So, ATI is doomed..?

On rage.3d as well. Can't link now appears to be down.

 

you are right mate,
The inventory has nothing to do with the comming R5xx generation.
As you can see their margins took a huge dive and so did revenues.
They are sitting on huge numbers of R4xx chips right now and they need to sell that as soon as they can. That's why we see X800GT and GTO products now.
Once their SM3 product lines hits shelves they will have a hard time selling old SM2 technology. Its a marketing problem for them. The competitions doesn't have those kind of problems.

Inventory increased 20% in 3 months and they warned yesterday that there is risk of some write offs. Looks like their sales in price segments from 200 to 500$ decreased rapidly. On the other hand the competition is enjoying huge profits and record margins.
It's undeniable that a huge numbers of customers the price segments i mentioned took the green road instead of the read one. No they are sitting on their X8xx inventory.

 

It also looks like X800s should get cheap real soon as they start getting desperate to clear the channels to make way for the R520.

Dark cloud = silver lining.

 

It's surprising how few X800s are in stock in the UK, e.g.

http://www.dabs.com/uk/Search2/results.htm?searchPhrase=x800

and how hard it is to buy any kind of AGP X800.
Jawed

 

Most of their inventory glut is of PCI-Express cards and not AGP. They obviously overestimated the move to PCI-Express.

 

Heh, they obiously overestimated the gullibility of the market.....AGP is a looong way from over.

It has to be, I just upgraded mobos and stuck with an AGP....

 

Obviously, Digi is trying to influence others to keep his own upgrade path open

 

Damned straight.

Besides, I really think they did push PCIe too hard to fast...there just wasn't the need/use/call for it that both companies were guilty (I felt) of trying to make the case that there was.

(Nothing against PCIe, I'm just cheap and didn't want to replace my viddy card too. )

 

Only officially cursed in this forum is me. Also, all the companies that I favour were seen to be doomed. I can't say favouring ATI right now, so they must be doing just fine then.

 

I've become a huge fan of that show in a very short amount of time. With idea's like Granny donuts, intelligent burnouts, & many of the group challenges they come up with. Pure genius TV.... Oh! & the cars are usually nice as well.

 

Digi man you shoulda sold it on Ebay like I did, I could use the money to buy a PCI-E of the exact same type right now.

I might even buy a x800 after the r5xx come out and drop the price again. Or more likely I will just continue to wait since I want a dual core as well.

 

How can you miss, you say? Heh... Ask nVidia, circa 2002 to present... Companies "miss" all the time.

IMO, ATi missed by counting its PCIe chickens before they hatched, and I think that is substantiated by what they've said so far. They were too optimistic about a PCIe market that has grown far slower than they anticipated--something I'd hoped they wouldn't do but wasn't surprised to see them do after looking at their promotional advertising over a span of months in the last year. They simply overbuilt for PCIe and underbuilt for AGP--is about the size of it--a simple error in the allocation of resources which happens all the time.

nV missed in 2002 and beyond not only with x-box (which ATi hit, btw) but with nV30 entirely. Again, companies "miss" all the time.

What matters to me is whether a company misses with its products and of course it's far too early to say whether ATi has actually missed the product boat this year in terms of technology. R5x0 will tell the tale on that, and in plenty of time to affect the X-Mas quarter, one way or the other. I think you are premature as of the moment as it could well be that '05 winds up a banner year for ATi. The largest quarter of the calendar year for the company is still ahead.

 

A "miss" in 2002 isn't what all call "all the time". That's 3 years ago.

Anway, I think Orton made it clear during the conference call what the problem was:

http://www.smartmoney.com/Techsmart/index.cfm?story=20050830

 

Who'd a thunk it Walt? The original Xbox with nV is a "miss" now that Xbox360 has ATI it's a "hit"?
Does anyone on this forum with a modicum of intelligence actually put any credence in your inane verbosity?

 

Nice word that - modicum And no.

 

Yeah, I do.

 

Um Microsoft missed with the xBox not Nvidia.

 

Actually I think they Walt was referring to the contracts made with M$ by nVidia & ATi, ATi has a much sweeter/smarter deal set up with M$ than nVidia so hopefully it won't end in a crash-n-burn relationship like M$ & nVidia did.

 

This, I fully agree with. If NVIDIA's margins for the XBox chips when they discontinued production a few months ago were public, it would raise more than a few eyebrows.
Anyone thinking ATI's contract is sweeter is either badly informed, or possibly blind. Whether it was a smarter deal when it comes to guaranteeing future business, that is another matter completely.

Uttar

 

We'll have to agree to disagree then Uttar, I think good deals should be mutually beneficial to both parties for true company growth.

nVidia might have profited well from M$, but they ain't gonna be doing business with them again any time soon....ATi's deal seemed smarter to me and thus sweeter in the long run.