XFX says no to 470/480

Well, I don't blame them.

In ATi territory, they are #1, no one else comes close in terms of warranty support and customer service.

In Nvidia territory, they have to compete with eVGA and BFG.
 
This must be a direct reaction to Nvidia's way of strong arming AIBs into buying gtx3xxx chips if they hope to get any Fermi allocation. For every 4 Fermi based chips (2 gtx480 and 2 gtx470) they are allowed to buy, they must first buy 6 of their crappy rebranded gtx3xxx class chips.
 
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I was told at CES that XFX would not get allocation on 470 and 480. Guess this proves my source right. I did not feel solid reporting it.
 
Lorien said:
This must de a direct reaction to Nvidia's way of strong arming AIBs into buying gtx3xxx chips if they hope to get any Fermi allocation. For every 4 Fermi based chips (2 gtx480 and 2 gtx470) they are allowed to buy, they must first buy 6 of their crappy rebranded gtx3xxx class chips.
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if this was true...then ya i can understand XFX's situation in not supporting a communist regime known as Nvidia.
 
Damn! All my GPUs for the last four years have been XFX because of the double lifetime warranty. nVidia you are making this VERY hard on me as today I just committed myself to building a 3x SLI 480 rig. Hmmm...

Guess I need to be committed huh? Don't worry I have an independent circuit for my primary gaming rig. And a window AC. And fire extinguishers. Honestly.

Fire%20Extinguisher%20(1280x960).jpg


I've been ready for Fermi for years!:D
 
XFX may be worried about losses incurred by their double lifetime warranty and the heat and power requirements of these cards. They have no control and knowledge over what end users might do. Many people may end up underpowering their cards with cheap PSUs (causing damage) or put into cases without the high end airflow that these cards require resulting in heat damage and many warranty requests. Also, given the recent talk on these forums about SLI configurations, they have no way of ensuring users will space out the cards properly either - again leading to potential heat damage. I've seen what a heat damaged videocard can be like. XFX also supports users using aftermarket cooling but with the heat generated by fermi, I can see warranty returns on aftermarket installs gone bad going up as well.

If they didn't have such a strong warranty policy, they may have stayed on the green ship. I also recall XFX and Nvidia having a beef with how their AIB arrangement and Nvidia being pissed off at XFX Europe and dropping them as a partner but I don't remember the specifics right away. I believe it had something to do with Nvidia being pissed off at XFX selling ATI products.

http://hardocp.com/news/2010/01/09/gpu_news_from_ces/
Was there a thread about that?
 
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wrangler said:
The report makes it sound more like XFX is "choosing" to sit it out but I wondered as I read it how much spin was on that ball.
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Well if XFX abided by NVidia's rules, I would think there would be no reason for the dealbreaker. For a showstopper to occur, both parties must come to a disagreement with the negotiations. So depending on the spin, NVidia "chose" to not agree with XFX and vice versa most likely. JMO.
 
I bet they just looked at what the cards had to offer and decided it wasn't worth the financial risk of bringing them on the market.

Unless Nvidia fixes the heat issues and lowers the price drastically these cards wont sell well at all.

At the very least they should redesign the cooler with a much better heatsink and a larger diameter fan.
 
Rendermonkey said:
Unless Nvidia fixes the heat issues and lowers the price drastically these cards wont sell well at all.
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I'll probably be buying three though I know this will be the RARE exception. That's just too much performance for triple head gaming to give up.
 
because they will lose money with all cards dying from overheating :p especally with Double Lifetime warranty
 
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1263/1/&sref=http://www.highdefforum.com/gaming-systems-48/

Perhaps because XFX is working on stuff like this! Can you just imagine what a 5970 running much higher core and memory clocks along with 4 gigs of memory can do? Considering their success with the ATI 5xxx AIB market, perhaps they wanted to focus their engineering on other projects rather than focus on something that will likely be very limited in supply for a while.

However, what Kyle said does make sense although I wonder what XFX must have done to piss off nVidia and not be given any allocations of the Fermi GPU's. Last I hear, XFX was a pretty significant player in the nVidia AIB market.
 
