EVGA will stop making Nvidia graphics cards, citing abusive relationship

Daniel Sims

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A hot potato: The relationship between Nvidia and one of its top board partners seems to have reached a breaking point. EVGA won't produce RTX 40 series GPUs, effectively exiting the graphics card market entirely. Possibly heralding the end of EVGA, the decision could bring closer attention to the business interactions between GPU makers and board partners.

In an exclusive report, EVGA told Gamers Nexus that it won't sell Nvidia graphics cards after the RTX 30 series. The company will keep supporting current customers' warranties but expects to sell through its remaining inventory by the end of 2022.

A primary reason for the falling out is that Nvidia's Founders Edition 30 series GPUs have undercut EVGA's variants of those cards, especially as Nvidia recently made significant price cuts to clear stock.

GPU makers boosted supply in response to the crypto boom, but then the crash and the more recent Ethereum merge have left them struggling to get rid of unsold stock, while competing with the deluge of used cards as they prepare to launch a new generation. Board manufacturers like EVGA say they can't absorb these shocks the way Nvidia can, and EVGA says it is losing hundreds of dollars on every RTX 3080 or RTX 3090 sold.

The board partner also accuses Nvidia of a lack of communication regarding MSRP when launching new GPUs. EVGA doesn't know the final price it will sell cards for until Nvidia announces the suggested pricing to the public. The GPU maker also enforces price floors and ceilings, restricting EVGA's ability to price its variants according to how it customizes overclocking or cooling systems.

Currently, EVGA calls itself Nvidia's #1 authorized partner in US and UK graphics card sales, and Nvidia GPUs make up about three-quarters of EVGA's gross revenue. Furthermore, the company doesn't sell AMD or Intel cards and doesn't intend to after splitting with Nvidia. Power supplies comprise most of the rest of EVGA's business, but it's hard to imagine what the company will look like in the coming year or two without GeForce products.

The decision to leave the GPU business didn't come suddenly or recently. EVGA says they notified Nvidia in April after trying to renegotiate the partnership several times. EVGA CEO and founder Andrew Han said the decision to leave Nvidia was easy, and that working with the company was hard. Han called the choice a matter of principle, not money.

Han says he has no intention of selling EVGA, worrying investors would change its identity and culture. The company also doesn't want to lay anyone off but that seems almost inevitable if it abandoned its main source of revenue.

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I do not think that this will be the end of EVGA.
But surely can be the end of how NVIDIA is blackmailing and doing business with AIB partners, hardware reviewers and others. We remember the disgusting blackmail Nvidia did against Steve from Hardware Unboxed or XFX for example.
Till the end of 2022 EVGA will clear it's RTX3xxx inventory and after that will be free to find another more advantageous partnerships.
And AMD, as a videocard company, has and will have better chip yields and profit margin available with Radeon 7xxx series than Nvidia power hungry 4xxx.
Wish EVGA good luck and hope to see you next year in new better partnerships.
And for Nvidia we'll give it Linus Torvalds treatment :)
 
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I feel like there's more to this than meets the eye. A lot of us complained about the lack of supply and crazy prices two years ago. That's largely down to the behaviour of the AIBs scalping prices and diverting stock to miners. I'm not a fan of Nvidia, but I can see why they'd want to have more control over marketing, pricing and distribution. However, if it can't maintain a healthy relationship with it's partners it ought to bite the bullet and do the hard work of sourcing, manufacturing, distribution and support by itself.

If I were an investor I'd be quite concerned about Nvidia's apparent aggressive approach towards its partners and customers, especially heading into a downturn. On the heels of their failed takeover of ARM it's starting to feel like a change of leadership might be best for everyone.

 
Quote: "GPU makers boosted supply in response to the crypto boom, but then the crash and the more recent Ethereum merge have left them struggling to get rid of unsold stock, while competing with the deluge of used cards as they prepare to launch a new generation. Board manufacturers like EVGA say they can't absorb these shocks the way Nvidia can, and EVGA says it is losing hundreds of dollars on every RTX 3080 or RTX 3090 sold."

