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VisionTek Folds
geogeek6_7 writes: "In a major shocker with potentially far reaching consquences, it seems that VisionTek, the number one producer of NVIDIA based graphics cards, will be foreclosed, and cease to exist. HardOCP has the details."
*speechless* utterly utterly speechless.
Graphics card OEMs have been being perpetually undercut by lower-margin competitors basically since they became significant. Visiontek became dominant by being able to undercut the likes of ELSA, Diamond, Canopus, STB, and (the original) Hercules, among others. Yes, none of them are around anymore.
In a way nVidia themselves have been shielded from this madness by not producing boards themselves. Its probably one of the reasons they still exist.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
So what about my Xtasy GF3 Ti200 lifetime warranty? I already replaced the fan on it with a Blue Orb because the fan was spinning very slowly.
Perhaps I have been living under a rock, but I have never heard of VisionTek. Most of the Nvidia cards I have seen used are Asus or Hercules so I don't see the "far reaching consequences".
Could it be that Nvidia's model of farming out the production as a way to sell shit really cheap allowed too much compatition on in the market?
They were able to offer the least expensive product (Nvidia) and not themselves worry about the selling at a loss part.
Nvidia's stradegy was great on paper, but it may bite them in the ass in the long run.
Having the largest supplier die at this moment could give ATI the boost it neaded to scream back on top. With the next generation of cards coming out so soon, and this likely to increase the cost of the Gforce cards.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Damn pity, they're the only (as far as I know) company that manufacture the GeForce 2 Xtasy GTS-V cards, at a knock down price of $47 (on newegg.com).. a damn good budget card with performance to boot, at least games are now playable on my brothers crappy Sony Vaio celery desktop (urghh!).
So I guess it is case of "buy while stocks last" (for those who are interested of course).
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I wonder which company will fill Visiontek's shoes. I'm thinking Asus, MSI, or Gainward.
That is, if you can find any of their remains. They used to just sell chipsets as well, then they decided to make the entire board. You know the rest of the story.
NVidia (and so VisionTek) doesn't support open source anyway. I'm going to buy an ATI next time just because they do.
Bye bye VisionTek! Say hello to Rendition for me (errr... sort of)!
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
In the past few years, graphics cards have been more that just an expample mirroring the ridiculous attempt to increase fervor for buying new pcs by tacking on new "features"...they have been even worse perpetrators. First it was the 8MB cards, then 16MB, then 32. Sometime in there AGP got thrown in (I know AGP is better for graphics/acceleration than PCI; the point is that for most AGP was a new buzzword that new gfx cards must have). Then the chips on these cards came in, and cards competed on the GCP (Graphics Processing Unit) and it's capabilites. Now I hear things like "All-in-one", "XTasy", and "Expandable RAM up to 512 MB."
All of these features serve a purpose, mind you. But if there's one thing the mindless pumping of new products to people that have decent ones already does, its precicely this. Create a 70's gas-like war where companies outbit eachother to sell the cheapest yet greatest. This is bad for the consumer, because he can generally get duped into purchasing that's either junk or way more than they need (or both).
This also has a negative impact on the companies. Take the pricewatch model (which I use myself :). Companies get thier business from being at "the top of the list," meaning their stuff is the cheapest. This becomes the only way the get business. They may even grow according to this model somewhat. At some point, they realize they are not really turning any kind of profit, and all their business would go away if they raised their prices. This self-destructive cycle is exemplified by pricewatch, but again, the same thing happened for this company.
The world needs companies that sell high quality products with good support, that work right out of the box, and are well maintained. Oh wait, there already is such a company.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Off the top of my head, there are plenty of other nVidia resellers still here in the US (eVGA, Gainward and PNY to name 3), along with some of the big boys in motherboards (Abit, Asus, MSI). It's a shame Visiontek couldn't keep fiscally sound, but in this economy, if you're in debt, you're dead.
RW
From my understanding the only people that make money on the sales of GF X cards is Nvidia, perhaps if they lowered the price of GPU's it could help companies stay afloat longer in these trying economic times.
Besides considering most geeks are unemployed who do they think is going to buy a $400 vid card?
This was posted just a couple of days ago. Looks like a nice piece of hardware. It's a shame they're dying.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Any one remember 3DFX? I do, they had a great video card and they supported open source initiatives, even creating their own. But you know what? I had an EXTREMELY had time getting X to work (this of course was in 1998, when I first got the card and little was supported). I bought a VisionTek card becuase it used the NVidia chipset and the support was out there for it. The install was easy and the card works beautifully! So do some 'real' research before you start knocking company's that do support open source. http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20010816_5612
http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=products_support ed
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?s =&forumid=14
...and does a major competitor have influence over them?
I just bought one of their cards like two months ago!
Why can't they let us know in advance when they're going to go out of business? I wouldn't have bought the card then!
"Derp de derp."
Does anybody actually go to HardOCP for information?
I don't get it. Superior products, largest reseller of Nvidia cards... Where did they go wrong?
I suppose financial scandal could do it, but was that the case?
It seems like tech companies have a problem staying afloat. Is it because their workers demand unreasonable amounts of pay? It seems like they would simply pass that on to their customers.
I mean it's a simple process...
Hardware Sales - Hardware Costs - Employee Costs ??? Profit!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Follow the link to the VisionTek web site and the first two stories right now are about expanding production and product lines. Now of course I guess that's a little outdated.
