Intel's new GPU (integrated with its chipset) slated to come out soon has vastly improved from what I understand. A friend of a friend...Their GPU might be terrible, but they're still the leader in BOTH PC and notebook chipset market by a hefty margin (Mercury Research). So does it matter?
I agreed with you that NVDA has some nice "toyz." But the big issue is whether that will translate into revenue and EPS. ATI has a pretty damn good chipset, but has only gain 1% market share since its last fiscal year. AND ATI has a p4 License!!!
AMD/NVDA's "joint venture" accounts for less than 10%, probably less than 5%, of total revenue.
As a side note:
NVDA is losing money. Enormous amount of stock options (expense). Previous accounting issues (new auditor announced last week) .. etc. etc. This begs the question: even if they're going to be recrown again, which I doubt, how much will they make? Assign a P/E ratio of 25X, and the stock is still overvalued.
If you read any street reports, the big issue/trend is diversification. ATI has the major share in notebook discrete GPU; ATI has the major share in set-topbox;ATI is rumored to have won the Samsung 3G design win. Intel has... well .... they have alot going for them. All NVDA has its its core GPU discrete. It's feeble attempt at diversifying has been terrible. Look at its notebook sales: abysmal. Only workstations powered by 64bit Opteron has done well. but how long will that last? Intel 32/64 is coming out. Only good news for NVDA is its design win with Motorola.
In sum:
Great product. But not great economics.
P.S. Did NVDA losing money on the Xbox deal? I know it was low margin, but it was contributing to the bottomline. And the lawsuit also allowed them to recover all the deferred revenue, which drops to the bottom line. I could be wrong of course ...
NV40 is terrific with respect to Direct9. But I wait until ATI comes out with its next line of product. Should be interesting for game fanatic
