Wednesday, September 21st 2022
EVGA Announces Cancelation of NVIDIA Next-gen Graphics Cards Plans, Officially Terminates NVIDIA Partnership
Towards the latter half of August, multiple EVGA employees involved in technical marketing and engineering had let us know privately that they were leaving the company for other ventures. When pushed further, several hinted towards some decisions being made by EVGA's management, including CEO Andrew Han, that would jeopardize their future. Some even went far enough to say they would share more in a few weeks time about how they felt exactly about their time there, the various issues that kept them from doing their best, and also that at least a couple of ex-employees were let go. TechPowerUp was doing due diligence in collecting the facts while keeping emotions aside from contacts who were understandably not in the best of moods, and one thing common across the board was there was something major coming up dealing with the EVGA GPU product line.
Today EVGA decided to throw a massive curve ball by formally announcing the company is canceling its plans to carry the next generation of graphics cards. Given EVGA's revenue sheets point to nearly 80% contribution from being an NVIDIA add-in card partner, this effectively also means an end to a long partnership with NVIDIA. The company's CEO confirmed as much to a few media channels citing poor margins and a challenging, stressful relationship that was no longer fruitful. There are no plans for EVGA to partner with AMD or Intel at this time when it comes to graphics cards and the company stressed they will continue to sell and support current-gen GPUs having retained enough units for RMA purposes too.
Jon Peddie Research also speculates EVGA is going to shift its priorities towards power supplies and motherboards instead that allow for higher margins and a more uniform, predictable sales pattern. Time will tell how EVGA, and indeed NVIDIA too who now has to re-distribute its GPU allocation among other partners and retail solutions, will come out of this split. It certainly does not seem to be an amicable one and we do not expect the partnership to resume anytime soon. This also affects companies who were no doubt planning on accessories for EVGA-branded GPUs, such as custom watercooling blocks from the usual suspects such as EKWB, Alphacool, and Bitspower.
What About Existing Customers
All existing owners of EVGA graphics cards will remain fully covered by warranties, including full replacements if needed. The company has withheld inventory of EVGA graphics cards from retailers (and will probably recall some perfectly-functional cards), so it has buffer stock to serve existing customers in need of total replacements or RMA.
What EVGA's Future Looks Like
EVGA CEO Andrew Han stated that the company has no plans as of now to partner with another GPU manufacturer like AMD or Intel, and the exit from the graphics card business will trigger an "imminent downsizing" of the company (to shed employees associated with the graphics card business). This could also be a subtle hint to AMD and Intel that if they're looking to work with EVGA, they should express interest right now.
Graphics cards made up over three-quarters of EVGA's revenue, and so we're not sure what the company could do next. If one were to speculate, the company could increase its presence in the prebuilt notebook and gaming peripherals businesses, and probably even ride the growth-cycle in the power-supply market with ATX 3.0 and PCIe Gen 5. Next-generation high-end graphics cards are expected to trigger upgrades among those with PSUs 4 years or older, as older PSUs, particularly mainstream ones, will find it hard to deal with the power excursions (spikes) of high-end PCIe Gen 5 graphics cards. The company could also retain its PCB engineering team to further develop its motherboard business. But all these are just speculation. Unless EVGA significantly invests in its other businesses, it's done.
How does this affect NVIDIA in the North American market?
EVGA was particularly popular in the North American market, among DIY PC enthusiasts. Other NVIDIA partners such as ASUS, could attempt to fill its void, but the distinct industrial design of EVGA will be lost, as would features such as iCX; and EVGA-exclusive customer programs such as trade-in upgrades. NVIDIA may also attempt to bring in new partners to the North American market to fill EVGA's void, such as GALAX (Galaxy), or Colorful, which are both major graphics card OEMs in the Chinese market. It will now fall on them to match the design and quality standards EVGA established. EVGA's exit will have minimal impact on NVIDIA's bottom-line, as those in the market for a GeForce graphics card will ultimately buy one from whichever brand.
NVIDIA's first reaction to this development is as follows:
Update Sep 21st: KINGPIN, a long time associate of EVGA, behind some of their fastest boutique graphics cards and motherboards, posted a note of gratitude for all the fans of EVGA + KINGPIN, and stated that KINGPIN Hardware may continue in some form.
Sources:
Jon Peddie Research, Gamers Nexus, EVGA, Tae Kim (Twitter)
Today EVGA decided to throw a massive curve ball by formally announcing the company is canceling its plans to carry the next generation of graphics cards. Given EVGA's revenue sheets point to nearly 80% contribution from being an NVIDIA add-in card partner, this effectively also means an end to a long partnership with NVIDIA. The company's CEO confirmed as much to a few media channels citing poor margins and a challenging, stressful relationship that was no longer fruitful. There are no plans for EVGA to partner with AMD or Intel at this time when it comes to graphics cards and the company stressed they will continue to sell and support current-gen GPUs having retained enough units for RMA purposes too.
All existing owners of EVGA graphics cards will remain fully covered by warranties, including full replacements if needed. The company has withheld inventory of EVGA graphics cards from retailers (and will probably recall some perfectly-functional cards), so it has buffer stock to serve existing customers in need of total replacements or RMA.
