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Graphics Software

VisionTek Folds 290

Posted by timothy from the crinkle-crinkle-smoosh dept.
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."
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VisionTek Folds More

VisionTek Folds

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  • Don't act surprised (Score:5, Insightful)

    by foonf ( 447461 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @01:25AM (#4095946) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:Don't act surprised (Score:3, Informative)

      by foonf ( 447461 )
      (addendum) Canopus is still around, they just don't sell commodity PC graphics cards outside of Japan anymore. Sorry.
      • Hercules is still around too, producing quite a few ATI chipset boards.
        • Actually, Hercules was bought by Guillemot.

          I was "lucky" to receive updates on the original Hercules bankruptcy proceedings when the original Hercules went under. I basically got legal updates on the death throws of a once-great hardware vendor. It was a morbid process.

    • As 3DFX learned the hard way (Score:5, Interesting)

      by svzurich ( 524785 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @03:39AM (#4096311)
      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.
      • Why would a change to die size affect the PCB assembly line? Couldn't a 'pick-and-place' machine pick up a .13 um chip just as easily as a .18 um chip?

        Or are you saying that the 13-odd video card vendors mentioned in this post by Fejji [slashdot.org] are actually fabbing the GF4 silicon? That doesn't seem right.

        • Why would a change to die size affect the PCB assembly line? Couldn't a 'pick-and-place' machine pick up a .13 um chip just as easily as a .18 um chip?

          PCB stuffers don't place die for these chips -- they take the BGA package and solder them to the boards. You're picking up a device about 3/4" square and placing it. The technology inside that chip is .13um or .18um or whatever, not the packaged chip itself.

        • At .35 um, the old TNT cards ran too hot. The cards generated too much heat, limiting clock speeds until the .25 um version came out. The smaller micron die size allowed more chip die to be cut from each silicon wafer.

          No, the entire PCB line did not have to be upgraded, but the tools to work on the silicon wafer did. 3DFX had to retool their etching machines for any die shrink, whereas Nvidia can solicit work from TMSC, UMC, or any other fab willing to upgrade its own line. The other video card OEMS buy the chips made in 3rd party fabs and then pick and place. My point is that Nvidia does not have to spend money retooling a die set to cut from wafers, instead they can shop around the foundaries already doing that. If Nvidia did own its own fabs, then they would have to experience that additional cost and might be tempted to make their own boards for retail. The OEMs just tweak a referance design and plug in a chip, but the foundaries are a completely different step. Intel, AMD, TMSC, and UMC are all experiencing major costs upgrading their die lines (allowing them to squeeze more chips from a wafer and having faster chips), and Nvidia is largely immune to that. Remaining fab free is a boon to them.

  • Lifetime Warranty? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The Big Dude ( 598652 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @01:27AM (#4095948)
    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.
    • You are not going to get warranty service in your lifetime.

      • Yeah. I bought an ELSA GeForce 3 board because it had a 6-year warranty. ELSA went bankrupt in February. And NVidia owned part of ELSA; they were the only manufacturer of NVidia's "pro" cards.

        The "pro" cards were just a jumper change from the low-end cards, anyway.

        • Re:Lifetime Warranty? (Score:3, Informative)

          by Sivar ( 316343 )
          The pro cards generally had faster cores, higher quality memory and capacitors, better warranties, and drivers that were optimized for professional work. The drivers could be used on regular Geforce cards by doing some precision saudering, but the other benefits didn't materialize doing so.
        • A warranty that long on home computer parts is a joke. Did you really think that you were going to be using that card in 6 years? Five? Four? Would you still have the receipt? And if the card died in five years, what would you expect the vendor to do? Give you a GeForce XV in return?

          Warranty's can be good, but they can also be completely useless. A six year warranty on a consumer video card is useless. Even moreso now that VisionTek is soon to be gone.

    • the "lifetime" refered to in your warranty refers neither to your life, nor the life of your product, but rather to the life of the *company* backing it.

      Can you say "Poof!" boys and girls?

      I knew you could.

      KFG
    • 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 have the same card and, opening my computer recently, found I have the same problem. Did you have to give up one or more PCI slots to install this fan? That would not be a good option for me. Can anyone recommend a source of replacement fans for this thing?

  • I wonder why (Score:2, Insightful)

    by AvitarX ( 172628 )
    Could it be that Nvidia's model of farming out the production as a way to sell shit really cheap allowed too much compatition on in the market?

