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标题: NVIDIA GT200昙花一现,GT200b即将登场 [打印本页]

作者: wangfeng 时间: 2008-5-30 10:06
标题: NVIDIA GT200昙花一现,GT200b即将登场
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/29/nvidia-gt200-sucessor-tapes

THE LAST TIME Nvidia's CPU mouthed off about Intel, the firm followed it up with the stunning NV5800 'Dustbuster'. This time, he mouthed off, and the successor to the GT200 had already taped out. NV is in deep trouble once again.
You heard that right, the successor for the GT200 chip has already taped out, and it too will be nothing special. Documents seen by the INQ indicate that this one is called, wait for it, the GT200b, it is nothing more than a 55nm shrink of the GT200. Don't expect miracles, but do expect the name to change.
There are several problems with the GT200, most of which are near fatal. The first is the die size, 576mm^2, bigger than most Itanics. One might trust Intel to make a chip that big with decent yields, especially if it is basically an island of logic in the middle of a sea of cache. Nvidia using a foundry process doesn't have a chance of pulling this off.
Word has come out of Satan Clara that the yields are laughable. No, make that abysmal, they are 40 per cent. To add insult to injury, that 40 per cent includes both the 280 and the 260 yield salvage parts. With about 100 die candidates per wafer, that means 40 good dice per wafer. Doing the maths, a TSMC 300mm 65nm wafer runs about $5000, so that means each good die costs $125 before packaging, testing and the like. If they can get away with sub-$150 costs per GPU, we will be impressed.
So, these parts cost about $150, and the boards will sell for $449 and $649 for the 260 and 280 respectively, so there is enough play room there to make money, right? Actually, most likely yes. There are costs though, but not enough to kill profit for any one touching these.
The biggest cost is memory. The 512b memory width means that they will have to use at least 16 chips. This ends up making the board very complex when you have to route all those high speed signals, and that means more layers, more cost, and more defect fallout with the added steps. You also have to solder on eight more memory chips which costs yet more.
To add insult to injury, the TDPs of the 260 and 280 are 182W and 236W respectively. This means big copper heatsinks, possibly heatpipes, and high-end fans. Those parts cost a lot of money to buy, assemble and ship. Not fatal, but not a good situation either. It also precludes a dual GPU board without losing a lot of speed.
Basically, these boards are going to cost a lot of money to make, not just to buy. The $449 price is justified by the cost. The last round of GX2 boards cost OEMs about $425, meaning that NV charges OEMs about 70 per cent of retail for high-end parts. After packaging, shipping and add-ins, there is almost nothing left for the OEMs, quite possible explaining why one of their biggest one is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, kept alive because NV won't call their debt while still shiping to them. Watch for this to melt down once NV loses the high end.
So, you end up with an expensive chip on an expensive board that makes few if any people money. Fair enough, bleeding-edge parts mean bleeding-edge prices. The problem is that ATI is going to make a chip that competes with GT200, and lines up with it point for point. NV wins big Z Fill, ATI crushes them on Shader Flops. What this translates to in the real world is still up in the air, but it looks like the 770 and the 260 will be about equal for most things.
The GT200 is about six months late, blew out their die size estimates and missed clock targets by a lot. ATI didn't. This means that buying a GT260 board will cost about 50 per cent more than an R770 for equivalent performance. The GT280 will be about 25 per cent faster but cost more than twice as much. A month or so after the 770 comes the 700, basically two 770s on a slab. This will crush the GT280 in just about every conceivable benchmark and likely cost less. Why? Because.
So, what is a company to do when it promised the financial world that ATI was lost, and GT200 would raise their margins by 100 basis points or so? Surely they knew what was coming a few weeks ago during their financial call, right? I mean, if word was leaking days later, the hierarchy surely was aware at the time, right?
The answer to that is to tape out the GT200b yesterday. It has taped out, and it is a little more than 400mm^2 on a TSMC 55nm process. Given that TSMC tends to price things so that on an equivalent area basis, the new process is marginally cheaper than the old, don't look for much cost saving there. Any decrease in defectivity due to smaller area is almost assuredly going to be balanced out by the learning curve on the new process. Being overly generous, it is still hard to see how the GT200b will cost less than $100 per chip. Don't look for much cost savings there.
The new shrink will be a much better chip though, mainly because they might fix the crippling clock rate problems of the older part. This is most likely not a speed path problem but a heat/power issue. If you get a better perf/watt number through better process tech, you can either keep performance the same and lower net power use, or keep power use the same and raise performance.
Given NV's woeful 933GFLOPS number, you can guess which way they are going to go. This means no saving on heatsinks, no savings on components, and a slightly cheaper die. For consumers, it will likely mean a $50 cheaper board, but no final prices have come my way yet. It will also mean a cheaper and faster board in a few months.
The GT200b will be out in late summer or early fall, instantly obsoleting the GT200. Anyone buying the 65nm version will end up with a lemon, a slow, hot and expensive lemon. Kind of like the 5800. It would suck for NV if word of this got out. Ooops, sorry.
What are they going to do? Emails seen by the INQ indicate they are going to play the usual PR games to take advantage of sites that don't bother checking up on the 'facts' fed to them. They plan to release the GT200 in absurdly limited quantities, and only four AIBs are going to initially get parts.
There is also serious talk of announcing a price drop to put them head to head with the R770 and giving that number to reviewers. When the boards come out, the reviews are already posted with the lower numbers, and no reviewer ever updates their pricing or points out that the price performance ratio was just blown out of the water. There is also internal debate about giving a few etailers a real price cut for a short time to 'back up' the 'MSRP'.
We would hope the reviewers are able to look at the numbers they were given on editors' day, $449 and $649, and take any $100+ last minute price drop with the appropriate chunk of NaCl. Just given the component cost, there is no way NV can hit the same price point as the 770 boards. "We lose money on each one, but we make it up in volume" is not a good long term strategy, nor is it a way to improve margins by 100 basis points.
In the end, NV is facing a tough summer in the GPU business. They are effectively out of the Montevina market, and they are going to lose the high end in a spectacular way. Nvidia has no effective countermeasure to the R770, the GT200 was quite simply botched, and now they are going to pay for it. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a 5800. µ

作者: 烦着呢 时间: 2008-5-30 10:08
虾米DD...
核心改进版?GTX280ULTRA?

