I have talked and discussed with you more often than likely anyone from 'the competition' and notice that Creative Europe is so extremely dynamic in their choices. You guys moved from 3dfx, to NVIDIA to 3D Labs, opted Matrox, Trident and ATi a few times and now are back to NVIDIA which is an obvious choice considering what they are about to release. Where are these dynamics based on ? Why not stick with one chipset designer ?

I think this is a reflection of the market more than anything else. The graphics market with its six month product cycles pretty much ensures that nobody stays on top for too long. At Creative we are committed to trying to provide the best solutions to our customers at the best price. This "silicon agile" strategy has been our model for over seven years now and has served us well.  To sum it up in one sentence…Creative is a solution provider, we will pick the right solution for the market.

It has been really quiet surrounding Creative Labs Europe and their videocard line-up the past year. We know about your new deal with NVIDIA, can you walk us a bit through what you guys are working on and what your thoughts have been lately on the European market for graphics cards. We saw VisionTek leave, ELSA quitted. Why is it so hard to sell these exceptional popular graphics card on-to an European market ?

I think I covered the reasons why the European market is so hard in the question above. The market is fragmented and the cost of doing business is huge. Over the years I have worked with NVIDIA and they have finally understood this and are willing to offer us the support we need to make this business work. The thing that other companies haven't figured out is that you have to be prepared to accept the European business model. So the key for us has been working more closely with NVIDIA and educating them about how the business is structured. We now have a working agreement in place that enables us to maintain profitability whilst ensuring NVIDIA product hits every retail shelf in Europe.

In Europe you will not launch ATI  Radeon based 9000/9700 videocards, this must have been a serious consideration. Why did you factual not choose for ATi ?

As I mentioned above we reviewed all available product including the ATI based cards. Firstly I can say that 9700 Pro is an awesome card but there are several other issues that one must take into account. Firstly and most importantly is the fact that over the years the hardware has been advancing faster than software. I think 9700 Pro takes this to a new level where the hardware is DX9 but the API has not even been released (let alone any software). So what are you buying with the 9700 Pro? For sure it is faster than Ti4600 but there is no app that requires the "power overhead" that 9700 Pro has (i.e. Ti4600 runs 1600x1200 with everything on so all additional power is overhead). You could argue that Doom III is the app that will unleash this power but by then NV30 will be out and the balance of power will have changed again. So buying a 9700 Pro will give you the best 3D Mark score for 3 months but nothing else … and that's a shame because as I said its an awesome piece of hardware.

What can you tell us about your upcoming NVIDIA product, and please refrain from, it'll be awesome and vague teasers ;) Will there be a diverse product line and can you specify when the product(s) will be available in retail? Also can you tell us a bit about what price-range your future customers will have to face ?

Now that's putting me in a really difficult position because as you know NVIDIA are pretty consistent with their "we don't talk about unreleased product" position but here is what I think I am safe in saying … (bear in mind I have seen specs and simulations not actual hardware). Based on what I've seen NV30 will retake the performance crown from ATI by a significant amount.  Obviously I can't comment on clock speed etc. but its fair to say that we should see a significant jump based on the fact that NV30 is on 0.13 and 9700 Pro squeezed every last cycle out of 0.15. With regard to pricing all I can say is you should use previous pricing as a guideline for estimating SRP's. There has always been a price premium associated with having the absolute bleeding edge and in the past process changes have lead to higher development costs and thus higher street prices. Against that we have the recent trend for binning chips by speed and producing a range from a single chip and I would expect that trend to continue. Sorry I can't be more specific but being totally honest there are no final decisions yet and all I can do is use past experience as a guideline.