SEC- Haven't seen JP's numbers yet for raw sales, but nV had doulbe the dollar amount, I think it is safe to say that they didn't achieve that by blowing ATi out of the water 3:1 in the high end.
Do you think they would keep selling PCs with rebrands of the G92, or with shinny 5000 series cards
GSOD and Crysis benches- if you are Michael Dell, which is a larger concern? Sure, they'll stuff the fastest part they can get in their Alienware rigs, but driver missteps of that magnitude are a larger factor then a couple fps on a bench chart, by a huge margin. Also, when is the last time you saw an OEM computer that shipped with anything worthy of us wiping our butts with?
IF this is the case, which is possible, nvidia really needs to reevaluate whether or not a "1 chip fits all" mentality when it comes to consumer and professional cards. I realize that cutting out HPC-specific features will require considerable reworking of the die, but trimming some of the fat off the steak for the consumer market will save on die size and probably also get higher clock speeds.
People aren't really looking at it this thoroughly on that front. GTX480 512SPs, GTX470 448SPs, GTX 260 384SPs, GTX 250 320SPs- not saying it is how they will go, but using nV's setup it is possible that they only yield 3% of their chips as 480s and it is possible they could hit close to a 95% useable yield rate. This is one of the issues I have with believing a lot of the talk about how they are going to stop production. No, it isn't ideal to use your largest die for 4 seperate chips, but it certainly is within their ability to do so if they decided to. Not saying they will go that route, not even saying they are absolutely going to launch, but when I look at all of the 'nightmare' scenarios I am reading about, seems like it makes a lot more sense to sell off ~1/2 good chips for ~$200 then to throw them away. Think 5830- somehow nV can't do the same thing when they by design make their chips with that in mind?
If the premium Fermi only beats the 5870 by 5%, nV and alot of enthusiasts will consider that a failure....I predict at least 15%, otherwise it isnt worth it!
What if Fermi is a full 15% slower then the 5870, and it launches at $200? Is that still a failure in your eyes? I'm not placing bets on any level of performance or price, but for me at the very least judging how good the parts are is going to be based on a combination of the two factors, either one in isolation is fairly useless to me as an end user.