VR-Zone

No one expects either the Nvidia Geforce GTX 470 or the GTX 480 to be available in any significant quantity come 12th April. Even optimistic rumours have placed the worldwide availability at 30,000 units. Nvidia themselves informed reviewers that the GTX 400 products will be available in >10000 units.

SemiAccurate, who have been accurate with most information regarding to Fermi/GF100, are now claiming the actual quantity is way lower. Even lower than their initial expectation of 8,000 units.

The rumour suggests two major AICs have allocated less than 100 cards for entire Europe. Clearly, with such numbers, Nvidia is falling far short of anything resembling availability.

All indications - the delays, the missed targets, the disabled units, further delays, abysmal thermals - suggest that GF100 is indeed too ambitious for manufacturing on a 40nm process. There is no doubt the GF100 chips, now in their A3 revision, aren't yielding well. SemiAccurate stand by their now ancient claims of sub-20% yields.

We are 4 days away from the long anticipated date - 12th April. It will be interesting to see how long the cards last in distribution channel, and at what prices? If Nvidia do make the 12th April availability dates, and these rumours are true, it is likely there will be no cards left by the 13th of April.

Reference: SemiAccurate