One of the surprises brought by Intel's launch of Arc B580 and Arc B570 graphics cards was the emergence of a new add-in-boards (AIB) brand: Onix. New players rarely arrive in the AIB market due to cutthroat competition and diminishing margins. However, Onix (via BenchLife) is reportedly not a newbie but a brand belonging to Sapphire, a veteran with a history spanning over 20 years.
Apparently, Onix Technology Limited was registered in Hong Kong on August 28, 2024. According to BenchLife, Onix Technology Limited is affiliated with Sapphire Technology Limited. Sapphire is primarily known for its AMD Radeon-based graphics cards, motherboards, and servers for AI and HPC. Unfortunately, we do not know whether Onix is a part of Sapphire or a part of PC Partner Group, which has a stake in Sapphire and owns Zotac, a maker of Nvidia GeForce-based graphics cards. In any case, Onix is not a newbie on the market.
Since AMD has gradually lost its share of the discrete graphics card market, it is logical for its partners to try and adopt other GPUs to make add-in-boards and earn money. For example, Tul Corp., the owner of PowerColor, resurrected its Sparkle brand last year to sell Intel Arc-based boards, so we will not be surprised if Sapphire follows suit. In theory, Sapphire could adopt Nvidia's GPUs, too, but allocation for these processors is tight, so it is possible that the company decided to go to Intel instead.
Given that PC Partner has worked with AMD, Intel, and Nvidia for decades, establishing a separate brand for Intel Arc graphics cards would not be a problem for the company, so it is possible that Sapphire itself has little to do with Onix.
For now, Onix only offers Intel Arc B580 and Arc B570 graphics cards, which target the entry-level market and will hardly grab a significant market share with these boards. Nonetheless, this is a start, and assuming that Intel's Arc B700-series products will be faster, they will gain more attention from enthusiasts and, therefore, a larger chunk of the market.
