Nvidia: OEMs Want Us to Re-Brand Graphics Cards

From X-bit Labs: Nvidia Corp. has blamed its partners among computer makers for frequent re-branding of their products. The company said that original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) need to constantly offer customers something new, which is why Nvidia is forced to rename its old products.

Nvidia said in an interview with Bit-tech.net web-site that it only rebranded its products at the request of large PC OEMs and that the most rebrands are OEM-only products and would never be seen within the retail space. According to Nvidia, large suppliers of personal computers “often require new products because they need to have something new to sell to customers”, besides, Nvidia itself has to be competitive against the new products by ATI, graphics business unit of Advanced Micro Devices.

The graphics chip designer from Santa Clara, California, started to rename its G92-based products back in 2008, when it re-branded the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB into GeForce 9800 GTX and started to sell it as a brand new product. Back then, the company’s competitive position was much better than today and the necessity to rename old products into new was not exactly clear.

ATI, graphics business unit of Advanced Micro Devices, also renames its old products into new, primarily in the notebook space, which creates no less confusion that is caused by Nvidia’s actions. Still, ATI has not done re-branding for so many times.

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