BFG president talks about Radeon HD 4800, Larrabee

Hexus had an interview with BFG president Scott Herkelman about the current state of the graphics card market. First they talked about the launch of AMD's Radeon HD 4800 series and Herkelman advises consumers to wait and see what NVIDIA does in response. He claims "NVIDIA will guarantee it wins the price/performance battle":

“NVIDIA has been number one for quite a while, and still is. But now it has to consider its response,” said Herkelman. “NVIDIA has made a lot of money and it will guarantee it wins the price/performance battle.”

Herkelman was quick to point out that this was just a statement of his belief in NVIDIA and not derived from anything NVIDIA has told him. However it does at least imply he anticipates price cuts, but he insisted it’s not as simple as that. “It’s definitely complicated and that’s why it’s taking NVIDIA a while to respond. AMD has gone aggressive on price in order to gain back consumer confidence but its R&D spend doesn’t come close to NVIDIA’s.”

Herkelman also shared his thoughts on Intel's Larrabee project, he says this chip will shake up the graphics market and expects there may be a greater emphasis on platforms.

“Next year we’re going to see a completely different competitive landscape and it will change how people buy graphics cards,” said Herkelman. He then indicated that there may be a greater emphasis on platforms – i.e. NVIDIA cards running on NVIDIA boards, etc.

To conclude, we suggested that Larrabee might put his, currently NVIDIA only, business in jeopardy. As you would expect, however, Herkelman thinks competitive GPU offerings have got their work cut out, warning: “A lot of companies have gone out of business trying to compete with NVIDIA on GPUs.”