I've been impressed with NVidia chips for a while but recently I've been buying ATI products for their solid OpenGL performance. Being a user for both work and play has demanded I have a card that can handle engineering apps as well as Tribes II.
ATI has a real chance now .. they better not blow it. ATI needs to improve their driver quality and they'll be the top dog.
..I want everyone to be successful so we too as consumers can benefit.
Not that I wish bad on nVidia
What the parent post ment to say is that they don't have open source drivers, not that they do not support open source at all. Nvidia has a binary driver with a compilable kernel "middle" layer. (I'm not a programmer so I don't know the technical term for that middle layer - if there is one). I have Nvidia cards as well, and they work beautifully in X, but my ATI works fine as well, and it is open source driver.
How many companies will fold when their accounting practices get reviewed?
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Well this sucks, yesterday you told me I needed a better graphics card to really enjoy Quake 3, and now I'm hearing I probably stuck with ATI.
Good lord I hate ATI. Just once could they make a frickin driver that works? I'm sure they will work much harder now that they've lost their biggest competitor.
*sigh*
If quake 3 would have come out a bit sooner maybe VisionTek could have pulled out.
Sad, sad day.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
We chased lady luck, 'til we finally struck Bonanza.
With a gun and a rope and a hat full of hope, planted a family tree.
We got hold of a pot of gold, Bonanza.
With a horse and a saddle, and a range full of cattle, how rich can a fellow be?
On this land we put our brand, Cartwright is the name
fortune smiled the day we filed the Ponderosa claim.
Here in the West, we're livin' the best, Bonanza
if anyone fights any one of us, he's got a fight with me
Bonanza!
Hoss and Joe and Adam know every rock and pine,
no one works, fights, or eats, like those boys of mine.
Here we stand in the middle of a grand Bonanza.
With a gun and a rope and a hatful of hope, we planted our family tree,
we got hold of a potful of gold, Bonanza.
With a houseful of friends where the rainbow ends, how rich can a fellow be?
On this land we put our brand, Cartwright is the name
fortune smiled the day we filed the Ponderosa claim.
Here in the west we're livin' the best Bonanza.
With the friendliest, fightingist, loving band
that ever set foot in the promised land
and we're happier than them all.
That's why we call it Bonanza! Bonanza! BONANZA!
Visiontek was Dell's supplier for nvidia based cards... Wonder what they're going to do now.
Gainwards cost less on average, have the highest speed ddr and are easily overclocked.
Check out http://www.newegg.com
(not being paid for this)
.
If you think
I have been keeping track of their inventory flow roughly over the last few months - they were dumping stuff to ubid and the geeky hardware sites giving great deals on V-tek stuff - no surprise sir
A2.6k
I don't think so... I've never heard of VisionTek, and I don't think this would be possible (not hearing about them) if they are such a big vendor of Nvidia products.
Anyhow... how will this cause far reaching consequences (potentially or otherwise)?
Will the price of Nvidia based gfx cards drop (due to oversupply) or increase (overdemand from other vendors)? Anyone care to give some opinions?
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
I just bought a visiontek geforce4 ti4600 this weekend at a computer show!! figures.. i buy one and they go out fo business.. great! wonderful!! well actually it works great in my new shuttle ss51 with a p4 2.26 533fsb chip in it as well.. oh well damn them for goin out of business!
..and buy ATYT (ATI), preferably first thing before you watch the former's stock go into freefall on Monday morning?
Or is that overreacting?
Your speechless? I don't have a warrenty anymore. Wahhh!!
"lifetime warranty"refers to the lifetime of the card - when it breaks the warranty runs out
Is that like closing before they close?
Just because it is a term vaguely related to companies in bankruptcy doesn't mean you can throw it around without knowing what it means.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The HardOCP article doesn't even mention the Asus video cards. Asus has been making some great Nvidia cards for a long time now.
Is there more information on the news? It does not mention what cause it to go down - is it due to bad sales, financial practice, accouting records, business processes or fraud? The article just whine about there won't be sufficient Nvidia cards for gammers in the Christmas and Nvidia would take a hit. Is it just me, but I really don't care whether Nvidia could earn enough money before Christmas. :)
And the front page of VisionTek doesn't say a word about it. Anyone could confirm the news?
Well they'll be selling more like a Denny's special than anything else. Remember the GeForce 3 has been out for awhile and does what the majority needs.
Two the economy is still in a slump, and the people who could afford the latest and greatest are currently unemployed.
Foreclosure means that loan terms have ended with the involved creditors no longer willing to negotiate. Thus, they're going after the company's assets to get their money back. Declaring bankruptcy is what you usually do if you're either expecting foreclosure or if it's on your doorstep.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
With VisionTek simply vanishing, this leaves a huge gap for NVIDIA to fill. VisionTek was the number one retailer of NVIDIA based VidCards in North America. Hercules has moved to ATi products, Creative is gone for NVIDIA as well with the purchase of 3dLabs, and Elsa's (which is now bankrupt) top-end VidCards were built by VisionTek anyway.
I doubt. If this was the case, it would cause a stir in stock markets, and by law when such a thing happens the public has to be notified officially.
*Nobody* does this. Rumours and more rumours.
And if you go to the visiontek site, the still have buying information and everything intact. If they were really being liquidated this wasnt possible, unless they all want to go to jail.
Another anomaly is that no company with such a large customer base is liquidated like this.
It is a long drawn process!
