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S3 Buys Diamond Multimedia
Anonymous Cowboy wrote in
to tell us that S3 has aquired Diamond Multimedia.
"Why" is still sorta up in the air, but hey, consolidation is
all the rage these days. Maybe they'll bundle Rio's with
video cards or something.
It is also interesting to see what happens to all those Taiwanese graphic card producers, perhaps they will have to use only Intel chips from now on? Permedia is still there, but they currently are out of the game. Rendition is already gone.
Fuck you, asshole.
b/c Packard Hell sucks. This is not a personal bias, but an all around industry opinion. And S3 has had there share of problems too. The real issue here is what will Diamond's future product line consist of? S3 based cards thats what. Hello Creative Labs and nVidia .. maybe "nVidia Labs?" (thats a tip folks, right it down)
Pepsi owned Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Taco Bell. They spun them off a few years ago into their own company. Look at the delivery trucks for these three, they all have each others logos on them. Easy way to look at, notice the Stars Wars commercials with the little dog, The Colonel and that Pizza Hut Chick.
a) Virges are dog-slow compared to any other 3D chipset. Even ATI can consistently beat them.
b) Virges have had a long-lasting habit of misreporting PCI memory usage. This requires anyone using a 3Dfx or Bt848 tuner to run all sorts of workarounds. I think other memory-mapped cards may be affected, too.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Companies buy other companies for lots of reasons. Diversifying their product line is only part of the reason.
Companies often buy other companies to take control of their destiny. They may buy a competitor to gain more market share, and with market share, greater ability to steer the market with respect to pricing and product cycles.
They may buy a customer to gain more influence on the consumer side of their market. I think this is the case with S3. Diamond is probably one of their biggest customers. Diamond is on shakey ground financially, and if they flounder it would be very bad for S3.
Buying a customer has other advantages as well. If your customer happens to be a big customer of one of your competitors as well you can buy them and close off one of your competitors major distribution channels.
This can adversely effect your competitors cashflow for some period of time and allow you to gain the upper hand. A position you might exploit in the future by buying up the weakened competitor.
Rendition was aquired by Micron, and this was part of the reason they didn't put out a chipset this time around. They actually had dual-head ready way before Matrox did, and some really cool features which are going into their next design.
Since Micron aquired Rendition, they have lots more money and staff to play with, and so didn't have to worry about hurriedly releasing a new chipset like everyone else. They're taking their own time, and it will rock when it does come out.
First up, I would say that due to the 3dfx/STB linkup, and this shoe dropping today, this trend is probably gonna go a bit further before it's all over. And if I was laying odds, here's how I think that it would/will play out, over the next couple years:
1. I think that the S3/diamond linkup, is likely. It may require some changes in the makeup of the takeover, but I think that at some price, it will happen.
2. Once it's signed and sealed, Nvidia, is going to be left in an untenable position. True, there are several small companies supporting them. But 2 of their biggest customers, are now going to be totally in bed with their enemies.
3. Either Creative will snap up Nvidia, or Hercules will get snapped up by Nvidia, or some combination of the three even, possibly. Whoever gets left out of this stage, is hosed, as far as video cards go. Sure there are options, but none are very palatable, once S3, Nvidia, and 3dfx are all captive organizations.
4. Moving forward, once the M&A frenzy starts to die down, I would say that in terms of cutting edge tech, the advantage will be to either ATI, or Matrox, for the next couple years. 3dfx, S3, and Nvidia, are going to be preoccupied for some time, absorbing and integrating into their new organizations, and engineering WILL suffer as a result. Once the suits start hacking away at organizations, nobody is gonna be very comfortable for a bit.
And regarding Nvidia's chances, I'd say that once the market realizes what's going on in this segment,and it dawns on analysts that nvid's market share is going to suffer as a result of what's happened so far, their stock is likely to get hammered down, and very likely Creative will take that opportunity to snap them up.
What do I think of this, as a consumer? I'm not sure. I think that it's not as catastrophic as some fear mongers are saying. Realistically, this shouldn't have too big a real effect on the competitive market in video cards. If Creative is the only big guy making Nvid cards, so what. It's not like there was a significant difference between their cards, and Diamonds anyhow. Both card companies basically used reference designs on their stuff anyhow. And there will still be plenty of price competition, just not within the same chipset. A Diamond/S3 card, is still going to be living in the same space, as a Creative/Nvid card, and will still have to be price competitive. You'll just have to spend a little more time comparing specs, and seeing who has a better total package, and not just comparing 2 functionally identical cards to see who has the best price.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
No taco bell where I am (western australia) but I take your point. Although, I seem to remember reading this story somewhere.
