Interview with ABIT, Scott Thirwell (English 150k Video)

Computex 2003 : Video Interview of Scott Thirwell
Bluetooth 28 Sept 2003

Introduction

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The Transcript

Q : Is ABIT going to develop new graphics card based on the XGI chipset ?

A: We met XGI a couple of weeks ago. They just launched their company and their first products. We probably need a few weeks to evaluate how well their products are performing and after we do the evaluation we will consider whether to use their chipsets on our VGA cards.

Q : So, what other graphics chipsets would you consider (for ABIT VGA cards) ?

A: For VGA cards, we are nVIDIA partner, thus nVIDIA based VGA cards will always be our first consideration. nVIDIA still leads the market from high end to mainstream which is our current market. The gamers will generally request for nVIDIA based graphics cards and we are going to continue to focus on the nVIDIA platform.

Q: We heard some rumours saying that ABIT is not making any Socket 939 and/or Socket 940 boards. So, what are your comments about that ?

A: Right now we are going to focus on the Socket 754 chipset products. Our users are generally higher end and demands better performance and better and better overclocking options. When we look at Socket 939/940, a number of options came out. Our users don't like to buy ECC memory which the 940 series requires. The second consideration that came out is that during testing the Socket 754 when overclocked, have performance results that is very comparable to the Socket 940, Therefore that make sense that we recommend to our ABIT users the Socket

754.

Q: Do you think that it will sell more than Socket 940 ?

A: Definitely because the biggest obstacle for Socket 940 is the Registered memory. Typically corporations will be willing to buy registered memory but gamers , performance users that AMD is going for Athlon 64, they won't consider buying registered memory.

Q: Will ABIT be considering using the ALi M1687 chipset for your Althon 64 mainboards ? What are the considerations in choosing the chipset?

A : For ABIT, whenever we design any motherboards, we will get every chipset available. We will do testing on those chipsets and decide on which chipset to use. For K8, we are down with NForce3 and VIA Performance on these two chipsets were stronger than then SIS and ALi and they decide to launch it together with AMD. So for ABIT, the first product is the KV8-MAX3 which uses the VIA K8T800 chipset. The other consideration is our users and in general our users like to see for AMD side, VIA or NVIDIA for chipsets. SiS is less acceptable by our market and ALi is simply not accepted by ABIT users and that is a great consideration to choose which chipsets to go with.

Q: We saw pictures of DigitDice, are there any plans to adopt watercooling into the boxes? What are their target markets ?

A: For DigitDice in general, the target market, we took 2 ideas. DigitDice came later than the Small Form Factor boxes in the market. Shuttle has it for more than a yr, MSI has the megapc that is in the market for 6 mths to a year. We were considering which market we want to target. Right now the SFF are more for home PCs. The traditional SFF people will call it your mum's PC. We see alot of LAN parties, in US there is QuakeCon, but you don't see a lot of SFF at LAN parties. Why ? It is because, SFF relies on integrated graphics, gamers do not want to be restricted with integrated graphics. So what we want is to have small form factor DigitDice, enters today's market the home pc, and as a SFF for the enthusiasts; abit's gamers. So for home user, we made it easy with one touch multimedia. If you want to copy a CD, just press one button, there is no need to use your mouse. It is the same for managing your photos and music. For enthusiasts, we want to give them what they want. What they want is full size for AGP cards. They want to use FX5900 or Radeon 9800pro cards. Some of the existing SFF can't accept these cards, on the ABIT, you can. They also demanded two HDD bays for 2 HDD. They have lots of music and videos on their PC. So we can accomodate two HDDs, no other SFF offers that. Finally, one or two buttons for copying CD, DVDs so we can do that. So this is really our target market. We launched with Intel 865G which is integrated graphics with a full size AGP slot. The second part, K8, we are considering that. Our concern is still the availability of the CPUs. If our users can easily buy it, then you will see a DigitDice with K8.

Q : With the launch of AMD 64bits processor, what would you per take the market share.AMD versus Intel would be ?

A: For Intel and AMD, this year Intel did well for the gaming market, that they lost to AMD last year. For ABIT, we game 100% to our users. Last yr it was 70% AMD, 30% Intel. Now it is 50% AMD, 50% Intel. Next month, it could probably be 60% Intel 40% AMD. Will the K8 launch change that mix, this year probably not. It still come down to the amount of CPUs available in the market. We don't expect a lot of K8 CPUs available in the market and it would not influence the 10 of millions of CPUs sold worldwide.

Q: Lets talk abt. something different. will ABIT be considering making Smartphones , PDAs ? What are your opinion ?

A: A lot of people have asked this question, from distributor to end users to stores. In terms of what we are considering to make right now beyond our tradition of making motherboards and VGA, we are still not sure. Now considering Smartphones PDAs, something out of our traditional line of product YES. People are saying we like ABIT products, we like to see more from ABIT.I think over the next few months, we will come out with a plan of having additional product line. Next year you would see ABIT brand in a different industry.

Q: I see, so any new ideas that you would introduce ?

A: Right now. we are pretty early in the discussions stage, so I don't think I will let out some of the things we have been talking about. Certainly, as you have mentioned, smartphones and PDAs, we have started discussion on them

Thank you for accepting our interview.. Thank you.