I suspect that the article in the Wall Street Journal on 23 June entitled
"ATI Posts Loss and Slashes Revenue Forecast" has a lot more to do with it
than anything having to do with SLI.
Ati has been sliding from a peak of ~ $20 last December to around $13
before the above announcement, when it tumbled another dollar or so.
Do you have any information to suggest that their next generation is _not_
going to be "on top"?
Better have quantity product available for immediate purchasein the
retail channel before any formal product announcement. The days of
paper announcements in the area of premium-range graphics cards are
over for the time being.
It seems as if Ati is currently draining a few swamps
simultaneously.The alpha-phase R520 has been plagued by
90nm leakage problems, and has required a re-design. Meanwhile,
I'd bet that Ati's efforts on behalf of M$$ Xbox360 are plagued by
the same problems.... talk about being short of time, with shipment
of a million or so Xbox360 due by mid-November.
And on the Crossfire MB chip-set, the Ati Southbridge is buggy -- and
Ati has objected strongly to MB vendors wanting to use the unbuggy
ULi Southbridge instead. However, I think that the MB board vendors
have won the battle. Crossfire MBs are rumored to be delayed till late
August....Ati is probably re-spinning the Southbridge to fix the
problems, with the MB vendors digging in their heels.... who gets to
eat returned motherboards ?....not Ati.
Not all is well in the Ati camp in the desktop world at the moment.
However, things are still going just fine in the mobile world.
John Lewis
- Technology early-birds are flying guinea-pigs.
