Visiontek going out of business!!!!

[RussSchultz]

ATI has a VP, general Counsel. They might be involved in some shady deals.

So does Compaq/HP. They might be involved in some shady deals.
So does Intel. They might be involved in some shady deals.
So does AMD. They might be involved in some shady deals.

So does...need I continue?

Bottom line: maybe these companies need lawyers for something other than shady deals? Like, um, protecting their IP?

 

[Nagorak]

I don't want to get in a tit for tat over something as banal as the merits of 6 month product cycle in the retail industry.

All I know is all our customers do it, and they're all in the retail consumer electronics business selling into Fry's, BestBuy, Circuit City, Compusa, RadioShack, etc (Anybody like their new MuVo? I wrote the basic software for it).

But, onto other things. Does anybody believe that Visiontek going out of business has any real impact to NVIDIAs sales? I see see it as a consolidation: some other vendor will pick up the sales that Visiontek would have gotten. As mentioned above, nobody was actively buying a Visiontek product. They were buying an NVIDIA card--it just so happened that visiontek manufactured it.

You're just assuming that the other card manufacturers necessarily have the production facilities to pump more cards into the market. That's not necessarily the case. Furthermore, unless they want to go bankrupt themselves, they aren't going to increase supply until they are sure there is demand (and maybe there just isn't...maybe that's half the reason VT folded).

But yes, it could effect them. I doubt it will be a big impact in and of itself though.

As to why Visiontek went under, it sounds kind of like bad management to me. The slump in the PC economy probably was just the nail in the coffin. The thing is, I'm not sure this slump is just a temporary thing...I kind of suspect it's permanent. People have realized that they just don't need faster computers for anything. I'm not refering to anyone here in this forum, but the people who play the Sims and browse the internet, they just don't need anything better. I bet you can even play War3 on a pretty low end system. Visiontek is probably not the last company that's going to get shaken out.

I don't really think Visiontek is a big loss frankly. I don't think anyone besides Kyle at HardOCP ever really felt Visiontek had such great quality to begin with. I know, I didn't... The Visiontek cards I owned sucked. I'm skeptical that the quality of their card ever "went down".

 

[Dave Baumann]

Well, we'll be looking for a new premier NV board supplier...

 

[Typedef Enum]

Never mind...

 

[Pete]

So what would they offer?

A premium product advertised as Made in the USA might've done well. 9/11 couldn't have hurt their sales, either.

Meh, I'm just speculating with no practical knowledge of the 3D card business.

 

[Reverend]

Well, we'll be looking for a new premier NV board supplier...

Wavey, have you any other vendor besides VisionTek that supplies NVIDIA review-cards to B3D without the need to ask (i.e. "automatically")?

 

[multigl2]

well its sad to see companies go out of business like this, but hopefully someone like Asus would step up and deliver. I don't know about you, if I were to buy an Nvidia based product, it most definitely be an Asus board.

 

[archie4oz]

I don't really think Visiontek is a big loss frankly. I don't think anyone besides Kyle at HardOCP ever really felt Visiontek had such great quality to begin with.

I think so... I'm going to miss them as they're one of the few nVIDIA vendors who were pretty tight and consistent with the RF filter and signal noise coming off their cards (unfortunately also means more expensive to manufacture, and lower profit margins). You get kind've spoiled by Matrox and ATi cards in terms of consistency of 2D image clarity (especially at 1600x1200@100Hz, 2048x1536@85Hz, etc...). Much harder to find that with the various nVIDIA vendors with Leadtek and (to lesser more recent extent), Gainward...

 

[Dave Baumann]

Wavey, have you any other vendor besides VisionTek that supplies NVIDIA review-cards to B3D without the need to ask (i.e. "automatically")?

I'd already started work on that anyway - NV has put in a good word with a couple of vendors over here for me, and Marco has a pretty good one (a review is immenent but delayed by me for various reasons).

 

[Gunhead]

Russ, while by and large most of those buyers indeed buy just "Nvidia", some do buy card. I was actually going to test a VisionTek product because of the allegedly slightly better 2D/3D IQ. Did the same with an Elsa product previously.

(Why do these companies always fold on me?)

But agreed, most buyers look at prices and extra features, then decide the brand. Nothing wrong with that, naturally.

 

[MikeC]

Even with the loss of VisionTek, the number of NVIDIA add-in manufactureres remains crowded:

Aopen
Apollo
Asus
Chaintech
Eagle
eVGA
Gainward
Gigabyte
Innovision
Jaton
Leadtek
MSI
Palit
Pine Technologies (XFX)
PNY
PowerColor
Prolink
Suma

 

[MaliciousBraham]

The biggest loss here that I see is in support. People from the US know that Visiontek was pretty much the exclusive supplier of BestBuy (one of the biggest electronics store chains in the US) and anyone who bought any Nvidia card from them most likely got a Visiontek.

Visiontek has always (until recently) been a US based, US manufactured, company. Lots of people didnt know that. And they were NVidia's #1 customer if I'm not mistaken.

BTW, Hardocp has their commentary on the situation posted on the front page. I'm not endorsing them, but I just read some comments in this thread about them. I've been reading here @ B3d for several years (back in the 3dfxgamers day... Hello again Wavey!!) put I've just now got around to posting.

--Braham