Tech ARP :

What new products can we expect from Palit in the new future?

Palit :

Roadmap items are always difficult to talk about because of NDA issues. Many times the actual plan isn’t actually finalized until a few days before launch. The best thing I can do is tell you that we’re going to release cards that make sense.

When the GeForce 9800 GX2 first came out, we had them just to catch some of those early adopters and so we could say we had them. There are some consumers that don’t yet understand those ultra high-end cards are all made in the same place and all the different manufacturers basically just put their own sticker on them.

In the case of the GeForce 9800 GX2, the reality is that not that many people actually want to plunk down that much money for a graphics card. Especially when you can match or exceed the performance of that card for substantially less money.

Is the GeForce 9800 GX2 the fastest single card on the planet? Sure. Are there people out there that are interested in that and do we want to support them? Of course. But there are VERY few of these cards being purchased right now (in our opinion) so we prefer to focus on products that people actually want to buy. Part of that reasoning is just business but it goes beyond that too.

We are about to see many new products get released in the coming weeks. We will have one or more versions of all of them for sure BUT many of them will be going into OEM designs and will not appear in the consumer space. These cards will be very similar in price and performance and we will only be pushing cards that make sense.

So, if you see a card that has 256 MB, 384 MB, 512 MB or 768 MB of memory, the performance difference and cost between any two adjacent versions will be very similar. I expect to see us pick two and go with that rather than producing all four for the consumer space.

We have also increased our AMD-based line-up so we are all looking forward to having a better selection of AMD-based video cards moving forward. This will include new cards as they launch that will also include products we design ourselves.

Tech ARP :

Does Palit see more of a future in NVIDIA or AMD-ATI? What about S3?

Palit :

I think that NVIDIA and AMD both have compelling products that do a great job. The biggest issue is that NVIDIA has a significantly larger manufacturing capability which puts AMD at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to R&D and capturing market share and Palit certainly sells more NVIDIA-based cards than AMD.

AMD simply sells fewer GPUs so they make less money but they still have a similar cost when it comes to developing new stuff. I don’t think that either company is going to stop making GPUs in the near future.

Who is S3? Joking! I don't think they have a viable mainstream part just yet and are still playing in the embedded side of the house. If you're an ODM or smaller motherboard partner I think it would be easier to work with them instead of the larger guys since neither AMD nor NVIDIA will have time to dedicate engineering resources to support you.

I haven't read any reviews of their products outside of onboard graphics so I honestly don't really know anything about them.

Tech ARP :

How does Palit intend to differentiate from other companies in the future?

Palit :

I think we're differentiating ourselves on both the hardware design side as well as the marketing side. Sometimes I just sit back and laugh at what's going on. We launch a 1GB version, then the other guys do the same thing. We add three-phase power and some of them do the same thing.

I tried to sneak out an announcement that we were going to launch a 2GB part (no, that's not actually on our roadmap yet) just to see how long it would take our competitors to make their own announcement. Oddly enough, after my boss told me to stop being silly, I got an e-mail from the factory asking if I thought we should.

I don't think it's quite time for a 2GB card yet BUT- the fact that the factory even cares what one of the guys out in the field thinks is amazing. I think that is yet another way the Palit differentiates ourselves from other companies.

I posted a thread in a community forum asking whether or not people would like to see more options in the color of the PCB and heatsink (mainly for case mod folks) and got over 300 responses from people who liked the idea. I sent that on to the factory and Palit is now trying to figure out how best to make that happen.

I find that amazing- the community says they would like to see something and the manufacturer responds. What a novel, if obvious, concept.

Tech ARP :

Thank you, David, for taking the time to answer our questions!

29-05-2008

1.0

Initial release.