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Soleron on 23 February 2010
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drkohler said:
Soleron said:
WilliamWatts said:
I've also seen rumoured prices for $499 for the 470 and $679 for the 480. I think these are closer to the mark personally.

Anyone can come up with numbers at this point. For example, my "sources" say they will charge $1 and $2 for the 470 and 480. Expect this to be the top story on all major tech websites tomorrow.

It si not a question of making up numbers. Inside rumours have been floating around for months now that TSMC's yields are anywhere from 5% to 20%, mostly cornered at the lower end of the percentage scale. It is also rumoured that NVIdia uses "risk wafers" for its first batches of chips.  Given that there are only around 100 chips on a $5000-6000 wafer, every workable chip costs NVidia anywhere from $250 to $600. I doubt NVidia is going to sell the stuff for $19.99 ...

I'm aware of the rumours and the economics. Nvidia will lose money on each card whatever the price, because it won't be faster than a 5970 even with extreme optimism so they have an upper bound on price there.

But with an extremely limited run (<8000 cards being the rumour) they can sell at any price they want; if they wanted to do a PR stunt (and we've seen far too many of those from Nvidia) they could undercut the 5870 on RRP and then never have any stock in to actually sell.

Yields are chip-specific anyway so you should really say Fermi's yields rather than TSMC's. e.g. I'm certain Cedar is yielding above 80% despite being 40nm.