Nvidia GT200 sucessor tapes out

Playing the numbers game

THE LAST TIME Nvidia's CPU mouthed off about Intel, the firm followed it up with the stunning NV5800 'Dustbuster'. This time, he mouthed off, and the successor to the GT200 had already taped out. NV is in deep trouble once again.

You heard that right, the successor for the GT200 chip has already taped out, and it too will be nothing special. Documents seen by the INQ indicate that this one is called, wait for it, the GT200b, it is nothing more than a 55nm shrink of the GT200. Don't expect miracles, but do expect the name to change.

There are several problems with the GT200, most of which are near fatal. The first is the die size, 576mm^2, bigger than most Itanics. One might trust Intel to make a chip that big with decent yields, especially if it is basically an island of logic in the middle of a sea of cache. Nvidia using a foundry process doesn't have a chance of pulling this off.

Word has come out of Satan Clara that the yields are laughable. No, make that abysmal, they are 40 per cent. To add insult to injury, that 40 per cent includes both the 280 and the 260 yield salvage parts. With about 100 die candidates per wafer, that means 40 good dice per wafer. Doing the maths, a TSMC 300mm 65nm wafer runs about $5000, so that means each good die costs $125 before packaging, testing and the like. If they can get away with sub-$150 costs per GPU, we will be impressed.

So, these parts cost about $150, and the boards will sell for $449 and $649 for the 260 and 280 respectively, so there is enough play room there to make money, right? Actually, most likely yes. There are costs though, but not enough to kill profit for any one touching these.

The biggest cost is memory. The 512b memory width means that they will have to use at least 16 chips. This ends up making the board very complex when you have to route all those high speed signals, and that means more layers, more cost, and more defect fallout with the added steps. You also have to solder on eight more memory chips which costs yet more.

To add insult to injury, the TDPs of the 260 and 280 are 182W and 236W respectively. This means big copper heatsinks, possibly heatpipes, and high-end fans. Those parts cost a lot of money to buy, assemble and ship. Not fatal, but not a good situation either. It also precludes a dual GPU board without losing a lot of speed.

Basically, these boards are going to cost a lot of money to make, not just to buy. The $449 price is justified by the cost. The last round of GX2 boards cost OEMs about $425, meaning that NV charges OEMs about 70 per cent of retail for high-end parts. After packaging, shipping and add-ins, there is almost nothing left for the OEMs, quite possible explaining why one of their biggest one is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, kept alive because NV won't call their debt while still shiping to them. Watch for this to melt down once NV loses the high end.

So, you end up with an expensive chip on an expensive board that makes few if any people money. Fair enough, bleeding-edge parts mean bleeding-edge prices. The problem is that ATI is going to make a chip that competes with GT200, and lines up with it point for point. NV wins big Z Fill, ATI crushes them on Shader Flops. What this translates to in the real world is still up in the air, but it looks like the 770 and the 260 will be about equal for most things.

The GT200 is about six months late, blew out their die size estimates and missed clock targets by a lot. ATI didn't. This means that buying a GT260 board will cost about 50 per cent more than an R770 for equivalent performance. The GT280 will be about 25 per cent faster but cost more than twice as much. A month or so after the 770 comes the 700, basically two 770s on a slab. This will crush the GT280 in just about every conceivable benchmark and likely cost less. Why? Because.

So, what is a company to do when it promised the financial world that ATI was lost, and GT200 would raise their margins by 100 basis points or so? Surely they knew what was coming a few weeks ago during their financial call, right? I mean, if word was leaking days later, the hierarchy surely was aware at the time, right?

The answer to that is to tape out the GT200b yesterday. It has taped out, and it is a little more than 400mm^2 on a TSMC 55nm process. Given that TSMC tends to price things so that on an equivalent area basis, the new process is marginally cheaper than the old, don't look for much cost saving there. Any decrease in defectivity due to smaller area is almost assuredly going to be balanced out by the learning curve on the new process. Being overly generous, it is still hard to see how the GT200b will cost less than $100 per chip. Don't look for much cost savings there.