It may have been in a book called 'The Way of Strategy'.
I knew it!
I mean, nothing against them, but the only time I've ever seen S3 cards are bundled with pre-built computers. (Actually, on motherboards. And granted, that's a lot of video cards/lil' onboard chips.) But who would buy an S3 if it wasn't bundled? Is it just because they're so cheap?
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
I wish I had seen this before I sold my stock for a loss...
If someone like Sony had bought them I would have been much happier. As it is, they're hoping to harness the synergies of combining two lame management teams. You'll note how the market hammer the stock price of both companies today.
STB use make boards with nvida TNT chips until they were bought out.
;)
Diamond makes boards using the TNT chips, now it's
being bought out by S3.
Who will nvida buy to make sure their cards make it to the shelf? Canopus? (Can't remember how to spell it)
The only cards that STB put out now are 3DFx and in the future the only cards Diamond will put out are S3. The only major manufacturer left that produce TNT cards is really Creative Labs. Maybe Creative will buy nvida?
Who really knows? *shrug* gonna buy the G400 from Matrox anyways.
Since 3dfx bought STB, what are the odds of STB making any non-3dfx boards? What are the odds of Diamond making any non-S3 boards in the future?
I hope this doesn't happen, but it is certainly possible. Diamond currently makes a lot of boards that easily beat anything that can be made with an S3 chip. If S3 takes such a route and, like 3dfx, stops selling chips to other board manufacturers, both companies could be in serious trouble.
Yeah, say more about the virge...
:-)
I just bought one (generic style) for $15 US, and it did just what I expected:
- TV in / out were PAL in an NTSC land (oh well)
- 2d performance was the best I've ever seen in this price range (good enough to drag "windows with contents" in windows without total system slowdown)
- 3d performance bites the big ass
- Drivers were the easiest I've ever seen to use, even included the ability to overclock the memory on the board if you felt lucky...
Not perfect, but all the important stuff worked (2d, drivers). For this price, I think I got a great deal. And MPEG video playback is smoooooth...
3dfx felt that the squabbling between the manufacturers was hurting sales more than anything. S3 is probably doing this precisely because it hasn't had a big market presence/reputation.
"Though it may take a thousand years, we shall be FREE."
What would that be? That if you have a 'girlfriend' and break up with her, she deserves half of your freaking assests? (yes, they really are trying to get that put into law there... THATS not something I'd prefer)
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Eastern Australia here .. and i'd just like to say for the record that those stupid ad's annoy me no end.
If i see that low quality dub of the kid 'saving' pepsi from a truck crashing off the cliff once more, i'm going to puke.
-KRAZ
You make it sound like there is some outside power that tells Creative, and Diamond what boards to make, and how many of each.
I'm sure that Nvidia probably didn't notice a huge shift after STB got bought out. But I'm willing to bet, that when there is only 1 major manufacturer pushing their cards, Nvidia WILL be hurt.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Hope So, i'd hate to see 3Dfx get any more power than they already have.
Don't forget a few months ago 3dfx tried to buy Diamond instead of S3.
But the deal didn't go through so they decided to buy STB instead. If people are wondering why S3 is buying Diamond just go back about 4 months and read all the interviews with 3dfx spokespeople about why they were buying STB.
OEM deals are where the money is and it is difficult for a chip company such as S3, nVidia, and the old 3dfx to get design wins with companies like Dell, HP, etc.
ATI made crappy low end junk but had the most market share because of all the OEM deals. They gave the OEMs what they wanted, a guaranteed supply of low cost boards along with excellent support.
OEMs don't care about the absolute fastest thing, they need a guaranteed supply first and foremost.
S3 realizes that in order to compete with the integrated chip/board companies like Matrox, ATI, and 3dfx/STB they need to sell boards as well.
nvidia knows this too, it's just a matter of time.
There is one other reason for S3 to buy Diamond. One of 3dfx's reasons was faster time to market if you build the boards yourself but the reason reason is more $$$ from OEM deals.
Whats scary is that having 3 MS execs in the top ten list of richest ppl (ok lets not quibble..richest men), MS could buy out piddly companies like nVidia and make their own graphics card (thats another tip kids, right it down).
:)
"Microsoft eXtreme Pixel Pusher" (TM)
-not compatible with Linux, but kicks serious a** anyways
A company that big would be able to hike up prices in all other areas to fund dirty tricks to get rid of any newcomers.
