When companies close down, there's rarely anyone there to answer calls to confirm the news. There's an early report on HardOCP, based on an insider e-mail sent to several sites over the weekend, that VisionTek is closing. GameSpot's repeated calls to company went unanswered today, which doesn't in itself confirm the news, but it does help give it credence.

　　According to the reports, employees were notified on Friday and issued their final checks. VisionTek's creditors are said to have foreclosed on the companies loans and initiated the liquidation of the company's assets. There's no word on what this means for the lifetime warranties that VisionTek issued for its products, but there's usually no way for customers to redeem service agreements in such cases.

　　Before the GeForce3 launch early last year, VisionTek quietly produced boards for OEMs and system builders. With the GeForce3, VisionTek made its entry into the US retail market. More recently, the company announced new products outside the graphics market and revealed its plans to move its manufacturing operations from the US to Asia to cut costs. Although this news has appeared at the same time as the first public release of benchmark results for ATI's next-generation graphics card, the Radeon 9700, the events are unrelated.

　　Nvidia representative Derek Perez said that the retail market represents just 10 percent of Nvidia's business, so even if VisionTek were to close, it would not significantly affect the graphics giant's fortunes. He could not speak for VisionTek to confirm the news, but he did point out that there are many other companies producing Nvidia-based graphics cards for the retail market, including PNY.