    They were able to offer the least expensive product (Nvidia) and not themselves worry about the selling at a loss part.

    Nvidia's stradegy was great on paper, but it may bite them in the ass in the long run.

    Having the largest supplier die at this moment could give ATI the boost it neaded to scream back on top. With the next generation of cards coming out so soon, and this likely to increase the cost of the Gforce cards.

    • Tell that to 3Dfx. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Blaede ( 266638 )
      That is, if you can find any of their remains. They used to just sell chipsets as well, then they decided to make the entire board. You know the rest of the story.

      • Re:Tell that to 3Dfx. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by AvitarX ( 172628 )
        If I'm not mistaken 3dfx released a very very expensive (was it 700 dollors?) card that required external power, had obnoxious fans, terible 2d crispness, and performed only marginally better then the Gforce of the time?

        I really don't think all of that was due to their building the boards themselves, but I could be wrong.

        Nvidia obviously made the right choice, they were able to tighten up the market without themselves feeling the burn of the price war since they made a proffit on evercard sold no matter what. That is probably a big part of how they got on top, but I also think that this may give ATI the chance it neads to overtake them.

        Either way Nvidia is still in a great place, #2 isn't really the first loser in a market big enough to support them.

        • Re:Tell that to 3Dfx. (Score:2, Informative)

          by khuber ( 5664 )
          Are you talking about the Voodoo 5? It required a separate connection to the power supply. Two fans. The basic one was a SLI setup on one board (2 GPUs on one card instead of two separate boards working together like older 3dfx products), and 3dfx was using a low density chip process which didn't help. The high end one had 4 GPUs!

          Speed wise the low end Voodoo 5 was roughly GeForce level, with better anti aliasing. I seem to recall constant arguing about quality (3dfx rulez!) vs. speed (nvidia rulez!). 3dfx drew a lot of die hard fans, though I never was one :)

          The company was founded by SGI people which is why I cared at all. Apparently they had the mad business skillz of SGI too (evil cackle).

          3dfx's heyday was when they made separate 3D cards that plugged into the VGA passthrough on your 2D card. I never bought into that setup and only having one AGP slot makes it undesirable now.

          I never actually owned a 3dfx, so this is just my frail memory and what I could find on google.

          I _do_ own a VisionTek GeForce 2 though. Ugh.

          -Kevin

      • Re:Tell that to 3Dfx. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @03:32AM (#4096288)
        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.
        • Actually, it's a somewhat different story to what appeared to be going on.

          3dfx knew the Voodoo2 wouldn't be king forever. They were working on Rampage as its successor. Unfortunately, it fell to feature creep and kept getting delayed.

          When 3dfx bought STB they pulled engineers off Rampage to design Banshee. Banshee went through so many respins it was silly, hence the huge delay. By now, Rampage had fallen even further behind, so much so they needed to go back to the drawing board. The huge exodus of engineers that had recently occured didn't help either.

          In order to keep chips moving, 3dfx die shrinked the Banshee, put the TMU it lost from the Voodoo2 back on, increased the clock and called it the Voodoo3. The Voodoo5 started out as the Voodoo3 4000 to combat the TNT2 ultra, but then 3dfx learned about the GeForce and added the T-buffer to produce the Voodoo5.

          Rampage taped out around late November-early December 2000. They even got the OpenGL drivers up to playing Quake3 (There are screenshots floating around). Unfortunately, by then it was too late. It's a shame, because I hear their "texture computer" was quite interesting.

          • Re:Tell that to 3Dfx. (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Daleon ( 602247 )
            It would be really interresting to get an inside story of the 3dfx downfall. It was the company the really made what we have today possible. I would hate to imagine what kind of games we would be playing if it had not been for them. To me, it just seemed like a series of bad management decisions that lead to their downfall. It the hardware market, bad management will put you out of business over night.

            Few things - The V2 kicked the day lights out of the TnT and in many cases the TnT2 for real gaming. Back in the day hardcore gamers could care less about 32 bit at 30 fps, we wanted 16 bit at 85+ fps. Not until the Geforce's did 32 bit become an everyday thing.

            - The V3 was one of the best selling cards of all time up to that point. It set more records than almost anything? Why, because it was the a single card solution that support Glide. 3dfx had enough games that looked much better at the time on Glide than D3D. The V3 was also not a complete slouch in the speed department.

