I think people still fail to understand WHAT investment nvidia made in their gpu's
and to make a point... the inquirer SPECULATES on RUMOURS... they are not always right... if ever... but there is usually SOME truth in what they say...
here is the gist of it...
nvidia commits and spends 400+ million dollars on the nv3x LINEUP... NOT the gf FX alone... but the lineup... technlogies blah blah blah...
the gf FX that will ship may not allow nvidia to recoup much if ANY money @ all... bad pr and a faulty product does nothing to ones image... nvidia can devote is time/efforts/money instead to improving its other nv3x based products such as the nv31 and nv34...
also what is the break even on the card? the Oems may not make much money selling this card when you consider the price of the 12layer pcb/ddrII/cooling solution et al... it does add up someplace and since nvidia does not sell direct (unlike ati) they have to ask the oem's to bear the brunt of the costs and I doubt nvidia will like to strain those relationships..
NOTE these are LOW LEVEL PARTS... they DO NOT outperform the nv30... they are supposed to go into the low-mid level market and compete v/s the 9xxx cards from ati...
nvidia... by scrapping or rather limiting its resource expenditure (both monetary and intellectual) would actually be doing a good thing.. because they can concentrate their efforts completely on their new part... the nv35 which by all accounts... on PAPAR... looks to be a behemoth of a card... it was expected in august/september but with a redoubling of efforts/cutting the gf FX life span short... nvidia may be able to push the card out end of summer which would be quite good... then it would compete directly with the r400 from ati...
THAT is the real battle this year... the gf FX is last years card...
the bad rap nvidia is getting for the card is due to its pr department issuing FUD but the nv35 WILL by most accounts be a very powerful card.. in evert respect... the 256bit memory it is expected to incorporate should allow for much better performance with anisotropic and anti-aliasing enabled v/s the crappola the gf FX does...