<< I am worried that Hercules will make Radeons with their typical poor quality 2d and ATI will be consigned to the land of poor 2d. I have never seen or heard much about Gigabyte's older offerings so I dont know about their manufacturing quality either.
-later >>
ATi manufacturs all third party Radeon cards. The cards are merely sold to the thir party to include any extraneous extra etc.
Visual quality and the like will be 100% identical.
Competition is always good, so this is great IMHO.
I can't say I'm surprised to see Hercules dumping nVidia. Ever since they produced their Kyro board they've been on iffy grounds w/nVidia.
Rumours have indicated for a long time that nVidia had been 'delaying' shipments of GF2/3 chips to Hercules, and bumping prices in them up slightly to hurt Hercules ability to compete against other nVidia board manufacturers. The fact that Hercules nViudia based boards have been in somewhat limited availability ever since then kind of indicates said rumours may have some validity to them.
At the very least, nVidia removed Hercules from theiur list of supported partners immediately after Hercules started producing their Kyro's.
<< So say goodbye to Gigabye, MSi very shortly, Gainward, and now Hercules >>
MSI?
Not likely. MSI manufactures nVidia's reference boards, and manufactures boards for at least 4 other nVidia board manufacturers. It would be insane for MSI to jeapordize all of that. MSI would be the last company I could see leaving nVidia.
Gainward... maybe. I don't see it happening anytime soon but it's possible. Gainward survives off of the enthusiast market, and if ATi starts taking off even larger then they have in said market or if they take the clear performance crown then i could see Gainward producing ATi boards.