The new shrink will be a much better chip though, mainly because they might fix the crippling clock rate problems of the older part. This is most likely not a speed path problem but a heat/power issue. If you get a better perf/watt number through better process tech, you can either keep performance the same and lower net power use, or keep power use the same and raise performance.

Given NV's woeful 933GFLOPS number, you can guess which way they are going to go. This means no saving on heatsinks, no savings on components, and a slightly cheaper die. For consumers, it will likely mean a $50 cheaper board, but no final prices have come my way yet. It will also mean a cheaper and faster board in a few months.

The GT200b will be out in late summer or early fall, instantly obsoleting the GT200. Anyone buying the 65nm version will end up with a lemon, a slow, hot and expensive lemon. Kind of like the 5800. It would suck for NV if word of this got out. Ooops, sorry.

What are they going to do? Emails seen by the INQ indicate they are going to play the usual PR games to take advantage of sites that don't bother checking up on the 'facts' fed to them. They plan to release the GT200 in absurdly limited quantities, and only four AIBs are going to initially get parts.

There is also serious talk of announcing a price drop to put them head to head with the R770 and giving that number to reviewers. When the boards come out, the reviews are already posted with the lower numbers, and no reviewer ever updates their pricing or points out that the price performance ratio was just blown out of the water. There is also internal debate about giving a few etailers a real price cut for a short time to 'back up' the 'MSRP'.

We would hope the reviewers are able to look at the numbers they were given on editors' day, $449 and $649, and take any $100+ last minute price drop with the appropriate chunk of NaCl. Just given the component cost, there is no way NV can hit the same price point as the 770 boards. "We lose money on each one, but we make it up in volume" is not a good long term strategy, nor is it a way to improve margins by 100 basis points.

In the end, NV is facing a tough summer in the GPU business. They are effectively out of the Montevina market, and they are going to lose the high end in a spectacular way. Nvidia has no effective countermeasure to the R770, the GT200 was quite simply botched, and now they are going to pay for it. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a 5800. µ

Epson - Stylus DX9400F review

The ongoing attraction of All-in-One printers shows no sign of diminishing and the latest Epson Stylus is designed to cram as many functions as possible within a compact body.

Measuring a tidy 435 x 219 x 165mm and weighing in at just 2.8kg, the DX9400F combines the roles of printing, copying, faxing and scanning into a stylish black casing that won't look out of place in a small office or home business setting.

It certainly won't be of much use for more demanding work, as the paper hopper at the back only holds a maximum of 80 sheets of A4, plus envelopes, and the automatic document feeder on the top can only handle an additional 30 sheets.

As you'll be buying this machine, at least in part, for its fax capability, it's perhaps surprising that it doesn't come with a phone/answering machine, so be aware that you'll have to provide your own.

The control panel at the front, however, is the current standard Epson format, with a four-function Mode dial on the left (handling Copy, Memory Card, Photo and Fax), a 2.5-inch LCD display which allows you to view, select and manipulate photos without having to use an attached PC, plus separate 4-way scroll, Setup and Menu buttons for more detailed settings.

The four individual DURABrite Ultra pigment ink cartridges are designed to be highly durable as well as smudge and water resistant. Print speed has been improved thanks to the revamped Micro Piezo print head which has increased the maximum size of the ink droplets and offers up to 5,760 x 1,440dpi optimised resolution. The scanner's top resolution is the usual 1,200 x 2,400dpi.

The resulting print quality is sharp, vibrant, authentic and detailed, but it still takes a good 5 minutes to produce a high quality, A4-sized colour print at highest resolution. A simple 10 x 15cm photo can be printed in around 90 seconds at the most basic setting and black text pages have a top rated speed of 25ppm.

The quality of colour print copying is disappointing, though, with a pinkish wash compared with the original. You might do better to copy directly from the memory card slots (which accommodate all the standard formats like Compact Flash, xD-Picture Card, SD and Memory Stick Pro) or from the PC.

