Monday, March 16th 2009
GeForce GTX 295 a PR Stunt?
On January the 8th, NVIDIA reclaimed the title of the manufacturer of the world's fastest consumer graphics accelerator, with the launch of the GeForce GTX 295. It was received adequately well by the press, for two factors: its performance, and its competitive pricing. NVIDIA, for the first time in generations of graphics technologies, chose to price its high-end offering competitively, and hasn't used its industry-leading position to warrant a high price. Unfortunately, the company seems to be in no mood to hand over the benefit the consumers, not by stepping up its prices, but by not keeping up to its demand.
NVIDIA, which believes in the concept that selling a GeForce GTX 260 for a price well within US $200, at the expense of profits, relies on sales volumes to do the job of making up for its losses, and/or reduced margins. To an extent, the company's moves to redesign the reference PCB for the GTX 260, and subsequently letting partners have a common design kit to come up with their own PCB designs, seems to have helped the cause. That isn't the case with GTX 295. Its power design and the requirement of two sets of high-grade components seems to have hit the company's plans of letting it sell for its competitive price, which it would rather channelize in subsidizing the GTX 260.
Popular tech commentator Theo Valich in his blog writes:
NVIDIA, which believes in the concept that selling a GeForce GTX 260 for a price well within US $200, at the expense of profits, relies on sales volumes to do the job of making up for its losses, and/or reduced margins. To an extent, the company's moves to redesign the reference PCB for the GTX 260, and subsequently letting partners have a common design kit to come up with their own PCB designs, seems to have helped the cause. That isn't the case with GTX 295. Its power design and the requirement of two sets of high-grade components seems to have hit the company's plans of letting it sell for its competitive price, which it would rather channelize in subsidizing the GTX 260.
NVIDIA's partners sold thousands of GTX 295 boards, and at the price of 520-550 bucks [USD] per card (or Euro), we're talking about millions of USD/EUR. One can only wonder what is going on in NVIDIA's head… there is an alleged recession going on, their quarterly results dropped by 50% to less than 500M USD a quarter, and they fail to deliver already sold boards - backorders.So what did NVIDIA gain out of GTX 295? The bragging rights of having made the fastest graphics accelerator, which in turn the company hopes to impact the sales of its other, more popular, accelerators such as GeForce GTX 260, and the new GTS 250. Inquiries on inventories of GTX 295, have been made by Theo Valich, to popular retailers the world over. Several retailers have replied saying their inventories of the GTX 295 were on a decline, and that the manufacturers (NVIDIA partners) were not keeping up with the demand. Popular American retailer Newegg.com currently has five brands of GTX 295 in stock, with that of one brand already out of stock. If you have plans of buying a GTX 295, it would be a good idea to materialize them now, not that you will be left with no alternatives later on.
39 Comments on GeForce GTX 295 a PR Stunt?
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And this is coming from an ATI fan.
To be honest, I don't know why we're even having this conversation. :laugh: All companies do this.
So 285 = more money, and 260 = more market share... so this does make a lot of sense.
Excuse me, the writer of this tech blog is floppy headed moron. As far as him being pissed off that he can't get a 295.... why blog about that?
Why would a client consider alternatives when nvidia is the "king"?... with a mostly nonexistent card.
For newtekie1 below: newegg isn't the only company on this planet that has to sell them, you know?
I think the better explanation is that the manufacturers aren't producing a huge over volume of the cards. They took a look at the current economy and cut back on production of the high end cards, and put those resources into producing the lower end cards that are actually selling.
Anyhow, as somone said early, both sides are guilty of this (Nvidia/ATI...), however, it is not so much a PR stunt as it is creating something you know for a fact will sell, but only too a small(er) number of users (alright maybe it is a PR stunt....)
If I had unlimited funds, sure I'd buy the fastest video card, and not care about brand at all... I don't know many people who are so loyal to either ATI/Nvidia that they would get a slower card if they could afford the fastest one. (ok maybe a few... :laugh:)
if there IS a shortage im sure not feeling the brunt of it. I tend to agree that manufacturing is probably held back, with the recession and the small market of high end buyers, its highly possible nvidia really didn't plan for this amount of orders.
They mayhave designed the card as a stunt, but when it landed it kicked serious ass and every (nvidian) high end gamer wants one.
LOL
NO ONE
The top selling cards are the LOW LOW end cards with lots of memory. lol
Mid range does sell but not like the low end cards. Having the FASTEST CARD on the market says that you are the best to noobs.