ASK ANY RETAILER and they'll tell you that Q1, once the January sales are over, is the quietest time of year; which makes Nvidia's inability to supply quantities of its new 7900 series almost unbelievable. But you'd better believe it. Once again, Nvidia is simply failing to deliver the goods.
There seem to be a few 7900GTs and GTXs kicking around in the channel but, wherever you look, you're far more likely to see an 'Out of Stock' sign. Certainly here in the UK, Scan and Dabs don't have any. In the US NewEgg and Buy are out of stock. After the firm's inability to deliver at Christmas time, serious questions must be asked about the firm's ability to deliver at all.
It could be that Nvidia has introduced an artificial shortage to help retailers get rid of old 7800s. There are certainly plenty of deep cuts in price on both the 7800GT and GTX available. But, if it is an artificial shortage, that would still draw some serious questions about Nvidia's sales expectations versus the reality.
It would be less worrying if this weren't all linked to Nvidia killing off the 7800 series. You only need turn your mind back to a few months to the debacle of Nvidia cancelling the 6800GT and Ultra in the run up to Christmas, just as people might have bought a second card to put into an SLI system. Now it's doing the same to the 7800 owners.
Perhaps it's ATI's almost amateurish attempts at competition that is to blame. While ATI has some great graphics chips and a fairly obvious lead in image quality, it has distanced both fans and journalists with its wince-inducing, horribly fumbled chipsets and Crossfire. After all, who wants to buy a chipset known to have problems or a pair of very expensive graphics cards only to have a nineties-Voodoo-style kludge cable hanging out of the back of their system?
Nvidia has a far more attractive technology in SLI compared with Crossfire. It's stable and mature. But what's the point of the technology if Nvidia cancels chips so quickly? All you're left with are a few thousand people who can afford to buy an SLI system with both cards straight away and many hundreds of thousands more disgruntled people who find that the promise of SLI can never be fulfilled for them because Nvidia has cancelled their chip before they could afford to get a second one.
So, here we are in the run up to Easter with Nvidia unable to supply kit for one reason or another. It cheesed of hundreds of thousands of 6800GT and Ultra owners at Christmas time. It'll have cheesed off many of the people who bought a very expensive 7800 at Christmas only to find it cancelled and half price a few months later. There'll be no SLI for either crowd. And people about to buy a 7900 have to ask whether it will be cancelled a few months from now too.
About the only upside for Nvidia is that ATI is too busy navel-gazing to do anything about it. Considering that both firms are supposed to be at the cutting edge of the industry, it is quite frankly embarrassing. µ
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Mas FEAR como podes ver pela Sig (Teste feito a 1024x768 TUDO no máximo sem Soft Shadows e sem filtros), corre bastante bem aki 
