After its miserable Q2, Nvidia was all smiles again yesterday after the company posted its best quarterly results in almost two years for the third quarter of fiscal 2005.

For the three months to 24 October 2004, Nvidia recorded revenues of $515.6m, up 13 per cent on the previous quarter and six per cent on Q3 FY2004. The figure also beat Nvidia's own revenue forecast, which it upgraded from $470-502m to $510-515m the day after the quarter closed.

Net income for the period totalled $25.9m (15 cents a share), up from $5.1m (three cents a share) in Q2 and $6.4m (four cents a share) in the year-ago quarter.

Q3's income was well above Wall Street's nine cents a share consensus. Nvidia was expected to show an improvement in its third quarter, comprising as it does purchases made by PC vendors and system builders gearing up for the Christmas sales period.

"Our improving financial performance reflects the success of the GeForce 6 architecture and our strategy to re-capture the technology leadership position," admitted Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.

Last week, it emerged that Nvidia had lost its long-held leadership of the standalone graphics chip market to its arch-rival, ATI, according to Mercury Research figures. ATI took 59 per cent of the market, up from 50 per cent in Q2, while Nvidia 37 per cent, down from 46 per cent the previous quarter. ®

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