Gigabyte Discloses Details on NVIDIA Based Graphics Cards

by Anton Shilov
10/22/2003 | 10:05 AM

Taiwanese Gigabyte Technology and US-based NVIDIA Corporation today officially announced their collaboration and disclosed details of Gigabyte’s new graphics cards lineup that will be available as early as next month.

Gigabyte, who started to produce graphics cards based on Intel’s i740 and 3dfx’s Banshee chips became an exclusive NVIDIA partner sometime in late 1999 to stay in the so-called NVIDIA camp until late 2001 making product using GeForce256, GeForce2 and GeForce3 GPUs. In early 2002 Gigabyte Technology became an exclusive partner of ATI Technologies from Markham, Ontario and ceased to produce GeForce-based solutions. Today the Taiwanese computer components producer, who already announced a close collaboration with NVIDIA earlier this year in the field of chipsets for mainboards, officially confirmed plans to make NVIDIA GeForce FX-series-based graphics cards.

“Gigabyte is an award-winning supplier of both graphics cards and mainboard products and they are indeed an ideal partner for NVIDIA,” said Jeff Fisher executive vice president of worldwide sales at NVIDIA. “The fact that they have decided to renew their partnership with NVIDIA and to use our graphics processing units is a testament to our products, our relationships and the support network we have in place for our board partners.”

The initial product line to use NVIDIA GeForce FX graphics processors will include GeForce FX 5900, GeForce FX 5600 XT, GeForce FX 5200 and GeForce4 MX440 with AGP 8x SKUs. All GeForce FX products will have 128MB of onboard memory, while entry-level graphics cards powered by GeForce4 MX440 technology will boast with 64MB.

It is obvious that NVIDIA-based devices will compliment, but not substitute the existing line of Powered by ATI RADEON solutions, as the GeForce FX 5600 XT, GeForce FX 5200 and GeForce4 MX440 with AGP 8x are mostly cost-effective solutions that will not have to compete with the vast-majority RADEON products in terms of performance, but will help Gigabyte to encourage ATI in lowering the prices of its VPUs. In the high-end Gigabyte does not offer the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra that is about to release in a week or two time, but sticks to a slightly-outdated GeForce FX 5900-based graphics card that is slower than the RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB offered by Gigabyte. The actual competition inside the product line may start when Gigabyte brings NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 and 5700-based products that will have to fight the RADEON 9800 PRO, 9600 PRO and possibly RADEON 9800 XT and 9600 XT.

Gigabyte is one of a number of AIB firms to start making both NVIDIA and ATI-based graphics cards this year. In case the experience of companies like ASUS, Gigabyte, Creative Labs and Club 3D in selling graphics cards powered by chips from different developers is positive, I would expect some other computer components makers to adopt the same business model. If this happens, it will crash exclusive-business models proposed and encouraged by NVIDIA and ATI Technologies earlier this decade.