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| Nvidia's Meltdown? |
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| Saturday, 02 August 2008 | |
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Page 4 of 5 Nvidia GPU Partners Not Happy It is difficult to know exactly where to start with this, so let's start with Gainward. After their acquisition by Palit recently, Gainward is seemingly no longer an nVidia only board maker. Similar situations seem to be brewing with the likes of XFX, EVGA, and others though there's nothing truly official from anyone as of yet (except for Gainward and EVGA perhaps).  Why are things like this? There are perhaps many underlying reasons, but plain old profit margin and grade school economic theory are what is at work here. Margins on current nVidia board products are tighter than Ebeneezer Scrooge's purse strings, even with the support money given to board partners. ATI has clear and decisive advantages this go around when it comes to available margin to board vendors. With ATI's recent 48xx series products being released (and the 4870x2 on the immediate horizon), the pressure is on board vendors to match pricing with competing ATI cards which has exacerbated the problem further for nVidia only board vendors. Not only this, but Intel's upcoming Larabee products (assuming they live up to expectations) should also have significant profit potential for board makers. Expect several of the green-team only vendors to go AMD "red" and perhaps Intel "blue" within the next two quarters. |