            - The V5 was just out way to late, it really should have come when the V3 came. It still had some of the best AA to this day, but it could not stand up against a real GPU.

        • Re:Tell that to 3Dfx. (Score:3, Informative)

          by Afrosheen ( 42464 )
          IIRC the first-gen TNT cards had a few significant advantages over the 3dfx cards. I originally owned a Banshee but traded it to a friend for a TNT. Why?

          1. Huge texture support. The Banshee could only render 256x256 textures while the TNT could render 1024x1024 textures (correct me if I'm wrong, it's been awhile).

          2. 32 bit color. Remember when quake3 first came out? The voodoos left you with 16bit color ONLY. That and the small textures made quake3 look like ass.

          3. Poor OpenGL ICD that hit the market pretty late in the 3dfx cards. They got a little too comfortable with Glide.

          4. Bad 2d quality. While the Banshee was a step up from the other Voodoos in this respect, it still didn't render as cleanly in 2d as the TNT cards.

          5. Splintered drivers. The TNT cards (starting way back then) only had one driver set. Upgrading was easy.

          So yeah, 3dfx had a good product at the time but Nvidia already had them beat coming out of the gate with their first product. After awhile the friend that traded me the TNT wanted to trade back LOL.
        • You bought a GeForce 256? You wasted your money. How many games supported hardware T&L at the release of the GF? None. How many in 6 months, still none, or one. What about in a year after? A few, finally. Unfortunately the GF was only slightly faster than a TNT2 Ultra with games not supporting hardware T&L. You should have waited for the GF2 like I did, or saved $100 by getting a TNT2 Ultra.

    • in a free market. Businesses come, businesses go. Just think of the convienience store field.

      But with an excess of competition there's always someone else chomping at the bit to take a piece of the pie abandoned by those fallen by the wayside.

      If VisionTek had been Nvidia's *only* retailer they'd be hosed right now, but with an excess of them VisionTek's loss is Asus's gain.

      Nvidia will be fine in the long run and ATI will hardly even see a blip in their market share.

      KFG
      • VisionTek isn't nVidia's only retailer, but they are the number one retailer, and their best retailer. I've bought an nVidia card from PNY, and it was the biggest waste of money I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing. I bought two GeForce cards from "cheapo" no-name brand retailers that were dead on arrival before I bit the bullet and bought a VisionTek that's been the best video card I've ever owned. VisionTek exiting the market means I exit the nVidia market, because I don't trust the other manufacturers like I trusted VisionTek. An ATI card will be the next on the docket for me.

  • GeForce2 GTS (Score:2, Interesting)

    by T-Kir ( 597145 )

    Damn pity, they're the only (as far as I know) company that manufacture the GeForce 2 Xtasy GTS-V cards, at a knock down price of $47 (on newegg.com).. a damn good budget card with performance to boot, at least games are now playable on my brothers crappy Sony Vaio celery desktop (urghh!).

    So I guess it is case of "buy while stocks last" (for those who are interested of course).

    • The GeForce2 GTS is a good buy still (Score:4, Informative)

      by Wee ( 17189 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @03:19AM (#4096257)
      I've got a GeForce2 GTS Pro, the 64MB AGP one. I'm using it on this very PC. It's been a great card. I bought it (right after the GeForce3s had just been out, whenever that was) for like $75.00 brand new. I figured that I'd get the highest end of the previous model and save some cash to upgrade when another new model comes out. By all rights I should have bought a GeForce3 by now since they are getting cheap in the face of the GeForce4s, but the GTS Pro I have seems fine still. It doesn't have all the latest features (I don't think it does hardware T&L for example), but I haven't noticed any game I've played lagging at med-high settings on my AMD 1.33GHz (that includes MoH:AA, SoF2, GTA3, and even the new Battlefield 1942 demo).

      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

  • Who's left? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by aredubya74 ( 266988 )
    Off the top of my head, there are plenty of other nVidia resellers still here in the US (eVGA, Gainward and PNY to name 3), along with some of the big boys in motherboards (Abit, Asus, MSI). It's a shame Visiontek couldn't keep fiscally sound, but in this economy, if you're in debt, you're dead.

