AMD Graphics Chip Shortage Hits PC Vendors 97
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the at-least-tsmc-is-consistent dept.
from the at-least-tsmc-is-consistent dept.
CWmike writes "An offshore AMD foundry is having trouble ramping up production of a new 40-nanometer GPU, forcing PC makers to delay shipments of desktop and laptop computers, AMD confirmed today. TSMC is struggling to get up to speed manufacturing AMD's 5800 series, 40-nm GPUs, according to Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat. He added that the foundry is in full production, but so far yields are below expectation. Matt Davis, a spokesman for AMD, confirmed that TSMC is having issues with production of the chips. He added that it's not clear how far behind the foundry is on production expectations. 'The design is sound. It's just a matter of trying to get TSMC to a point where they can yield. They're feeling the manufacturing crunch,' said Davis. 'We're a little bit under yield but we're working back into a manufacturing schedule we want for these parts. TSMC can only kick them out so fast at this point.' He said that PC vendors are being affected but declined to say how many vendors are feeling the pinch or which ones. 'It's the end of the whip,' he added. '[The vendors] are going to have a hard time.'"
A post at Anandtech suggests we'll see price hikes for the 5800-series Radeons until this situation sorts itself out.
TSMC (Score:5, Informative)
One word: Drivers (Score:1, Informative)
AMD/ATi's video card drivers suck, have sucked and continue to suck. This is a real shame because ATi's hardware has really picked up (the 9800 was a ground-breaker, the X???? series was pretty lame but 3xxx/4xxx/5xxx is blowing nVidia out of the water which probably serves them right for over capitalising on the high-end scientific computation market).
The problem with ATi's drivers for me personally are: .Net with 3+ background services (annoying)
Windows
Problems with OpenGL performance compared to DirectX (annoying)
No per application profiles (deal breaker)
Catalyst control panel is apparently
Linux
Unstable, slow, don't support the newest kernel releases and are quite slow to add support. They also drop support for old cards too quickly (deal breaker)
People who use them complain about graphical glitches and performance slowdowns (deal breaker)
The open source drivers suck (So does nouveau but at least the binary driver is decent)
Basically, I would buy ATi's stuff as the hardware is great but their end-to-end support is awful so I'm stuck with nVidia or not upgrading.
Re:One word: Drivers (Score:1, Informative)
www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=11880
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY0NA
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=960&num=1
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzAxNg
If you want to help Linux, buy AMD.
Re:Still has a lead on nVidia (Score:3, Informative)
They always manage to stay on top because they are a monopolist in the gfx industry
Market share numbers from Q2 2009:
Sure, nVidia is an evil monopolist, what with having a market share slightly more than half of the company with the majority market share and a third larger than their nearest competitor.
I know it's fashionable to call everyone a monopolist on Slashdot, but the term has real meanings in both law and economics. Neither definition can apply to a company that has both a market share under 50% and a competitor with a larger market share.