We've all seen what happens when dirt and dust pile up inside these self contained heatsink designs that are hard to clean out. If brand new Fermis hit 95° C OUTSIDE of a case on reviewers test benches, what will happen to a Fermi card that is sitting inside that case that has accumulated dust for a few months. XFX has no control over whether or not users are smart enough to disassemble their heatsinks for dusting every few months. Just a little bit of dust build-up and Fermis are going to hit 105° C and they'll start shutting down. A lifetime warranty for such a product is just not profitable.
 
amdgamer said:
However, what Kyle said does make sense although I wonder what XFX must have done to piss off nVidia and not be given any allocations of the Fermi GPU's. Last I hear, XFX was a pretty significant player in the nVidia AIB market.
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Nvidia already cut off XFX Europe from their partners back in December/Janurary. I never found out the specifics of that squabble.
 
heatlesssun said:
I'll probably be buying three though I know this will be the RARE exception. That's just too much performance for triple head gaming to give up.
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Tripple SLI 480's, I hope you set aside some $$ for a decent fire extinguisher...and better mount that sucker right on the case....you will need it when your mobo starts to melt :)

In fact I think Nvidia should start bundling one of these with any 3 card purchases :D
 
Rendermonkey said:
Tripple SLI 480's, I hope you set aside some $$ for a decent fire extinguisher...and better mount that sucker right on the case....you will need it when your mobo starts to melt :)

In fact I think Nvidia should start bundling one of these with any 3 card purchases :D
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Like I said independent circuit, window AC, and I have two of the fire extinguishers pictured in my first post just in my office and I'll be getting the Asus Rampage III Extreme with double spaced PCI-E slots and I guess the Thermaltake Fermi case. And of course an Enermax Galaxy 1200 PSU to power it all. Don't need to water cool because of the way my rig is positioned it's about 8 feet from me and fan noise when gaming with the window AC or fan on masks the noise.

Pretty much it'll be the fastest of the fast with the best of the best. :D
 
heatlesssun said:
Like I said independent circuit, window AC, and I have two of the fire extinguishers pictured in my first post just in my office and I'll be getting the Asus Rampage III Extreme with double spaced PCI-E slots and I guess the Thermaltake Fermi case. And of course an Enermax Galaxy 1200 PSU to power it all. Don't need to water cool because of the way my rig is positioned it's about 8 feet from me and fan noise when gaming with the window AC or fan on masks the noise.

Pretty much it'll be the fastest of the fast with the best of the best. :D
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Be sure to post impressions (and benchies) whenever you get it and good luck getting three cards on release.
 
Will do! Actually the Rampage III is probably about another month out from what I can tell so I don't expect to be able to get all the parts until late April/early May anyway so getting three 480s by then should be a problem.
 
Appreciate all the replies, I did not think this thread would produce a good amount of feedback.

ManicOne said:
Umm why? I can't see XFX dropping NV for good.
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This is true and I think ManicOne meant in terms of accessibility and availability of the 470/480.

XFX is still supplying Nvidia cards, just lower end/budget models for now. Interested to see if Nvidia will offer 460 and below, but not too sure of that.

Spare-Flair bringing up Kyle's entry does indeed confirm it is correct.

I would individually quote everyone and offer replies, but doubt anyone wants to see one post which expands to the bottom. :p I'm glad to have the chance to offer this news to all.

To end my reply here, I found heatlesssun's picture to be hilarious. :D
 
i don't see any fermi based bfg gc either seems something is going on there too
 
Given the thermals of the GTX 4xx series, I wouldn't want to offer DOUBLE LIFETIME warranty on such parts, either. EVGA is NV-only so they don't have much of a choice. BFG is very quiet suddenly. I don't know of other NV AIBs that offer genuine lifetime warranties (not PNY).
 
