News Nvidia moves into retail

Why Best Buy? The type of people who shop there aren't likely to know what a graphics card even is.

 

They couldn't make 4xx cards as nVidia wouldn't supply them. I think that was in response to XFX diversifying into AMD cards.

 

True and second that!

When XFX started working with HD4000 series, Nvidia went crazy like a cry baby and removed XFX from their official partners just because Nvidia thought they couldn't do that, like a only child makes a tantrum to his parents. XFX saw an opportunity to cash a few bucks by moving to the successful HD4000 family and they succeeded. Better for ATi user because XFX has an extraordinary customer service.

Let Nvidia cry...they need to be humble.

 

dont apple and microsoft got their own stores, taking business away from resellers

 

Nvidia already makes most of their Quadro's and Tesla graphic cards.
I also read that it will be Foxconn (if Engadget is to be believed), will manufacture it.

I think it's nice to be able to buy a GPU that looks nice as the picture and not be plaster with 20 labels with crappy 3D figure on it.
Then again Nvidia warranty is far from interesting.. it's on 3 years. Well, it's pretty good, but most partners offer life time warranty.
I think the idea behind this, is that Nvidia wants to put their name out there, for the average computer user to see their name, and really know Nvidia.
Also, if it's sold at Best Buy, it means that the prices won't be competitive.

 

All this means is that Best Buy are a 3rd Party Distributor, selling Retail branded OEM products. It's a new channel for NVidia, that's all.

As for prices going down, get real folks. This'll just increase distribution. There'll be enough of a markup to allow this to trade. NVidia wont want to damage their current partners buying power.

Great move for Best Buy

 

having worked for the local competition (DSGi), i can say that wont stop the less clued up punters. If XFX was axed just because NV were having a hissy fit over the XFX AMD cards, well thats just a poor business move. I doubt the XFX teams will loose much sleep over it, from what iv been reading AMD are churning out better value chips anyway imho.

For the overclockers i cant see this being an issue, as Redbeaver said, assuming the reference card is sensibly priced just get your own cooler and go nuts. Its a null point for me anyway, id only buy pre-oc'd cards with a warranty.

 

Except if you read the original Kyle article that set this all off then you'd know that nVidia are putting their cards into BestBuy at the same pricepoint as 'their' POV cards!

As for it being a new channel, isn't this a channel previously trod by 3dfx?

What happened to them?

 

You try setting up an RMA directly with XFX after your retailer warranty has expired, and tell me they have good customer service again. Descriptive words including "disastrous", "abysmal" and "pathetic" come to mind - they're just not interested and are completely solid on not letting you RMA dead cards, regardless of supposedly "lifetime" warranties. This isn't just based on one experience either - not a single one of my friends who have also had XFX cards die got anywhere with their support, and 6 of them have been in this position.

Add into the fact that XFX are producing some terrible AMD cards currently (I bought an XFX 4890 recently and my 1GB 4870 gets 17k 3DMark06 points, where the 4890 got 14k - so have had to RMA with my retailer, and still waiting to hear whether my RMA has been approved with XFX's distributor). I'm not alone either - another set of forums I frequent are completely littered with complaints about XFX's worryingly underperforming non-reference, non-black edition designs. Staff on this forum also revealed they have the highest return rate with XFX than any other AIB by several percentage points.

XFX are cheap for a reason, and I'll be avoiding them in the future.

 

You're RMAing because of a synthetic test result? What about real performance in games?

 

This is what concerns me the most in the article. Not only will it be a massive shame to see XFX cease to manufacture Nvidia cards (because they have been top of my Nvidia third party list for ages now) but it will also be a shame for it to happen under these circumstances, with Nvidia pulling the plug on them for such a stupid reason. I really hate this industry sometimes. Like you said, it's a cry baby reacion, and this is nowhere near the first time it has happened.

The whole computer electronics industry needs to catch itself on and quit the bickering and bad business moves.

 

The 4XXX was never that good in the first place and was cleanly hammered by Nvidia on all fronts, clearly selective memory has kicked in. This site and it's sister mag only recommended Nvidia cards during that time.

Why are people here getting their backs up about the developer of a product actually releasing the product themselves?

If it was such an excellent move by XFX to manufacture ATi cards then why are you all bothered Nvidia have done this, with your bias you weren't going to buy one even if they still could make them.

 

I always thought all "reference" cards were built the same anyway, so no news

Not outside the US (or Canada in your case) they don't

 

Quite funny to read the comments regarding RMA... I thought most people here had voided the waranty anyway

Regarding Nvidia and Best Buy, partners probably won't have a problem with it, Nvidia just found a high profit margin business plan. Who really buys their stuff there anyway? As explained above, most people in US would buy from Newegg?

 

All the games I play (TF2, Audiosurf, L4D2, GRID, DIRT2) had a corresponding drop in average fps of around 15-20% over the 4870. TF2 suffered worst though - putting 4xMSAA on the 4890 dropped my average fps by about 40% compared to when 4xMSAA is on my 4870 - going from an average of 95fps to 55 is really not good, and the minimum went from around 65 to 28, which is hopeless in the heat of a TF2 match. 3DMark just symbolised the drop well.

 

@NickCPC:

Heh, weird. I always thought XFX was supposed to be one of the better board partners - must've been a faulty card.

 

Greetings!

My experience disagrees with your affirmation.

 

I always thought of XFX as a "budget" partner and not for high end products since they never could get them spot on like Asus, Gigabyte, MSI etc...with that in mind, would it be a problem for Nvidia to drop them? It may be the reason for it in the first place.

 

Spot on, that's what I did. Bought a cheap 8800gtx (OcUK OEM) and stuck a Zalman waterblock on the bugger!

 

Greetings!