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Why is demand so high??

N

Nirad9er

2[H]4U
Joined
Feb 18, 2004
Messages
3,035
It seems demand is so much higher than it used to be. Its absolutely ridiculous you can't get a GTX 480 or let alone a 5970 after like 6months of being released.

You used to be able to get the high end cards no problem seeing as how most people bought the mid range cards.

Im fed up with all the gouging and greedy vendors. Just sell the damn things for MSRP like everything else in this world!! :mad:
 
Menelmarar said:
Supply is low.
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Short and sweet to the point answer.
AMD admits they underestimated the demand for the 5970. Plus it uses two 5870 cores, so 5870 sells are effected.
nVidia has problems and who knows when they will have a large enough stock for MSRP pricing at venders.
 
acodoes said:
yeah im pissed about that too... i'm still looking for a 5970
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Yeah, they have to hand-pick the chips in the 5970 to meet the maximum board power of 294w.

The chips they allow to be sold in 5870 guise have a maximum allowed board power of 188w, and this is 40w too high per-GPU to meet the spec of the 5970. The only way to bridge this massive gap is to bin GPUs based on power consumption, and use only the most efficient for the 5970

Sure, you get a slight down-clock (%15) and a *tiny* voltage reduction going to the 5970, but that's not nearly enough to use any-old 5870 chip. You need to do power consumption binning as-well, and the end result is you only have a handful of chips that meet muster.

They could have used two 5850 cores, and there would have been no supply problems (after the initial round of availability problems across the board), but it wouldn't have been nearly as-impressive a beast.

I don't think supply of the 5970 is going to get any better, since it's been half a year now, and the yields of high-efficiency chips is still in the gutter.
 
Reason I will be skipping this gen. At least until some refreshes hit that make me wanna spend my cash. I am kinda glad supply has been low, I am an upgrade sucker for a gpu.
 
Well, if your crossfire capable, two 5850s seem like a good choice. granted, it will have a higher overall power consumption than say a 5970, but they are essentially the same solution just executed differently.
 
I've bought 2 5970's and just bought a GTX 480 today. I started about 4 weeks ago....
 
TSMC seems to have bitten off more than they could chew at 40nm. They have been having serious manufacturing problems in the last few months.

I'm not sure how they allocate their efforts to ATI and Nvidia (highest bidder?), but all I do know is that Globalfoundries needs to do everything they can to get running because this market is ripe for the picking.
 
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fattypants said:
TSMC seems to have bitten off more than they could chew at 40nm. They have been having serious manufacturing problems in the last few months.

I'm not sure how they allocate their efforts to ATI and Nvidia (highest bidder?), but all I do know is that Globalfoundries needs to do everything they can to get running because this market is ripe for the picking.
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very true, Biggest problem here is TSMC, totally unreliable ever since they made the shift to 40nm, that is one reason Nvidia is suffering with fermi, 8800gtx was big and power hungry but they had no problem with those at all, but with 40nm TSMC has dropped the ball big time. The yield issues are still present with ATI and ofcourse worse with Nvidia. If TSMC had their shit together Nvidia would be in much better shape and ATI would be in even better shape. I think AMD and Nvidia are working around TSMC problems faster then TSMC themselves, LOL.
 
defaultluser said:
Yeah, they have to hand-pick the chips in the 5970 to meet the maximum board power of 294w.

The chips they allow to be sold in 5870 guise have a maximum allowed board power of 188w, and this is 40w too high per-GPU to meet the spec of the 5970.
Click to expand...


i doubt they "hand-pick" gpus for the 5970. They may be of a higher grade bin. The TDP of the 5870 is of the entire card, not just the gpu, so there is no massive gap to overcome. And they don't even have the same specs
 
NKD said:
very true, Biggest problem here is TSMC, totally unreliable ever since they made the shift to 40nm,
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AMD has had no problem selling over 3 million 40nm DX11 GPUs

that is one reason Nvidia is suffering with fermi, 8800gtx was big and power hungry but they had no problem with those at all, but with 40nm TSMC has dropped the ball big time.
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Nah, they just didn't learn anything from their mistakes in designing their first 40nm chips (you know, all those rebrands gt3xxx series) as opposed to ATI which identified the problem and engineered their chips around the shortcomings of the 40nm node.

The yield issues are still present with ATI and ofcourse worse with Nvidia.
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I will say it again, AMD has already sold 3million+ 40nm DX11 GPUs.

