NVIDIA GF100 & Friends speculation

[eastmen]

What are the cost of a 40nm Wafer? $5000? $6000? With 100% and 106 chip on a wafer they would pay $48/$56. That's to high for a $299 selling point?

It will never be 100%. Lets be fair and say 50%. Your going to pay double that cost and be at close to $100 per chip.

Cypress on the other hand is smaller and has been in production longer 6 months longer so whatever yields nvidia is getting ati should be doing more and they already have more chips per wafer than nvidia. Then you have board and ram price diffrences.

Before nvidia's chips even ship ati can adjust pricing.

Though I really odn't see nvidia selling these cards for $300

By the time you get everything together even claiming $56 a chip. You have board , ram , cooling and other costs . Your most likely looking at over $200 per board.

Though if true and the 470 is clser to the 5870 and is priced at $300 ati would respond by pricing the 5870 closer to $300 and we all win. Heck ati should be able to under cut them cost wise and the 5870 is a much smaller and less complex board which has been in production for half a year already.

 

[Razor1]

What is a typical % of MSRP for the gpu on a modern board?

profit margins were much higher before it really depends on the market place, but a good margin was around 30% for both the partner and IHV if I remember correctly for the higher end products. We can see that the GTX line nV exclusive partner got hurt, so probably was very slim for them, and very slim for nV too.

Now the partners aren't going to take a loss on their sales, they can't, they don't have the flexibility or means to, but nV has other avenues to make money but I don't think nV will sell their cards to partners at a loss either, doesn't make much sense, the partners and nV will just have to share the less profits over all.

 

[Razor1]

By the time you get everything together even claiming $56 a chip. You have board , ram , cooling and other costs . Your most likely looking at over $200 per board.

Though if true and the 470 is clser to the 5870 and is priced at $300 ati would respond by pricing the 5870 closer to $300 and we all win. Heck ati should be able to under cut them cost wise and the 5870 is a much smaller and less complex board which has been in production for half a year already.

Nope ram, pcb and housing etc, are dirt cheap compared to the GPU, you can get 2 gigs of ddr 3 memory for $60 here, for GDDR5 at wholesale how much do you think it would be? Probably right around there, its pretty cheap. And we weren't really getting around to talking about what ATi would do, if they do drop the price on their cards which is a possibility if nV prices their cards that low, will hurt nV's ability in a price war.

And I think you guys calling Sontin's comments as off the wall, he was showing that the other post didn't make much sense at 100% yield. Pretty easy to understand the train of thought in the posts.

 

[Sontin]

It will never be 100%. Lets be fair and say 50%. Your going to pay double that cost and be at close to $100 per chip.

I didn't want to start a "yield" and production discuss.
BTW: The difference between GF100 and Cypress ($6000, 166 Chips) is 20$* - one chip would cost $36. Think about it.
With twice the chips on a wafer it would only $28.

 

[leoneazzurro]

and you know how much I hate cutting down from wafer costs since its not accurate at all, if at $5000 per wafer, we get 60% yields (which yields have to be above 50% to launch a card with sustainable levels of inventory) we are looking at $80 per chip if we have 106 dies on the wafer, even if we put the PCB at $40 bucks which is ridiculously high and $50 for the ram and $20 for the housing, fan, heat sink and others, you will still get a nice profit.
realistic at 30% they won't be able to launch at all.

I always forget that die packaging, testing of the GPU, assembly of the components, soldering, testing the cards, packaging, shipping, bundles and advertising cost nothing for GPU/AIB manufacturers. They surely have huge advantages with respect to all other factories.

 

[Razor1]

I always forget that die packaging, testing of the GPU, assembly of the components, soldering, testing the cards, packaging, shipping, bundles and advertising cost nothing for GPU/AIB manufacturers. They surely have huge advantages with respect to all other factories.

I always forget that die packaging, testing of the GPU, assembly of the components, soldering which is why I did put in there others, and etc.

These come into manufacturing of the card the res, are secondary expenditures (accounting is done differently for these). Oh yes that is very correct on the AIB side

 

[eastmen]

Nope ram, pcb and housing etc, are dirt cheap compared to the GPU, you can get 2 gigs of ddr 3 memory for $60 here, for GDDR5 at wholesale how much do you think it would be? Probably right around there, its pretty cheap. And we weren't really getting around to talking about what ATi would do, if they do drop the price on their cards which is a possibility if nV prices their cards that low, will hurt nV's ability in a price war.

And I think you guys calling Sontin's comments as off the wall, he was showing that the other post didn't make much sense at 100% yield. Pretty easy to understand the train of thought in the posts.

considering the speed of gddr 5 i would think more than $60. I'd be betting its closer to $100.

But then again the chip wont have a 100% yield. You guys also don't count the other costs like shiping. There is a lot of shipping being done before the product gets to your house. Fab to nvidia , nvidia to partners. Then boxing costs , the cost of the packaging , driver cds and al lthat fun stuff.

I can easily see a gtx 470 costing $200 or more even with close to 100% yields

I didn't want to start a "yield" and production discuss.
BTW: The difference between GF100 and Cypress ($6000, 166 Chips) is 20$ - one chip would cost $36. Think about it.

Yes but do you really think a product that has been shipping since sept is going to have the same yields as a product shipping in march. Ati should have better yields and thus prices of chips would be even cheaper for ati.

For fun lets say nvidia is at 60% yields. Thats 63 chips . 6000/63 = $95 per chip. Cypres at just 70% yield would be 116 chips. 6000/116= $51. Actual at 70% ati would have more working chips than nvdia at 100%.

Who knows what nvidia's yields are. We also currently only know of two nvidia chips the 480 and 470. We know that ati is using the cypress in 3 chips. So even if yields are similar of working chips ati has a third option for using chips that nvidia doesn't have yet.

