I am sure Dave B will disagree with me on this one...

I'm not saying that nVidia, if they could, wouldn't go back in time and erease the whole NV30 from it's sorry existence. However, the fact remains that 10 months after launch it was more then easy to get one and it was in lots of product listings. So despite all the erroneous pre-launch hype it just wasn't in demand even before the NV35 replaced it. Where I got mine, out of morbid curiosity I might add, they had at least 35-40 in stock before they dumped the price to get rid of them. I don't know where that 'couple of thousand' number comes from, but it just has to be wrong. Maybe that's the amount of ultras they shipped or something?

 

The figure I remember being quoted was about 10,000, but of course Nvidia never publicly commented on NV30 after it was replaced/cancelled apart from their "humorous" show video where they made fun of it.

 

Now I'm getting confuddled --I was thinking it was the 5800 Ultra that was declared "boutique" and done away with after a very small run of a few thousand.

Edit: Ah. Memories. . . http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?news=Njg3NyxNYXJjaCAgICAsMjAwMw==

Edit2: Egad. http://content.guru3d.com/article/review/22/24 Quick, someone stage an intervention before I surf for 5800 stuff again. Definitely binge & purge material. Next thing you know I'll be in a gutter somewhere surfing "8500 drivers". . .

 

IIRC, standard NV30 and NV30 Ultra were functionally identical, the Ultra just being an unfeasably overclocked version of NV30. Same pipes and everything, just volted, clocked, cooled, PR'd, and FP16-evangelised to desperate limits in order to try and keep up with R300.

 

Oh, I agree with all that. I was just thinking that if you were after a number in the few thousands, it was 5800 Ultra, not NV30 as a whole. But then maybe I'm mistaken --I did see one article that claimed 100,000 as the whole run of NV30 (from which Ultras were cherry-picked and abused to the ragged edge), but I wouldn't call it an offcial source at all.

 

Yeah, I seem to recall the 10,000 figure as well -- didn't nVIDIA PR come out with some press release in early Q1 2003 along the lines of, "... listen up fan-boys, we know NV30's great, you know it's great -- see our Doom3 benchmarks if you don't believe us! Well now it's even greater, not only does FlowFX add oodles of street cred to your pimped rig, making you the coolest (geddit!) geek around, we have now decided to reward our gulli...er...adoring and patient fans (hey 5 respins takes time!) with a special, limited-edition release of this unbelievable, out-of-this-world GPU (if you don't believe us you must be smoking dope or as our illustrious leader put it, "something hallucinogenic").

You read it here first -- buying ATI makes you an unpratriotic, brainwashed crackhead who funds terrorism, piracy, African dictactors, child prostitution, etc. So, go forth, scour the web for availability and trawl the tech forums in defence of this mind-blowing product -- e-mail F.Lunky@nvidia.com for our list of non-approved partners and reviewers (aka "The Hitlist") and make'm see sense! And to those of you (we know who you are) thinking about buying an R300 this round, remember, TWIMTBP=dev ownage ("all your pipelines are belong to us")! Please note: if you are paying more than $500 for a pre-order you are not being ripped off (what price excellence?), just mildy exploited.

P.S. 3DMark03 sucks!

Seriously though, it was a true masterstroke from nVIDIA's marketing guys -- by significantly constraining supply to mostly a few online retailers and ephemerally adding prestige to the product by making it a rare part, they could satiate the demand from hardcore enthusiasts and still claim some availability, buying enough time to get NV35 out the door.

Cheers,


BrynS

 

Wrong! Hehe. I own a Radeon 9500. There goes that theory eh? Have had it since they were introduced. I am merely tired of the constant anti-Nvidia drivel. I come here to hopefully catch some objective views and typically all you get is the same posters dominating the boards with their usual rhetoric. If you enjoy the rhetoric, then perhaps you are the fanboi. Me? I can care less which card is better. I am in it for the content of the post yah!

edit- Being an anti-fanboi-fanboi makes me sound kind of lika a superhero! Out to rid the world of IHV fanbois where no a-f-f has gone before!

 

It was not 10,000 cards. According to Digit-Life, they produced 100,000 NV30 chips: http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/gffx/gffx-ref-p1.html

The 5800 ultras were the cards that were near impossible to get. Possibly only a couple of thousand of those were ever shipped. Based on Digit-Life's statement, I would say that between 20k to 40k NV30 cards were sold as desktop cards and the rest were used for the workstation market.

 

100k ? don't get much more limited to that . The r300 sold in the millions

 

I agree that 100k is limited. However, it is a quite a bit more than the 10k that some thought were produced. The failures of the NV30 and the success of the R300 are well documented and noted. The stated number was intended to put actual production amounts into perspective.

 

I believe most ppl refer to the 5800U when they say 'NV30' and not the non-Ultra. In any case, we are arguing over scemantics here.

 

This thread is way OT. Get back on topic or the padlock comes out!

 

check the hl2 hardware survey and be surprised how little 5800's are still in use

 

Err, so Josh --any updates on the thinking that informed your piece based on feedback (public or private) since? We've since heard that R520 did go back for another spin and that G70 is 16 ROPs, for instance (plus whatever your PM's tell you! )

 

that is a good point! how does one check the HL2 survey? What about Futuremark. Don't they store video card usage?

 

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

 

Thanks!

 

Numbers from the Steam Survey:

X800 Pro, X800XT, X800XTPE: 30,810

6800GT: 29,162

How much do you think that was due to shortages in manufacturing at ATI. And if it was due to it, and it seems the R520 may have even worse yields than the R420.....

 

add the ultra there as well, you're creating an unfair image!

x800pro 15k / 6800gt 30k
x800xt/x800xt-pe 15k/ 6800U/UE 6k

 

While shortages did effect ATI's sales, it was primarily the 6800 GT's price and performance that made it sell well, and the fact that ATI didn't really have anything to compete until the X800 XL which came many months later. Same applies to the 6600 GT though less so since 9800 Pros are readily available for cheap and have similar performance. But still, people want newer products.