Fiscal health of DFI?

[Buffy635]

I know that DIY-Street no longer has any ties to the DFI brand, aside from the large repository of DFI info lingering on the forums that is. I read on another forum that DFI as a company was going down the toilet. (I suppose that would explain why they could no longer support a forum.) Is there any truth to that statement?

[UncleDavid218]

DFI's enthusiast sector is a very, very (almost infinitesimally) small portion of their sales.

 

DFI is really known for their industrial level motherboards.

 

I think it's safe to say that DFI is here to stay...

 

(their support just kinda stinks now )

[likewhoa]

i agree with UncleDavid218 on the support part, but what about their CFX boards? they seem to be having real issues with the RAID controller. I'm keeping my eye on Abit boards as they seem to be coming back in style

[KimTjik]

H_G will probably tell me what a stupid jerk I am, but personally I really hope DFI will have the resources to keep developing products for the enthusiast market. As the others are pointing out the industry level boards are they main market and may that please be a success, because:

 

- even though it has been ridiculed by some I personally think it was a very brave move to stay the course and actually develop the UT ICFX3200-T2R/G. From a business point of view I don't know what to say: bravery or stupidity? However both might at times result in great things.

[Devil 07]

Does this mean that Oskar is going to some other manufacture to design mobo's?

[laserred]

Why? So he can take his "expertise" of hand-picking an entire pile of components, tuning it to be blazing fast with the cream of the crop components, and then deny all problems as user error (see RDX boards) when your mail-order parts don't play nice together? I'll pass Just my $.02 for those that take offense and worship the Wu.

[Angry_Games]

H_G will probably tell me what a stupid jerk I am, but personally I really hope DFI will have the resources to keep developing products for the enthusiast market. As the others are pointing out the industry level boards are they main market and may that please be a success, because:

 

- even though it has been ridiculed by some I personally think it was a very brave move to stay the course and actually develop the UT ICFX3200-T2R/G. From a business point of view I don't know what to say: bravery or stupidity? However both might at times result in great things.

 

nah yer not a stupid jerk, but you didn't work for them and didn't see the trouble brewing 2 years ago that we saw

 

as for the ICFX3200, it was a very poor move on their part, putting all their eggs in one basket for a chipset that was already dead before it hit the ground (ATI will make no more chipsets for Intel, and have already stopped supporting that particular chipset to make room for all things AMD+ATI).

 

Rgone and I tried to get them to develop competing 965 and Nvidia chipsets but they refused to listen, and that's just another reason why they are a nobody now in the game, and own less than 3% of the market.

 

WHich is why DIY-Street is not even interested in the slightest about any of their offerings and have dedicated ourselves to getting into what the market is buying, which are brands like Asus, Abit, Giga, MSI, ECS, Foxconn, etc.

 

I don't hate DFI, I just made the decision to get out before my own integrity went down in flames (look at my rantings on their RDX200 and CFX3200 and ICFX3200 to see which road they've decided to go down).

 

Plus this way, I can't be limited on what I might say about a particular product. If the product stinks or is worthless or is a defect that no one shoudl buy, I'm going to tell you straight about it (which is how I lost my job with DFI haha).

 

Review sites have really become nothing more than paid whores all across the board, with only a few sites left that I trust for integrity and honesty (LegitReviews.com, TweakNews, Overclockersclub.com....and that's about it really).

 

We plan on becoming a review site, but we are not going to be like any review site you've ever seen before. Our format will probably be ridiculed, and it will probably take time to catch on (just like DFI-Street did), but when it does catch on, I think it will be the trend-setter for what users like you really want to know about a product, not the usual blah-blah-blah-and-here's-some-benchmarks nonsense that these paid whores are doing.

 

Of course not all review sites are bad, but as i mentioned, there's only a few that I truly pay attention to (though I will still read as many reviews from as many different places as I can to get a better idea of what the product is about).

 

But DFI? Nah, I don't see them lasting through the year, and if they do, great for them, and if they don't then it's Darwinism and they weren't fit enough to survive.

[Angry_Games]

Why? So he can take his "expertise" of hand-picking an entire pile of components, tuning it to be blazing fast with the cream of the crop components, and then deny all problems as user error (see RDX boards) when your mail-order parts don't play nice together? I'll pass Just my $.02 for those that take offense and worship the Wu.

 

lol worship of the Wu is a financially bad proposition

 

unless you got loads of money, loads of time, and backup hardware when you have to RMA his bits. Worship of the Wu won't get you but a couple Mhz more overclock than say worship of the 'normal' (and in fact I am overclocking easier and better on these 'vanilla' boards like the Gigabyte and MSI 965's than anything the Wu has ever produced).

[red930]

I'm like Angry on the "Wu" factor. There was a time that his abilities made a difference in the performance of the board.

 

I visit lots of forums in the course of a day and when it comes to DFI boards they aren't beating other boards by leaps and bounds like they did previously.

 

Much of this is due to more mature chipsets and processors. There's less wiggle room when designing a BIOS these days and even "vanilla" boards are coming with more BIOS options than in the past.

 

The bottom line is that the vast majority of dedicated builders aren't interested in setting a world record on their rig. They simply want the best performance for their dollar.

 

Value is subjective which leaves a lot of room for other players in the market. I'm very satisfied if I can get a 20% increase in performance for my money.

[Devil 07]

Mine weren't words of worship. I just kinda noticed that Abit was hot then not with him and now DFI. Who's next?

[kitfit1]

I just kinda noticed that Abit was hot then not with him and now DFI. Who's next?

 

Who knows? but thngs are always changing. Anyway the best mobo's ar'nt always down to one person. Like a lot of peep's i respect what OW has done for us in the past, but things change. For instance, the only reason i swapped from Abit to DFI was that the NF2 Lanparty would do 250fsb+. At the moment i'm not changing platform until at least AM3. When that time comes, like half this forum, i'll jump whatever is best at that time. Either AMD or Intel, with the best mobo, at that time. But who's to know what will be hot in the future.

[KimTjik]

nah yer not a stupid jerk, but you didn't work for them and didn't see the trouble brewing 2 years ago that we saw

Thankfully I didn't! If I had I would maybe be a desperate alcoholic wreak by now.

 

Rgone and I tried to get them to develop competing 965 and Nvidia chipsets but they refused to listen...

That's the strangest part of it all to me, because it would probably meant quite a short-cut with less effort just to keep things going and to not loose too much ground. These 965 boards perform pretty much the same so they could have sold well by just keeping the nice Lanparty design and say that Oscar looked at it, even though they didn't allow him to even touch the board.