ATI has just released its financial summary for Q3 and the results are quite a shocker from the same time last year. The Canadian based silicon-manufacturer has posted a net loss of $9.4 million compared to a net profit of $49 million a year ago.
"It was a challenging quarter for ATI, particularly within our PC business where we came in well below our expectations for both revenue and gross margin," said David Orton, ATI"s Chief Executive Officer. "Yet, during the quarter, we also achieved important milestones in our core GPU business. In addition, we have a renewed focus on improving our operational consistency in ramping new technologies. Looking forward, we expect continued growth in our core markets as well as the new markets of chipsets and consumer."
With NVidia already introducing next-gen cards like the GeForce 7800 GTX, ATI has an uphill battle ahead of them. July 26th is rumored to be the launch date for ATI"s next-gen R520 GPU; effectively giving NVidia a months head start on sales and availability. ATI is expected to try and improve on core and memory speed until launch day using raw numbers to justify a new card purchase. Leaked benchmarks of card using the R520 core, suggest that it should outperform a 6800 Ultra SLi array.