Nvidia's earnings bloomed during its second fiscal quarter, despite a slight dip in sales, the graphics chip maker revealed yesterday.

For the three months to 31 July 2005, Nvidia realised revenues of $574.8m, up 26 per cent on the year ago quarter's $456.1m, but down 1.5 per cent on the previous quarter.

The company recorded "strong" year-on-year revenue growth for its Quadro workstation graphics chips, and its nForce system logic products - sales were up 40 and 128 per cent, respectively, Nvidia said. It also claimed good growth for desktop GPU sales, but did not provide a figure.

The company also launched its GeForce 7800 GT chip yesterday, the follow-up to the higher-end 7800 GTX launched in June. This month has also seen the release of two new Quadro chips, the FX 4500 and FX 3450, both bringing SLi support to the workstation segment.

For the first six months of fiscal 2006, Nvidia reported a net income of $139.3m (77 cents a share) on sales of $1.16bn, both up 425.7 and 25 per cent, respectively, over H1 FY2005.

Arch-rival ATI's most recently completed quarter, the third of fiscal 2005, running to 31 May 2005, saw the company report a net loss of $400,000 on sales of $530m. ®

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