WE learned that ATI technology decided against a big presence at the Hannover based computer trade show, CeBIT. The show kicks off on the 9th of March, with ATI or Nvidia routinely spending up to $1 million to organise shindigs at CeBIT in the past.
That number included ultra expensive booth space, booth creation, booth babes, parties, hotel reservations, personal flight tickets and all the other additional expenses.
This year, ATI decided to focus more on smaller exotic locations and to invite the selected press and try to spread the message that way. It had a huge success with its Ibiza R520 launch and we understand that the Seville based press days were a huge success as well. ATI finally started to get the right people to such shindigs. We met some key chaps such as Raja Coduri, the creator of R520/580 marchitecture, and John Bruno, the creator of RD580 motherboards.
We don’t approve ATI’s stance on CeBIT as we are kind of sentimental about this show [not me, Ed.] but it is kind of a waste of money if you don’t have anything to launch and you have to spend one million bucks for a trade show. Nevertheless, CeBIT is the world’s largest computer trade show. ATI plans to launch its RD580, Xpress 3200 chipset featuring 32 PCIe graphic lanes before CeBIT.
This doesn’t mean that ATI won’t be at the show, but will probably share the booth with its partners and remember even the mighty AMD hasn’t had a dedicated booth in CeBIT for two years even though it has a huge factory in Dresden, Germany. AMD prefers to organise a suite and wheel in customers and hacks to that, and will do that again this year.
However, Nvidia is preparing a massive launch at Cebit. You will see the birth of G71 marchitecture, Geforce 7900 GTX and GT will finally see the light of day, then Nvidia plans to introduce Geforce 7600 GT and GS based cards. It makes perfect sense to do the loud launch at this show and to spend the money.
News source: Theinquirer