If TSMC had their shit together Nvidia would be in much better shape and ATI would be in even better shape. I think AMD and Nvidia are working around TSMC problems faster then TSMC themselves, LOL.
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Nah, only AMD was smart enough to identify the problem and doubled up on via's where Nvidia just yelled publically at TSMC to have 0 defective vias. Yelling at your manufacturing partner does not fix a defectively engineered chip. Pointing fingers at TSMC to try and save face is laughable at this point in time. The ones who need to get their shit together should be Nvidia's engineers.
 
Lorien said:
Nah, only AMD was smart enough to identify the problem and doubled up on via's where Nvidia just yelled publically at TSMC to have 0 defective vias. Yelling at your manufacturing partner does not fix a defectively engineered chip. Pointing fingers at TSMC to try and save face is laughable at this point in time. The ones who need to get their shit together should be Nvidia's engineers.
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TSMC is to blame for promising certain goals, but then failing to deliver. ATI didn't buy the bullshit TSMC was selling and hedged their bets with early engineering efforts. Instead of waiting for TSMC to get their shit together ATI decided to workaround TSMC's manufacturing deficiencies. Go read the Anandtech article.

A public flogging is exactly what TSMC needs. Don't promise shit you can't deliver.
 
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Lorien said:
AMD has had no problem selling over 3 million 40nm DX11 GPUs

I will say it again, AMD has already sold 3million+ 40nm DX11 GPUs.

.
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I don't think you understand how these numbers work, 3Million 40nm DX11 gpus does not mean 3 million 5970s, 5870s and 5850s, it means 3million 5000 series cards, which include 5450,5670,5750,5770 and those are easy to manufacture because they are much smaller and less complex then the 5800 series. so 3m+ 40nm doesn't mean shit in terms of yield on the 5970/5870/5850 chips.
 
Reading up on TSMC has shed a lot of light on all of this for me.
 
Lorien said:
AMD has had no problem selling over 3 million 40nm DX11 GPUs

Nah, they just didn't learn anything from their mistakes in designing their first 40nm chips (you know, all those rebrands gt3xxx series) as opposed to ATI which identified the problem and engineered their chips around the shortcomings of the 40nm node.

I will say it again, AMD has already sold 3million+ 40nm DX11 GPUs.

Nah, only AMD was smart enough to identify the problem and doubled up on via's where Nvidia just yelled publically at TSMC to have 0 defective vias. Yelling at your manufacturing partner does not fix a defectively engineered chip. Pointing fingers at TSMC to try and save face is laughable at this point in time. The ones who need to get their shit together should be Nvidia's engineers.
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I find selling 3 million 5000 series hard to believe, any link with proof?
 
KENNYB said:
A public flogging is exactly what TSMC needs. Don't promise shit you can't deliver.
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Well, production estimate is not like promising lending or borrowing xbox between your little friends, in business world, it is much more complicated than that, get over it.
 
mafa said:
Well, production estimate is not like promising lending or borrowing xbox between your little friends, in business world, it is much more complicated than that, get over it.
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I don't have anything to get over. I'm stating the obvious. Go read Anand's article and you'll see TSMC promising bullshit is not something new.
 
needmorecarnitine said:
i doubt they "hand-pick" gpus for the 5970. They may be of a higher grade bin.
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It's a saying, don't take it literally. The specs required to meet their power budget are pretty tight, and that's what I was referiing to as "hand-picked."

The TDP of the 5870 is of the entire card, not just the gpu, so there is no massive gap to overcome.
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5970: 294w full board

Major sources of power consumption:

2x5870 GPUs
16 1 Gbit GDDR5 chips
VRM support for 294w

5870: 188w full board.

Major sources of power consumption:

5870 GPU
8 1 Gbit GDDR5 chips
VRM support for 188w

It's fair to say that components are roughly doubled for the 5970, aside from the VRMs, which only need be increased %50-75. But since the VRMs are way low on the consumption scale, it matters little.

Extrapolating, the power of 2 5870s is 376w, and that's 41w extra per-GPU that te 5970 spec can't hande. So, we need to get the board power of a 5870 down to about 147w.

And they don't even have the same specs
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But I accounted for that.

The GPUs for the 5970 and 5870 both have all 20 blocks enabled, wiith 1600 stream processors. You can take two things from this:

1. the dynamic power will depend solely on frequency and voltage changes.

2. the static power will not change at all if voltage remains the same.

There is a %15 drop in GPU frequency between the 5870 and 5970, and the tiny voltage drop brings that GPU dynamic power diference to %17. On the memory, the voltage remains the same, and there is a %17 drop in frequency. So, overall the DYNAMIC power of the card drops %15-20. and since the voltages are mostly unchanged, the static power will remain the same.