Thats why most of the world has anti trust laws. But if a company got so big it controlled the world economy, anti trust laws wouldn't work, because the economy of any country going against them would collapse.
Great... now that NVIDIA seems to be one of the leading 3D hardware providers to support Linux, who's gonna actually make the cards? STB? er.. no, 3dfx only. Diamond? Nope, they're an S3 shop. Guess that leaves Creative, and all of the taiwanese clone boards. For one, this means less competition for NVIDIA-based boards, so I assume that Creative will be free of some price pressures. Damn... wonder how long 'til Pepsico buys 'em all.
S3 is buying: :)
a)Diamond's customer base (ppl with no clue who think 'hey Diamond is cool' only to get a sucky chip set and not something like a TNT2)
b)Diamond's brand name (they have some solid products)
c)Diamond's non-graphic card products (ie. Rio, home networking, etc)
d)Diamond's software engineers (they can write decent drivers)
e)Diamond's labour work force (though some jobs will be redundant and eliminated)
f)Those cool boxes that Diamond products ship in
Now, each board manufacturer just makes cards with their own chip. No more cooperation, no more choice. Want 3dfx? You have to buy STB. Want S3? Well, now you'll have to buy Diamond. Of course, this does not bode well for XFree86 developers, trying to keep up with changes in technology. Developments like this are only going to encourage concealment of design specs *cough*ATI*cough*.
It would be interesting if Diamond/S3 decides to enter the PC market. Collectively, they own enough products to produce an entire box - except for the hard drive and CPU. Perhaps Western Digital and Transmeta can be wooed.......
No sig.
>times better, but my Uncle Fred could care less >when he goes to Walmart to buy his next PC.
Then you're Uncle Fred is l00ser and deserves what he gets (sorry I'm in a foul mood).
Seriously though ppl like him could care less of specs, so products such as integrated gfx chips on the MB is perfect.
>3DFX/STB
>S3/Diammond
>??/Creative
As I noted in my previous posts Creative and nVidia will team up to form an exclusive partnership (call your stockbrockers folks..geez i'm just giving away the info for free here).
>Oh well. How long before Nvidia/Permedia/#9 or
#9 can die a slow and horrible death for all I care (bad experiences with past cards. 'Ticket To Ride' my a**)
Permedia.. they can go way of 3DO for all I care as well.
The AC said it well - I don't have a personal grudge with PB, but I've seen enough of their hardware to know that I could build a better PC out of a stick of chewing gum and a rubber band :-)
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
WTF??? What the hell does this have to do with:
a) S3's purchase of Diamond?
b) nVidia and the TNT2?
c) Grahpic cards?
d) Technology and nerd stuff in general?
Go troll somewhere else
I never thought S3 what that big of a company. I always thought diamond multimedia was much bigger. Where are these companies getting money?.....are they pulling it out of their ass? Send down the flames.
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
Not even close. Their TV-out has never been spectacular, and their cards are nothing special.
The best TNT card was made by ASUS (most overclockable, best quality, blah blah), and the cheapest TNT card was made by Creative, so that leaves Diamond with just the brand name. The best TNT2 card is currently made by Hercules. Creative had the maracas to fly in the face of 3dfx with the Glide wrapper. Diamond is just another card.
I had a Diamond Stealth2 S220 a while back, and it was a good card (though they were the only ones to use the cheaper v2100, most people used the v2200)
Lots of people like the Diamond brand name, and I'm really not sure why...there's nothing special about any of their products. It's nice that they support Linux and all, but there are definitely other vendors.
I think the problem is that this is starting to be a trend. Soon nVidia will buy someone like Hercules (since they will have lost all the revenue generated by Diamond and STB cards now that these companies will likely be selling only their parent companies chipsets exclusively). Then each competitor will own their own company. Maybe Trident will buy someone too.
The biggest problem is that those of us with Diamond products will probably be screwed in the driver support venue. Thank god nVidia makes decent reference drivers or i'd be really concerned about my recent V770 Ultra purchase.
I worked for Diamond for about a year, and left this last February. I have suspected that Diamond has been grooming itself for quite a while to be aquired. Diamond management had been making cuts that look good on paper, making for a better bottom line, while shooting themselves in the foot in the long run. (Scaling back customer service, outsourcing RMA, eliminating the repair department to name a very few.)