    • Re:Who's left? (Score:2, Informative)

      by neafevoc ( 93684 )

      I gained interest in Leadtek [leadtek.com] when I read a review [gamers.com] about the quality of the 2D filters they use on that Ti500 card. It rivals both ATI and even Matrox! (That's what really sparked my interest since I enjoyed the sharp 2D of my G400, but it just didn't cut it when it came to 3D games.)

      They also mentioned that every Nvidia-based card Leadtek releases will have the same high quality 2D filters on it. Since then, I ended up buying a Titanium 200 TDH from them and its 2D display is up to par with my G400.

      I'm happy :)

  • This [sharkyextreme.com] was posted just a couple of days ago. Looks like a nice piece of hardware. It's a shame they're dying.
  • ...and does a major competitor have influence over them?

  • Dammit! (Score:4, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @01:47AM (#4096034) Homepage Journal
    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!

  • Companies need to learn how to make money. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mustang Matt ( 133426 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @01:49AM (#4096045)
    I don't get it. Superior products, largest reseller of Nvidia cards... Where did they go wrong?
    I suppose financial scandal could do it, but was that the case?

    It seems like tech companies have a problem staying afloat. Is it because their workers demand unreasonable amounts of pay? It seems like they would simply pass that on to their customers.

    I mean it's a simple process...
    Hardware Sales - Hardware Costs - Employee Costs ??? Profit!
    • Superior products, largest reseller of Nvidia cards... Where did they go wrong? I suppose financial scandal could do it, but was that the case?

      I doubt the accounting had any role in this. They are small fish.

      What is more likely is that the investor (or investors, or VCs, etc.) who owned the company did some calculations on a napkin and came up with conclusion that closing the company -now- is more profitable than allowing it to exist. This is a common problem with VCs who own 95% of your company and make decisions for you.

    • Re:Companies need to learn how to make money. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @03:06AM (#4096235) Homepage
      They were U.S. based - labor costs were too high.

      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."

      • They were U.S. based - labor costs were too high. / A worker in China or Malaysia will work for a month on what an American makes in less than a shift.

        Let's hear it for people who wholeheartedly endorse paying poor people of other nations crap wages! You know what? You're slime. As long as you keep thinking that way, we will all be the next victim. The Maylasians are just the "fortunate benefactors of a small paycheck," realistically, they are the next ones on "the big screw job" list.

        Know what happens when our corporate masters realize that there are famines in Africa and that they can pay people in breakfast cereal instead of money? They move right out of Maylasia and right into the Congo. Another bonus: "What government regualtion? What environmental concerns? What child labor laws?" Don't laugh. Someone behind a big ass mahogany desk is thinking about this right now. That man behind the desk is dissappointed that the political stability of the region hasn't changed and he can move in right now. Someone is waiting to see the civil wars end, then move right in. The sad part about all of this is that the Maylasians will be screaming foul in a much shorter time than Americans ever did. Because in the old days, they used to feign responsibility. Too late now. The only gold watches the MAylasians will get will be the ones they steal from the factory floor.

        Also, has anyone noticed that without a well paying job, people cannot afford the shiny new products that these corporations make? When the jobs move overseas, no one wins but the owner of the corporations. Of course, in a couple of years, there is no one to market to, because the pay and prices have all turned to the Maylasia standard... soon to be the Congo standard.

        "Thanks corporations! I love you all! Nah, forget my raise. Buy your daughter a BMW. She deserves it. Go play some golf. Your back must be killing you from sitting at that big desk all day. Have fun. Don't worry about me... I'll be working late."
      • Almost all your points were good--labor costs, restrictive labor laws, etc... But one thing America doesn't have is high taxes.

        In the end, I think all the garbage that leads manufacturing jobs to go outside the US is a good thing. It leads to a true globalization of the economy. Instead of a a bunch of isolated, self contained countries, we have global interaction. The fact that China or whomever can manufacture stuff cheaper leads American corporations to move their manufacturing plants to that country (When the US government doesn't interfere), and that is capitalism on a global scale.
  • Follow the link to the VisionTek web site and the first two stories right now are about expanding production and product lines. Now of course I guess that's a little outdated.

    I've been impressed with NVidia chips for a while but recently I've been buying ATI products for their solid OpenGL performance. Being a user for both work and play has demanded I have a card that can handle engineering apps as well as Tribes II.

