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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."
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.
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."
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?
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
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?
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'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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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