper

13-Feb-2003, 23:52

I must say it shows how small the Internet in General affects graphic card sales, no mention of the cancellation of their high end part, danced around any idea of future releases.

The one bright spot being the Nforce 2 I can actually give them credit for was really small potatoes due to market share.

Not one question was asked on how well the Pre-orders were on their FX cards, and the CEO simply lying by making claims as 'the most powerfull GPU'.

Oh well..Marketing vs. Performance

Anonymous

14-Feb-2003, 00:12

I must say it shows how small the Internet in General affects graphic card sales, no mention of the cancellation of their high end part, danced around any idea of future releases.

Well, it's a bit early to say that. After all, their results are up to the end of January. And really all the controversy about the GeForceFX didn't start until around then. So we may yet see some fallout.

And, from what I understand, management was very coy about their expectations for the upcoming quarter, perhaps indicating some uncertainty. From Reuters: '' "At this time we are unable to predict whether the growth of our core products will offset the decline in the Xbox," Burkett said on the call. ''

They are to be congratulated for doing better than expected in challenging circumstances. But keeping in mind that the last Jon Peddie report seemed to indicate increasing graphics chips shipments while nVidia's quarterly report showed flat Q over Q revenues and significantly declines compared to the same quarter one year ago.... Well, they are not out of the woods yet.

BRiT

14-Feb-2003, 00:19

3. Their next product the Nv35 is not 2x faster than the Nv30. The Nv40 might be.. but they did not seem to be talking about that.

Actually, maybe they are talking about clockspeeds? The NV30 is clocked at 400Mhz, while the rumored speeds of NV35 is 800Mhz. I'm confident they are not talking about performance.

Nagorak

14-Feb-2003, 01:02

They even shipped a few million units of TNT-2 this quarter.

For what, $5 a board? I'm surprised TNT2s are even being produced still...

tamattack

14-Feb-2003, 01:06

Oh, and BTW, Joe, you are not correct.
$35M exceptional *revenue* doesn't mean $35M profit!
That means it's probably around $15M exceptional profit. Just a guestimate.
I guess that question will be asked during the conference call.

Uttar

Just in case there's any remaining doubt about this, but Uttar you are incorrect in your assessment.

The X-Box arbitration caused NV to defer the X-Box revenues because they couldn't be certain of what the actual contribution to revenue would be at the end of arbitration... The expenses were not deferred because there is no question as to what those amounts were.

Expenses are reflected on an incurred basis (look up Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP as it is more commonly referred-to, if you want to know more). Therefore, the related expenses have already been reflected in prior quarters, and the conclusion of the arbitration shows its full results on the bottom line for this quarter.

So the full amount was fully accretive to net income. [EDIT: before taxes]

[EDIT: wording]

Hellbinder

14-Feb-2003, 02:25

Actually, maybe they are talking about clockspeeds? The NV30 is clocked at 400Mhz, while the rumored speeds of NV35 is 800Mhz. I'm confident they are not talking about performance.

800mhz is not the rumored spec for the Nv35. They cant even get 500mhz totally stable with an extreme cooling solution. Even With low-k, the first generation boards on that process are not going to hit anywhere near that high.

If they impliment the low-k, get decent yields, and continue to use the dustbuster they *may* hit around 625-650mhz

demalion

14-Feb-2003, 02:50

3. Their next product the Nv35 is not 2x faster than the Nv30. The Nv40 might be.. but they did not seem to be talking about that.

Actually, maybe they are talking about <b>clockspeeds</b>? The NV30 is clocked at 400Mhz, while the <i>rumored</i> speeds of NV35 is 800Mhz. I'm confident they are not talking about performance.

Maybe they are being creative with "256-bit bus" versus "128-bit bus" and will just sort of gloss over how that could apply to the competition. Even if it was still at 400 MHz, they could say the bandwidth had doubled and sell that pretty easily as "2x faster".

When was nv40 intended to be launched? Maybe they are referring to shipping that card this year (or atleast a bit more "within the year" than the nv30 was)...they did seem hesitant to give a time scale in association with the part they were saying was 2x faster, as well as shying away from the term "refresh".

Anonymous

14-Feb-2003, 06:16

So the full amount was fully accretive to net income.

Hmm, now that you say this, it actually makes sense

But... Well...

With this, you've got $51M net profit or 30 cents a share.
Without this, you've got 14 cents a share.

That means about $25M
But, err, wasn't the original number of $40M?
So they only retrieved $25M...

Any explanation?

Uttar

Anonymous

14-Feb-2003, 06:18

Damn, I really should login and stop double-posting...
Just after posting this, I realized what my mistake war.
There's taxes, and the $40M doesn't count taxes.

Uttar

DemoCoder

14-Feb-2003, 06:26

]If they impliment the low-k, get decent yields, and continue to use the dustbuster they *may* hit around 625-650mhz

Interesting. How did you calculate those numbers?

Evildeus

14-Feb-2003, 07:35

tamattack

14-Feb-2003, 16:24

Damn, I really should login and stop double-posting...
Just after posting this, I realized what my mistake war.
There's taxes, and the $40M doesn't count taxes.

Uttar

I haven't actually looked over the numbers. I was just going off of the numbers that you guys had posted. But yes, this sounds about right.

Nil Einne

16-Feb-2003, 04:27

I don't think it's the first time Nvidia has made dubious statements about 2x increases in speeds when neither the clock speed, the RAM or the benchmark speed showed any of it... Did something like that happen with the G2? Can't quite remember now... Anyway, they could compare NV35 with the optimised drivers at release vs. NV30 with the current crop of unoptimised drivers... :-)

Or perhaps just have a 256 bit pathway and claim you doubled the speed.....