Let's give ATI the benefit of the doubt, and give them a very small leakage value of %40. That means dynamic power is %60 of all consumed.

So, the (best-case) power reduction from 188w is the following:

%20 from dynamic power (this is very generous) * 0.6 = %12 reduction in overall power.

A %12 reduction gets 188w down to 165w, but it falls well-short of the required 147w. That gap has to be surmounted by aggressive binning.
 
I love how the fanboys flock to threads like these really makes me laugh.

Here I will sum it all up for you guys kk?

AMD= ALL GOOD THINGS. Lolipops, candy and icecream. All served up for the AMD fanboy masses to consume free of charge( well cheaper than those bastards at Nvidia) since they aren't out to make as much money as possible like every other corportaion on the planet, nah. They always ALWAYS do right by their customers and never ever lie about anything ever.
Bottom line: Their video cards are the bestest!!11!

Nvidia= ALL BAD THINGS( of course) Medicine and ill tasting veggies for all the bad bad nvidia fanboys to consume. Nvidia is an evil evil empire set out and hell bent on taking over the world with their hellishly evil sinister ways of umm making money? Ya ya that's it. They lie, cheat and steal all they can from their customers and never ever do anything right by them. They never innovate and always try to stagnate the market. They have the most evil marketing department on the planet and always try to maximize their sales in any way they can. Just horrible.
Bottom Line: They make the worstest video cards evar!!111

Amirite???

Hope you guys got a laugh out of this cause I was sure lmao while I wrote it lol. Just couldn't resist.
 
fattypants said:
TSMC seems to have bitten off more than they could chew at 40nm. They have been having serious manufacturing problems in the last few months.

I'm not sure how they allocate their efforts to ATI and Nvidia (highest bidder?), but all I do know is that Globalfoundries needs to do everything they can to get running because this market is ripe for the picking.
Click to expand...

nvidia paid for higher yields so this fucks up all other clients by making TSMC make more wafers with less than 15%useful chips so a lot more goes to waste makign a crippled gpu while the other clients have to deal with lower amount of wafers but higher % of useful chips


nvidia fucked up and is dragging others down with them plain and simple

but yes at the same time the 40nm manufacturing wasnt perfected, ATI designed around it nvidia plowed on.
 
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Savoy said:
I love how the fanboys flock to threads like these really makes me laugh.

Here I will sum it all up for you guys kk?

AMD= ALL GOOD THINGS. Lolipops, candy and icecream. All served up for the AMD fanboy masses to consume free of charge( well cheaper than those bastards at Nvidia) since they aren't out to make as much money as possible like every other corportaion on the planet, nah. They always ALWAYS do right by their customers and never ever lie about anything ever.
Bottom line: Their video cards are the bestest!!11!

Nvidia= ALL BAD THINGS( of course) Medicine and ill tasting veggies for all the bad bad nvidia fanboys to consume. Nvidia is an evil evil empire set out and hell bent on taking over the world with their hellishly evil sinister ways of umm making money? Ya ya that's it. They lie, cheat and steal all they can from their customers and never ever do anything right by them. They never innovate and always try to stagnate the market. They have the most evil marketing department on the planet and always try to maximize their sales in any way they can. Just horrible.
Bottom Line: They make the worstest video cards evar!!111

Amirite???

Hope you guys got a laugh out of this cause I was sure lmao while I wrote it lol. Just couldn't resist.
Click to expand...

You forgot to mention the AIDS...
.
.
.
(I can't believe you forgot to mention the AIDS)
 
acodoes said:
give it a few days. i'll have pics. i plan to resell them. my cc limit doesn't go that high. :(
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this thing goes about the same price you can find online, I can hardly see how you can sell these cards with higher price tag...
 
2 of them i am keeping. the other 6 will go. i am eager to get my hands on these as everyone else... i will have pics in a few days. i'll post them here.
 
acodoes said:
HD 5970 is available now from newegg (XFX)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150460

I ordered 8 of them. Reselling them down the road. :)
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So that's why they're always out of stock huh? That's a bunch of bull. You'd never want to think, but I guess you have to assume. I refuse to pay $100 over MSRP from Newegg let alone pay more than that from a local guy just cause you can't find em and he wants to make a few bucks.
 
well at least with 5970 with aib look at this way i can see 2 5870 card for 800+ or sell it in a 5970 for 700+. they are out to make a profit now. they go with the highest profit making decisions.
 
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