BFG Exiting Graphics Card Market 108
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-pixels dept.
from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-pixels dept.
thsoundman writes news that BFG appears to be giving up on the graphics card side of its business. The company's chairman said in a statement:
"After eight years of providing innovative, high-quality graphics cards to the market, we regret to say that this category is no longer profitable for us, although we will continue to evaluate it going forward. We will continue to provide our award-winning power supplies and gaming systems, and are working on a few new products as well. I'd like to stress that we will continue to provide RMA support for our current graphics card warranty holders, as well as for all of our other products such as power supplies, PCs, and notebooks."
Not Surprised (Score:2, Informative)
BFG cards were often priced 20-50$ more than other video cards of the same model, but with a small boost in clock speeds, something that takes less than 5 minutes to setup yourself. It doesn't surprise me that they had a hard time selling them.
BFG products fit a niche, and their absence is bad (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Informative)
BFG was one of many manufactures that made nVidia cards from their reference design. Often, they would improve on the design with a better HSF and higher quality RAM so the card could be overclocked out of the box.
Kinda sad to see them go. They've always provided good warranty support.
Re:Oh well (Score:3, Informative)
Supply & Demand vs Acceptable or Insane graphi (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe it's because they all eventually crap out before the warranty does (or at least a very high percentage). Not just this vendor (BFG) but all of them. nVidia's chips may hold up, sometimes, but the fans fail and once the chip overheats....its toast. This problem even applies to ATI/AMD cards. Not to mention the power supply requirements of the higher end cards and it all adds up to more and more people being satisfied by 'acceptable' performance versus those who want to see insanely high frame rates. Vendors (such as BFG) who sell JUST the higher end cards of the currently released chip, are not selling as well as say XFS, or PNY that make a full range of cards. But even those vendors have turned to making more than just the video cards. Plus there are tons of 'unknown' brands available on places like NewEgg and such that you can find a decent card for $150 and not have to shell out $400 for the card and another 200 for a power supply that will properly power it. BFG was on one of the few who had lifetime warraties on their cards and upgrade options if you owned a previous card of an older chip.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh Well.... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Not Surprised (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh well (Score:3, Informative)
For those that don't know/never have owned a BFG the company's claim to fame was OC'd from the factory Nvidia chips. Unless they changed they were a pretty much Nvidia chip company exclusively, and you could have a little faster card from BFG than from anybody else.
Maybe they found that Fermi runs just too damned hot to OC at the factory? from everything I've read Fermi is a real power sucking Netburst P4 style space heater, so I can see how OCing them from the factory might not be a great idea.
I'm personally sad to see them go. Their cards usually carried lifetime warranties and being OC'd they would always score a little better than other manufacturers. I've had several cards of theirs over the years, from a MX4000 to a 7600GS, and all are still running day in, day out. Like Abit motherboards they were never the biggest or the best, but they did make good middle of the road hardware.
Re:Oh well (Score:3, Informative)
The BFG is a bit overpriced, they sell through the B&Ms (best buy, etc), but a totally worthwhile card.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Informative)
And in those 5 minutes you could completely void your warranty on your $350 video card, or spend the extra $20 and keep it.
Since overclocking control (and sometimes even overvolting) is now built into the software drivers/control panel (with approved limits), you don't void your warranty by doing these sort of small overclocks.
If you re-program your BIOS or disable the overclock limit by using a third-party program, you might void your warranty. Since the chips have thermal shutdown built in, you really can't harm them by overclocking, so even some of that may be OK. Intel is an another example of a company that realized this and now offers overclocking of the CPU on Intel-brand motherboards.