What's NVIDIA up to...? v2

[daglesj]

The financial pain continues -

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/17259/nvi ... index.html

[powerarmour]

I wouldn't worry too much about Nvidia's finances, they still have very little debt :-

http://ycharts.com/companies/NVDA/long_term_debt

$23 million is paltry compared to AMD's $2.4 Billion or whatever, they could easily afford to carry on as they are for a long, long while yet even if their overall revenue drops.

There's always another corner to turn around, and the next proper Fermi refresh on 28nm should put them right back in the money.

[daglesj]

Trouble is with a small amount of debt the banks can suddenly call it in and pull the plug. They can then make back a few million selling off the carcass.

But when you are in debt with the banks to the tune of a few billion, they aint gonna do that. Sometimes it pays to be up to your eyes in debt, the bigger the better.

[powerarmour]

You make that sound like having more debt is better...

Tbh AMD have done well to get it down from ~$6 Billion a few years ago (mainly due to spinning off the fabs and selling more shares), but they are still hurting badly due to the acquisition of ATi.

Nvidia are in a lot better shape financially if you purely look at the numbers right now, it's just the immediate outlook that looks grim. Whereas outlook for AMD is slowly but surely improving, but they are having to work hard to protect their bottom line, launches like the 68xx series show that they are basically on the economy drive, and not wanting to gamble as much on the high end profits.

What's amusing is that Intel also has ~$2 Billion of long term debt: http://ycharts.com/companies/INTC/long_term_debt
But percentage wise it's not that much to a company with $110 Billion market cap...

[daglesj]

You make that sound like having more debt is better...

Sometimes it can be to your advantage.

[thegrommit]

Trouble is with a small amount of debt the banks can suddenly call it in and pull the plug. They can then make back a few million selling off the carcass.

They have sufficient cash on hand to repay their debts if needed. The real concern is with the erosion of margins - 6.36% is pathetic compared to Intel's 18.78% (or even AMD's 19.9%).

[powerarmour]

Nvidia helps China to supercomputer crown :-

Nvidia chips are powering a Chinese supercomputer that the graphics chip supplier claims has achieved the fastest speeds to date. The "Tianhe-1A" has hit 2.507 petaflops, beating a system at Tennessee-based Oak Ridge National Laboratories.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20020991-64.html

Even made the BBC news :-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11644252

[powerarmour]

NVIDIA blogs about AMD's "optimizations" lowering IQ :-

http://blogs.nvidia.com/ntersect/2010/1 ... ality.html

[impar]

Greetings!

Driver tweakings changing performance?
Hasnt that be always the case?
The only review site I remember that mentions the driver settings is XbitLabs.

[daglesj]

Thing is that image quality on the AF front hasnt been an issue for years.

To be honest it could be pulled back if it gives a boost to performance. As far as I can tell they have effectively set say 4x as the default rather than 8x. Big whoop.

I've seen a few articles on this showing bizarre moir patterns that supposedly show the difference but it real use it means nothing. Most folks I know run AF at max anyway.

Dont know why Nvidia doesnt do it as well. Maybe they just didnt think of it first.

Just wish both sides would both get a good relaxing blow*** and move on.