nVidia Card Shortage Hits System Builders

nVidia had already been selling record amounts of chips for its GeForce 4 series, but an order for several hundred thousand chips from German PC maker Medion caught the company off guard, and created a temporary shortage of products in the United States.

The shortage has been for the GeForce4 Ti 4200 ($199) and 4600 ($399) graphics cards, while the 4400 ($299), the middle of the performance and price ranges, has not been affected. There has also been a shortage of GeForce 4 MX 440 chips, the value line of video cards.

The result is a backlog of orders by as much as a month, according to Nicholas Yoritate, purchasing manager for ComponentsDirect.com, a nationwide VAR of parts and systems in Irvine, Calif. The company sells several GeForce 4-powered cards and hasn't been able to get products from the big-name makers, such as ASUSTek and MSI Computer.

"There are a lot of system builders calling saying they need the card, and [the system can't go out because it doesn't have a video card," Yoritate says. "So when customers are looking for GeForce cards, we push them onto no-name brands because that was all that was available."

Customers have been waiting a long time for GeForce cards. This has "caused them to [be pushed onto [ATI Technologies' Radeon," Yoritate says.

nVidia, whose chips are manufactured by Taiwan-based semiconductor company TSMC, says it is now catching up with the demand, running approximately one week behind other card makers and expects to be caught up by Christmas, according to Tony Tomassi, general manager of desktop graphics for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor company, which sees the situation as a positive one.

"The way I read it is the market for high-end graphics is a lot stronger than anyone thought, which is nothing but good news for all of us," Tomassi says.

nVidia is less willing to talk about the NV30, its next-generation chip that will supersede the GeForce 4 and is rumored to be code-named GeForce 5. The company has kept a solid track record of releasing a new chip every six months. But it stumbled with the NV30, which was due in spring/summer and has yet to emerge.

"It's not fair to nVidia to get righteous about it," says Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research, which follows the graphics market. "Look how late Intel is with their stuff, and Microsoft has never delivered anything on time. The reason there's so much attention is they have executed so flawlessly in the past. What's happened is Murphy's Law has caught up with them."

The NV30 chip is an enormously complicated part, with 120 million transistors, twice the number of a Pentium 4, and it's the first graphics chip to use a .13-micron design, which has proved a challenge for TSMC. That was the only item nVidia would admit to,the problem was in the chip-manufacturing process, not in the actual chip design.

The delay isn't really hurting, Peddie says. "Who's screaming for new parts?" he asks. "With the market as depressed as it is, it doesn't hurt them that much, and it may have helped them a little. There's not an OEM in the world who hasn't told me, 'Can't [you slow it down? Do we have to have a new product every six months?'"

Yoritate says the delay hasn't really hurt. "The GeForce 4 is doing quite well," he says. "People know the new card is due, but they aren't screaming

for it."