 

[swaaye]

Is it surprising that NV is at A3 silicon already? In that the card's not even out yet and they've spun it 3 times and that sounds like they have been pushing themselves to the limit.

 

[leoneazzurro]

@razor
Then I am inclined to think that your estimation of only 20$ for additional components, assembly, GPU & cards testing, etc. is not exactly correct. Let's say what's missing on the component side:

- SMD components (IC, resistors, small capacitors, etc) -
- Power circuitry (MOS, capacitors, coils, control circuitry) - cost increases with the card dissipation. Both this and previous components should be usually of higher-than average quality.
- Connectors and auxiliary materials (DVI, DP if they have some, power connectors, brackets,etc.)

Now, this plus:

- GPU packaging
- GPU testing
- component assembly (the more the components, the more the cost)
- Soldering
- Heatsink and fan
- Card testing
- Packaging
- Shipping
- Bundle & extras (adapters, software, etc)
- Support
- Marketing & advertising

should be 20$?

 

[Razor1]

@razor
Then I am inclined to think that your estimation of only 20$ for additional components, assembly, GPU & cards testing, etc. is not exactly correct. Let's say what's missing on the component side:

- SMD components (IC, resistors, small capacitors, etc) -
- Power circuitry (MOS, capacitors, coils, control circuitry) - cost increases with the card dissipation. Both this and previous components should be usually of higher-than average quality.
- Connectors and auxiliary materials (DVI, DP if they have some, power connectors, brackets,etc.)

Now, this plus:

- GPU packaging
- GPU testing
- component assembly (the more the components, the more the cost)
- Soldering
- Heatsink and fan
- Card testing
- Packaging
- Shipping
- Bundle & extras (adapters, software, etc)
- Support
- Marketing & advertising

should be 20$?

- GPU packaging
- GPU testing
- component assembly (the more the components, the more the cost)
- Soldering

Not all of those things go into the cost of the graphics card. Most of these things specially for the higher end cards, are done by a separate company who assembles the cards and then sends it out to the AIB partners.

of course lets add more to that cost anyhow lets say $40 instead.

- Packaging
- Shipping
- Bundle & extras (adapters, software, etc)
- Support
- Marketing & advertising

All this is done by the AIB partners so we can kinda put that aside for now.

- Card testing

This is an interesting one, not sure who would do this, just a thought, if Flextronics put these cards together before sent out to AIB partners, they might do the testing and AIB partners will do more testing for the overclocked ones?

@eastman, its not the speed of the GDDR5 that will be the factor in its cost since GDDR5 goes much higher then what will be in these cards, its more of the supply of it that would effect the cost, since nV and AMD buys the ram directly and then sells the ram to partners. And its fab to 3rd party who assembles the cards then goes to partners. But again we are talking about millions of cards here mass production will drop the 3rd party costs down to very little on a per card basis.

What is the market sale price of the gtx 270 right now, if its make very little it hit rock bottom its not going to get any lower, now you might want to use the gtx 285 for the rock bottom price but that doesn't give since the gtx 270 and gtx 285 are the same gpu so the cost price won't be that much different. We then have to add in the seller's profit in there too. Which I forgot, so if end sale price is $299 does now seem a bit low for a $100 profit, let me make an amendment they would barely skimp on profits at $299 .

 

[NathansFortune]

realistic at 30% they won't be able to launch at all.

At $299. They will be able to launch quite ok if they sell it at $500 or any price around there.

 

[Sontin]

Is it surprising that NV is at A3 silicon already? In that the card's not even out yet and they've spun it 3 times and that sounds like they have been pushing themselves to the limit.

They start with A1 - this would mean two respins.

 

[Razor1]

At $299. They will be able to launch quite ok if they sell it at $500 or any price around there.

no I'm talking about keeping on the selves, they won't be able to produce enough, fast enough to keep inventory at acceptable levels, its possible if the chip was smaller but that isn't the case here.

 

[NathansFortune]

Is it surprising that NV is at A3 silicon already? In that the card's not even out yet and they've spun it 3 times and that sounds like they have been pushing themselves to the limit.

Something has to be done to get yields up. Launching with A1 would have seen extremely poor availability and ridiculous pricing. B1 should be where availability comes good...

 

[MfA]

realistic at 30% they won't be able to launch at all.

Why not?

 

[Razor1]

Why not?

They can launch but they won't have any volume in the channel after launch, I should rephrase it. And anyways it was stated they are at ~60% yields, nV did state this that current yields of Fermi is as good as the gtx 2xx line.

 

[Dave Baumann]

The notion of "a wafer costs $xxxx so chip costs $xx" is very short sighted. There a lot more that goes into the chip costs even before it hits a board. leoneazzurro is certainly on the right track.

 

[MfA]

And anyways it was stated they are at ~60% yields, nV did state this that current yields of Fermi is as good as the gtx 2xx line.

I missed those, could you dig up the links?

 

[thatdude90210]

This goes back to my original question. If a gtx470 can possibly sell for $299, why did they have to kill the 275-285. Shirley those can be priced to match the Radeons and continue to hit on their own selling points of Physx, cuda, drivers, or whatever.

 

[Mize]

I think you guys are confusing margin with profit. Even if nV's direct costs come in below MSRP that only means that make MSRP-COGS = GM. For many companies a GM% below 60% is loss making. That means you have to sell for COGS*3 basically to make a dime. (for those who don't know GM$ = sale price - COGS and GM% = (sale price - COGS)/sale price. This is because overhead (r&d, marketing, depreciations, etc.) is a huge cost. That's why I asked what is the typical % of MSRP for the raw chip...if anyone knows that will tell.