Nvidia (Santa Clara, Calif.) recorded a third quarter GAAP net income of $107.6 million, or 19 cents per share, up from $61.7 million, or 11 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter, the company said.

Nvidia's results exceed consensus analyst expectations for the third quarter. The comapny said it expects fourth quarter sales to be up about 2 percent compared with the third quarter.

Craig Berger, an analyst with FBR Capital Markets, said in a research note that Nvidia has many "irons in the fire" that could drive future growth, including Tegra application processors, Ion chipsets, Tesla GPU parallel-compute processors and Quadro workstation GPU shipments. But visibility into the timing and magnitude of revenue growth remains low, said Berger.

"Chipset growth of only 4 percent sequentially, driven by lower AMD shipments, could be the first sign of a slowdown in that business, especially as Intel launches Auburndale early in 2010," Berger wrote.

Berger said Nvidia's guidance for fourth quarter growth was less than typical due to component shortages and low 40-nm yields at foundry provider TSMC.