Lonely Silicon Hearts said:
Damsel in distress keen to experiment. Upwardly mobile, experienced Asian spouse with penchant for red lingerie, hot multi-gpu action, high margins and wild channel parties, as well as seizing the means of volume production seeks strong, aggressive IHV (preferably green) with heaps of cash and massive ego for orgasmic fling, possibly leading to longer term relationship.
Prepared to travel and maintain pretense in current stale relationship. Will seek separation if prospective partner presses the right buttons and provides excessive financial rewards.
Interested parties should send their latest roadmap, projected unit ramp for FY2007 and a shot of their largest part to deprived_red_mistress@red-gpu-aib.com
P.S. No time-wasters, please! (That includes you, S3)
More seriously, if Sapphire was feeling pangs of loneliness before the R520 delay as per Dave's comment above, presumably the desire not to rely on a single supplier for continued growth -- a valid concern -- has likely increased since the "tardy" R520 rollout and converse G7x (G70 in particular) AIB merriment.
However, one gets the impression (anecdotally of course) that ATI AIB's and presumably Sapphire in particular, shifted boatloads of R4xx cards last year, especially X800GT/GTO/GTO2/etc with ATI seemingly taking the bullet via their inventory writedown, although the thought of possibly juicier G70 margins for NV AIB's in the vacuum of no-show R520 must have rankled; sigificantly for large team players like Sapphire. Perhaps this public grumbling is simply Sapphire putting pressure on ATI for a better deal?
It's interesting that, if I recall correctly, a number of NV-only AIB's (Asus? Gigabyte? Palit? others?) clamoured for dual-IHV rights (in this case jumping in with ATI) in the wake of NV3x and got them, which appeared to yield a period of stability (save for the loss to ATI of respected "we used to sell nVIDIA, but never again" Hercules, reorganisation of Pine-->XFX and emergence of BFG from the ashes of VisionTek) in AIB-land. The inference that R520 is comparable to NV30 is obviously not justified, except in the sense that R520's material delay like NV30's delay (and piss-poor performance) marginalised ATI-only AIB's for some time and could be a factor in a possible Sapphire/nVIDIA partnership.
The post-R520 affairs already appear to be underway with the all-swinging Club3D (ATI/S3/XGI -- gotta love those crazy Dutch!
) joining the NV stable. Sapphire going green while still producing a considerable portion of ATI product would likely be a major nVIDIA coup. Again, perhaps this infatuation will be shortlived -- Vista uptake, R6xx, Sapphire CE stuff, etc could swing them back into line. As geo often reminds us, "it's all swings and roundabouts" -- Orton has to be hoping that there's less swinging in future, unless it's to ATI. :smile:
