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VisionTek Folds

Posted by timothy on from the crinkle-crinkle-smoosh dept.

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."

22 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Don't act surprised by foonf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Don't act surprised by foonf · · Score: 3, Informative

      (addendum) Canopus is still around, they just don't sell commodity PC graphics cards outside of Japan anymore. Sorry.

      --

      "(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
  2. Lifetime Warranty? by The+Big+Dude · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Lifetime Warranty? by eclectro · · Score: 3, Funny

      You are not going to get warranty service in your lifetime.

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
    2. Re:Lifetime Warranty? by Sivar · · Score: 3, Informative

      The pro cards generally had faster cores, higher quality memory and capacitors, better warranties, and drivers that were optimized for professional work. The drivers could be used on regular Geforce cards by doing some precision saudering, but the other benefits didn't materialize doing so.

      --
      Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
  3. Tell that to 3Dfx. by Blaede · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Tell that to 3Dfx. by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

      While the choice to produce their own boards was certianly a substantial part of the problem, the large problem was simply that of being complacent.

      When the Voodoo first came out it quite simply shocked the industry. When 3dfx first demoed their technology on a simulator, their competitors lauged at them, saying they could never get real silicon to do that. 6 months later those competitors were sitting and taking notes when a real Voodoo was being demoed.

      Now when the Voodoo 2 came out 3dfx was able to keep their commanding lead as THE 3d kings, but there was a problem: The Voodoo 2 wasn't really a new card. It was just the next generation of Voodoo technology. Ok, fine, all the time companies release refinement on what they have already, this is no big thing.... Except 3dfx just kept doing it.

      The Banshee was just Voodoo technology, and even the Voodoo 3 was nothing more than a fast Voodoo 2 compressed to a single chip. Now all the while, nVidia had been sneaking up on them. With the TNT they introduced a card that, while not as powerful as the current Voodoos, had features (32-bit support being the most important) that they didn't. With later TNT2s, nVidia actually became the first to dethrone the Voodoo3 as the speed king.

      Well No problem said 3dfx, they had this new VSA-100 technology in the pipe (what the Voodoo 5 used) that kicked the crap out of the TNT processors. Fine, but one huge problem: VSA-100 was still well over a year off from being real silicon and nVidia was NOT sitting still. By the time VSA-100 saw the light, the GeForce and then GeForce 2 had seen the light of say, and 3dfx just couldn't keep up.

      3dfx got complacent, they forgot that their competition was fighting hard to beat them and to produce better GPUs. They keep trying to milk more out of their again Voodoo architecture and ny the time they had something new out the door, nVidia had them beat.

      I was a huge 3dfx fan and owned a dual 12mb Voodoo2 rig that cost about $600, and then replaced that for a Voodoo 3 later, but when the GeForce came out I just couldn't stick with 3dfx any more.

    2. Re:Tell that to 3Dfx. by Darren+Winsper · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, it's a somewhat different story to what appeared to be going on.

      3dfx knew the Voodoo2 wouldn't be king forever. They were working on Rampage as its successor. Unfortunately, it fell to feature creep and kept getting delayed.

      When 3dfx bought STB they pulled engineers off Rampage to design Banshee. Banshee went through so many respins it was silly, hence the huge delay. By now, Rampage had fallen even further behind, so much so they needed to go back to the drawing board. The huge exodus of engineers that had recently occured didn't help either.

      In order to keep chips moving, 3dfx die shrinked the Banshee, put the TMU it lost from the Voodoo2 back on, increased the clock and called it the Voodoo3. The Voodoo5 started out as the Voodoo3 4000 to combat the TNT2 ultra, but then 3dfx learned about the GeForce and added the T-buffer to produce the Voodoo5.

      Rampage taped out around late November-early December 2000. They even got the OpenGL drivers up to playing Quake3 (There are screenshots floating around). Unfortunately, by then it was too late. It's a shame, because I hear their "texture computer" was quite interesting.

    3. Re:Tell that to 3Dfx. by Afrosheen · · Score: 3, Informative

      IIRC the first-gen TNT cards had a few significant advantages over the 3dfx cards. I originally owned a Banshee but traded it to a friend for a TNT. Why?

      1. Huge texture support. The Banshee could only render 256x256 textures while the TNT could render 1024x1024 textures (correct me if I'm wrong, it's been awhile).

      2. 32 bit color. Remember when quake3 first came out? The voodoos left you with 16bit color ONLY. That and the small textures made quake3 look like ass.

      3. Poor OpenGL ICD that hit the market pretty late in the 3dfx cards. They got a little too comfortable with Glide.

      4. Bad 2d quality. While the Banshee was a step up from the other Voodoos in this respect, it still didn't render as cleanly in 2d as the TNT cards.

      5. Splintered drivers. The TNT cards (starting way back then) only had one driver set. Upgrading was easy.

      So yeah, 3dfx had a good product at the time but Nvidia already had them beat coming out of the gate with their first product. After awhile the friend that traded me the TNT wanted to trade back LOL.

  4. Dammit! by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Funny

    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."
  5. Companies need to learn how to make money. by Mustang+Matt · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Companies need to learn how to make money. by tftp · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Superior products, largest reseller of Nvidia cards... Where did they go wrong? I suppose financial scandal could do it, but was that the case?

      I doubt the accounting had any role in this. They are small fish.

      What is more likely is that the investor (or investors, or VCs, etc.) who owned the company did some calculations on a napkin and came up with conclusion that closing the company -now- is more profitable than allowing it to exist. This is a common problem with VCs who own 95% of your company and make decisions for you.

    2. Re:Companies need to learn how to make money. by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Interesting
      They were U.S. based - labor costs were too high.

      I'm surprised anyone had the nerve to start manufacturing anything inside American borders. It's a miracle they lasted so long. A worker in China or Malaysia will work for a month on what an American makes in less than a shift. Add on high American taxes, restrictive labor laws, environmental costs, and the constant threat of ruin by litigation and it's no wonder nothing but a few specialized industries produce products with the label "Made in U.S.A."

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  6. Lack of detail by jsse · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  7. Just an observation... by t0qer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  8. The wallmart equation by Stonent1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    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?

  9. Visiontek doesn't even matter! by fejji · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!

  10. Re:Hmmm... by barfy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Interestingly enough, the answer is in this weeks Slate...

  11. The GeForce2 GTS is a good buy still by Wee · · Score: 4, Informative
    I've got a GeForce2 GTS Pro, the 64MB AGP one. I'm using it on this very PC. It's been a great card. I bought it (right after the GeForce3s had just been out, whenever that was) for like $75.00 brand new. I figured that I'd get the highest end of the previous model and save some cash to upgrade when another new model comes out. By all rights I should have bought a GeForce3 by now since they are getting cheap in the face of the GeForce4s, but the GTS Pro I have seems fine still. It doesn't have all the latest features (I don't think it does hardware T&L for example), but I haven't noticed any game I've played lagging at med-high settings on my AMD 1.33GHz (that includes MoH:AA, SoF2, GTA3, and even the new Battlefield 1942 demo).

    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.

  12. As 3DFX learned the hard way by svzurich · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  13. NVIDIA is doomed! by monopole · · Score: 4, Funny

    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 ...

  14. Why I hate Slashdot by m_evanchik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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