Given its production scale, Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) has greatly encouraged graphics chip designers with its decision to expand into the medium-to-high-end graphics card market in 2003. However, the company’s usual low-price policy may create some worries for its chip supplier, as ECS’s marketing approach may threaten the business of other graphics chip buyers.
ECS’s graphics card team, set up in the third quarter, is still evaluating whether Nvidia or ATI Technologies will be its future partner.
Planning to ship one million graphics cards every month, ECS is expected to offer a great business opportunity to graphics chip companies. For Nvidia and ATI, the top two suppliers, landing ECS’s orders would certainly boost their presence in the clone market.
However, as ECS intends to adopt the same low pricing policy it uses in the motherboard business, whichever company becomes its graphics chip supplier is likely to see not only its product ASP (average selling price) fall, but also its present card-production clients squeezed by the price competition.
Though the company’s graphics card operation will not officially start until next year, ECS’s graphics division recently tried its hand in developing the board maker’s first graphics chip-incorporated motherboard, the Game Union. Adopting the Xabre200 chip from Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS), the Game Union line currently consists of one SiS648 Pentium 4 board and one SiS746-based product for the K7 platform from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Shipments of the two models are scheduled to begin in mid-December.
Article translated by Christy Lee and edited by Richard So
