XFX Abandons GeForce GTX 400 Series

I can't help but wonder if this may have something to do with them selling the 9800GTX+ as OC'd 65nm cards rather than the 55nm versions that NV stated they were going to be?

Well there is this angle to it :



http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/18278/1/

Such is the price of treachery.

Personally I don't think this is the wisest of moves. How does the behaviour look to the other sellers?

Are they going to feel secure in their dealings with nvidia, especially with the precarious position the 4xx series has in the marker right now.

I feel this must have been a culmunation of several issues for it to come to this.

This is pretty big though, since they are only dealing with half their resources and buyres right now. I mean they've been with out Nv for what 6-8 months. I think this will show Nv not to F*ck around with companies. XFX didn't have problems, but think of all the NV only companies.  I dont think they are happy either!

You might be right there might be some other factors, but I bet you this was the biggest.

I don't think XFX would really mind right now - both nVidia and XFX know that the profit margins on the GTX 470 and 480 are going to be pretty small. I know semiaccurate isn't a very good source, but according to them, GF100 GPUs aren't exactly cheap to make, and considering that nVidia has to sell it for a low price by nVidia's standards to compete with ATi, nVidia's either just breaking even or making a loss right now, so I'm pretty sure XFX doesn't care. Most of the money in the GPU market is the mainstream segment, and XFX may still make GTS 450s or GTX 460s instead.
Honestly though, I think XFX's decision essentially to jump from nVidia to ATi so soon was a bad one - IIRC remember they were nVidia only approximately a year ago. If the graphic card cycle continues as it always has, eventually nVidia will take the performance crown back, and probably sell some good mainstream cards as well. When nVidia does, XFX is probably going to have to beg on its knees to be able to sell the GTX 580 or w/e their next generation flagship is.

Whilst I do like my XFX cards I can't deny that they are not the easiest of vendors to deal with when it comes to choosing the card you want, I always found myself having to check the part number to make sure that the card I was buying was actually the right one as it didn't always seem that apparent on the box.

Anyone else want to take the cynical view and say that warranty support came into this :lol

haha thats pretty funny.

If I end up liking the 480s, I am going to be super pissed, because I wanted to grab a 2nd 1 and go custom water block 

Neither company wants any bad press about the split IMHO, XFX does not want its enthusiast customers to think they aren't/can't carry the flagships models. Nvidia does not want people to think that it has something to do with one of XFX's features (warranties). IMO, its why XFX mentioned not carrying Fermi only in a press release announcing a 5970 custom model. And Nvidia is leaking their reason through Fudzilla ?
conjecture.

Interesting. Maybe XFX is gonna end up as an ATI exclusive if things continue like this. I don't think that would be the best thing for competition, but who knows.

Since revenge always works. Great move, NVidia.

Who knows. I'm sure we'll see some dirty laundry aired about this in the next couple of days. Personally, I think that XFX may have felt it wasn't going to get sufficient quantities of the the high end stuff and that they didn't want to cut into their Radeon 5000 series margins to sell limited quantity GTX 470s and 480s. After all, the Radeon 5870 is still generally over MSRP.

This really sucks as I may end up buying a GTX 470 if I can afford it and my preferred brand is XFX by a mile.

To be honest though, it doesn't really matter too much as ATI finally has a distributor with a good warranty, XFX, while nVidia has BFG and EVGA all with great warranties too.

well at least Nvidia still has powercooler and sparkle

lol :-p

I stand corrected, nVidia has EVGA, BFG, Zotac, and PNY. They all offer better warranties than the ATI partners...

Yeah, ATI is a little lacking in the warranties with its AIB's, but hey- XFX is good, and if things continue as they have been so far this year, I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the other AIB's move over to ATI.