The company will be given time to turn around, it will file for bankrupcy and so on
So hold on to your horses my gut feeling is that it is just a hoax.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
I'm holding a 16bit mach64 card in my hands, just for effect...
ATI has been around as long as i've been playing with PC's. Slow and steady wins the race.
Sorry that was all I could think of at the moment. My heart goes out to all the people getting laid off from this. Someone got really rich off of your hard work, while you struggled for them, now they sit confortably driving some nice cars. Sorry VC's and exec's of the internet age, most of you are real assholes!
Right now the way things are going, it reminds me of the victorian age when railways were first coming about. All this money was poured into the rail systems of europe (watch this on discovery yesterday) and it was managed by crooks that were chased out of the US. (This one paticular guy i'm thinkin of had a wife and 4 mistresses!)
It's not a lot different now. Sure we have fancy computers and slashdot, but to get there we had to put some really crooked people in charge of our money. Some of them did right, a lot of them did wrong.
I'm goin off base here, but I just wanted the people getting laid off, i'll say a prayer for you and your families. Cause I know what it's like to get laid off.
Yours Truly
--Toq
Would someone please explain how this news hit the press at 2AM Sunday night (Early Monday morning if you want to nitpick)? I realize that it's well into business hours in Europe and most of Asia, but according to the article, VisionTek is a US-based company in Northern Illinois.
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
VisionTek had a Walmart exclusive card, a GF2MX 32MB pci card that sold for $50. Sure PCI isn't much to look at, but consider... What do all of the sterile minded individuals that bought the el-cheapo computers with I810 or SIS chipsets need to play Deer Hunter XXIV (or whatever..) a decent pci video card (cuz they ain't gots no "Hey Gee Pee" slots duh!) And at $50 that VisionTek card fits the bill perfectly and it was at their favorite store too! Where else can you pick up a shotgun, Geforce card, and a little 'sumtin sexy for the Misses?
They crop up on eBay occasionally. For the people who still play Glide games (like me), they are the Holy Grail, due to the 8X FSAA. I'll putter along with my 5500 in my Glide system for now, one day I'll grab one when they are obsolete just to have one.
Let's see - GF4 cards are made by XFX, Leadtek/ Gainward, Asus, MSI, AOpen, PNY, Abit, Soltek, Chaintek, EVGA, Albatron, Pine, AND Visiontek (see newegg.com). Visiontek was a popular retail card in the US only and one of the few not made in China/Taiwan. You still have 12 of 13 manufacturers left - I can't imagine how they will pick up the slack!
I was going to get a Geforce4 Ti not too long ago, figuring I'd already "saved" money by leaping the GeForce3 upgrade and could therefore justify spending more to get the newest high-end card, but I just don't feel the need. Works great in Windows, works great in Linux, reasonably fast, not that hot as long as I have my extra fans on, so it's all good.
If anyone needs a fair-to-decent 3D card with good dual-boot support, grab the GeForce2 GTS like T-Kir says. It's a bargain, even still.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
So do some 'real' research before you start knocking company's that do support open source.
Real research? I think it's blatantly obvious I did none. I quoted no sources. I referenced no "proof". My severly unresearched statement simply stated: ATI supports open source (http://www.ati.com/developer/linux.html). Show me where Nvidia has helped with the creation of open source drivers. Maybe they do, but I currently understand they don't.
Nice links BTW. Informative?
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
If such a large company in the tech world, like Visiontek can go under. What about NVidia? They've been declining and recently they announced they did not hit their targets for Q2. Could this be a sign of NVidia's demise too?
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
This has nothing to do with market share or costs. All the video card suppliers for Nvidia cards are doing great. Visiontek was different in that they were american. And like everything american noone wants anything to do with them. Their backers have pulled.
Flame away, but I dont see the other Nvidia suppliers going under. THis is just another case of America reaping what they sow.
I agree that Nvidia has been wise to stay out of manufacturing their own cards. Remember when 3dFX bought STB? That proved to be one big costly mistake that led to their assets being acquired by Nvidia. Producing boards is very expensive as one must constantly upgrade the assembly line. When the die shrinks to a smaller size, the entire line has to be upgraded to take advantage. 3DFX learned this the hard way as having the factory slowed down their ability to respond to changing technology and market conditions. Once they bought STB, they became competitors with their former customers, and lost their support. Diamond, Creative, and Goulimont all dropped their 3DFX product lines overnight. By remaining unemcumbered by fabs, Nvidia is able to shop around in Taiwan to pick the best foundaries for the dollar. If TMSC can't do the job, Nvidia can always switch to UMC of even IBM. Over at www.theregister.co.uk and www.theinquirer.net are often articles covering the problems the Taiwan foundaries are having in production, and speculation on how Nvidia should react. Remaining fab free has definately been a boon to Nvidia, leaving them nimble enough to concentrate on R&D and changing conditions. It also keeps costs down.
I bought a brand new Elsa card. Then when I went to their website for possible newwer drivers, it didn't load. I expected maybe it was my DNS server or something really crazy, so i thought about trying again later. I thought for a while and did a search on Google. Nothing of relevence came up. I dug deeper, and it wasn't until I came across an artical in German (thanks to a handy translater) that I found out that sessied operations 2 weeks after i bought the card. Kind of sudden, unexpect and amazingly never announced here in the US. Well thanks to NVIDA, my 3D Revolator glasses work because they decided to over production of the driver. I'm just happy I had a friend who cached the entire site so that I could get my BIOS updates.
Just to be clear, ELSA isn't tottaly dead. At the last momment of closing show across the world, ELSA Japan/Asia got a big contract and is still in alive to make up some of their debt and at http://www.elsa.com.jp (funny how its the same site as the former elsa.com but with all the US and German stuff stripped out.)
No.
Yet another casualty of an xtasy overdose.
Not because of VisionTek or ELSA folding, or the earinings restatements. The reason they are doomed is very simple: They made the cover of Wired, which ensures the imminent collapse of any company that makes the cover.
...
Remember Push technology, cover of Wired, vanished without a trace.
Remember Smell-o-Vision for the internet, cover of Wired, vanished without a trace.
Remember the New Economy, cover of Wired, vanished without a trace.
Remember Y2K, cover of Wired, vanished without a trace.
So next thing you know NVIDIA is on the cover of Wired
Last year I was looking for a new video card for my computer. First I got a Visiontek card based on an nVidia GeForce2 MX-400 with 64MB RAM. I took the thing home, and it flat out didn't work. I told Visiontek about it, and they told me to send it to them for a replacement, which I did at my own expense. When the replacement arrived a month later, it did not work at all either. So I demanded my fricking money back, since either they were giving me lemons (and by the time I finally got a non-lemon it would only be worth like half of what I paid for the original card, besides the fact that I didn't want to be sending bad cards back my whole life) or the card wasn't compatible with my computer, even though I met all the requirements listed on the box. They basically said screw you, 'the warranty is a manufacturing defect warranty, not a compatibility warranty,' and informed me that they couldn't possibly be compatible with everything out there (apparently even things that they said that they were compatible with), and basically wouldn't budge and said 'thanks for your money though.' So I finally bought a PNY card based on the exact same nVidia GeForce2 MX-400 chip with 64MB RAM, and it worked (and still does) beautifully. Both cards were identical in every way that anyone can tell other than the manufacturer. I took Visiontek to the Better Business Bureau, but apparently they lost the file or something got lost in the mail or something. I was going to take more action to make sure Visiontek paid for screwing a college student with no money out of over $100, but now that they're going out of business I guess I get the last laugh.
Wow, that was some seriously lucky timing for me. I had been saving up for a few months to buy a nice new VisionTek card, and at the last minute I decided to go with a ChainTech card, because it was the same price, and included an S-Video In/Out port, and a gold plated fan and heat sink (dont ask what the point of this is, it just looked cool and was the same price).
Preformance has been execellent, and the card never overheated (which is amazing, since the room it's in is usually 90-95 degrees in the summer. Anti-Aliasing preformance was great at 4x, 1024x768. Of course, I upgraded from a TNT2, so what would I know?
Show me where Nvidia has helped with the creation of open source drivers
:)
Okay, so I'm shopping for a new videocard. First a layout of some observations and requirements:
1) I want the most bang for my (300,-) euros
2) No matter which card I buy, it will be obsolete in 2 years time (my next upgrade)
3) It should run flawlessly in Linux, meaning both 2D, 3D and TV-out should be excellent and at fullspeed.
4) It must be Doom III ready
First let's check out Matrox, the other famous "Open Source" supporting chipset/card manufacturer. Parhelia drivers are not available at this time ("Coming Soon", that could be tomorrow, or next year), so scratch the Parhelia. I do have a G400 MAX I bought 3 years ago, hmmmm. The TV-out support requires a closed-source binary module, so they're not much better than NVidia when it comes to Open Source. On top of that, RENDER support has been utterly broken on TV-out for well over a year. Oh and you do not get hardware accellerated OpenGL or Xv(ideo) support on the second head. The G550 suffers the same braindeadness BTW. With a track record like that Matrox is definitely not an option right now.
Next ATI. Radeon 9700, sweeet! However there's no news on wether or not we'll have full Linux support for this beast, and when! The 8500 is supposed to be fully supported by the end of 2002 (when it will be about 2 years old!). Let's wait and see...perhaps at the next upgrade cycle.
And finally NVidia. Let's see, unified driver architecture, so both Linux and Windows support are on-par. The best Linux OpenGL stack at this time (ask John Carmack). Excellent Xv support. The main Xv architect is on NVidia's payroll BTW. He's also one of the most active X guru's these days, currently coding the new XAA architecture. Very good TV-out with accellerated RENDER *and* OpenGL support. Definitely the best of the flock!
So today I have a brandspanking new Geforce4 ti4400 128MB which replaced my aging Geforce2 GTS. Updating was as simple as swiping the cards.
I'm a strong Open Source supporter, but there is one area where Open Source hasn't proven itself yet: up-to-date videocard drivers...
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
the "lifetime" refered to in your warranty refers neither to your life, nor the life of your product, but rather to the life of the *company* backing it.
Can you say "Poof!" boys and girls?
I knew you could.
KFG
in a free market. Businesses come, businesses go. Just think of the convienience store field.
But with an excess of competition there's always someone else chomping at the bit to take a piece of the pie abandoned by those fallen by the wayside.
If VisionTek had been Nvidia's *only* retailer they'd be hosed right now, but with an excess of them VisionTek's loss is Asus's gain.
Nvidia will be fine in the long run and ATI will hardly even see a blip in their market share.
KFG
refered to shooting someone to get to move up one spot in line at the gas pump.
I've got a silver(Texaco)star to prove it. Some nice battle scars too.
In the *60's* not only did they compete on price, but couldn't lower the price low enough and so had to resort to giving away yachts and shit with a fill up.
Ah, those were the days, filling up your Eldorado, getting *change back from a five*, AND a lovely new vacation home in Zurich.
Exactly how was this bad for me?
KFG
What if you don't want to be stuck with the magical mystery tour of "whatever PCI video card we can pull out of the junkpile" for your secondary card?
And sheesh, some of those AGP-less machines are really cheap. For someone who isn't a gamer and does not give a pair of matched fucks about Unreal Tournament 2003, such a thing is a smart buy. If they later decide to start gaming, hey, they can always get bumped up to the minimum necessary to enjoy what's out there now.
And hey, you can get your 3d game fix perfectly well with the near-infinity of halflife mods out there, none of which require anything terribly mighty. Hell, the integrated stuff on the newer Intel boards can play quake3 just fine.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I wonder if ATI smelled the blood in the water earlier this year? You can bet that PC manufacturers are taking a really close look at the health of NVidia now!
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Nice post. You actually taught me a few things ("The main Xv architect is on NVidia's payroll. . .", ". . .unified driver architecture, so both Linux and Windows support are on-par.").
I'm not a big gamer myself, so the 3D aspect of things doesn't really interest me as much. I mean, I like the occasional session of JK2 (via Wine of course), and my GeForce 2MX has been solid, but I figure if more folks actual purchase prodcuts BECAUSE of the open source driver support, maybe this would become a non-issue. I KNOW Nvidia has the best drivers - hell, just read any review from the past two years, but I'm willing to "struggle" with open source drivers just because they're open source.
Now I'm no idiot (obviously not every one agrees), so if open source drivers plain SUCK and show no significant chance of improvement, I'm gone. From what I have heard though, the open source drivers for ATI cards are fair. I'll live with fair... for a while. I remember when the SB Live! first came out. Those drivers SUCKED HARD! But now, they're awesome. Sure the card is old, and I'm not even sure if the open source support has continued with the Audigy, but the SBLive is plenty for me.
Side note: I've been posting to /. for years, but I'm still not used to the mindless attacks folks make for now real reason. Thanks for actually posting something RELEVANT instead of just calling me a moron and spewing forth foolishness.
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
VisionTek isn't nVidia's only retailer, but they are the number one retailer, and their best retailer. I've bought an nVidia card from PNY, and it was the biggest waste of money I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing. I bought two GeForce cards from "cheapo" no-name brand retailers that were dead on arrival before I bit the bullet and bought a VisionTek that's been the best video card I've ever owned. VisionTek exiting the market means I exit the nVidia market, because I don't trust the other manufacturers like I trusted VisionTek. An ATI card will be the next on the docket for me.
Reverse engineering is always an option, but it takes time. By the time a video card can be reverse engineered fully, it'll be obsolete.
For the time being I think you will have to stick with the binary only drivers. However, I think that the HW vendors should follow Id's lead in their engines. 2 years after the product is released (or obsolete) the HW specs should be released for that card. Then the HW can potentially live forever.
Of course the good HW architectures (Nvidia) that are backward compatable will be able to work with open-sourced drivers based on released specs.
And why I hate OCP for that matter.
This seems like a big enough story that I'm surprised that it's scooped in a dopey source like HardOCP. What really bothers me is that they didn't even bother getting any reply from Visontek. I tried calling their HQ but it's before start of business.
I wander if some PR flack will soon be looking for a job.
Unless the story is true, but I doubt that it is. My guess is there is a germ of truth to this story, but no more. There may be a reorganisation in the works, but I dount it is more than that. Even if there is, it is pretty irresponsible journalism to publish such a big story with no verification.
evanchik.net
My first Visiontek Ti4600 had very weird problems. The screen would slowly get a yellow tinge. Had to send it back for a replacement. Thankfully it has been flawless.
Bill Gates has made the cover at least once recently, and probably several times.
Get off my launchpad!
After frying my board in a failed bios flash, I was happy to hear that VisionTek would take it back and fix it. Now...three months later I was dissapointed to find that the card I got back wasn't fixed at all...they just shipped it back to me. Well, I guess they don't really care about quality service now, huh?
Asus and Hercules, while they may be very good manufacturers to those "In the know", are not quite "Major Brand" - Asus's primary market is to OEMs and people who buy motherboards.
Anyone who goes into a retail store to buy a video card sees one of the following:
An ATi Radeon card
A VisionTek Xtasy GeForce card
A PNY Verto GeForce card (Much rarer thank VisionTek, this is going to change...)
Asus may have some of the best boards (I loved my V6800 deluxe), but they are nowhere close to being a major retail brand.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Assuming this story is true, it's a fairly interesting situation. It's unfortunate the upper management of VisionTek didn't have the business smarts to turn this around (when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade): if you're a reasonably sized company, then when the bank comes for its money, they're remarkably easy to manipulate). Still, the banks know this, so the fact they ended up in this kind of situation indicates a general lack of business wits.
Still, it's a golden opportunity for anybody wanting to get into the graphics card fab business. With VisionTek being liquidated, you can buy everything necessary at firesale prices. Buy the equipment, hire the employees off, and you've got a working graphics card manafacturer dirt cheap. Which means, if you play it well, you can undercut all your competitors on price and when the economy returns to force, you're in a stronger position than the original company was to start with (since you've managed to get the bank to take most of the setup costs). I only wish I had that kind of cash on hand. :)
Of course, there are lots of other amusing possibilities. The key thing to remember here is that if the bank is foreclosing, it means they'll probably be writing off most of the debt. From there it just takes a little bit of imagination...
