We've heard nothing else so far but EVGA haven't had any stock of high-end for a long time either now. They do have their motherboard business on the otherhand and I'd say they're more profitable than BFG were.

I think the company's that have become very entwined with Nvidia, and newcomers without a decent base would at the most risk.

Did OcUK stock Zotac ?

would be good if some more companys would start bringing out ATI cards for us =] it would make financial sense for them!!

Slackworth said:

We've heard nothing else so far but EVGA haven't had any stock of high-end for a long time either now. They do have their motherboard business on the otherhand and I'd say they're more profitable than BFG were.

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Not so sure, they aren't a really big volume mobo seller are they, and don't they tend to make more specific mobo's on non reference design? Design, testing and support gets very expensive when you ship very few boards.

I'll be honest and say I have no idea what kind of penetration they have in the USA/Asian markets for mobo's, but I've never thought of them as a massive player and the other niche small volume mobo makers have all spluttered out of existance due to fairly small profits with high production costs.

The problem isn't completely lack of actual production of the top chips, there was next to no money in the gt200b when they were being made. £130 for a 260gtx was basically at cost, the other cards were barely selling. We're not looking at any real chance of Fermi being a massive selling product at profitable margins. The thing is without a midrange, they don't have a cheapish high volume part. If the gt200b can't be sold in great numbers at decent profit with all the partners hurting before production stopped, how can an equally large core(for the process) with significantly worse yields be profitable even at much larger cost?

The other bigger sellers, gigabyte, asus and so on can afford to make little profit due to obvious volume in other products, but the guys who pretty much only do graphics cards with very low volume sales in a couple other area's could have a very very tough time in the next year.

JonJ678 said:

If BFG leave Europe but continue to trade abroad, is importing their cards (individually if need be) not an option?

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But there maybe warranty problems if you import them from abroad....

jigger said:

Did OcUK stock Zotac ?

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We used to. No plans to bring it back either.

drunkenmaster said:

Not so sure, they aren't a really big volume mobo seller are they, and don't they tend to make more specific mobo's on non reference design? Design, testing and support gets very expensive when you ship very few boards.

I'll be honest and say I have no idea what kind of penetration they have in the USA/Asian markets for mobo's, but I've never thought of them as a massive player and the other niche small volume mobo makers have all spluttered out of existance due to fairly small profits with high production costs.

The problem isn't completely lack of actual production of the top chips, there was next to no money in the gt200b when they were being made. £130 for a 260gtx was basically at cost, the other cards were barely selling. We're not looking at any real chance of Fermi being a massive selling product at profitable margins. The thing is without a midrange, they don't have a cheapish high volume part. If the gt200b can't be sold in great numbers at decent profit with all the partners hurting before production stopped, how can an equally large core(for the process) with significantly worse yields be profitable even at much larger cost?

The other bigger sellers, gigabyte, asus and so on can afford to make little profit due to obvious volume in other products, but the guys who pretty much only do graphics cards with very low volume sales in a couple other area's could have a very very tough time in the next year.

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EVGA definitely don't sell motherboards in volume apart from when they want to do a bulk clearance deal on some lower end product. They charge silly amounts of money for their boards though and make a lot of profit on each one they sell.

EVGA aren't big over this side of the pond but in the USA they are huge. The business is operated in a completely different way to Europe though and the USA unfortunatey get a much better deal. EVGA Europe just see € signs in their eyes which is probably why they can still manage to trade. The business in Europe is completely independant from the US business and if the company does hit problems then it will be another BFG situation.

You make a very good point about the cost of the cards. NVIDIA partners were selling us 260s for example waaaay below the £130 mark going back several months. Asus and Gigabyte are both multi-vendor brands though so both AMD and NVIDIA only ship them small amounts of stock in comparison to the likes of Sapphire and Palit/Gainward/Xpertvision.

Off the top of my head, NVIDIA have about 12ish board partners (might not be 100% but it's a Saturday morning ) but I can easily see this dropping to sub-10 within the next 6 months.

This is the biggest problem I see, even with Fermi coming in, there are really only two options, price match AMD and make smeg all on every card, or charge what the card needs to make a profit and have very low volume overall. The problem is their past 3 gens it would be normal to be selling Fermi and the 260-285gtx as their new midrange, at a profit with high volume. That segment is just not there now and likely not for a long time. They've already tried and failed to shrink it to a crap 40nm process.

You can't really see a return to a decent income until the midrange Fermi is ready, but Nvidia's game for the past 3 years has to not make a midrange part, so who knows if theres a Fermi midrange, or when it would be ready.

A midrange fermi would be able to cut size, mem bus, pin out, traces, pcb layers, power circuitry which would make it much more competitive, I just can't see it being ready before Q3 now(as Nvidia for quite some time have been releasing mid/low end 6 months after the high end).

Well A3 silicon is supposed to be back very early Jan, which should mean info about if they have done risk production alongside(put in a limited amount of waifers at the same type and pray A3 silicon is good enough, otherwise you throw away millions of dollars of waifers) they might have a few ready to go in Feb but not many. It would still be 2 months after A3 silicon comes back that they can get real supply.

So the thing is, if Nvidia partners make almost nothing on Fermi and desparately need a midrange, when is it coming. The high end part will change fairly little for their partners as I just can't see huge money in it.

Obviously if its 4 times as fast as a 5870 and only costs Nvidia £50 more to make, they can sell loads at £400-500 with ease and make a killing, but I don't think even the hardiest of fanboys thinks thats possible. Would be interesting though, I might have to buy an Nvidia card

Cant see BFG dying they have a very strong brand name. people trust them, pretty sure they covered as they as did nivida knew what was coming

wab said:

Cant see BFG dying they have a very strong brand name. people trust them, pretty sure they covered as they as did nivida knew what was coming

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They won't die but they definitely won't be in Europe anymore. That's come from BFG themselves.

Shame to see BFG in trouble. Would have been nice if they could have kept going in Europe until the release of FERMI at least

DOnt evga have problems stocking their motherboards also atm?