NVidia's Largest N. America Card Manufactor is Dying

[Ioman]

HardOCP has the scoop on VisionTEK. It looks like Nvidia could be loosing their largest N. American card manufacturer. This is a critical time for card makers right now as they gear production up for the holiday shopping season. Maybe Matrox and ATI can charge in to fill the void. View the HardOCP Article here:

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzM5

[SponGeBoB]

that to go along with this story along the same line on buddhacon.com

http://www.buddhacon.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=478

[Ioman]

I think this is great news for consumers. Compeition should drive price down and with ATI stepping up in a big way, we should expect the technology to sky rocket versus the small incrememnts companies like Intel and Nvidia force us to use. Stepping up from 33Mhz cores is a joke, let spread the gap for less money.

[martianviking]

Sad to see that.

[Entropy]

I'm glad to see that.

It puts a necessary damper on nVIDIA's production capabilities.
nVIDIA has already had to delay the release of the nv30 GPU due to an unexpected die process change (.15u to .13u).

This is great for the boyz at ATI. Because now they can stop playin the catch up game with nVIDIA.

This is gonna force nVIDIA to step up their development and release bigger and better things much faster and at a much lower price if they want to regain their old position. So those dirty *$^tards will be forced to stop their price gouging.

I can only hope and pray that some Intel fab blows up in the middle of the night now :D:D:D:D:D (sry Seng :P )

[Cloud]

I think what happened is that ATI skipped a generation in their production. Instead of going in the small increments they are used to following from Nvidia, they said "screw this" and surprised us all. I just hope their drivers are stable enough. The bench,arks are good and the technology is great. Lets not ruin a good thing with bad support and drivers.

[Unregistered]

ATI ALL THE WAY. SCREW NVIDIA

[Ioman]

It sounds like either way Visiontek will be no more. I am both surprised and not surprised by this. I say this because what surprises me is how the number one NVIDIA based video card manufacturer can go under when sales are so well. But what does not surprise me is that this company went under the way it has. They came onto the scene as a company incredibly fast. I mean who heard of Visiontek 4 years ago? I for one had not. So with that, they probably spent too much money all at once with marketing etc... The moral is to be wise with your money. Venture capitalists and those that like to fund ventures like this will always want to see a ROI in the next year or two, but with an operation this big, it will take a few years at the most.

[ruri]

Not to rag on America or anything, but the reason VisionTEK failed is because they produced their cards in the US while everyone else made them in Taiwan/China. The labor / tax / insurance / fringe benefit costs killed them in the end. You can't compete against someone making as much in a day as your employee makes in a hour.

Sad to see an American company blew up like that.

[dang]

Plus the fact that not many people buy the top of the line cards due to the expense. I can buy a top of line CPU for cheaper. :)

[Ioman]

I would expect video card prices to drop due to ATI and Nvidia competing so hard. ATI really surprised me by allowing other manufacturers to use their GPU's in their own video cards. Traditionally ATI makes and sells their own cards exclusively.

[Entropy]

Originally posted by Ioman
I would expect video card prices to drop due to ATI and Nvidia competing so hard. ATI really surprised me by allowing other manufacturers to use their GPU's in their own video cards. Traditionally ATI makes and sells their own cards exclusively.

That kind of threw me off as well, for the longest time ATI has been the "Apple equivalent" of the GPU market. Meaning... that they have exclusively developed, produced, and marketed their products, much like Apple Computers used to do (and still does to a significant extent).

I think they just saw the light, learned from other company's mistakes, and allowed others to help drive their products forward. I think a major reason Apple doesnt have the market share it deserves is due to the fact that they didnt allow others to develop for their systems, therefore making their products too exclusive (and therefore hard to upgrade).
The exact oppposite of this is IBM, IBM allowed entirely too many people to develop for them, and so therefore it effectively lost control of its own technologies. (also the reason PC's are simply called "PCs" anymore, and not "IBM PC's" ;) )


-For all those that just read my speculation and analysis. I extend my deepest apologies :D "