Nvidia Selling its Own Retail Add-in Graphics Cards
Nvidia is going the more direct route.
Suppose you wanted to buy a new Nvidia GeForce GTS 460. You've decided on the technology, and then you get to pick from a vast array of vendors to find the design (and price point) that's best for you. That's been the model for buying an Nvidia GPU, at least up until now.
Nvidia-branded graphics cards are now trickling into Best Buy, going up head to head against the similar offerings from its partners.
Both Legit Reviews and HardOCP have scooped up the $299.99 GeForce GTS 460 from Best Buy's shelves and found them to be of the reference design. The packaging also makes it abundantly clear that it's designed and built by Nvidia, despite being a product from the Foxconn factories.
Curiously, these products showed up in stores before Nvidia made any sort of announcement. In fact, from the statement that the company's PR gave, it sounded like Nvidia was slightly caught off guard with the appearance in Best Buy.
NVIDIA and Best Buy are working together to offer PC customers the opportunity to experience firsthand the latest in PC technologies right inside Best Buy stores. As part of this broad initiative, NVIDIA is supplying to Best Buy specific GeForce models built and supported by NVIDIA. These products will only be available at Best Buy and will complement GeForce products from our partners. We will provide more details on this next week.
If you've been looking for the most pure, bone stock version of the GTS 460, this is it. Buying from Nvidia will get you a direct support line as well as a three year warranty.
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remember 3dfx
will history will repeat it self
looks like it
nvidia has backstabbed its partners by the looks of it
Sure seems that way. Under no circumstances can they undercut their partners either if they've even slightly thought this through, but they should have made it so they were selling them where none of their partners' products would be.
In the end, I can see this improving availability, but at the expense of ticking the likes of ASUS, EVGA and Zotac off. Will it push them into the AMD camp?
Sure seems that way. Under no circumstances can they undercut their partners either if they've even slightly thought this through, but they should have made it so they were selling them where none of their partners' products would be.In the end, I can see this improving availability, but at the expense of ticking the likes of ASUS, EVGA and Zotac off. Will it push them into the AMD camp?
I strongly doubt it. Even when undercut by Nvidia itself, it's still likely to be profitable to manufacture and sell Nvidia cards. I'd rather make less profit than no profit on Nvidia designs...
To be honest, I'm not opposed to this move. If Nvidia is now competing with third party manufacturers directly on reference designs, those third party manufactures are likely to drop prices or come up with more compelling custom designs. Either way, it's an improvement for us, the consumers.
Sure seems that way. Under no circumstances can they undercut their partners either if they've even slightly thought this through, but they should have made it so they were selling them where none of their partners' products would be.In the end, I can see this improving availability, but at the expense of ticking the likes of ASUS, EVGA and Zotac off. Will it push them into the AMD camp?
I seriously doubt that ASUS cares all that much. They already make both nVidia and ATi cards but those are just "side jobs" when compared to their core competency of manufacturing motherboards. It might just piss them off enough to no longer offer nVidia IGPs on any of their mobos. The level of stupidity that nVidia is showing here exceeds even that of rebranding the 8800GTX/9800GTX as the GTS 250. RIP nVidia, I just hope for our sake that AMD ends up buying you instead of Intel.
I seriously doubt that ASUS cares all that much. They already make both nVidia and ATi cards but those are just "side jobs" when compared to their core competency of manufacturing motherboards. It might just piss them off enough to no longer offer nVidia IGPs on any of their mobos. The level of stupidity that nVidia is showing here exceeds even that of rebranding the 8800GTX/9800GTX as the GTS 250. RIP nVidia, I just hope for our sake that AMD ends up buying you instead of Intel.
I hope you're joking when you're suggesting Nvidia will go down any time soon...
Do you really think they're in trouble at the moment? Their Quadro line is doing great. Their Tesla line of GPU's doesn't really have a credible competitor. Fermi is hot and noisy, but it's priced quite well and SLI scaling is great. And even if Fermi were to fail utterly, Nvidia sits on enough cash to keep going till the next generation. On the mobile market they aren't doing badly either and that's a hugely important market.
I'm an ATI fan mostly, but such blatant fanboi-ism hurts...
Oh and besides: motherboards aren't Asus' main source of income, nor are GPU's. In fact, motherboards and GPU's combined account for 19% of Asus' revenue - compared to 22% from netbooks, 47% from notebooks and just over 10% from miscellaneous products like their gaming mice, mobile phones, cases,...
Given this story is published on tomshardware.co.uk, presumably this applies to Best Buy in the UK? what are £ prices like?
Do we have Best Buy in the UK?
Edit: Oh yes, seven stores.