I would guess that S3 may decide to sell off Diamond's Communication Division, which is pretty much maintained seperatly (in Vancouver, WA) from their main HQ in San Jose. They probably want to sell very soon before the communications division product line and development becomes irrelivant, and focus on video.
My $.02 worth, anyway.
... so the joke about selling video cards with Rios doesn't quite work. :)
Anyway, I'm very concerned that 3dfx will be buying S3, which would mean that I have a 3dfx Rio *shudder*. Luckily I switched to Creative Labs for nVIDIA chipsets a little while ago. I guess I'll just have to get everything from Creative Labs now. (I personally dislike 3dfx due to their business practices and the whole Babbages incident)
There's no way 3dfx could buy S3 at the current time. They just spent a LARGE chunk of money acquiring STB, and S3 was a bigger outfit before the STB/3dfx deal. Also, one of my friends works for S3, and he says that any rumors of 3dfx buying them are bullshit.
except it won't really be a "company" anymore and it will simply call itself
"The Government."
B-
When you have a lot of voting shares in a company, your feelings suddenly become important. Granted, DiamondMM doesn't care WTF I feel, but when myself and a few thousand others express similar opinions, they tend to take notice.
RB
Guys, you must be confused. The Latest SavageS4 video card is pretty good at 3D. If you look at benchmarks you will see it performs up to par with others (Banshee,TNT). Even Id people have said (someone in their plan) that they like it ..
This could get interesting... ;O)
I think they probably did it so they could have a company selling only their video cards, such as STB-3dfx. That way they can get more exposure. Everything else diamond sells is just a bonus.
pretty much what the subject says...I don't believe this acquisition will affect the end-consumer any time in the near-future. Diamond will be run as a subsidiary of S3, but business tactics and products won't change because of it.
*my 2 cents*
-hajmola
ps: i still despise S3 with a passion!
Having been on the receiving end of this kind of acquisition before, I'm not sure I want to do so again. I previously purchased two STB Velocity 4400 cards (Riva TNT based). Shortly after this, 3Dfx bought STB and STB discontinued all cards using chips other than 3Dfx. Fortunately, they have continued to support the Riva cards.
I was considering the Viper 770 Ultra because I want to upgrade my game machine to a TNT2, but I'll probably go with another company now, because I don't want to end up in a situation where my card isn't actively supported by the company that made it.
This seems to be the case more and more these days. Some company that makes a variety of products is acquired by some other company, and the first company drops everything not made by the parent company.
Of course, that is to be expected in these kind of deals, but it leaves me with a bad feeling. I like competition in these things because it makes for more variety and better prices. Ultimately, I think it will probably hurt Diamond, because they will be stuck with S3's video chipsets. Hopefully, their other products will take up the slack.
Anyway, I probably won't be buying anything from them now. I'm definitely not buying from STB anymore.
Who else out there thinks
there will be one huge company
someday?
GlobalCo or some such nonsense.
Why? Not a difficult question to answer. Same reason why 3dfx bought STB... Chip manufacturers want more control over the final product. When you only make chips, it's up to the whim of the board manufacturer what size/type of memory to use, what clock speed, what features, etc. S3 must be realizing they can put out a better total package if they have control over the entire path from the chip to the monitor plug.
It will be interesting to see how these new "uber-companies" compete with companies like ATI, Matrox, etc. who already do the chips and boards by themselves.
If these board company buyups prove to be successful, watch for other chip-only companies like nVidia, etc. to follow the lead.
...Diamond Multimedia bought the German
graphics card developer Miro.
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
S3 has had problems recently - maybe they are raiding the company war chest to shore up their position. If you've got it, spend it.
What's wrong with providing hardware for the cheaper computers? I do not quite understand your logic of hating them. Could you explain, or do you have some kind of grudge against Packard Bell?
I found reason #428 why not to like S3 :-)
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
Nothing really. They basicly won the 2D chipset market 2 years ago with some very decent chips (Matrox was faster, but S3 was MUCH cheaper).
Then they did a HUGE misstep with the S3 Virge 3D chipsets, which were somewhat buggy for 2D and really bad for 3D, even at that time. This caused S3's reputation to suffer greatly, and they lost a lot of the customer loyalty, from both vendors and end-users.
The new Savage 3D chipsets are reported to actually be pretty good, performance-wise, but it is also reported that they need better drivers for Windows 9x, and I don't think that S3 has released specs for the XFree86 community yet.