I gotta give the obligatory mods on crack statement. I thought the parent post was quite funny.
Just out of curiosity, has anyone emailed the author of the article Kyle Bennett? His email is kyle@hardocp.com in case anyone is wondering...
This doesn't surprise me at all. They never paid their bills, and it's really hard to stay in business when you don't. They owed everyone money, and that was about a year ago. We couldn't buy stuff from over half of our vendors because of non-payment of past bills.
As far as the website getting updated, that won't happen, atleast not with news of the foreclosure. They never updated the website. Atleast not in a timely manner. : )
They were U.S. based - labor costs were too high. / A worker in China or Malaysia will work for a month on what an American makes in less than a shift.
Let's hear it for people who wholeheartedly endorse paying poor people of other nations crap wages! You know what? You're slime. As long as you keep thinking that way, we will all be the next victim. The Maylasians are just the "fortunate benefactors of a small paycheck," realistically, they are the next ones on "the big screw job" list.
Know what happens when our corporate masters realize that there are famines in Africa and that they can pay people in breakfast cereal instead of money? They move right out of Maylasia and right into the Congo. Another bonus: "What government regualtion? What environmental concerns? What child labor laws?" Don't laugh. Someone behind a big ass mahogany desk is thinking about this right now. That man behind the desk is dissappointed that the political stability of the region hasn't changed and he can move in right now. Someone is waiting to see the civil wars end, then move right in. The sad part about all of this is that the Maylasians will be screaming foul in a much shorter time than Americans ever did. Because in the old days, they used to feign responsibility. Too late now. The only gold watches the MAylasians will get will be the ones they steal from the factory floor.
Also, has anyone noticed that without a well paying job, people cannot afford the shiny new products that these corporations make? When the jobs move overseas, no one wins but the owner of the corporations. Of course, in a couple of years, there is no one to market to, because the pay and prices have all turned to the Maylasia standard... soon to be the Congo standard.
"Thanks corporations! I love you all! Nah, forget my raise. Buy your daughter a BMW. She deserves it. Go play some golf. Your back must be killing you from sitting at that big desk all day. Have fun. Don't worry about me... I'll be working late."
LeadTek is pretty good also.
I'm glad I wasn't even considering the VisionTek cards. Don't ask me why, but I had a feeling they wouldn't last long. They came out of nowhere, took over every retail shelf spot with their overpriced underfeatured cards, and now they will vanish. My current card is an Asus GF2 Deluxe, and I'm on the verge of getting an Abit Siluro GF4 because it has the quietest cooler of its class. VisionTek was the noisiest! 46db at one foot, vs 34db.. that means four times the loudness!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Have you been satisfied with the driver stability? I've been thinking about buying an ATI card for some time now but I remember all the trouble I used to have with their crappy drivers. Oh, and are you using it under Linux or Windows?
WTF????
ATI does NOTHING to support open source. What the hell are you talking about? All of the open source drivers you see for the ATI cards are done by people in their free time wih ZERO help from ATI.
Proof in point - THE WEATHER CHANNEL - is picking up the bill to design open source drivers for the Radeon 8500. That right there should tell you something.
NVIDIA does more to support open source just by releasing drivers for an open source platform! Wihthout them gaming in linux would be even more bleak than it is now.
Now shut your pie hole and go buy an nvidia card.
Derek
Visiontek had a lot of the OEM nVidia business. They produce the special ADC cards for Apple, and I believe that they are also the nVidia OEM producer for Dell.
With Just In Time (JIT) manufacturing, a fold of a major OEM supplier creates many problems for their customers. Apple may have seen this coming as witnessed by their switch to the ATI 9000 for the default in their high end models.
-- Len
if you cant get to hardocp's website, i made a backup of it...
http://www.floabie.com/hardocp/
Alcohol & calculus don't mix. Never drink & derive.
nV News has a story about this too...
...
...
:) ... I ended up buying a Blue Orb :)
What they mention is that
This has already claimed one of VT's suppliers, when VT failed to make payments, the supplier folded. This may also affect TotalEMS, a manufacturing company that was a supplier for VisionTek, and is owned by the "owners" of VisionTek, as TotalEMS was picked up in bankruptcy proceedings to begin with.
And considering the size of the company, this very well may cause problems with more companies.
The other thing is
The company doing rebates has stopped honoring them because of non payment.
On a side note, they also mention that they were informed that all content on Hard OCP is copyrighted...
Anyhow, I own a GF3 TI200 VisionTek card...I just had to replace the fan on it last week (not spinning)...I called their tech support # (800) and was on hold for over 3 hours until I decided there must be something going on...I figured it involved their move, but I musta been wrong
Anyhow, VisionTek made some good cards...all of the cards they made were Reference cards (except the extremely new Xtasy Everything). So, VisionTek cards should work well into the future.
Regardless of generic reference drivers, it can't hurt to grab the WQHL zips for Wintendo use http://www.visiontek.com/detonator4.shtml
>Let's hear it for people who wholeheartedly
>endorse paying poor people of other nations crap
>wages!
Woah, woah, woah, settle down there, chief.
He never endorsed it, he never said it was a good thing, he never said he would suggest it.
He only explained why it was done that way.
Re-read before you go off on your rant.
