BFG Exiting Graphics Card Market

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."

Re:Not Surprised

[Hamsterdan]

The difference is the warranty still applies if it breaks. they are *guaranteed* to work at those speeds, often because of a beefier / better cooling and better ram as a previous poster said. I'm using one in one of my machines, and it still works, which can't be said for one of my Sapphires (running at stock speeds).

Any other card *might* be able to run at higher speeds, *might* being the magic word.

Re:Oh well

[Khyber]

"It took them 3 freaking tries to properly replace my bad gtx8800oc with a WORKING card"

Yea, you do realize that's nVidia's fault for having a faulty die packaging for their 8 and 9 series GPUs, right? Not BFG's problem nVidia had other higher-volume retailers they had to take care of first.

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

EVGA is a much better company to deal with in my experience. I had an EVGA 7600GT that blew several caps just beyond the one year warranty that was stated in the documentation for the card. When I called them, they informed me that I had a "1+1" warranty which automatically granted another year and without any further questions, they gave me an RMA number and told me to send the card back. Within a week they sent me a replacement, which happened to be a 8600GTS. Not only did they extend my warranty and make the return painless, they gave me a significantly better card as a replacement. Ever since then, I have been recommending their products to everyone I know.

Re:Oh well

[shadowrat]

Could also be that the laptop market is killing the video card market. I don't get a choice beyond nvidia or ati when speccing out a laptop. I haven't bought a brand name video card in 8 years because all I've been getting are laptops.

Re:BFG products fit a niche, and their absence is

[couchslug]

Installing new hardware isn't relevant to the normal PC owner. Geeks buy online and don't need brick-and-mortar stores.

It would appear that BFG cards sucked, hence lack of geek support.

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm incredibly sad to see them go. BFG was one of the few vendors who produced low-power versions of cards (read: no need for a physical 6-pin power cable between PSU and card), cards with HSFs which were *quiet*, in addition to power circuitry that didn't emit high-pitch noises under load.

We're now left with after-market coolers which often void warranties if installed, shitty Zalman products that are excessive in size and don't even live up to their hype (now available on Gigabyte and Asus video cards as "stock"), and EVGA who continues to put out cards with known/confirmed bad RAM and suffer from aforementioned power circuitry design issues.

Intel's integrated GPU (e.g. their i5 661) is looking better already.

Re:Not Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it ironic when someone that is nearly illiterate is chastising others for being "incompetent"?

No, just predictable.

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