Wednesday, August 18th 2010
BFG Tech Explored AMD Partnership Before Quitting?
The enthusiast community witnessed the sad "demise" of BFG Tech, as it categorically announced an exit from graphics cards business, and then unofficially left other businesses such as PSUs and PCs. It has come to light, however, that BFG Tech did in fact toy with the idea of doing what XFX did, and become an AMD add-in-board partner. Pictures surfaced that showed a Chinese OEM had made samples of ATI Radeon HD 5000 series graphics cards carrying the BFG Tech name, and other things BFG has been known for - such as free 24/7 tech-support, lifetime warranty, and other tiny BFG-esque details.
Under a partnership with that company, BFG would just have to market the cards and run support, while everything from manufacturing to packaging would be carried out by the OEM (earlier BFG, like EVGA, would package, market, and run support for the products). The company while working with BFG did produce a batch of ATI Radeon graphics cards to supply to BFG. When inquired by AMD about who these cards were being made for, the company mentioned BFG Tech. AMD responded saying that BFG Tech wasn't an authorized board partner, and would not be allowed to sell ATI Radeon graphics cards. This sent the OEM into panic, which got back to BFG only to find out that the marketing staff there had been let go of. The company now has with it a batch of "BFG Tech" labelled graphics cards it can't sell. It plans to rebadge and exhibit them at the China Sourcing Fair later this October, to exhibit its capabilities and possibly find a buyer for those cards.
Source:
PC Perspective
Under a partnership with that company, BFG would just have to market the cards and run support, while everything from manufacturing to packaging would be carried out by the OEM (earlier BFG, like EVGA, would package, market, and run support for the products). The company while working with BFG did produce a batch of ATI Radeon graphics cards to supply to BFG. When inquired by AMD about who these cards were being made for, the company mentioned BFG Tech. AMD responded saying that BFG Tech wasn't an authorized board partner, and would not be allowed to sell ATI Radeon graphics cards. This sent the OEM into panic, which got back to BFG only to find out that the marketing staff there had been let go of. The company now has with it a batch of "BFG Tech" labelled graphics cards it can't sell. It plans to rebadge and exhibit them at the China Sourcing Fair later this October, to exhibit its capabilities and possibly find a buyer for those cards.
44 Comments on BFG Tech Explored AMD Partnership Before Quitting?
I miss Abit alot too. I am still holding onto my MoBo despite the fact their gone. It has served me well and still does.
Nvidia - Here want these 20 cookies BFG, then buy 80 other cookies that aren't the cookies you want first
BFG - We can't afford those cookies
Nvidia - Then go buy AMD's cookies
BFG- Fine we will
Too late
Death from starvation.
Well at least the cards would still serve some purpose for the manufacturing company, they can show their worth in efficiently and timely making the cards to specifications. I must admit that it was quick, considering it was done within a month or so.
Did I get that right? The company's marketing team was fired...was that BFG, or the OEM maknig the cards for BFG?
Yikes, BFG stuck some others in a pickle, then. I was hoping that this might explain why BFG failed so hard.
At the same time, there's quite a few other "OEM" companies I'd like to see dissappear.
Maybe this means there will be some cheap ATI cards floating around soon?:laugh:
ATI/Nvidia wouldnt do it for no reason you would think....
And again, BFG didn't approach AMD for a tieup.
BFG's employees got screwed
the chinese company selling these cards got screwed
BFG's customers got screwed
wierd though that BFG was founded by ex visiontek employees, visiontek makes ATI cards(now), BFG tried to make ATI cards to save themselves after nvidia bitch slapped em.
its like when visiontek nearly died off they screwed all their warranty holders and the engineers almost all took off, maybe a new company will spawn from all this like what happened with visiontek which didn't die.
If they had reached out to AMD earlier they could have been saved, but I was under the impression that AMD didn't keep a lot of Authorized Partners to prevent starving them out.
Visiontek Focuses on Buyer:
www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=6340
Visiontek, Going... going... GONE!:
www.hardocp.com/article/2002/08/15/visiontek/
Visiontek, LLC Complete Late Model PCB Surface Mount & Insertion Assembly Factory Auction:
archive.dovebid.com/brochure/bro1595.pdf
Hartford's Visiontek division will bring Radeon-based graphics products to resellers under Xtasy brand:
www.gamespot.com/news/2902054.html
* = "lifetime" refers to the life of the company, which by the way, died last week.
www.visiontek.com/
they are hardly dead.
Anyways, is there a chance those bfg cards will come out?
visiontek of years ago is not the same visiontek today that said the same thing might happen with BFG someone basically buys the name and reopens shop so to speak only time will tell of course