Why do Nvidia's partners change?

[FearoftheNight]

I was reading up on old card benchmarks and I"ve been realizing that many of nvidia's old partners are w/ Ati now. Why do they do that? What is the reasoning between changing up like that? I.e. Visiontek, Hercules, Gigabyte, Elsa.

Does anyone know?

 

[EdipisReks]

the companies find what they percieve to be better deals and they change suppliers. that's how business works.

 

[Lonyo]

Elsa and Visiontek both went bust and came back with new backing useing the old, trusted, name. They are really new companies, but they use the name because it's a recognised name. They haven't really changed who they partner.
Hercules I believe used to make lots of cards, then companies all went to individual companies, looks like Hercules chose ATi. They used to do the Kryro 2 cards as well as nVidia.

 

[Schadenfroh]

personally if i were an AIB manufaturer i would not trust a company that sold me chips that also made a board themselves to compete against me.

 

[EdipisReks]

good thing you aren't a manufacturer, then.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: EdipisReks
the companies find what they percieve to be better deals and they change suppliers. that's how business works.

I think thats pretty much it. Also note that they will usually become partners with whomever has the best performance for the same price at different levels. Think about it, a company can choose company A or B and A gives more performance for the same price. Or they can choose B just because they used them earlier and sacrifice sales and performance. Most likely, company A will be chosen. There is obviously more to it than what I've mentioned but its a simple overview.

 

[IamG]

There are lots of factors that could influence a manufacturer to change there partners.

Take Gigabyte for example. They used to be a tier 2 supplier for Nvidia. Then here comes along ATi with good product (9xxx series boards) and starts offering tier 1 status for companies that switched partners.

Gigabyte did just that and for them it was a good move indeed.

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: Lonyo

Hercules I believe used to make lots of cards, then companies all went to individual companies, looks like Hercules chose ATi. They used to do the Kryro 2 cards as well as nVidia.

After the original Hercules went bankrupt shortly after the TNT2 Ultra launch Guillemott bought them out. Guillemott at the time was on fairly poor terms with nVidia being relegated to tier2 status after their lofty days with 3dfx. nV was also less then pleased with Guillemott's tendencies to clock their graphics cards beyond stock speeds out of the box.
With 3dfx having already bought out STB and manufacturing their own graphics cards Guillemot jumped ship almost immediately after ATi arose to become a serious competitor to nVidia.
With nV's negative PR spins towards Guillemott/Hercules Kyro boards their still on pretty poor terms with them.

 

[FearoftheNight]

How exactly does the relationship betw. Ati/Nv and thier partners work? And what is to stop them from switched often? Are there contracts involved?