>How long before Nvidia/Permedia/#9 or whoever teams up w. Creative leaving us with out a venue for interesting 3rd party chips such as the TNT
TNT = nVidia
I'm not sure how attractive Creative would be for a video processor company to buy. Isn't Creative into all kinds of multimedia products like sound cards, cd roms and such?
But I agree overall that chip mfrs. like 3dfx and S3 buying card fabricators will probably mean less choice and for consumers, less competition which could mean lower quality and higher prices (lower value) for customers. Right now when a chip like TNT2 comes out, I can look around and see which card mfrs. have the better drivers, software bundle, added features and price. It would stink if that goes away.
I am currently living in France and can think of several things we could learn from the French ... There are plenty of people in my own hometown who can teach me to be an asshole, and I'm sure the vagrants on State St. can teach me about how to maintain poor personal hygiene. Aside from that, there is nothing to learn from the French. Like the last poster said, this has nothing to do with video cards, so take a hike, hosebeast.
Yeah, this pretty much marries nVidia and Creative, since they are the only standalone board/silicon manufacturers left. Only, as good as their sound hardware is, I am not the biggest fan of Creative video cards. Or CD-ROMs, or modems...
No sig.
> Isn't Creative into all kinds of multimedia
> products like sound cards, cd roms and such?
So is Diamond.
Well, your experience with diamond is much different from mine. I have never had a diamond product whose drivers worked well *Except* their cards with the S3 chipsets on them.
-Cheetah
for both boards and chips there are many smaller companies. boards: Hercules, and all the Taiwanese companies including board makers, asus, etc. chips: intel (not really independent since it is huge and can make its own boards) and others (whose names I can't remember).
No north american independent makers (unless Celestica or IBM or some other companies with fabs and board plants start making nVidia or some other chipset).
btw: Creative won't be bought by nVidia, creative is huge so it'd do the buying.
Does anyone remember the old tv show "Dinosaurs"? It was all pupets or people in costumes. It had a company that was THE company, period. No other companies existed. Their add's were "Why? Because We Say So." Doesnt it look like thats what we are heading too?
Er... you've got it the other way around... CL would be more likely to purchase nVidia, due to its deep pockets.
So now we have 3Dfx/STB vs. S3/Diamond vs. nVidea/Creative and nVidea/Hercules... I'm not sure it matters a lot that there won't be any 3Dfx/Diamond or nVidea/STB cards, for example.
We would really lose out if, say, ATI bought out nVidea, 3Dfx and Matrox. (I have no idea about the relative sizes of the companies - just an example).
True, not a fair comparison. When I got the card it was part of a $3000 PC (before I started building my own) that was supposed to be a 3d-accelerated multi-media machine. Probably true that this was mostly the fault of Gateway for putting this card into a machine to do something it wasn't capable of, I still thought it was a piece of crap.
Plus, if one board/chip maker goes down, it's gonna stay down...without anyone to replace it. Market entry just got a lot harder.
What's with Transmeta and CPUs? Transmeta makes CPUs? All I know about them is that they do Kaffe...
Way to go stockholders! Wooohooo!
Just when you get depressed about all the mergers and greed of capitalism, and your thoughts turn to M$...boy, something like this happens!
Where do you want to go today? . Why? Because We Say So.
The only unreliable part of my Linux box is the pesky S3 virge that my roommate pawned off on me - random locking in X is the main problem. I'm eagerly awaiting my V770, at which time the Virge will be boxed up and thrown in some dark corner.
I am English and would like to think that there are better countries out there! If you can't think of any improvments, you have no immaginanation.
...
I am currently living in France and can think of several things we could learn from the French
I can't understand this kind of bussiness movements.
What is S3 buying anyway? Diamond brand?
WHat Diamond have that s3 needs to buy?
Because I feel that S3 have the tech skills to develop any product they want. And at 10% of the price of Diamond acquisition, they can take S3 brand from a OEM level to general public.
SO where's the deal?
I suppose this is needed to prepare for the onslaught of Intel's 810. With the advent of the 810 why even bother w. a 3rd party graphics card?????
Oh sure your TNT Ultra2 or whatever is a zillion times better, but my Uncle Fred could care less when he goes to Walmart to buy his next PC.
So here is the future of grahics:
Wintel 810 w. the 75x
3DFX/STB
S3/Diammond
??/Creative
Oh well. How long before Nvidia/Permedia/#9 or whoever teams up w. Creative leaving us with out a venue for interesting 3rd party chips such as the TNT.......