I really hope they don't drop nVidia for good. Really like their cards. Actually XFX is the best brand here since we don't get BFG or evga

heatlesssun said:
Like I said independent circuit, window AC, and I have two of the fire extinguishers pictured in my first post just in my office and I'll be getting the Asus Rampage III Extreme with double spaced PCI-E slots and I guess the Thermaltake Fermi case. And of course an Enermax Galaxy 1200 PSU to power it all. Don't need to water cool because of the way my rig is positioned it's about 8 feet from me and fan noise when gaming with the window AC or fan on masks the noise.

Pretty much it'll be the fastest of the fast with the best of the best. :D
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:eek:
I'm jealous :(

:p
 
Spare-Flair said:
XFX may be worried about losses incurred by their double lifetime warranty and the heat and power requirements of these cards. They have no control and knowledge over what end users might do. Many people may end up underpowering their cards with cheap PSUs (causing damage) or put into cases without the high end airflow that these cards require resulting in heat damage and many warranty requests. Also, given the recent talk on these forums about SLI configurations, they have no way of ensuring users will space out the cards properly either - again leading to potential heat damage. I've seen what a heat damaged videocard can be like. XFX also supports users using aftermarket cooling but with the heat generated by fermi, I can see warranty returns on aftermarket installs gone bad going up as well.

If they didn't have such a strong warranty policy, they may have stayed on the green ship. I also recall XFX and Nvidia having a beef with how their AIB arrangement and Nvidia being pissed off at XFX Europe and dropping them as a partner but I don't remember the specifics right away. I believe it had something to do with Nvidia being pissed off at XFX selling ATI products.

http://hardocp.com/news/2010/01/09/gpu_news_from_ces/
Was there a thread about that?
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this was the first thing to come to mind when I heard that. I really can't believe that Nvidia designed a chip that was meant to run at 96C (though ATI tried that trick themselves with the 4850 single slot) If Kyle hadn't spoken up I would assume this as well, and I still wouldn't rule it out as a contributing factor. Just one more reason for XFX to be less interested then the other vendors. ATI is a refresh away from taking the single GPU back with OC cards and they can't be making money on these things right now if the yields are still as low as reported.
 
This just means nVidia users can opt for a better brand like evga. I know some people swear by xfx but I'm not very fond of them. Had a bad RMA experience with a 8800GT, that alone isn't enough for me to write them off, but then they gimp their 4890 and reciently been reading evidence of their 5870's being gimped as well by either very poor (no) OC head room or not being stable even at stock speeds, requiring an underclock. Interestingly enough, that was the same issue I had with my 8800GT.

You have some AIB's that either stick with the reference design or use it until they learn how to improve upon it, then there is XFX who will use the reference design until they can figure out how to cut costs on it.
 
Crazy news. Since the review of 480/470 last week, I pulled out the GTX 285 I was planning on trading up for Fermi with and returned it.

Just so happens Ive been eyeballin an XFX 5870 but so far the stock cooler equipped boards from XFX have been sold out. Im hoping that this news means that they will ramp up production of their 5870 series. What I am REALLY interested to see is the possibility that they are planning the 5xxx refresh right now.

If so, right on. And the rumors of BFG going Red? lol thats RAD!
 
With XFX and maybe BFG going ATI, EVGA maybe the last quality vendor backing Fermi. People are not going thrilled to buy Galaxy, PNY, MSI and Gigabyte Fermi cards.
 
I'm a bit surprised by XFX's move, they used to be NVIDIA's top dog but it seems like they are now in bed with ATI.
 
nV can suck it. We should all go out and buy an XFX 5870 to protest :)

This brand was my first choice for when 480s become available. I'm wondering if XFX also had a say in skipping Fermi since they know the failure rate will be high due to temps and they don't want to get reemed with their double lifetime warranty.

Update: Just read XFX is releasing this instead. I'm sold: a 2GB 5970 is exactly what I'm looking for.
 
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http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/18278/1/

also a post on Fud

I love how they have a policy on what you have to buy to be able to buy 470/480 gpus, buy our old, outdated, re-branded economy and OEM stuff and we will let you pay us large amounts of money for a gpu that will probably come back on rma in the near future

I feel sorry for their bed buddies evga/bfg having to warranty these things, let alone try and sell off old inventory for the privilege of selling the new gpus.
 
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