Interview With Chaintech
Mar 2nd, 2003 | By Archive
Interview With Chaintech
Date
: 03/2/03 – 03:52:01 PM
Author
:
Category
: Misc
Page 1 : Introduction
Introduction
Before we launch the interview, I'll give you a short history lesson on the company "Chaintech", so you have a good idea on who they are.
Chaintech, which was founded back in 1986, has established a good reputation as manufacturer of motherboards and video cards. In order to achieve their current reputation, they have implemented their
Seven S'
:
- Staffing Chaintech emphasizes the professional development and social welfare of each and every staff member.
- Satisfaction Chaintech's mission is to meet or exceed customer expectations to provide them total satisfaction.
- Solutions With advanced technology as the foundation, we strive to provide our customers with complete, high quality solutions.
- Service To exceed customer expectations, Chaintech is dedicated to insuring thoughtful, forward looking service.
- Superiority The pursuit of excellence at Chaintech as carried out with the goal of maintaining a superior level of product quality and service.
- Strategy The underlying guiding strategy of Chaintech is the drive to integrate the concept of the 3Cs – computers, communication and customers – into a single harmonious vision.
- Success Chaintech seeks to insure that all of its relationships are "win-win" for all involved. Success begets success.
The combination of the above parameters guarantee that their products are of a high quality level and meet with people's expectations.
The person who I got to interview for this chat, is Stuart Bird, one of the main tech guys at Chaintech Europe. I first got in contact with him when we posted our review of the Chaintech 7VJL Apogee KT333 motherboard (review is here). At that moment, some owners of the board were complaining on the lack of a 1/5 PCI divider at 166MHz FSB, and Stuart was kind enough to elaborate on this matter. The answer to that question and several other ones can be found in our "Chaintech Interview" that takes of on the next page. Happy reading!
Page 2 : The Interview – Part 1
O²
Hello, I'd like to thank you for this opportunity and also thank you for producing some fine products as I have been very pleased with owning a 7VJL. Now, I figure we'll get started…
O²
To start off, for owners of the 7VJL Apogee, what is the best way for these owners to get a fixed board that is able to use the 1/5 divider that we need to run at 166mhz FSB?
Chaintech
Well the 7VJL Apogee was never advertised as having that capability, as the CPU was not on the market we could not give it that functionality as the time, but the demand from users created the M101 version, released after the CPU was released that it could support. From there, there is the 7VJL Deluxe, this has full support for all AMD CPU's.
O²
What's the biggest problem that you see coming into the tech support?
Chaintech
The diversity we have in mainboards and the evolution going must faster then before I see that we get more problems with the BIOS, new CPU's released onto the market, FSB etc. For every new processor or memory coming out we have to have new a BIOS and that is the biggest problem we have right now is getting this to everyone who requires it. Most support issues are more questions rather than problems.
O²
Chaintech's Apogee and now Zenith motherboards carry with them a great set of features and quality that is being harolded by review sites. How has the execution of these product lines changed Chaintech's customer service department?
Chaintech
The first job lies with R&D to make the product perfect compatible with it's accessories. We haven't got much more technical issues because of the good featured boards. Especially our Zenith with the new improved Cbox and Fire Wire card. But there are no issues that really keep us busy or changed our customer support ideal.
O²
Is there more concentration nowadays by Chaintech on motherboard manufacturing than on video card/sound cards/modems?
Chaintech
No, we sell as much VGA card as we sell motherboards these days. The combination is lots of the times the general demand of the people we do business with. The customers who want mainboards choose 90% also to buy Chaintech VGA cards of the one-shop one-stop. Why buy VGA cards somewhere else when we also sell these.
O²
Does Chaintech have any future plans on producing ATI based graphics products?
Chaintech
Chaintech is watching also the competitors of ATI and they have good products now and they can really compete with NVIDIA now. But our relation with NVIDIA and our sells are very good. Like they say, never change a winning team!
Page 3 : The Interview – Part 2
O²
If we would ask you to speculate on what Chaintech's plans are with the GeForce FX, what would you answer?
Chaintech
Very easy and simple to answer: We are going to sell a lot because of its design and performance.
O²
I'm sure many of our readers have been comparing nForce 2 boards, and for me Chaintech's offering is very appealing. Of what board do you find yourself most leaning towards in interest?
Chaintech
I don't think that is the case when we look at our Zenith board. There are no other boards to compare it with until now so I can't really give you a satisfying answer.
O²
Are there any future products (e.g. a Granite Bay-based motherboard?) from Chaintech that have you really excited, and if so are you able to provide any details?
Chaintech
Only the GeForce FX is really having my attention just for the design. Hyper-threading will also be quite exciting when there is more support for it in software.
We have created (again) a product for the case mods among us. That's the audience to target now.
O²
Could Chaintech supply O² with an exclusive roadmap of upcoming products and where they see themselves several years down the road?
Chaintech
I'm sorry but I can't release roadmaps, they are confidential. We are now number 5 worldwide with production of mainboards and we want to become no3 within 5 years.
O²
Are you aware of any future changes in Chaintech that might have an impact on their current state?
Chaintech
Not that I am aware of. We just keep on going to design special products for the people who are demanding it from the mainboard/VGA manufacturers. And we have proven it that we can do it.
O²
Does Chaintech have any plans on expanding into other markets?
Chaintech
At this moment there is still a huge market in eastern Europe that we can concur. So we first want to focus on that territory before we will expand into other markets.
O²
Is Chaintech going out of their way to create more overclockable products?
Chaintech
At this moment we are not that popular with our overclocking capabilities on most of our products. We are trying to improve but that will be done now with our new boards to come. Keep on tracking us.
Page 4 : Wrapping It Up
That concludes our chat with Chaintech. I hope you learned something from this interview and that it opened up some dark corners in your brain. Again, I would like to thank the people at Chaintech for donating us a moment of their time!