BFG Tech throwing in the towel?

Nathan Andrews 10 Jul, 2010 at 1:19am ET Article published in Tech

HardOCP is reporting that sources “inside BFG Tech” have stated that employees in their PSU division have been let go.

Couple this with their recent announcement of backing out of the video card business, and it looks like we are watching a company in the final stages of closing up shop. While there is no official announcement from BFG Tech to this regard, the fact that they appear to have stopped producing their two core business components is pretty telling.

While companies popping out of existence is no new occurrence (if we reported on the comings and goings of every company, there would hardly be room for anything else on the site), the BFG Tech situation rings a little differently. For many years, they were an icon of the high-performance gaming hardware business. They essentially created the market for video cards with ridiculous long suffixes like “BFG nVidia GeForce 7950 GT OC OMFGWOWWTFBBQ”. They made themselves famous by taking a retail graphics chip, overclocking it to ridiculous proportions, building a massive cooling system around it, and topping it off with a lifetime warranty. If you wanted your graphics card to dominate all of your friends’ equipment, they were your go-to source—and now it looks like they might be packing it up entirely.

These developments are more than just the disappearance of an icon. Could this be a signal for the specialist enthusiast OEM? Are other companies like BFG Tech in similar situations? Are stock cards currently so powerful and so well priced that they are putting companies like BFG Tech out of business?

Maybe it’s all just a thinning of the herd, maybe it’s BFG Tech focusing on more profitable core business, or maybe it’s a sign of future things to come in the hardware business. Only time will tell at this point.

Hey, maybe we’ll all get lucky, and the KillerNIC will end up disappearing, too.

Comments

10 Jul 2010 ~ 1:36am primesuspect Welcome Nathan to the Icrontic newsteam
10 Jul 2010 ~ 1:39am AlexDeGruven Aww shucks.
10 Jul 2010 ~ 2:45am TurboPenguin Honestly I am not surprised, when they closed their doors to the GPU line I was like WTF, why would you keep a PSU line that is well descent but not top of the line? I saw it coming awhile ago when it took them 2 months to get me an RMA'ed GTX280... I highly doubt that other companies will go this way. Honestly I think BFG ran out of products, they stopped making motherboards and competed in a high competitive market. Lets be honest if someone has two choices and BFG is $20 more and warranty is the same, they are going to save the $20.

As for the Killer NIC, I seriously don't know how the heck they are still in business? WHO BUYS THEIR CARDS?!
10 Jul 2010 ~ 3:11am MrTRiot That sucks! I got a 1gb BFG 9800GT for Christmas. Amazing card, never get hot and can STILL be over-clocked to ridiculous proportions

It'll be a sad day if they actually go under
10 Jul 2010 ~ 3:34am Thrax

Mr TRiot wrote:

I got a 1gb BFG 9800GT for Christmas. Amazing card, never get hot and can STILL be over-clocked to ridiculous proportions

Just like every other GeForce, and therein lies the rub.
10 Jul 2010 ~ 7:11am Shorty Welcome Nathan. Sad news on BFG. Loved their model of taking things to the extreme. But alas, the world is changing!

Good write up though!
12 Jul 2010 ~ 4:15pm AlexDeGruven Like Thrax (and a point I made in the article) said: I think one of the problems that the extreme OEMs are having is that the stock-clocked chips on standard reference boards with reference coolers are putting out enough performance to make their updates irrelevant.

Why would I spend an extra $200 on a super-clocked card that gives me a 10% (or even 20%) performance gain, when I can probably do that myself using RivaTuner or CCC on a stock card with reference parts?
12 Jul 2010 ~ 4:22pm Tushon

AlexDeGruven wrote:

Why would I spend an extra $200 on a super-clocked card that gives me a 10% (or even 20%) performance gain, when I can probably do that myself using RivaTuner or CCC on a stock card with reference parts?

Their market was certainly wider before the advent of "easy" overclocking, but I'd be surprised if there still weren't plenty of people who would take a premium to not have to do it themselves. After all, Alienware is still around (though the benefit you get from an Alienware is highly suspect).
12 Jul 2010 ~ 4:25pm AlexDeGruven

Tushon wrote:

Their market was certainly wider before the advent of "easy" overclocking, but I'd be surprised if there still weren't plenty of people who would take a premium to not have to do it themselves. After all, Alienware is still around (though the benefit you get from an Alienware is highly suspect).

I agree, but I think their market has shrunk enough that it's really starting to affect even the biggest names.

Group 1: People who originally liked the idea of OverClocking, but found it too difficult/dangerous to do themselves. Software tools have made it a lot easier and safer. Additionally, thermal sensors and cutoffs/throttling on-die make it almost impossible to detonate your GPU anymore.

Group 2: Liked the idea of the performance gain, but don't see enough benefit any longer to justify the price.

Both were good customers of BFG and the like, but now don't really have a reason for such cards.
12 Jul 2010 ~ 4:43pm MAGIC

Tushon wrote:

Their market was certainly wider before the advent of "easy" overclocking, but I'd be surprised if there still weren't plenty of people who would take a premium to not have to do it themselves. After all, Alienware is still around (though the benefit you get from an Alienware is highly suspect).

Dell bought alienware. Otherwise, they wouldn't be around. HP bought Voodoo, same case. Falcon-NW seems to still be hangin in there, but they have their custom painting niche.
13 Jul 2010 ~ 10:15am Tushon Fair enough. I don't really keep up with the business side of that, so I appreciate the info.
16 Aug 2010 ~ 3:24pm Tom Bfg is going out of business.I got a letter from them stating this and the are not covering any warrenty on there cards.Save your money without the warrenty theses cards are useless
16 Aug 2010 ~ 3:30pm primesuspect Thanks for the heads up, Tom
16 Aug 2010 ~ 4:26pm Tushon Validated with a copy of the letter. Sad day.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6921
16 Aug 2010 ~ 4:32pm RootWyrm BFG's troubles were not purely the highly competitive nature of the area. NVIDIA has too many AIB partners as is. Just off the top of my head, only the ones doing lifetime warranties, you have: BFG with Lifetime, EVGA with Lifetime, and XFX with Double Lifetime.
Total AIB partners? Well: BFG, EVGA, XFX, MSI, Asus, PNY, Gigabyte, Jaton, Palit, Zotac, ECS, and Biostar. Just off the top of my head. All of these companies have to compete with each other for part supply, especially on 480 and 470's.
That's why only a tiny subset made 480's or 470's at release, and BFG would have had to fight them very hard for supply. Without a 480, BFG couldn't compete at all. It's likely that BFG was told they would not be getting enough GPUs to make 480's when they announced they were exiting the graphics card business.

And once they exited graphics, that was probably that.
16 Aug 2010 ~ 9:57pm Cliff_Forster So, the letter says in a nice way, Nvidia screwed us all, have a nice life!!

To be honest though, who can really take a company called BFG seriously? When it came time to dole out the dozen or so working Fermi chips they had, no wonder they were at the bottom of the list.

Now, if they would have wised up like XFX, maybe they would still be around.