Graphics Division No Longer Primary Focus Point of NVidia

SimGuy

Graphics Division No Longer Primary Focus Point of NVidia

Jen-Hsun decides its time for diversity...



Over the last 10 years, the little upstart NVidia, who brought us such revolutionary products like the Riva TNT, GeForce 256 and GeForce 3, has continued to push the graphics technology envelope forward. From programmable pixel shaders to a complete graphics programming language (Cg), NVidia was the graphics market leader. Was.

At Day 2 of Computex Taipei 2003, NVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made it 100% clear that the 3D graphics division of NVidia would no longer be the primary focus point of the company.

Could this actually mean that NVidia plans to stop selling top-of-the-line video cards to public consumers? With the NV40 in development, does NVidia actually fear that their latest product will not stand up to competing products from ATI, XGI & S3?

Loosing the XBOX contract with Microsoft was a massive blow to the graphics division of NVidia, in both monetary contributions and in stature. For 2003, NVidia raked in almost $445 Million US in revenues on the XBOX contract. Loosing that to their arch-rival ATI was a crushing defeat.

All wild speculation aside, Jen-Hsun's comments today cast a dark shadow over the graphics industry. What will become of NVidia's graphics division? Will they be relegated to constructing and shipping performance-limited cards to the mainstream users at rock-bottom prices, or will they continue to innovate like they always have, just at a slower pace. Has "3DFX" syndrome affected Nvidia? Only time will tell.

Source: Legion Hardware

TheSmJ

Might not mean anything from the consumer's point of view. They may try focusing a little more on chipsets for a while. I doubt it means they simply wont produce new high end GPUs anymore.

primesuspect

Everybody can dog nVidia all they want, but if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have these high performance cards that we have right now.

CyrixInstead

Eh? They shift their primary focus from graphics to something alse and word arises about the end of the graphics industry.

dark shadow over the graphics industry

My arse!

:rolleyes2

~Cyrix

RWB

PRIME FOCUS does not mean they are stopping, just means they are opeing their doors to more things. Motherboards, possibly other things can come later on like NVidia Memory and stuff, who knows.

LawnMM

It just means they're admitting defeat. Too bad apple can't do the same.

stillwaters

You guys Remember a little Company called S3 from back in the day? They were pretty much in control of the whole market for a couple years. Then they bought Diamond Multimedia and started making all kinds of Carp. Then They released a serious couple of crummy cards the worst being Savage 2000.

Then They Changed their name to Sonic Blue, Sold off S3-Gaphics to Via and the rest is history.

Guess what... for about 6 months before this all happened the Company CEO and Execs started saying things like "We are changing our focus more towards MultiMedia and away from Graphics".

6 months later.. Boom. Done.. Gone... 3 Years later to today and we are just now starting to hear about a possible comback product from the S3 Spin-off.

Dont be shocked if Nvidia Spins off their Graphics Business. Or sells it to one of the big Mobo Companies.. Or even more amazing.. Sells it and all its patents off to ATi.

Sounds crazy? Wait till This time next year and well see whats crazy.

thats a quote from Rage 3D.

I doubt that will happen but if it did, it would suck. As much as i prefer ATI to Nvidia, its the instense conpetition between the 2 firms that gets us, the consumers the best quality cards.

Looks like Nvidia could do with a new CEO

karatekid

Geez, I just find it hard to believe that nVidia would completely give in on graphics. They have had a couple of tough quarters, but it seems they are starting to rebound. They have been having a ton of success with chipsets, it probably just means they are going to do more work as a chipset maker. Though, it would be irontic if nVidia spun off its graphics assests and named them 3dfx :woowoo:

primesuspect said
Everybody can dog nVidia all they want, but if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have these high performance cards that we have right now.

Actually, we have 3dfx to thank for that

Shorty

karatekid said
Actually, we have 3dfx to thank for that

Right on! the Voodoo 3 3000 was the monster

Thrax

v3 3000 suxx0red. That was the card that sealed the coffin for 3DFX. Instead of offering 32bit color like the rest of their competitors, they decided to add more memory that no game at the time was taking advantage of.

Everyone saw "32 BIT COLOR! REVOLUTIONARY COLOR ACCURACY!" and bought the TNT2 series.

kanezfan

i doubt nvidia is going anywhere. if anything, this is an excuse for the crap they've been involved in lately.

primesuspect

nVidia is the premiere chipset maker for AMD chips right now. They're going to be spending their R&D dollars where the market wants them to spend it. Right now, the market is telling them "chipsets, not GPUs".. You guys always think that these companies are like people. You try to ascribe personalities to them. This is just standard business. Get one thing very clear in your heads - they do not care about gamers. They do not care about you. They care only about the almighty dollar and this "announcement" is proof of that.

Mt_Goat

primesuspect said
nVidia is the premiere chipset maker for AMD chips right now. They're going to be spending their R&D dollars where the market wants them to spend it. Right now, the market is telling them "chipsets, not GPUs".. You guys always think that these companies are like people. You try to ascribe personalities to them. This is just standard business. Get one thing very clear in your heads - they do not care about gamers. They do not care about you. They care only about the almighty dollar and this "announcement" is proof of that.

I think that pretty well sums it up in a handbag!!!

If they want to maintain their position in the chipset market they need to to this or they will loose out. They need to be right in the thick of things with the A64 and develop newer better chipsets for it as well as smoot out what they already have out to keep their share from slipping. Does anyone think we will see them in the Intel chipset market?

TheBaron

damnit its all about dual monster 2's linked ... THAT was the best thing ever. i want the ability to link two 9700 pros :-D

Gobbles

I think this is their way of stepping aside gracefully to allow ATI to be king unchallenged...

Thats my .02

GHoosdum

This means bad news for the prices of graphics cards...

nVidia was king of the graphics industry until they started using the technologies they licensed from 3dfx. Now their graphics division is going the way of 3dfx.

ATi has been producing absolutely 100% superior GPUs since the Radeon 9700 series went head-to-head with the GeForce FX. Until the FX was added, GeForce was king.

Now nVidia is capitalizing on the dominance they've achieved in chipsets since everybody and their brother is buying the nForce2. It's just the best chipset out there for socket A, just like GeForce used to be the best thing out there in graphics. Hopefully the GeForce3 will rebound from the low benchmark numbers we've seen from it... when I go Athlon 64 I don't want to have to buy another VIA board!

GnomeWizardd

I beg to Differ! Nvisia started slipping when ATI possed a minor threat with the 8500 when it was released. Big bad Nvisida got a little Competition and tripped themselves up. Now what they should do is make a kick @$$ card and try and retake thier thrown.