CES 2008: Palit the biggest graphics/mobo company you’ve never heard of

Las Vegas (NV) – Chances are you probably own a Palit graphics card, but you don’t even know it. The company is the 3rd largest graphics card maker in the world and has made cards for other vendors, but now Palit is gunning to take over the industry by going after the consumer. We talked to Palit’s Public Relations Manager and former Tom’s Hardware Guide graphics reviewer Darren Polkowski about how Palit will compete in this cutthroat market.

Slideshow : CES 2008 - Palit, the biggest company you’ve never heard of ...

Palit North America just started doing business in August 2007, but the parent company has been selling cards globally for years. To help ramp up consumer and channel operations in North America, it was obvious to Palit that they needed someone with both technical knowledge and contacts. In this case, a former THG graphics editor made sense.

“We want people to know that we’re here to stay and we are going to take over North America,” Polkowski told us.

So how will the company take over the market ? The secret is “not being average” like the rest of the industry, according to Polkowski. He told us that their graphics cards will use larger capacitors for better overclocking and stability. Also they are planning to release a line of cards that will have removable heat sinks so you can keep the sink for future product generations. Presumably, that will lower per unit costs, both on the manufacturing side and also the consumer level. Palit will also sell motherboards, first at the consumer level and eventually ramping up to gamer and enthusiast motherboards later this year.

In the beginning months, Palit will need to get their name out because people are so used to seeing names like Asus, Sapphire and others for graphics cards. One obvious way is to sponsor lan parties, a lot of lan parties, 300 in total. “We want community support and are aiming at the small and medium events,” said Polkowski. Palit will launch a community website next month that will not only have a calendar of events, but also tools that will help LAN party organizers calculate technical needs like power and bandwidth.

Polkowski wasn’t the first Tom’s Hardware graphics card reviewer to head for greener pastures, another THG reviewer, Lars Weinand, recently joined Nvidia a part of the company’s technical marketing arm. Weinand was with THG during the early years and left to do a stint at ATi and then AMD (after the merger).

Palit North America is headed up by Toshi Okumura, a former marketing director at AMD.

Of course the burning question in our minds are, how much money is Darren making and what the heck does Palit mean or stand for ?