Quote from: triox on June 26, 2011, 06:56:33 PM

Not sure if it's the right board or if it's been already discussed, apologies if so, but:

with all the talk about top ATI cards being sold out throughout the western world, do you guys think that the card manufacturers actually take notice of bitcoin phenomenon, or is it not even a blip on ATI's and NVidia's radar?
How about manufacturers, like MSI, Saphire and others?
Do you think they are working on custom chips?
Do they realize that they have a interest on helping to keep BTC alive?

They've noticed there is no question.

It's not just the raw sales. As other people mentioned, it might be 1-3% boost. Just looking at some of the top online retailers, it's extremely hard to get quite a few of the ati models and nvidia from what I've seen doesn't have any stock issues. It might be 1-3% so it's not a game changer.

But the bigger boost is people seeing ATI as badass and nvidia as "slow as hell". If you google around there's lots of people recommending ATI and tell people not to get nvidia. It might be or might not be obvious to people researching it's from a bitcoin perspective. There is no question a perception shift between the two brands and I'm sure the ATI folks are quite pleased with it.

Will either company make any changes to help/hurt bitcoin? I doubt it. But the fact 10,000s of people are out there saying ATI is 5-10x faster, oh don't buy an nvidia card does have an effect. It's free advertising and when it's all about speed (gaming) people are probably going to lean more towards ATI next purchase then Nvidia's offering. Very few people even know why ATI is faster, they just know that they are.