Once set up, the fax has a few additional features like international colour to colour communication, both auto and manual answering modes, a 180-page memory and speed dial for up to 60 addresses.

Belarc - Belarc Advisor 7.2 review

Traverse the computing message boards and forums of the Internet, and there's always going to be a new post from a user struggling to identify the components that are sat inside their PC. Be it identification of something simple, such as a graphics card, through to the requirement for an exact name for a motherboard, it's a question that most of us have faced and many of us have answered.

The easiest way to head such a query off at the proverbial pass, though, is with the superb Belarc Advisor, now up to version 7.2. This is a comprehensive tool for rooting around the insides of your PC and revealing just what hardware lies within. Furthermore, there are no vagaries here: the answers you get are thorough and specific.

The program is a free-of-charge release from system management specialists Belarc, that's not even a couple of megabytes in size. Once opened, it invites you to check for security updates and then it requires generally just a minute or two to explore your computer (although it was nippier than that on our two testbed machines).

It generates a fairly formal looking report, perhaps the least user-friendly part of the program. However, the detail in the report is staggering. On top of identifying the exact nature of the hardware in the computer - right down to serial numbers if you need them - it also gives you an overview of your drives (and the remaining capacity on them), user accounts on your system (including last log-in times) and the build of your operating system.

And there's more. A lot more. Belarc Advisor digs right down into the software that's installed on the machine (including version numbers and serial numbers where appropriate), delivers a list of Windows hotfixes that have been installed and digs into the available devices on the system.

It's a staggeringly comprehensive report, that inevitably comes with a link to Belarc's system management products at the top, although it seems churlish to quibble with that given the level of information you're provided with. What's more, it's a program that answers a legitimate need, in a way that leaves you with no doubt whatsoever.

In an ideal world we'd like to see the report screen overhauled and just made a little more penetrable for the absolute novice user. But on the other hand, we admire the fuss-free way the tool uncovers, audits and reports on information without the need for fanfare or fuss. Belarc Advisor isn't a program you'll be needing very often, but it is a handy one to keep around.

Archos - TV+ review

Archos is best known for its music and media players, which are among the best liked, by those not buying Apple. The TV+ box is something of a departure for the company; a media streamer and PVR. This isn't a TV tuner - there's no Freeview or Sky compatibility built in - so it sits between a set-top box and your TV, feeding the signal through.

What it does do is take media from a server on your PC, via Ethernet or WiFi connections, and play it back on your TV screen. It can record up to 250GB of material on its built-in hard drive, too (there's an 80GB model for around £160).

Archos has remembered its media player customers with type A and B USB sockets on the side, so you can easily download media from the box to a player. On the back are connectors for composite, component and S-Video in and out, as well as S/PDIF and analogue, stereo sound. Two SCART conversion cables are also supplied.

The main box is controlled from a small square remote control, complete with QWERTY keypad and thumbpad for navigation. This is one of the best features of the box, and the on-screen menuing system is adequate, without having the flair of something like Apple TV.

To get the TV+ box to operate your TV tuner or set-top box and make recordings, it needs to be able to communicate with it. Somebody at Archos obviously decided to ‘think outside the box' and fitted it with an infra-red emitter, so it could simulate the signals from a manual remote control and work with a wide range of TV setups. To do this, though, the TV+ has to face the TV's I/R receiver, which means you can't stack it with your other TV equipment.

Other problems include the unit's lack of HD support. Although it has an HDMI socket on the back, it can't process HD signals so you're left with plain old TV. The take-up of HD is by no means universal, of course, but a device designed for the high-tech community, as the price tag suggests the TV+ is, should cater for it.

The box price isn't all you'll be paying, either; there's some important software missing, too. While you might argue that a Web browser for the TV+ should be an optional extra - it's a £20 download - things like MPEG-2 and QuickTime plug-ins should be standard equipment on a media streamer. If you buy all the plug-ins, the unit scrapes £300.