Where is the "free market" here? Nvidia practices are certainly to blame, but then, it's not like all this huge backlash was predictable *and* predicted a long time ago, as a logical follow up to this insane era of hugely inflated prices!
I'm sticking to my 3070 Ti for now, and will not jump the 40xx ship. I'll just wait for this to settle down and get a second hand GPU when the right time comes. Enough is enough!
 
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I applaud the CEO's decision.
"It's not a matter of money, but principle"

The abusive relationship from Nvidia towards EVGA should tell Gigabyte and Asus something.
Asus at least already knows and had to deal with NVIDIA abusive relationship. Remember Geforce Partener Affiliate program when Nvidia demanded and blackmailed ASUS to use ROG brand only for their Nvidia cards and not for AMD or anything else, like MB. Nvidia had to cancel the Geforce Partener Affiliate program only because of lawsuits which they could loose.
I can say that NVIDIA reputation is plummeting fast to where they really deserve despite of their PR twisting, bending reality and bribing or coercing reviewers to paint Nvidia in a fake but more favorable view.
 
This is disappointing. I've owned many GPUs over the years, from Asus, Gigabyte, EVGA, and several others. But I have always thought that EVGA made some of the highest quality cards with the best coolers. I still have an EVGA 2080Ti FTW3 Ultra. Sad to think that this might be the last EVGA GPU I ever own.
 
Well this truly sucks. I have used EVGA cards for years because they have the best quality. (They are the only manufacturer that I have bought that has not had a card die on me!) Also I do not run top tier cards so the xx60 NVidia series are easy on the power, unlike AMD that need extra power.
 
At first glance it seems that Nvidia Bad!

But after hearing about this, listening to GN's video on the subject, and thinking about it overnight, it sound more and more that the C suite, and the CEO in particular, are suffering from "delusional small business" syndrome. I've seen it before, from both local companies and former employers, who get pissed at a partner and pull their relationship, often with disasterous consequences.

EVGA has, for the last 3 generations, managed to overbuy GPUs at the tail end of a generation and wipe much of their profit. They did it with the 1000 series, the 2000 series, and now they have done so with the RTX 3000 series. The C-suite at EVGA got greedy, seeing GPU sales, and repeatedly shot themselves in the foot. They claim that nvidia's "abusive relationship" is why they are no longer making GPUs, yet they have no interest in making AMD GPUs. Or intel GPUs. And they stayed as nvidia's star partner for years, despite this behavior. They claim they are not going to lay people off, but they also have no plans to expand their company and just got rid of 80% of their revenue.

That doesn't sound like sane behavior to me. Given the CEO's statements about not wanting to sell the company to the "wrong investors" and wanting to spend more time with his family, yet not wanting to leave the CEO position, it sure sound to me like the CEO wants to retire, but is married to the baby that is his long running business. Rather then train others to lead, he insists on continuing as CEO, and his newest round of business decisions are costing EVGA money and stressing out management, stress they have attached to their supplier, blaming them for EVGA's problems because he doesnt want to admit that it may be time for him to step down and be an advisor.

So much sounds sus. Like, he claims the 3060 is profitable for EVGA, but he is losing "hundreds" on cards like the 3080. You're telling me that when EVGA was selling 3080s for $950 scalped, they were somehow still losing money? Same with cards like the $1200 3080ti, and the $2000 3090ti? And nvidia was limiting profit? After the last 2 years of insane scalping, who believes that? He also talks about how he refuses to compromise designs to save money, which clashes with nvidia's pricing, but EVGA was also the only GPU maker to make 3000 series that blew up when running new world, some due to poor soldering some due to low quality components. Odd that..... 🤔