作者: wangfeng 时间: 2008-5-30 10:09
GT200b只有在制程上更新到55nm，其余部分有什么改进还不得而知。

作者: tomsmith123 时间: 2008-5-30 10:17
如果是真的，GTX280 性能是RV770XT 的125％，这可能吗？

作者: cxasuka 时间: 2008-5-30 10:19
=.=~~~虽然不知真假~~~不过如果是45该有多好~~~不太可能就是了~~~orz

作者: Travis 时间: 2008-5-30 10:29
INQ号称GT200是下一个5800缺乏一个重要的前提就是它得有个9700级别的对手，而现在它没有。
经过了G80的年代大家对性能绝对领先功耗也颇高的旗舰已经不陌生了。
INQ号称RV770（就当是安上了GDDR5吧）能打平GTX260，就这个架构，能么？

[ 本帖最后由 Travis 于 2008-5-30 10:32 编辑 ]

作者: Chanel 时间: 2008-5-30 10:33
改进工艺了，估计频率还会提高，然后叫个Ultra版:loveliness:

作者: cardex_sp 时间: 2008-5-30 10:40

原帖由 wangfeng 于 2008-5-30 10:09 发表
GT200b只有在制程上更新到55nm，其余部分有什么改进还不得而知。

没有任何改进....仅仅是重新进行了一遍后端设计

作者: 天边的浮云 时间: 2008-5-30 10:42
提示: 作者被禁止或删除内容自动屏蔽

作者: Travis 时间: 2008-5-30 10:45
更换工艺的首要目的应该是控制功耗提高频率。
1.3G的Shader频率是一觉回到解放前啊……

作者: bfg9000 时间: 2008-5-30 10:48
GTX290?:loveliness:

作者: teddytao 时间: 2008-5-30 11:09
应该叫GTX290

作者: seraphim01 时间: 2008-5-30 11:13
INQ出品,PRO-A最爱
R600呀
5%良品率呀
R6XX没上市就卖出200w呀

作者: teddytao 时间: 2008-5-30 11:21
:loveliness:

作者: 醉猫 时间: 2008-5-30 11:54

原帖由 seraphim01 于 2008-5-30 11:13 发表
INQ出品,PRO-A最爱
R600呀
5%良品率呀
R6XX没上市就卖出200w呀

很像对岸一些挺绿的地下电台。

冥进洞很清廉的啦
阿便永远不会A钱的啦
这一切都是阿共仔的阴谬啦

作者: PS5 时间: 2008-5-30 12:03
55nm能缩小多少核心面积?

作者: 侏罗纪跑步龙 时间: 2008-5-30 12:09
文章信息很多阿，“gtx 260比rv770性价比差很多，gtx280又比r700贵而且性能还比不上”，“gt200b成本比gt200便宜不多”，另外“那个被nv拖得要倒闭的oem厂家是谁阿？”
看来ati走对路子了？

[ 本帖最后由侏罗纪跑步龙于 2008-5-30 12:12 编辑 ]

作者: phk 时间: 2008-5-30 12:42
INQ现在是垂死挣扎的娱乐网站而已:p

作者: jiayifan 时间: 2008-5-30 13:06
楼主大哥能不能翻译一下

作者: 三毛妮 时间: 2008-5-30 13:09
这个破站的东西不值一看

作者: teddytao 时间: 2008-5-30 13:14
的确破。。。

作者: xreal 时间: 2008-5-30 13:29
先占了第一的位置在考虑提高频率， 4870x2没那么快推出

作者: xday2000 时间: 2008-5-30 14:19

原帖由 yoloh 于 2008-5-30 13:21 发表

站着说话不腰疼，你自己去搞个网站，看看影响力和知名度能赶上INQ不？
倒是PCI显卡区变得象个娱乐板块似的，今天出个2倍于9800GX2，过几天又变成2倍于8800U，再过几天估计就要变成9600GTsli了吧？
亏得一个个还Y ...

难道某个200要被乘以3一样的下作了么

不会这样吧~~

作者: 排骨饭 时间: 2008-5-30 15:14

原帖由 yoloh 于 2008-5-30 13:21 发表

站着说话不腰疼，你自己去搞个网站，看看影响力和知名度能赶上INQ不？
倒是PCI显卡区变得象个娱乐板块似的，今天出个2倍于9800GX2，过几天又变成2倍于8800U，再过几天估计就要变成9600GTsli了吧？
亏得一个个还Y ...

:loveliness: 那您还来，还看得很高兴？且又回帖了~

作者: akcadia 时间: 2008-5-30 16:30
:funk: :funk: :funk:貌似臭名昭注的变速齿轮先驱P2**就是自己做了个娱乐网站~~

作者: 心酸的事 时间: 2008-6-17 17:02
路过···学习学习~~~~

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