Yet another manufacturer drops ATI...

OK,
THX!

Bye!

 

Yeah for Nv, MSI being dual is the biggest threat.

 

"Yet another manufacturer drops ATI". I hereby nominate this thread for FUD-of-the-day. Since Hercules and Terratec are no longer in the business, they aren't manufacturers, and therefore did not "drop" ATI.

To lump them in with Creative in an effort to show a trend of graphics makers fleeing ATI is Burkean.

 

Gigabyte made all Nv for Hercules. they were relying on them for distribution in Europe and US. Hercules had problems with NV and switched to ATI so did Gigabyte. But Hercules also switched to Powercolor and that left Gigabyte in the open and only then started to target retail

 

Maybe it should also be stated that ATI has a new AIB partner called Celestica.They just started selling ATI cards in NA recently. Don't know if their in Europe or Asia though.

 

Creative Asia is under real pressure from china, they need the best price on chips they can get. Creative Asia might not be in the vid market in a few years. If you filp flop and dont carry both your on the way out.

 

Hercules closed down its whole graphic card business, once and all. Finito.

Creative never sold its ATI cards outside of Asia. Thay always remain loud NV advocates.
(OFF: I actually looking forward when these two dirtiest company will unite... )

So - where is your 'pattern'?

Edit: wording

PS: Terratec is ~25th level card maker probably - it's absolutely proclictic whom they support at any given time (it's not their first change ). I can imagine they can't even afford to manufacture two kind of graphic family.

 

Stupid thread. Most IHVs these days are doing both ATI and nVidia. The only signifigant holdouts are Sapphire for ATI and Gainward for nV. If either of those started doing cards from a different IHV, then you'd have something to talk about.

 

Maybe creative is trying to get into the market of selling powersupplies, who knows?

I think it has more to do with audio, than video... ATi is planning on rolling out their integrated mobo chipsets, handheld chipsets, and HDTV chipsets - Some of which are rumored to have built in sound-decoding capability.

What I'm thinking:

Creative, which pretty well owns 90 percent of the Add-in-board PC soundboard market probably asked ATi not to make any products capable of decoding sound. ATi said no, and without mixing words, the relationship ended.

Don't worry, I'm sure Creative does not like Nvidia either. Rumor has it that Creative is looking to spend a few billion to develop their own videochip inhouse (Although I highly doubt they will be sucessful, egos are quickly and often shattered in the videocard arena.)

 

Well, maybe they'd license Series 5 instead... Could open up intersting possibilities if they all 3 parts of Creative did so, what with their distribution network....

 

I highly doubt both ideas, guys: 3DLabs is owned by Creative, since 2002 Spring.
They've bought it dirt cheap, for 100M bucks IIRC.

Edit: typos

 

If Creative ever decides to get really serious in the vid card market I am sure they will leverage their ownership of 3DLabs.

 

That is one of the reasons a ihv would switch. The underlying reason for a ihv to do anything is money ie: profit. Whatever they have to do to maintain or increase their profit is where they will go.

So if a ihv starts to see a backlash against a chipvendor and sales drop, they make less money.
If a ihv is getting really poor margins for a top selling product and gets good margins with a average selling product, they may switch if the profit is better on the average part.
If two products are selling equally well but one provides a higher profit margin, they may switch.
If the costs incurred for one companies products over another are higher, they may drop the higher cost companies product. ie: warranty returns, defects from manufacturing.
If one company has a really great product but cannot supply you enough chips the IHV may switch to a slightly worse product with better supply.
If a company is charging you more for their chips than your competetors, you may switch to a company that evens the playing field a bit more. As it is hard to compete in a market where you have a price disadvantage.

Of course that all is in a general sense and doesn't refer to one company or another. It is just wise to remember that the top selling product does not have to be the best product, just perceved to be the better purchase.

 

For NV, Leadtek/Winfast are as common as Asus over here, as well as smaller NV-only brands like Albatron (claiming first to market with the 6800), XFX, and I hear BFG are one of the dominant US retail cards. I think PowerColor are still ATI-only and aren't exactly a minnow, the same goes for HIS/Hightech.

Creative 9000 Pro here, their Radeons are pretty common in this corner of the planet.

 

Yeah.. whats more Truthfull and telling is that (last i heard) Nvidia has signed virtually no OEM partners for their Nv40 line. With the excetion of Alienware. One or Two more may have slipped recently i dont know about.

OEM sales are where the meat of the market is and ATi is rolling.

 

Wouldn't the big OEM money earners be contracts for a load of low-end parts? I'm not surprised that ATI have picked up more OEM deals for the X800's, they are tailored just a little better to the heat and power concerns of box builders, but does it make much financial impact? Retail high end is only a fraction of the market, and I expect the OEM high end is similarly small. Unless of course you have a pretty graph to prove me horribly wrong.

Edit: BTW, they have HP/Compaq on board.

 

Hmm. ". . .availability in July. . .among the first. . ."

Wonder how many X800 Pro ATI will have sold by then.

 

*raises hand* I have the Hercules Prophet 9800 Pro...I haven't even heard of Terratec.

 

Sapphire starting to make nvidia boards would be quite a feat, as they're still a subsidiary of the BBA board manufacturer aren't they?

 

As you said, the first two went out of buis, so they also dropped nVidia and anyone else they may have made cards for.

You are trying too hard.