Our colleagues at the Inquirer found out that ATI's partners are happy with the HD 2000 series and we wanted to find the other side of the coin. The original INQ story is here.

It turns out that the margins that ATI's partners are making from these cards are "around 5 percent" in the mid range segment and that for a while "All ATI margins for VGA are in the toilet".

It is getting very difficult to survive on such money and five percent of the total price is an average mid range margin. 

In the high end they earn a bit more, but most of ATI DirectX 10 sales these days are 2400 and 2600 cards.

Life is tough and margins are good and we would not be surprised if ATI gains market share with the HD 2000 series, but it reports bad financial sales numbers and they are not earning as much money on the chips as Nvidia does.