Oh, and as you slam corporations in general, be sure to consider who made your computer, your car, and the trucks that bring you your family-farm-organically-grown produce. And I suppose it's a mom'n'pop small business providing your internet connection, too.
-l
Yes, I have the 64MB GTS Pro card from VisionTek as well, and it is a rock solid card. It's about the virst video card I've purchased since the Voodoo 2 that I didn't feel like upgrading in a few months. nVidia's model might hurt them in the future, but you gotta love the fact that I will still be able to get drivers from nVidia after VisionTek folds. Cookie cutter boards do have their advantages.
yeah, that's all good, until you read the press release from 2 months ago that says their expanding because they are experiencing huge growth in sales.
press release
Be warned about that url, it has crashed every browser I've tried in linux so far including galeon, netscape 6.2, and mozilla 1.0. I've got a friend in the windows world however that was able to view it with IE and copied the text of the press release here.
There PR wennies need to learn HTML or use something other than dreamweaver. 60K of text for a 4 paragraph press release is to much.
If this were true, don't you think this would be something that they would put on their website?
/.'ed
As of 12:45 EDT, there is no mention of forclosure on their site.
I'd like to read the HardOCP article, but its been
It took many angry phone calls to the rebate fulfilment company before I finally got the rebate on 5/1/02, over six months later. E-mail directly to VisionTek during this period was ignored. You don't endear customers and build up repeat business with this type of treatment.
On an 800# call to tech support, I was on hold waiting for someone to pick up for about an hour (didn't give up thanks to my trusty speakerphone). Again a customer relation error, and in this case a costly one. I clearly wasn't the only person on hold. If you consider the number of people on hold and the amount they spent for each of those 800 number calls, it would have been much cheaper to have the staff to properly support the calls.
Curiously, you didn't have to "register" the card for warranty support, but there was a post paid card in the box that was supposd to be returned for the DVD player software. With the post paid card you were expected to "enclose" both a copy of your receipt and the UPS barcode from the back of the box. Why put a buyer through this and make them wait for something that should have been in the box? How do you "enclose" anything with a postage paid postcard? And since they got my UPC code for the rebate, how can I submit it again for my CD? If they wanted the information they should have just provided a "register within 30 days to activate your warranty" card, and why would they need both my receipt and UPC to prove I bought the product, doesn't the UPC or even just the postcard itself show them that?
All told I wasn't going to buy another card from them anyway.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I go out and buy a 3dfx VooDoo card.. the company folds a couple months later.
I go out and buy a VisonTex nVidia video card.. the company folds a couple months later.
Muhahahaha, which video card company will get the Hut-Moll kiss of death next.. Muhahahaha
Note to any video card companies out there.. contact me and we can make arrangements for me not to buy your product.
My, my, we do seem to have some issues don't we? Mom and Dad cut off your allowance, told you to move out and get a job?
One other thing, for most large corporations the "owner" equates to stockholders (think California Personnel Retirement System), NOT a single individual holding everything. Own a car, a computer perhaps? If so, save some of the vitriol for the guy in mirror.
I bought a ELSA GeForce MX card that started dying about 9 months after I purchased it. I called ELSA to get it returned under warranty and they told me that they were out of stock and should have some in a few weeks and that I might want to just hold onto it if there was any usage I could get out of it in the meantime.
I checked back in a few weeks to find the web site down, the phones no longer answering, and word on the street that they were only going to honor RMAs that were already in their system.
Ripped off good... but what are you gonna do???
Evolution: love it or leave it
... that we got trolled? I mean, come on! The latest press release from VisionTek states that they have expanded their manufacturing capabilities, and they have NOTHING to say about them going "boom" or other synonyms for it.
Just my.. um.. 3.14 cents...
pi
If I was running a large corporation, I would definitely move my production to China or any country with low labour costs, and half-decently educated people for tech-industry type jobs. There are other jobs people can do here, they just may not pay as much. But as my father would say "You should be thankful that you have a job at all." The production goes overseas to lower the price of the product, and our incomes drop cause we start doing low-paying service jobs, it all balances in the end ...
The point being is, you can't compete with North American labour running your factory anymore.
Now, I hate this fact. But you have to realize that a VERY VERY large chunk of the US and Canadian employed are in service industries now. Factory work is on the decline, and commissioned sales work is almost always availible as a form of employment. North America is quickly moving towards a market of selling products produced over-seas.
This is the way it seems to me right now at least. I'm probably wrong, but this is from my personal experience. I personally hate the whole concept behind any of this, but none of this will change unless we start tearing down capitalism.
If you're ready to go do that, great. If you're not, stop crying, cause this is the way the current system works.
But there's some people who're willing to help tear down capitalism out there.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Strange, strange. I bought a total of 3 "no name" NV cards. All of them working at the the moment. But I did take other people's advise before I bought...
Wow, corporations play golf and have daughters? Quality.
for the concise and CLEAR answers :) It makes much more sense as a business in light of that info...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
We have seen some problems with the auditors and the executives, however. And most of the problems that he raised still exist, even if we are currently benefiting from them.
BTW, this isn't the first time that Arthur A. has been caught "misauditing". Last time they got away without anyone pulling their license, wonder how it will work out this time. I think the last time was around 20 years ago, but it could be 30, or even a few more. I thought sure they'd have their license pulled, but after a week they dropped out of the news, just like this time. I think that they never did get any real punishment. A letter of censure, perhaps? Wonder about this time...