  • Lack of detail (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jsse ( 254124 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @02:32AM (#4096151) Homepage Journal
    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?

  • Just an observation... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @02:54AM (#4096207) Homepage Journal
    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

  • Hmmm... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ZeLonewolf ( 197271 )
    Would someone please explain how this news hit the press at 2AM Sunday night (Early Monday morning if you want to nitpick)? I realize that it's well into business hours in Europe and most of Asia, but according to the article, VisionTek is a US-based company in Northern Illinois.

    • Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Informative)

      by barfy ( 256323 )
      Interestingly enough, the answer [msn.com] is in this weeks Slate...

  • The wallmart equation (Score:4, Funny)

    by Stonent1 ( 594886 ) <stonent AT stone ... intclark DOT net> on Monday August 19, 2002 @02:57AM (#4096216) Journal
    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?
    • PCI cards still make sense for some of us, even if we've never stepped foot inside a Walmart (or outside the office, for that matter). If you can show me a motherboard that has four AGP slots for all my video cards (I run a multihead setup), then I'll no longer need PCI video cards. Alternately, show me an AGP card with at least four high resolution outputs that works as solidly under Linux as four individual nVidia based cards.
      • nVidia Quadro4 400 NVS, ironically it's a PCI card (at least the one from PNY is) but at least it frees up 3 slots. My ideal setup is a nVidia Quadro4 950 running dual hean on the AGP and a 400 NVS supporting the other 6 panels. DVI of course.

  • Visiontek doesn't even matter! (Score:5, Informative)

    by fejji ( 600857 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @03:05AM (#4096232)
    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!
    • Visiontek had a lot of the OEM nVidia business. They produce the special ADC cards for Apple, and I believe that they are also the nVidia OEM producer for Dell.

      With Just In Time (JIT) manufacturing, a fold of a major OEM supplier creates many problems for their customers. Apple may have seen this coming as witnessed by their switch to the ATI 9000 for the default in their high end models.

      -- Len

  • NVIDIA is doomed! (Score:4, Funny)

    by monopole ( 44023 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @04:08AM (#4096389)
    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 ...

  • Chaintech GF4 Cards (Score:2, Informative)

    by Zenex13 ( 584549 )
    Wow, that was some seriously lucky timing for me. I had been saving up for a few months to buy a nice new VisionTek card, and at the last minute I decided to go with a ChainTech [chaintech.com.tw] card, because it was the same price, and included an S-Video In/Out port, and a gold plated fan and heat sink (dont ask what the point of this is, it just looked cool and was the same price).

    Preformance has been execellent, and the card never overheated (which is amazing, since the room it's in is usually 90-95 degrees in the summer. Anti-Aliasing preformance was great at 4x, 1024x768. Of course, I upgraded from a TNT2, so what would I know?
    • the card never overheated (which is amazing, since the room it's in is usually 90-95 degrees in the summer

      Umm...buddy, it looks like you've got your priorities ALL fuxed up. Given the choice between a window-mounted air conditioning unit and a new video card, I'd take the AC any day.

  • Why I hate Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by m_evanchik ( 398143 ) <michel_evanchikATevanchik@net> on Monday August 19, 2002 @07:22AM (#4096726) Homepage
    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.
    • Is it okay for anyone to call a company to ask about something like this? I would guess the corporate office number is the one to use, and preferably not the 800 number?

      I never thought about calling companies to ask about news that affects them. I thought they just gave out carefully prepared press releases.
    • I don't see why it's not OK to call a company with this sort of question. It certainly would be expected if you are publishing a story about them, especially one this important.

      OK. I'll try it, calling 1 (800) 726-9695 as listed on their website(I know it's an 800 number but I got the same answering machine earlier on the toll number)...

      Still waiting on hold... Heh, heh, it's probably a bunch of slashdotters clogging up the lines...

      OK, it's been over a minute now, I'll try the toll # 1 (847) 360-7500... Hmmm... still on hold... And it's the same message as the toll #, so I'll hang up and try the toll-free number again (no reason to run up my phone bill).

      So after waiting on hold another few minutes I give up. Guess I'm no responsible journalist

  • Assuming this story is true, it's a fairly interesting situation. It's unfortunate the upper management of VisionTek didn't have the business smarts to turn this around (when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade): if you're a reasonably sized company, then when the bank comes for its money, they're remarkably easy to manipulate). Still, the banks know this, so the fact they ended up in this kind of situation indicates a general lack of business wits.