Maybe the reason you are losing money on high end GPUs is you are overbuying at the wrong time in a generation trying to scalp the market, and it backfired on you. Again. Or maybe its procedure. If you need to limit costs on high end cards for profit reasons, well, do you need 5 different PCBs for what are pin compatible GPUs? Make just 1 PCB for the 3080, 3080ti, 3090, and 3090ti. Same with the cooler. Design it around the 3090, with headroom for a future Ti, then use the same cooler on lower end 3080s and 3080tis. And dont bother making money wasters like the k|ngp|n. Do you really need 4 different 3080 cooler and PCB designs? If you are loosing money, when Asus, MSI, and gigabyte are making money, maybe you are spending far too much on R+D for overlapping products. Similarly, why not just make the mid range and low end nvidia cards, and branch out to AMD options like the competition?

Top it off with EVGA having finished RTX 4000 designs, but now they wont make them, so all that cash is down the drain. The CEO talks repeatedly about how he didnt want to "betray" nvidia, but also talks about how nvidia "betrayed" him. Sounds to me the CEO may have gotten something of an ego, being one of the oldest and more prestigous brands of nvidia cards, and got upset that nvidia didnt treat him better then the other AIBs. Yes, nvidia are dicks. They are dicks because they own 80% of GPU sales. They make the lions share of profits, and have for decades. Doesnt mean its right, but you knew, and have known, how nvidia acts, yet never bothered to branch away from them and resisted embracing their competitor despite calls from the community for EVGA designs.

I've seen this same behavior, in the model railroad space, for years, and many a small model company has gone under from the owner being unwilling to treat the business as a business instead of a group of friends that all owe each other. The CEO's actions just dont make sense, they reek of an emotional decision, and if EVGA waits too long to lay off employees or extend their business they could very well fade into irrelevancy.
 
EVGA can get out of an abusive relationship yet Nvidia fans can't. Think about that :joy:

well, I almost bought rx6600xt but then I saw that I will need to change my perfectly good motherboard for one with pci-e 4.0, that would also entail new CPU, at least. Talking about abusive relationships, everyone has one these days ;)
 
EVGA, if you could release a decent ATX 3.0 certified PSU, I'll buy it. Some of my best Graphics cards (as in, they just never failed and worked perfectly even after pushing them to the limits for years on end) have all been EVGA. If you aren't selling GPU's anymore, lets get cracking on improving and updating your current product stack to make it more attractive.
 
They knew the rules of the game
Probably went ahead and bought too much at too high a price
When prices where up, it was all cool
Now that prices are going down, they are crying.
 
Famous people divorce of the year, beats the crap out of Hollywood couple drama.
They should make a movie about this +20 years mariage.

Waiting for more details to show, maybe some green shlt.
 
Boo hoo eVGA. Companies fall and eVGA has a horrible product portfolio compared to it's competitors. How much of a computer could you build using only eVGA parts compared to Asus, MSI, NZXT, Gigabyte or even a mobo and GPU-less a Corsair? Now the next question; Would you want to build an all eVGA system? I know I don't.

80% of revenue was GPU. That leaves 20% for PSU, and we know motherboards and other account for 2%. eVGA has no other products to offset slumping GPU sales like the others. And we should attack Nvidia on their behalf? No.

eVGA never had the best anything. And you don't become a billionaire by playing by the rules. This is life. Our computers will continue to power on.

Graphics cards all perf the same. They have good warranties and continue to have long life spans. I've bought maybe 20 GPUs. None of them eVGA (no hate, they just never made the final cut), and the sun still rises to this very day.
 
well, I almost bought rx6600xt but then I saw that I will need to change my perfectly good motherboard for one with pci-e 4.0, that would also entail new CPU, at least. Talking about abusive relationships, everyone has one these days ;)
It's true we are all getting shafted in some way these days. I thought only the RX 6500 XT is the one that has terrible performance on PCI-E 3.0.

I watched a couple of videos of RX 6700 XT before buying one and the performance was largely the same on either PCI-E version.
 
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