Asus goes ATI/Nvidia in deep trouble?

[sbp]

Its been bantered about before, now its confirmed.

If these links don't work, try ixbt links below.
http://www.asus.com/products/vga/ati.htm
http://www.asus.com/products/vga/ati_back.html
http://www.ixbt.com/short/2k3-09/ASUS_r ... nt/ati.htm
http://www.ixbt.com/short/2k3-09/ASUS_r ... _back.html

Question is will Asus still produce Nvidia cards? Are we going back to the time where companies could have videocards based on chips from multiple companies?

Another thing is what does this suggest for NV40? Like is it not impressive and Nvidia did another cut down number on it?

But they still have other companies like MSI, right? Maybe not, MSI might be going ATI's way also.
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.html?i=1882&p=1

And if thats not bad enough check this out: Gainward, everybody wants a piece of ATI

Moving along...got to like Nvidia still claiming a miracle driver will come out of their arse.
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.html?i=1886

It is likely you are already familiar with our Day 1 coverage and know about how NVIDIA has been reassuring video card partners that newer and better graphic drivers will fix performance issues for DX9 games. Just to reiterate, manufacturers are skeptical that NVIDIA will be able to accomplish this, but nevertheless, they want to wait it out. Actually, one manufacturer surprised us a bit by saying something to the effect, “If they can pull this rabbit out of the hat, it will be the best rabbit pulled out of a hat ever.”

Well Nvidia does fine in the mainboard chipset market. Perhaps not anymore.
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTI3

So all in all, from what I am seeing on the Computex show floor, NVIDIA is about to go MIA when it comes to being a player in the mainboard chipset arena. Add to that the crumbling support for the GeForceFX line and things look very gloomy. Asus is supposed to shortly be publicly announcing that they are going to start building ATI video cards and I would expect that once the dike breaks, a flood of video cards builders will follow them. Diversifying your market is a good thing, but you have to have a product line that will still contend.

http://www.legionhardware.com/html/doc.php?id=261&p=3

The NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun made it quite clear that the graphics industry would no longer be the primary focus point of the company.

Ok Nvidia is diversifying. For example its said Nvidia is planning to release a stand-alone sound board in the next few months. Well that wouldn't be surprising.

Nvidia will be going against the 800 lb gorilla in the form of Creative Labs.

More competition in the soundcard market would be nice since some contenders have effectively abandoned the market.

wrapup: OEMs are leaving in droves, no more moola from consoles {ATI has 2 next gen!} and mainboard market may not be great for them. Is Nvidia in deep trouble? Just a rut? Can they come back?

[DocSilly]

I tell ya, it's the 3DFx curse

[BillyGoat]

This is not a good thing, video cards already cost too much. Less producers of chipsets= less compitition= More cost to us

[FlyingPenguin]

If NVidia's on the stick, they'll need a competative chipset to come out sometime next year. If they're still lagging at the end of the 3rd quarter next year, it's going to be grim.

Also keep in mind that the 3D PC market is not everything for NVidia. Their chips are in a lot of budget OEM systems that aren't targetted for heavy 3D. They're also used in a lot of industrial and arcade systems.

[Gand1]

FP has a point! But look at what happen to 3Dfx. Nvidia seems to be heading down the same path, the were small fry, had a major breakthrough, became king of the hill, and then produced lack-luster crap after that. Guess what, no more 3Dfx. If someone at Nvidia does not take a step back quickly and look at what is happening to them I could picture them going bust. Fools.

[wvjohn]

they do make cheapo chipsets for the big boys like compaq - also - how many people here have nforce2 boards?

granted, they do need to make some progress with vid cards, if not on the top end then good solid cards like the 9500/9600 series - seems like they've put their best engineers on the motherboard side of the shop

i would like more competition for the vid cards to keep the $$ down though

[Demrok]

lol @ Doc

yes... yes it is!!!

they should just wash their hands of 3DFX ASAP!!!!

lol