Mulciber

16-Feb-2003, 06:34

I think its perfectly feasible that by fixing a few design flaws, aiming for 600mhz, and doubling the bus on a currently bandwidth starved chip could actually provide double the performance on high-res AA situations. especially when taking into consideration that the drivers will probably be highly improved 6 months from now.

sadly I dont think that nVidia should have any problems doubling performance over the nv30 :wink: and deffinately not ATI

Crusher

17-Feb-2003, 07:22

If doubling the performance of the FX were that easy to do in the near future, I should think they would have done it already. I don't see anywhere that the 2x performance design was even remotely related to NV35, and I think it's fairly safe to say that we won't see anything close to a 2x increase in performance until at least NV40.

Look at it this way, if raising the core clock to 600 and eliminating the memory bottleneck with even faster DDRII on a 256-bit bus could give twice the performance of the FX, that would imply the current FX design was so memory bandwidth limited, that you could clock the core back to 300 MHz while keeping the memory at 500 MHz and you wouldn't see much of a performance drop. I would bet that's not the case even at 1600x1200 w/ 8x AA and 8x Aniso.

As for the profit per share calculations, without the X-Box revenue I think it would be closer to 6 cents per share. Assuming net income = revenue - expenses, we know net income including X-Box settlement, and we know the revenue including the X-Box settlement as well as the ammount of the settlement, and expenses remain constant. So if we decrease revenue by $40.4 Million, we decrease net income by $40.4 Million as well, giving us $10.5 Million. Their shares were based on net income, not net profit, so 30 cents a share at $50.9 Million revenue would be about 6 cents a share at $10.5 Million.

Arun

17-Feb-2003, 20:08

Look at it this way, if raising the core clock to 600 and eliminating the memory bottleneck with even faster DDRII on a 256-bit bus could give twice the performance of the FX, that would imply the current FX design was so memory bandwidth limited, that you could clock the core back to 300 MHz while keeping the memory at 500 MHz and you wouldn't see much of a performance drop. I would bet that's not the case even at 1600x1200 w/ 8x AA and 8x Aniso.

As for the profit per share calculations, without the X-Box revenue I think it would be closer to 6 cents per share. Assuming net income = revenue - expenses, we know net income including X-Box settlement, and we know the revenue including the X-Box settlement as well as the ammount of the settlement, and expenses remain constant. So if we decrease revenue by $40.4 Million, we decrease net income by $40.4 Million as well, giving us $10.5 Million. Their shares were based on net income, not net profit, so 30 cents a share at $50.9 Million revenue would be about 6 cents a share at $10.5 Million.

1. That's not really the way to look at it...
Take a GFFX. Use 4x AA, 8x Aggressive Aniso - note the results
Take a GFFX at 500/300, note the results
Takea GFFX at 300/500, note the results

I'd bet the GFFX at 300/500 is faster than the GFFX at 500/300
And anyway, if you compared 6xS & 8x AF with 6x & 16x AF, which would result in identical quality, it would be perfectly reasonable to assume twice the performance because 6xS is simply abysmal due to the SSAA part.

2. No. You're not counting taxes and several other factors. nVidia said that without the XBox settlement, it's 14 cents.

Uttar

Crusher

17-Feb-2003, 20:46

1. That's not really the way to look at it...
Take a GFFX. Use 4x AA, 8x Aggressive Aniso - note the results
Take a GFFX at 500/300, note the results
Takea GFFX at 300/500, note the results

I'd bet the GFFX at 300/500 is faster than the GFFX at 500/300

It might be, but I don't see why that would matter. If it's bandwidth limited at 500/500, it's going to be even moreso at 500/300. That doesn't have much to do with the statement I was adressing though.

The claim was that an FX at 600 MHz core with no memory limitation could be twice as fast as the current FX at 500/500.

My reasoning is that a 600 MHz core with no memory limitation is in theory going to be twice as fast as a 300 MHz core with no memory limitation. Therefore, if the 600 MHz core with no memory limitation is twice as fast as the FX, then the FX must be memory limited to the point that it's performing the same as something with a 300 MHz core and no memory limitation.

If that were the case, one should be able to bring the core clock down to 300 MHz on an FX and not see a difference in the performance. Whether or not it is still bandwidth limited at 300/500 doesn't matter with this theory. If it's still bandwidth limited, it shouldn't be any slower than it was at 500/500, since the memory bandwidth is kept constant and is limiting it in both cases. If it's not bandwidth limited at 300/500, then it still shouldn't be any slower, because according to the original theory a 300 MHz core that isn't memory bandwidth limited is what the 500/500 part is performing like to begin with.

My stance, however, is that this is incorrect. I don't think that the FX at 500/500 is so bandwidth limited that it is performing as if it were a 300 MHz part that isn't bandwidth limited. I claim that clocking the core back to 300 MHz would show a significant decrease in performance, even at the highest resolution, AA, and Anisotropic settings where it would be the most likely to remain memory bandwidth limited. Since I believe this to be the case, I therefore claim that producing a 600 MHz core with no memory limitation that is twice as fast as the current 500/500 MHz part (in the same tests, with the same settings) is not possible.

Crusher

17-Feb-2003, 20:54

2. No. You're not counting taxes and several other factors. nVidia said that without the XBox settlement, it's 14 cents.

I didn't see where they sait it was 14 cents without the X-Box revenue. I only saw reports saying that it was 30 cents a share based on net income, (which is roughly revenue - expenses, maybe take 35% off for tax if their including that, but that shouldn't change the proportionality much). They probably know their finances a little better than I do :)