Nvidia's 9400/9500 Cards, Postponed by the 8600GTs

Chip manufacturer Nvidia is reportedly planning to introduce its upcoming 9400 and 9500 series of graphics chips in early June. Although the new 9-series graphics cards are performing well and samples are already available to Nvidia's selected OEM partnerts, the company will push back their release until it gets rid of the old stock.

According to a report published by Fuzilla, the graphics specialist has still a lot of GeForce 8400 units that merely can't be sold to its channel partners. At the same time, the OEM themselves have piled up huge amounts of 8400-based graphics cards that sell slowly and painfully.

Even the Geforce 8500 and GeForce 8600 offerings are facing sales problems, and they are up to $15 more expensive than the 8400-series. For instance, the same report confirms the fact that Nvidia is sitting on a massive 1.5 million 8600GT pile, and the introduction of a higher-end model would create additional sales troubles for its low-end offerings.

The 9600 series of graphics cards is the company's best sellers, and Nvidia plans to completely clear out its 1.5 million 8600GT offerings before taking the next step. The 8600GT-based graphics cards come in both GDDR2 and GDDR3 flavors, and the early introduction of the 9600 offerings would make Nvidia lose significant revenue.

The 1.5 million stock of 8600GT graphics cards are the direct result of the recently triggered price war between AMD and Nvidia. While AMD rushed to perform dramatic price slashes to its mid-range offerings, Nvidia tackled the subject in a more cautious manner.

It's true that AMD's move made Nvidia lose significant market share in the sub-$100 market space, but at the same time, it practically bled money along the first quarter. However, it managed to kill Nvidia's average selling price, and dragged its competitor into the same grave.