O-M-F-G? RV515 pushed from "Late September" to "Q1 06"? This is a joke, right? Or is ATI trying to win those class action lawsuits by proving they're generally clueless and can't manage a business properly, thus implying they did their best at trying to warn investors of potential risks? Heh...
Oh well, if that's true, they've basically lost the holiday season with their low-end parts, if not with their other ones considering the announcements are coming a bit too late for OEMs. If the RV515 shipments do not begin before Q1, then their next financial results will be even worse than I had expected, and and they won't able to pretend being optimistic about the next quarter.
So, for anyone following that other thread... I'd say even a short-term investment in ATI is a bit risky. Just wait for their Q4 results in early october before reacting if you don't want to take too much of a risk here - of course, such a risk might turn out well, but imo it's more likely not to. No guarantees of course.
Semi-OT, but NVIDIA's stock seems like a safe tech bet right now, that should imo follow the market (but with a slightly more "upwards" tendency): there will be no financial results for about 80 more days, forecasts and estimates are good, and so on. The problem is, many analysts aren't buying the "Lost XBox revenues will be fully compensated by increased desktop marksetshare and revenues".
What that means is the upwards movement of the August results has been decreased by insufficient forecast credibility, and generally speaking, the stock may increase over time before the next results, and especially so if there are conference calls during which the forecast is confirmed in a Q&A. New product launches, of which there will be plenty before November, will also help analyst confidence.
In the case of ATI, I would tend to believe that industry analysts overestimate the revenue and most especially profit potential of low-end parts compared to high-end parts; this was for example extremely visible and in the apparent misunderstanding of the importance of the G7800GTX sales in the quarter's results for NVIDIA. Simply speaking, many (but not all) analysts will tend to be less annoyed at high-end delays than low-end delays. The reverse is true for enthusiasts, and from my perspective, the financial truth lies between those two extremes.
And now I'll try to summarize this whole post in a single sentence: "NVIDIA currently is a good short-term and long-term general tech buy, ATI on the other hand is a risky investment with little chance of significant increase before after the Q4 results announcement". Heh, long sentence that was!
Uttar
EDIT: And no, I'm not calling "Doom" on ATI - I'm just saying that short-term, the chances of their next quarter being a good one are rapidly becoming extremely weak.
As for NVIDIA, I would suspect them to reach their revenue goal, but increased operational expenses would decrease their net revenue; still, that would be better than analysts are currently expecting.
