14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA has recently held its annual meeting between its leadership and its investors. There, it brought a certain slide that raises as many questions as it gives answers.
The slide is a vague chart of how GeForce GTX 680 graphics card sales compare to shipments of GeForce GTX 580 boards.
Apparently, the former has sold roughly 60% better than the latter. NVIDIA actually gave this as the reason why availability of the GTX 680 isn't exactly in top shape.
But this leads to suspicions regarding all the times NVIDIA complained, for lack of a better word, about the 28nm process.
Even though AMD didn't seem to have any issues with TSMC's production, NVIDIA actually started looking for additional suppliers.
We suppose NVIDIA could justify it by saying that 28nm yields were good, but not good enough. This doesn't really add up though.
The 40nm process was troubled, yes, but that was way back when the GeForce 400 series was selling. By the time the 500 line, particularly GTX 580, showed up, production capacity was more or less fine.
Having the GTX 680 selling so much better than GTX 580, six weeks after their respective launches, implies that, instead of suffering from shortages, 28nm chip yields are actually quite good, maybe even better than 40nm yields during the GTX 580's prime.
Sure, the vertical line corresponding to “units sold out globally” has no numbers on it, making the whole thing incredibly vague, but the 60% advantage of the newest flagship adapter is still a big figure.
All in all, there is a high demand for the single-GPU high-end graphics card and less of a supply problem than NVIDIA managed to make the world believe.
Now, we just have to wonder how things will go when the GK110 appears. 28nm will reach a sort of maturity by then, but owners of GTX 680 cards won't feel compelled to upgrade to 700, not in the same way owners of 400 series were anyway (they switched to 680 and skipped 580 altogether).