    Still, it's a golden opportunity for anybody wanting to get into the graphics card fab business. With VisionTek being liquidated, you can buy everything necessary at firesale prices. Buy the equipment, hire the employees off, and you've got a working graphics card manafacturer dirt cheap. Which means, if you play it well, you can undercut all your competitors on price and when the economy returns to force, you're in a stronger position than the original company was to start with (since you've managed to get the bank to take most of the setup costs). I only wish I had that kind of cash on hand. :)

    Of course, there are lots of other amusing possibilities. The key thing to remember here is that if the bank is foreclosing, it means they'll probably be writing off most of the debt. From there it just takes a little bit of imagination...

  • nV News [nvnews.net] has a story about this too...

    What they mention is that ...

    This has already claimed one of VT's suppliers, when VT failed to make payments, the supplier folded. This may also affect TotalEMS, a manufacturing company that was a supplier for VisionTek, and is owned by the "owners" of VisionTek, as TotalEMS was picked up in bankruptcy proceedings to begin with.

    And considering the size of the company, this very well may cause problems with more companies.

    The other thing is ...

    The company doing rebates has stopped honoring them because of non payment.

    On a side note, they also mention that they were informed that all content on Hard OCP is copyrighted...

    Anyhow, I own a GF3 TI200 VisionTek card...I just had to replace the fan on it last week (not spinning)...I called their tech support # (800) and was on hold for over 3 hours until I decided there must be something going on...I figured it involved their move, but I musta been wrong :) ... I ended up buying a Blue Orb :)

    Anyhow, VisionTek made some good cards...all of the cards they made were Reference cards (except the extremely new Xtasy Everything). So, VisionTek cards should work well into the future.
  • yeah, that's all good, until you read the press release from 2 months ago that says their expanding because they are experiencing huge growth in sales.

    press release [visiontek.com]

    Be warned about that url, it has crashed every browser I've tried in linux so far including galeon, netscape 6.2, and mozilla 1.0. I've got a friend in the windows world however that was able to view it with IE and copied the text of the press release here [mobass.com].

    There PR wennies need to learn HTML or use something other than dreamweaver. 60K of text for a 4 paragraph press release is to much.
  • I bought their Gforce3 last November with a $50 rebate. I doubt that their margins really allow them to offer such a high rebate, or that very many buyers will fail to send for a $50 rebate.

    It took many angry phone calls to the rebate fulfilment company before I finally got the rebate on 5/1/02, over six months later. E-mail directly to VisionTek during this period was ignored. You don't endear customers and build up repeat business with this type of treatment.

    On an 800# call to tech support, I was on hold waiting for someone to pick up for about an hour (didn't give up thanks to my trusty speakerphone). Again a customer relation error, and in this case a costly one. I clearly wasn't the only person on hold. If you consider the number of people on hold and the amount they spent for each of those 800 number calls, it would have been much cheaper to have the staff to properly support the calls.

    Curiously, you didn't have to "register" the card for warranty support, but there was a post paid card in the box that was supposd to be returned for the DVD player software. With the post paid card you were expected to "enclose" both a copy of your receipt and the UPS barcode from the back of the box. Why put a buyer through this and make them wait for something that should have been in the box? How do you "enclose" anything with a postage paid postcard? And since they got my UPC code for the rebate, how can I submit it again for my CD? If they wanted the information they should have just provided a "register within 30 days to activate your warranty" card, and why would they need both my receipt and UPC to prove I bought the product, doesn't the UPC or even just the postcard itself show them that?

    All told I wasn't going to buy another card from them anyway.

  • I bought a ELSA GeForce MX card that started dying about 9 months after I purchased it. I called ELSA to get it returned under warranty and they told me that they were out of stock and should have some in a few weeks and that I might want to just hold onto it if there was any usage I could get out of it in the meantime.

    I checked back in a few weeks to find the web site down, the phones no longer answering, and word on the street that they were only going to honor RMAs that were already in their system.

    Ripped off good... but what are you gonna do???
  • ... that we got trolled? I mean, come on! The latest press release from VisionTek states that they have expanded their manufacturing capabilities, and they have NOTHING to say about them going "boom" or other synonyms for it.

    Just my.. um.. 3.14 cents...

    pi

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