NVIDIA Kepler speculation thread

The key here is the assumed supply issues.

Otherwise your argument and that of some others here seem to assume that there is no demand vs. price relationship, and that these cards will sell solely according to their relative performance vs. AMDs offerings. For devices such as this where there is no actual need other than upgradeitis, that is a dangerous supposition. For some I'm sure buying the latest and greatest is a compulsion (and I'm not joking here) but I think it's a fair assumption that the majority look at what they have and make some sort of cost/fun analysis and decide to buy or not based on that. Thus, unless you're supply bound, it will be a larger volume-and-lower profit/card vs. lower volume-and-higher profit/card balance to be struck. The problem with going lower volume-and-higher profit/card is that while it seems great, it reduces the total size of your market. The more extreme tech entusiasts will upgrade and the less extreme will tend not to. As long as the less compulsive wait around for the next round, all is relatively well, but if they loose interest in the whole thing due to lack of activity, you've managed to shrink your customer base and move deeper into a downward spiral, which interestingly can look fairly good on the balance sheet. For a while.

It would be interesting to see how volumes have changed, say during the last decade. I doubt we'll ever have other than circumstantial evidence.

You have to factor that they are targeting all segments of the market regardless the price point of an individual product. This hasn't really changed over the years aside from the low end where integrated has all but eliminated discrete products. You can actually get some idea of numbers if you look at market analyst (mercury or Jon Peddie) numbers which breakdown units moved for discrete and integrated.
 
You have to factor that they are targeting all segments of the market regardless the price point of an individual product. This hasn't really changed over the years aside from the low end where integrated has all but eliminated discrete products. You can actually get some idea of numbers if you look at market analyst (mercury or Jon Peddie) numbers which breakdown units moved for discrete and integrated.

It is true that they target all segments, and thus can keep a customer active if they can manage shifting him to a relatively lower performance segment at the same price. But that is a dubious proposition, and as you mentioned, the lower end of the market is eaten by integrated graphics which, to 80+%, is Intel, and those are lost customers to both AMD and nVidia.
 
edit: I think it was as simple as (xx/yy)^2, for (40/28)^2, so theoretical 100mm^2 chip on 40nm would be ~49mm^2 on 28nm (assuming everything is perfect etc etc)
Yes that's right (xx/yy)² of course being identical to (xx²/yy²). Add something for the parts which don't shrink well (i/o?) and you're on the right track. So a shrunk GF100/110 would be around 300mm² most likely. (Something like gate-last vs. gate-first on 28nm HKMG is said to have a density difference of 10-20% according to AMD so this is really just a rough estimate.)
 
Yes that's right (xx/yy)² of course being identical to (xx²/yy²). Add something for the parts which don't shrink well (i/o?) and you're on the right track. So a shrunk GF100/110 would be around 300mm² most likely. (Something like gate-last vs. gate-first on 28nm HKMG is said to have a density difference of 10-20% according to AMD so this is really just a rough estimate.)

I was actually thinking more along 400mm^2 or even bit over, considering that 65>55nm could have theoreticly given us something like ~28% smaller chips, but in the end we got merely 10% smaller ones, so was thinking around 30% smaller chips from the 40>28 process switch (which theoreticly could allow up to ~51% smaller ones, but since i/o etc shrink worse and worse every process if I've understood it right, the ~30% feels about right based on 65>55nm achieved scaling)
 
I was actually thinking more along 400mm^2 or even bit over, considering that 65>55nm could have theoreticly given us something like ~28% smaller chips, but in the end we got merely 10% smaller ones, so was thinking around 30% smaller chips from the 40>28 process switch (which theoreticly could allow up to ~51% smaller ones, but since i/o etc shrink worse and worse every process if I've understood it right, the ~30% feels about right based on 65>55nm achieved scaling)

As I recall, the 55nm node was just an optical shrink of the 65nm one, meaning you couldn't get a big improvement unless perhaps you were willing to go through a more significant design effort. I think TSMC advertised a 10% linear improvement at the time, or 21% in area.

I believe GT200 went from 576mm² to 485mm² or something like that, so it was more than 10%.

Well, there are people far more knowledgeable about these things here, but that's what I gathered.
 
Some other folks have touched on it already but there are only three real options.

#1. Pricing reflects competitive performance versus Tahiti.
#2. Pricing reflects competitive performance versus an incoming GK110.
#3. nVidia is just taking the piss to fuck with AMD's sales (unnecessary IMO).

If it's #2, I'm sorry but AMD will be in bad shape. Being capped at $299 is no fun and dual-GPU cards won't help much. Die size isn't very relevant either. nVidia has historically been willing and able to sell their big dies for less than AMD and still turn a profit.

Question of the day: where are the volumes for a $300 part coming from?
 
If it's #2, I'm sorry but AMD will be in bad shape. Being capped at $299 is no fun and dual-GPU cards won't help much. Die size isn't very relevant either. nVidia has historically been willing and able to sell their big dies for less than AMD and still turn a profit.
Not really.

Tahiti cant be worse than R600 :p And AMD has also survived a cycle in exactly that situation: top end competing in sub $300 segment and dual gpu solutions for higher segments.

It could also be that Nvidia is color coding the leaks and Charlie's sources' last days could be up.
 
Not really.