Sigh
Actually, that's something of a fallacy. I was reading about it in Applied Corporate Finance (it's as interesting as it sounds) the other day. People used to think that, but you have to remember that for these companies (at least the publically traded ones), pleasing the shareholders is the #1 priority. Thus it makes no sense for a company to spread itself thin (unless it's huge, like PepsiCo, IBM, etc.) because it's more efficient for the shareholders' risk to be spread by way of them buying the stock of other companies. Of course, some peolpe might not realized this and might act to reduce risk in this way, but it's not the most efficient way to do it, so that's not how it gets done usually. Mostly it's usefulness is just to reduce redundancy, or in the case of this vertical integration, to be more efficient/quicker to market.
Nvidia buys Creative Labs?
From ZDNN:
Diamond shareholders balk at S3 deal
The full story should be very interesting.
Keith Russell
OS != Religion
This sig intentionally left blank.
This is just great. Viper 770 owners can now look forward to no new drivers being released soon, if ever. The same thing happened with the STB Velocity 4400 with the 3dfx merger. What's ironic about it is that they buy these companies for the brand names, but when you get crappy support of the card you just bought because of the merger, it pretty much ensures that you won't be buying from them again. Anyhow, who really cares that much about the brand name? If Hyundai were to buy Merecedes and slap the Merecedes name on their crappy cars, don't you think sooner or later folks would figure out that the name doesn't mean anything anymore?
Forget the RIO. Perhaps now S3 will release the specs on the diamond cards so that folks can right good linux drivers for them? S3 support has, thus far, been very good.
The S3 Virge did what it was supposed to do... provide graphics for the ultra low end. Comparing $20 video cards against cards that, well, don't cost $20 is hardly a fair comparison.
I am not sure if it is true (if not, then take it as a 'parable')
I think that Pizza Hut bought Pepsi a while ago. Or was it the other way round?
Anyway, all the other fast food ummmmmm . . . "restaurants" stopped using pepsi and moved to coke.
Otherwise, they would be financing a competitor.
Well, at this moment Im glad Ive waited to upgrade from a TNT to a TNT2! Though my strongest choice would be the Creative TNT2 Ultra, the Diamond V770-Ultra would have been a second choice. But then again, what if we had a TNT with compresed textrures combined with some of the other neat features of the S4?
Oh well, it's not like you can win at this game anyway, upgrading is like tic-tac-toe the other side is always equaly good and it all ends in a draw.
If you look at all the new tnt2 ultras it seems that hercules cards actually run at the promised 175mhz where everyone else runs at 150. After overclocking, the hercs can at average get to 190 as opposed to the diamond 170 avg oc. Coincidence?
The reason I would do Buy Diamond if I ran S3.
:). The cards were technically identical except that the Generic board had more stable drivers and 4 megs of memory. ( vs the Diamond's 2 megs ).
Back when the S3 Virge was the hot Low end 3D chip I worked at a PC shop that sold Generic no name Virge based cards for $1,600 and Diamond Stealth 3D for $ 4,999 ( These are Jamaican Dollars so the numbers look funny
Lot's of people asked for the Stealth and bought it even after seeing the boards running side by side in identical systems on our demo shelf ( The $1,600 price on the Generic board left us with more profit ).
Generally, the people who bought the Generic board installed it themselves. The ones who bought the diamond paid $950 to put it in. Want to guess where they got the impression that the name "Diamond" was worth a few extra Dollars ?
PS : We had no video cards returned while I was there. Modems, Hard Drives and Monitors came back all the time though.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Do you know what this means? Yet another company that will no longer produce nvidia based graphic cards. The irony is I was just looking heavily at a Diamond v770 TNT2 Ultra. This is not good.
There probably go the rebates I've been waiting 6 and 8 months for from Diamond.
> Maybe they'll bundle Rio's with video cards or something.
Hrrmmm... Well, since Diamond already makes video cards (just got my Viper 770 Ultra last month) they could have done this bundle without S3.
I'm not real excited about this because I'm very happy with Diamond (good hardware, great drivers) and my previous experience with S3 (Virge, need I say more?) was bad.
When companies get bought like this, it seems the reasons are to get an instant market share boost (Diamond seems to have a very strong presence in the 3D accelerator market) and to take advantage of 'synergies' - which usually means eliminate overlapping staff. Unually it is the company being bought where the 'overlap' is eliminated.
I don't have anything concrete to back this up, but I'm just uneasy that this move is probably in the best interest of S3 stock-holders (if they are even public?) and not in the best interest of customers who already own Diamond products.