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Old August 4th 03, 05:42 AM
Derek Wildstar
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"Dave" wrote in message
news:S4iXa.41432$Oz4.11794@rwcrnsc54...

I beg to differ. They are the ones who help push the envelope, as you say.
This is Good for business. Helps drive the gaming industry too,
hand-in-hand. We'll see when Doom 3 comes out which cards leave the

shelves
fastest (most of us I'd imagine are already all set. Last I looked, I
haven't jeopardized ANYONE's bottom line! :^) ). Any jeopardy might come

in
the guise of a generous RMA policy, for those who cannot accept personal
responsibility as part of a choice to tweak things...


I'm going to reinforce my point, that enthusiasts' aren't much for the
bottom line. Firstly, look at the percentage of sales that the top of the
line cards have versus the rest of the market, it's miniscule and it's not
very profitable. In fact, the recent FX adventure was a very unprofitable
venture. Huge losses for nvidia due to an aggressive push for the untested
smaller fab process. How do I know? On line press and company
communications. Only the enthusiasts cared about the FX5800, and only they
will even know it existed, the mainstream will never think of it again after
this post.

Now, what about the lesser cards? According to dr. watson and directx diag
reports submitted to microsoft and user submitted specs, the actual
percentage of PC's with top tier video cards is in the low single digits.
Only when you include the ti4200's does that percentage increase into the
teens. Not a whole lot, when it's about 1 in 8 have a ti4200 or better. And
that's the *savvy* user who is considered to have better hardware than
average, so the actual numbers are likely less.

Nvidia is a behemoth compared to ATI, and they make the bulk of their money
from OEM sales of average-performing current hardware, not titillating the
hard core. Sad but true. I'm not trying to play 'I have a corporate secret'
either, most of this info has made it's way to the public domain, as it
should, but for the most timely info, try some marketing sites like
npdtechworld.com. While it is a pay service, is certainly has value if you
have to make business decisions based on what's selling when.