🚀 go-pugleaf

"Jeff Atwood" <jatwood@a.crl.com> writes:

> So why doesn't 3dfx just contract to make the boards themselves and sell
> them direct, as well as distributing them? They'd make a LOT more money.

They'd also need to invest (risk) a LOT more money building plants,
buying capital equipment, building a distribution mechanism and sales
force, etc...

They don't make 3dfx boards for the same reason they don't make sound
cards, motherboards, memory, or a whole host of other things and
Diamond doesn't design core chipsets for graphics
cards.

Specialization ensures that companies concentrate on what they're good
at, rather than trying to do everything. Investing in a fab for chips
and equipment for PCB stuffing and soldering isn't core to what 3dfx
does. Diamond and Creative already have experience in and capital
equipment to manufacture boards. So they do that, 3dfx does the chip
design and everybody makes more money than if any of them did the
whole thing soup to nuts...

> Creative and Diamond are hardly DESIGNING boards, they take the 3dfx
> reference design/drivers and produce it, then slap little "DIAMOND" and
> "CREATIVE" logos on both. Hardly a feat of engineering genius.

Creative and Diamond are doing more than you probably give them credit
for. In fact, I'd argue that they ARE designing boards, just not the
core graphics processor.

---Jim