To put it mildly, both video companies have been having problems getting the next generation of product out.
AMD/ATI hasn’t been able to get its stuff out at all, while nVidia has only released a top-end item.
Why so? Well, both companies have suddenly gotten very gung-ho on process shrinks. ATI literally pulled the plug on 80nm and suddenly went to 65nm, and just as suddenly is working with 55nm.
After they did that, all of a sudden nVidia didn’t like their brand-new 80nm anymore, and started talking up soon-to-come 55nm processes. Then they delayed some of their 80nm parts because there was a bug that wouldn’t let them throttle down power while in 2D mode.
A very good rule of thumb when a company all of a sudden does something unexpected is not because they want to but because they have to.
Really, which is more believable:
or
I think the GPUers have hit the heat wall, and the story over the next few years will be, “How do they deal with it, and what happens while they try?”
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