Fermi launch limited to first-tier manufacturers?

[Matthew DeCarlo]

According to sources cited by DigiTimes, Nvidia's upcoming Fermi launch will be limited to select graphics card makers. Second-tier manufacturers won't start shipping GeForce GTX 470 and 480 cards until April, as most have yet to receive complete reference board designs. Nvidia will reportedly give supply priority to first-tier makers, or those that only produce Nvidia cards.

Both the GTX 470 and 480 have already appeared on some e-tail sites from manufacturers like XFX and PNY, so they are presumably among those that will have stock available early on. DigiTimes spoke with PNY, who stressed that it is not yet offering pre-orders on Fermi cards, so the listings were probably the result of miscommunication.

DigiTimes also noted that some analysts don't expect a price war between Nvidia and AMD until after May. The sites that accidentally jumped the gun listed the GTX 470 and 480 at $499.99 and $679.99, and AMD only has one card in that territory: the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970, which is fetching about $650.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/38028-fermi-launch-limited-to-first-tier-manufacturers.html

 

[dividebyzero]

Makes sense that nVidia are likely to cater to their major AIB partners first. I'd expect eVGA to be front and centre, probably alongside Palit/Galaxy/BFG since they are all nVidia exclusive in the graphics card sales. Hard to imagine that Asus wont be at the top table either, so how the allocations between them, Gigabyte and MSI shake out could be interesting.
The supposed rift between nV and XFX cant have amounted to much if the latter already have allocation, add in the workstation board vendors (PNY and Leadtek) and nVidia might have some creative juggling to do to keep everyone at least partially supplied.
Could be a long wait for Sparkle, Zotac, PoV, Inno3D, ELSA etc...

 

[red1776]

Did Palit stop manufacturing ATI cards? I know they used to. and I saw this the other day about Galaxy.

 

[dividebyzero]

I haven't seen a Palit HD5xxx series card. I know they were producing HD4xxx series and their cards are in general are numerous and cheaper than most other brands here in NZ- even their Sonic branded OC cards (along with the XpertVision counterpart).
Strange bedfellows- Galaxy produce ATI cards while another arm of Palit Microsystems, Gainward gets a rap over the knuckles from ATI over producing the HD 4850 Golden Sample because Gainward had the temerity to give the card GDDR5 memory.
I couldn't see Palit being frozen out simply because of the size of the market they operate within. If the Galaxy story is true I wonder if they slip down the list, or whether Galaxy/Palit are sending Nvidia a message in regards who gets a share of the launch cards.

 

[Guest]

Why does XFX get to sell Fermi early? Don't they also make ATI cards and thus, not nVidia exclusive?