Tahiti cant be worse than R600 :p And AMD has also survived a cycle in exactly that situation: top end competing in sub $300 segment and dual gpu solutions for higher segments.

It could also be that Nvidia is color coding the leaks and Charlie's sources' last days could be up.

Depends on if you consider R600 just "bad shape" :) They will of course survive but I didn't say otherwise. Just that it won't be fun.

If we step back from fantasy for a bit then we come up with a troubled and delayed GK1x0 and a GK104 that can't quite romp with the big boys but is priced aggressively. That's probably closer to reality than some of the magical claims out there.
 
Prices are dictated by what the market will bear. Even if a 580 at $300 would have been profitable, it would be more profitable at $500. Lowering its price would force AMD to lower prices but it would also cannibalize their own lower performance parts sales.

If the $299 part is a 560 which is close to Tahiti in performance, they are only selling it at that price because they expect to launch something faster in short order. More likely I expect that they are selling it at $299 because that's what the market will bear for its performance level, so a substantial upgrade to a 560, but nothing that will infringe on the halo cards.

You missed supply and demand then. If you sell X cards at $500 you sell X+Y at $300. The price point you choose is not just based on what you can sell it for. It is based on what is the optimal price to maximize profits.
 
You missed supply and demand then. If you sell X cards at $500 you sell X+Y at $300. The price point you choose is not just based on what you can sell it for. It is based on what is the optimal price to maximize profits.

They aren't selling only 1 product. And x+ y has a limitation of the number of people interested in spending $300+ on a graphics card and you no longer benefit from those willing to spend $500 as you've effectively just given them a $200 discount by moving down the high end option.
 
Some other folks have touched on it already but there are only three real options.

#1. Pricing reflects competitive performance versus Tahiti.
#2. Pricing reflects competitive performance versus an incoming GK110.
#3. nVidia is just taking the piss to fuck with AMD's sales (unnecessary IMO).

If it's #2, I'm sorry but AMD will be in bad shape.
It will be #2. nVidia will release the GK110 (single GPU) around mid year. It is a FACT that this GPU will be produced as it will be used in the HPC/Workstation market and already has a design win (Cray).

As a stop gap a dual GK104 may be produced to combat the dual card coming from AMD before the GK110 is available.

It does look like it will be a painful 2012 for AMD.
 
Please remove the OFF topic posts that are polluting this thread

It does look like it will be a painful 2012 for AMD.
This thread titled: Kepler speculation thread and has been derailed big time.

Why are all the off topic posts on AMD products/positioning/prices allowed? What exactly do they they have to do with what Kepler is/will be.

I expect a title of a thread "Kepler speculation thread" to be about Kepler.

There are other threads here for the AMD parts so please post to those threads.

Moderators please clean up this thread of the off-topic posts.
Thanks
 
Oh, there's no way in hell nVidia is abandoning the $500 segment if they can help it. If GK104 goes for $299 it's either because it can't justify a higher price or because they have something even faster that does. What's for sure is that they won't sell it cheap just for kicks.
 
It will be #2. nVidia will release the GK110 (single GPU) around mid year. It is a FACT that this GPU will be produced as it will be used in the HPC/Workstation market and already has a design win (Cray).

As a stop gap a dual GK104 may be produced to combat the dual card coming from AMD before the GK110 is available.

It does look like it will be a painful 2012 for AMD.
If so, the strategy sounds like what AMD was doing at 4870.
One thing differenct is HD7970 is exceedingly not a big chip, means 7990 can come up soon.
 
If performance is close to 7950/7970, then GK104 will be priced at a similar price to those cards.

Pricing of 299 USD suggests it will be a fair bit slower than 7950. Nvidia aren't ones to seriously discount their cards unless they are forced to as they were with GTX 260/280.
Uh... 8800 GT anyone?
 
GK104 replaces GF114 in the NV line-up- 299$ perfectly matches a GF114 2GB at launch. Also consider the timeframe. If we believe that GK104 was planed for early Febrauary, but is now delayed until late March, then GK110 could still beready for late April or ealry May. No point in launching the GK104 @ 500$, when the real 500$ chip is right around the corner.

AMD should have no problems at all. Tahiti is just way too expensive for a performance chip at the moment.
 
They aren't selling only 1 product. And x+ y has a limitation of the number of people interested in spending $300+ on a graphics card and you no longer benefit from those willing to spend $500 as you've effectively just given them a $200 discount by moving down the high end option.

You are effectively assuming a fixed number of market participants willing to pay at a given price point. That isn't necessarily true. You could convince a lot of people where were only willing to buy a $200 GPU to get a $300 one instead if it was the equivalent of a $500 GPU. They could always make something higher or the dual GPU, SLI stuff to pick up the top end buyers who want to throw more money.

All I am saying is the market is more nuanced than "Charge the maximum a consumer is willing to pay." If they did that then GPUs would be far more expensive and they would only sell one card to a person willing to pay the most :)
 
AMD should have no problems at all. Tahiti is just way too expensive for a performance chip at the moment.
AMD already have a lot of problems. From the looks of all of it it'll certainly be a harder time in GPUs for AMD than it was during RV770->Cayman period. So I would say that they'll have even more problems soon. But this thread is really not about AMD -- I think there is a thread for that somewhere in 3D Industry forum.
 
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