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Sapphire CEO Interviewed 47

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the sapphire-oscopy dept.
Steve from HEXUS writes "How does the battle between ATI and nVidia look from the inside? In his first press interview in four years, CEO of graphics card manufacturing giant Sapphire - add-in-board partner of ATI - talks about what it's like being in the thick of it and how things may pan out for Sapphire in the future."
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Sapphire CEO Interviewed More

Sapphire CEO Interviewed

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  • Drivers (Score:3, Funny)

    by porkThreeWays ( 895269 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @09:12AM (#15083464)
    So do they write their drivers in perl, or in ruby?
  • Think of it like this, there are two types of people who will want a German car, some go for BMW, some go for Mercedes

    I guess I am not a person since I like the Volkswagen GTI MkV [vw.com] ;)

    Man, it was difficult to read that interview with 2 annoying OCZ and NewEgg flash ads moving up and down and side to side on each side of the article. Do these people think about the effect these ads have on their readers? It makes you not want to read the page at all IMHO.

  • Missing PR bunnies? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gormanly ( 134067 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @09:26AM (#15083539)
    Wow. If this is really an interview with the CEO of the biggest ATI add-in board maker, there's a real opportunity for someone to land a role as his PR minder...

    He admits to Sapphire being weak in Asia and Turkey, talks openly about ATI's problems and his reliance on them being a weakness, suggests he's going to move into Nvidia parts too and then says he want to shift the firm from being an AIB maker to a "multimedia company".

    Sell, sell, sell would be a sensible shareholder reaction.

    But maybe it's his first interview in 4 years because he has good marketing people and they've successfully managed to keep him away from the journalists for that long?
    • Sell, sell, sell would be a sensible shareholder reaction.

      Except that Sapphire is not a publicly traded company, so there are no shareholders to have that reaction (as far as I could tell with about 60 seconds of Googling). And besides, Sapphire was really stating that it has big growth opportunities in Turkey and Asia. Could be good for the company long-term.

    • Re:Missing PR bunnies? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by na641 ( 964251 )
      Did you ever stop to think that honesty isn't such a bad personal trait?
    • I don't know, it gives me confidence that someone at the top of one of these companies not only has the balls to speak out but also the honesty to have an ambition for his company that isn't "How many people can we get away with sacking?"
    • God forbid we have an honest businessman who doesn't sell flowery garbage like "selling solutions" and instead is forthright.
      • God forbid we have an honest businessman who doesn't sell flowery garbage like "selling solutions"...


        But how else can you achieve successification? And the synergies, For god sake think of the poor synergies!
    • You shouldn't assume that these aren't strategies already discussed with shareholders.

  • Summary of article (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ravenscall ( 12240 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @09:30AM (#15083567)
    We are getting screwed by ATI's supply issues and will probably start marking nVidia cards soon, as well as other products.

  • Good interview (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FishandChips ( 695645 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @09:41AM (#15083618) Journal
    Nice interview, refreshingly honest and without a trace of the PR droidism and jargon that makes most interviews with guys in his position meaningless. So he's not 100 per cent redhot-wedded to ATI and may "go green" at some stage? As he says, dependence on a single supplier is a risk and a weakness. It's especially good to hear him say "everything is down to the people; without them a company is nothing" when most other executives babble about outsourcing and the digital lifestyle, meaning they've fired everyone they can lay their hands on, done a deal with a call center outfit in Bangalore and bought themselves a new Ferrari on the proceeds.

  • Nice little interview (Score:2, Insightful)

    by na641 ( 964251 )
    Very short article, and i honestly dont care too much about sapphire, but it was very refreshing to read an interview that wasnt essentially an advertisement. The man actually answered the questions... a rare thing indeed.
    • The interview was not an advertisement, but everything else was. My CPU usage jumped to 100% when I clicked on the link from all of the flash adverts. Even some of the words in the interview were ads (mouse over them and you get a little ad pop up). Hexus.net is not a site I will be returning to.

  • So THATS why... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gameforge ( 965493 )
    From TFA:

    ATI put a lot of work into development for the XBox 360

    And THAT would explain why ATI is so damn inconsiderate with Linux users (i.e. it's been what, three years since I bought my AIW Radeon 9800? And gatos [sourceforge.net] is just now starting to get some things into the mainstream as far as TV tuning support). I didn't know that ATI made the graphics hardware in the 360; I'm sure I should have, but I have no interest in the expensive-as-hell 360. :)

    EVEN ON WINDOWS, the latest ATI drivers (for the last ye

    • I am not sure about the specific hardware that you are talking about. However I have had various ATI hardware with pretty decent Linux support. My TV tuner card (not a AIW) has full linux support. I also downloaded Graphics Accelerated X server bins from their site, both for my Desktop and my notebook. Not sure about the AIW but my TV tuner from ATI has better support on Linux than Windows. Though to be fair, except my Laptop my other ATI hardware has been around for atleast a year now. I can't talk much ab
  • Every Sapphire card I've ever owned burned out within six months. Can't blame ATI for that.
    • And I've known lots of people that buy saphire and your the first person i've found to ever make this complaint that hasn't destroyed their cards themselves.
      • Well, there you go. A stock, non over clocked card in a well ventilated case should not burn out. Period. I don't (or didn't before this) know anyone whose high end card survived without being modded for better cooling. Mileage, as always, will vary.
    • I've got a Sapphire Radeon 9700 in my machine, no problems at all (except ATI's drivers defaulting to have AGP Fast Writes enabled, which equals random crashes on my system). Must be ~3 years old now, I got it when the 9700/9700Pro GPUs were new.

      I plan on replacing it with a Sapphire x800 card (best AGP Radeon I can find in Canada) "soon" unless I can trick my wife into letting me order whatever the x86 PowerMac replacement is going to be (MacMac Pro?).

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