There seems to be a certain group of people who both steal on a grand scale, and are rich enough to buy their way clear whenever one of their schemes miscarries. And they seem to have a few companies that they like to do business with. It's not right to blame all companies because some are immoral and unethical. Unfortunately, the laws tend to shield them against any adverse consequences. (I wonder what the loopholes in the recent "Get Tough" law is, but it will probably be a decade before we find out. Of course they could just decide not to enforce it. That's what they do with a lot of the laws. Or only enforce it against their political opponents [that is technically grounds for having the law thrown out, but you've got to get the courts to agree with you].)
Seriously, corporations get away with first degree murder, without any punishment at all (well, a fine that was a lot less than the profits that they made by killing people). Here I am talking about intentional poisoning. The corp. knew that the chemicals that they were dumping into the water supply of the city were slow poisons, and that in a few years many people would die because of it. But they guessed at the cost of proper disposal, and they guessed at the fine, and they guessed that by poisoning people they'd save money. They were right. Despite having this stuff put in writing, they weren't fined enough to even remove their profits. Hardly punitive.
This happened in Georgia, I think, and the court case was covered in Science News. Earlier this year (I think). Sorry, I don't save the back issues (which is why I didn't name the corporation, as well as provide more accurate dates [don't want to make a mistake about who to blame in this one]).
I suppose that you could say that this is an exceptional case, but how do you know?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
and i was just hours away from buying a visiontek geforce4 ti200. should i reconsider? what video card should i buy instead?
Gah... I just sent in my broken GeForce 2 card to them a few months ago. No word since. Does anyone know if RMAs will be processed, can I even expect to see my little $300 purchase fixed and returned to me?
Alari
I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.
I'm a multihead-one card user right now, myself- but it's impractical to do anything heavy and 3d on more than one monitor at once, as the card is already laboring hard enough to support one screen.
No, if you want very fast 3d on both screens you'd better go for two cards.
And in practice, I'd have to say that some of the driver issues with dualhead on one card have been exactly as weird as the ones I had with two cards. I still do dualhead on one card because of power and space concerns, though.
On the other hand, one advantage of having one card do two monitors is that the capabilities of both monitors are relatively equal (in practice, head 2 is a little weaker than head 1 on recent nvidia cards) so you can throw a performing 3d app from one screen to the other without entering into a magical hell bus ride of slowness.
All in all, it's nice that both options exist.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Put your primary manipulation views on monitor 1, and then put one really big scene view on the other one. Good fun, and you can devote as much screen space as possible to actual fiddling room.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I just sent their tech email address an inquiry. Somehow I doubt they will write me back.
Evolution: love it or leave it
Get the $87 Radeon 8500LE at newegg.com. It smokes a Geforce3 and costs less. :)
Repeal the DMCA!
Slashdot has a comment area so things like this can pop up when the news is doubtful. Unlike many other "news" sites. Slashdot maybe wrong about as often as they are, but at least we'll find out by checking the comments.
When the dollar is high, it fucks manufacturing jobs in the US and leaves us with the trade deficit. But I bet you loved it last time you went on vacation.
...but everything has it consequences...
I think tariffs are a good thing in moderation... it evens out the abilities of foreign companies to undercut american jobs.
you probably voted republican anyway
I had passed up the store warranty where I had bought my visiontek card (Futureshop -- Canada's version of Best Buy, Fries, etc I think?).
After looking at the side of the box and seeing "lifetime warranty" I thought "great, don't have to spend $34.50 on 3 year plan"...
Never thought they could fold, read that they had a VERY large share of the nvidia geforce market.
But then again look at 3DFX, who thought they'd go under, but at least Nvidia (I think that is who snatched them up?) said a statement on 3dfx.com a while back that they would carry on the warranties of 3dfx cards.
well, this does tell us that their cards are under-valued and prices will go up soon...
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
I thi
A few things:
Open source video drivers are very good for one thing: awesome stability. When I was running X dual head on a TNT2 + Matrox combo with full open-source drivers on my workstation only 4 months ago I had uptime of more than 50 days. This is not on a back room server doing only one thing, this is on a workstation with several dozens of windows open, 6 desktops, all sort of things going at once.
Now I've `upgraded' (no choice, work policies dictate) to a P-IV with some GF4 card, for which there is no open-source driver available, it's either use the vesa driver or the NVidia closed source one. I use the latter one. So sure I have dual-screen on the one card, accelerated openGL and TV-out (maybe, never tried it), but the stability is way down.
My desktop activities haven't changed much but so far I haven't been able to use this setup more than a couple of weeks at a time without random freezes, weird events such as windows not wanting to show up, bizarrre interation between applications (sometimes I have to close mozilla to get openGL working again, talk about weird) and a general feeling of instability. I hate it.
So it's a great thing that NVidia provides these drivers, and maybe they are great from a Windows user perspective. However talking from an open-source perspective where everything is rock-solid, they are simply not up to par, although they are improving all the time, I must admit (I tried the NVidia drivers only last year with the previous setup and things were atrocious. Couldn't get X working more than a couple of hours at a time).
People want different things. Open source is slower to get there, obviously, due to its process . But when it does get there it's usually better. I look forward to upgrading my home setup with a Radeon 8500 at a very low price when XFree86 supports it. I'm in no hurry.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-954566.html
VisionTek denies everything. Says they're still in business and doing just fine.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Before the TnT was the Riva 128.
It was about even with the original Voodoo, but had integrated 2d/3d that was pretty good.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?