RUMOR: NVIDIA to drop XFX/Visiontek...

[Semi-Lobster]

GPU News from the CES

Rumor has it that this week NVIDIA will let it officially be known that XFX's European operations will cease to be an NVIDIA Approved Partner. This means that XFX will lose all underlying NVIDIA support on GPU allocation and new product launches...including Fermi. It also looks as if Visiontek will be kicked out of a MAJOR USA e-tailer, which will probably decimate Visiontek's business. We will be seeing other major changes in video card sales this year here in the USA as well. The video card manufacturer landscape will be very different in the USA this year. Expect to see two or three major brands fall by the wayside when it comes to NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.

I'm curious how dropping XFX will effect their North American and Asian operations to? (if this rumor is correct)

 

[afw]

XFX is one of the best VGA Card Manufacturers ... dropping them will hurt nVidia as much as it wiil hurt XFX ...

 

[EastCoasthandle]

Hmm, I wonder if they plan on reducing their overall capacity to produce gpus...

 

[douglatins]

They resent those companies for offering AMD cards?

 

[yogurt_21]

not a very supriing move considering xfx's recent step up on it's amd product line. and visiontek has been dieing for a while so not suprising there either.

it's always a risk when you suddenly obtain anew supplier that the old one might not take it so well.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Visiontek makes great stuff. They will be losing out if they drop them.

 

[bobzilla2009]

ah well, i suppose it'll just mean ATi will gain more sales, since XFX is a very well respected brand. Nvidia really aren't doing much right at the moment are they?
Out of interest i visited XFX's UK site: there are far more ATi's on their homepage than geforces, and they don't even have the geforce 285/295 on the front page either, i bet nvidia threw a hissy about that

EDIT: most of the nvidia cards are at the bottom left in small print, and the gtx275 is off to the left if you scroll the main page. Only the geforce 220 and 240 are on the main display area, with the hd5xxx series being the default ones to load in.

 

[btarunr]

A lot of wild rumors go around at CES. For the past three or so years we've been told that DFI was going to close down its consumer motherboard business, for example.

XFX was born out of being a tier-1 NVIDIA partner which sold NVIDIA graphics cards and motherboards, it still is.

Don't know if VisionTek is an NVIDIA partner.

 

[bobzilla2009]

Don't nvidia lose their motherboard chipsets soon though? Something i read about a month ago was on about nvidia losing the rights (or something to that effect) to making new integrated gpu's on motherboards (probably shunned by amd and intel, after all both companies have their own integrated gpu's now, they just stand to lose money if nvidia makes their integrated gpu's), so the market is closed to them for new chipsets afaik.

EDIT: they didn't lose all chipsets, but cannot make any for Nehalem based systems (i3/5 being the biggies, since they are the new mainstream parts) due to a legal battle with intel, which basically amounts to intel not wanting any more nvidia chipsets. AMD obviously prefer to add their own gpu's in, since they are just as good, if not sometimes marginally better than the nvidia gpu's.

 

[lemode]

If this is true, that will be rather upsetting to me to say the least. XFX has become one brand I trust tremendously in the GPU market. I pick XFX over most other manufactures due to my endless positive experiences with their products. Hopefully this is just a rumor.

 

[KainXS]

not true, XFX EU is not run anywhere near the same, XFX in other EU area's and have horrible support from everthing I have heard, even XFX NA puts them down sometimes, XFX EU needs to get their act together.

in NA and CA XFX is one of Nvidia's best partners with one of the best warranties available but in EU even if you remove the heatsink, your warranty is void from what I remember.

I never had a visiontek Nvidia card though.

 

[newtekie1]

I'm curious how dropping XFX will effect their North American and Asian operations to? (if this rumor is correct)

The problem with rumors is that everything believes them without question.

Why has no one noticed that Visiontek isn't a nVidia partner, they are an ATi partner?

That right there makes this rumor scream bogus!

 

[Tatty_Two]

They resent those companies for offering AMD cards?

Possibly but no mention of Palit or gigabyte yet.

 

[Tatty_Two]

not true, XFX EU is not run anywhere near the same, XFX in other EU area's and have horrible support from everthing I have heard, even XFX NA puts them down sometimes, XFX EU needs to get their act together.

in NA and CA XFX is one of Nvidia's best partners with one of the best warranties available but in EU even if you remove the heatsink, your warranty is void from what I remember.

I never had a visiontek Nvidia card though.

I only have had cause to RMA an XFX 790i Ultra motherboard but they were very good.

 

[KainXS]

do you guys have lifetime warranties with XFX tatty

 

[erocker]

If anything, I would think XFX would be dropping Nvidia.

 

[kylzer]

Tru dat

XFX ATI are selling like crazy so i hear and also theres no nvidia cards to sell so....

guess it makes sense.

 

[bobzilla2009]

you can very rarely get lifetime warranties in the uk, full stop. If you can they are always with hugely picky terms & conditions, although the companies do not seem to check and will repair them anyway.

And yes, ATi are selling like hot cakes in the UK for sure, the longest i've seen a hd5870 in stock was 2 days thus far.

Update: CCL computers actually have 18 cards in total instock atm! 10 of their 'own brand' (lol) and 8 sapphire, all the rest are awaiting shipment, so i'm assuming those 18 came in today.

 

[Tatty_Two]

do you guys have lifetime warranties with XFX tatty

No, I think it's just 2 years with graphics cards but lifetime with motherboards.

 

[werez]

I have a strong feeling that XFX sold ALOT of HD58**'s . I know NVIDIA promised FERMI but , they did not cut prices on GTX series when AMD launched the HD5*** . THAT IS SO LOW . Greedy bastards ... yea i'm slowly becoming an AMD fan . I wonder what will happen if EVGA decides to go AMD ... you never know

 

[bobzilla2009]

If AMD retain popularity, i would imagine EVGA would probably go for AMD, after all, the amd cards are likely cheaper to produce, providing ati and potential board partners with better profits.