| Daffy said: That sounds a bit too much. Cell it self cost some where around 50 to 90 $ (Usually I have seen estimations ~60$ to 65 nm chip and ~90$ to 90nm chip). 45 nm chip would reduce cost somewhere ~30$ per chip (uneducated guess). Of course Sony can shrink cooling system of PS3 at same time, but that really can't be worth of 55$ to 120$ per console. What else Sony can cut from PS3?. Remember that 40 Gb version have 50% less parts than original 80 Gb PS3 version, so how much more they can cut off parts from PS3 without losing features like Wifi? GPU is from NVidia and if Sony did do similar deal with NVidia as Microsoft did with original XBox, then all price reductions of GPU will go to Nvidias pocket. Even Sony had better deal, that 85-150$ estimation sounds just too big to be true.
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Good points there, and I'm trying to find the sources of those numbers.
But you're wrong about one thing that might (partially?) explain the discrepancy: the RSX designed by nVidia is manufactured by Toshiba and they are the ones in agreement with Sony for the fabrication of the GPU chips. It was initially a joint venture, but I found something about Sony selling their facility in Oita to Toshiba at a later point. In any case we can assume that savings in fabrication will directly affect the costs on Sony's part.
The upper cost cut might be with the 45nm Cells from IBM plants and if Toshiba also manages a cheaper fabrication of the RSX/ smaller package and coolers. There was a piece of info about a Nikkei report speculating that in 2007, but more recent news here.