What EVGA's Future Looks Like
EVGA CEO Andrew Han stated that the company has no plans as of now to partner with another GPU manufacturer like AMD or Intel, and the exit from the graphics card business will trigger an "imminent downsizing" of the company (to shed employees associated with the graphics card business). This could also be a subtle hint to AMD and Intel that if they're looking to work with EVGA, they should express interest right now.
Graphics cards made up over three-quarters of EVGA's revenue, and so we're not sure what the company could do next. If one were to speculate, the company could increase its presence in the prebuilt notebook and gaming peripherals businesses, and probably even ride the growth-cycle in the power-supply market with ATX 3.0 and PCIe Gen 5. Next-generation high-end graphics cards are expected to trigger upgrades among those with PSUs 4 years or older, as older PSUs, particularly mainstream ones, will find it hard to deal with the power excursions (spikes) of high-end PCIe Gen 5 graphics cards. The company could also retain its PCB engineering team to further develop its motherboard business. But all these are just speculation. Unless EVGA significantly invests in its other businesses, it's done.
How does this affect NVIDIA in the North American market?
EVGA was particularly popular in the North American market, among DIY PC enthusiasts. Other NVIDIA partners such as ASUS, could attempt to fill its void, but the distinct industrial design of EVGA will be lost, as would features such as iCX; and EVGA-exclusive customer programs such as trade-in upgrades. NVIDIA may also attempt to bring in new partners to the North American market to fill EVGA's void, such as GALAX (Galaxy), or Colorful, which are both major graphics card OEMs in the Chinese market. It will now fall on them to match the design and quality standards EVGA established. EVGA's exit will have minimal impact on NVIDIA's bottom-line, as those in the market for a GeForce graphics card will ultimately buy one from whichever brand.
NVIDIA's first reaction to this development is as follows:
"We've had a great partnership with EVGA over the years and will continue to support them on our current generation of products. We wish Andrew and our friends at EVGA all the best."EVGA's full statement is as follows:
EVGA CEO Andrew HanEVGA has terminated its relationship with NVIDIA. EVGA will no longer be manufacturing video cards of any type, citing a souring relationship with NVIDIA as the cause (among other reasons that were minimized). EVGA will not be exploring relationships with AMD or Intel at this time, and the company will be downsizing imminently as it exits the video card market. Customers will still be covered by EVGA policies, but EVGA will no longer make RTX or other video cards. The company already made, 20 EVT samples of EVGA RTX 4090 FTW3 cards, but will not be moving to production and has killed all active projects pertaining to cards, including KINGPIN cards.According to JPR, EVGA was the best-selling NVIDIA AIB in the US market, with a market-share of nearly 40%. NVIDIA would have lead its board partners to take its place.
Update Sep 21st: KINGPIN, a long time associate of EVGA, behind some of their fastest boutique graphics cards and motherboards, posted a note of gratitude for all the fans of EVGA + KINGPIN, and stated that KINGPIN Hardware may continue in some form.
I'm thankful for all the industry friends, old colleagues, etc. that reached out. It means a lot and I appreciate it. The news isn't received well ofc, and I'm mostly sorry for the fans and people that are passionate for our brand and everything that we have done here over the years at EVGA. If the KP hardware is meant to continue on in one way or another, I'm sure that it will :). The EVGA and PC hardware enthusiast community have been great to me and my teams here over the years, THANK YOU.Update Sep 21st: Jensen Huang responded to a question about his thoughts on EVGA in a Q&A session today:
Jensen HuangYou know, Andrew (EVGA CEO) wanted to wind down the business, and he's wanted to do that for a couple of years. Andrew and EVGA were, are great partners and we're great partners, and I'm sad to see them leave the market. But, he's got other plans and he's been thinking about it for several years, so I guess that's about it. The market has a lot of great players and it will be served well after EVGA, but I'll always miss them, they were an important part of our history, Andrew is a great friend. I think that it was just time for him to go do something else."
536 Comments on EVGA Announces Cancelation of NVIDIA Next-gen Graphics Cards Plans, Officially Terminates NVIDIA Partnership
- Limited memory bandwidth
- Sharing of limited memory bandwidth with the CPU
- limited die size (small dies for CPUs, and only a fraction of that space is devoted to the GPU)
- limited power (35 to 65 W) compared to a discrete GPU (north of 100 W)
All of these are limits imposed by the necessity of these APUs being available in affordable laptops. When these limits don't apply, we can see great APUs like the various console chips that AMD has made. However, this will never be the case for the APUs that we can buy for desktops or buy in the form of a whole laptop.As for marketing support not being meaningful for their bottom lines ... what planet are you living on? Do you think they'd survive without marketing? Do you think AIB partners have the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars necessary for a significant marketing presence in all the markets they are a part of? 'Cause they dont - outside of possibly Asus, being the juggernaut they are (but they also have way more products to market, which again eats into these funds).
When your highest revenue product segment has low single digit profit margins, even if you sell millions of that product and ASPs are high, you'll still be struggling to cover basic operating costs for your business, let alone have cash left over for marketing, R&D, etc.Yeah, APUs have promise in theory (and current ones are pretty good for their power level) but the board and platform requirements to realize that promise just don't really make sense for consumer applications. Special motherboards with GDDR on board would be exorbitantly expensive and difficult to sell; on-chip memory (like HBM) is expensive and very difficult to fit in a small package, etc. DDR5 has some promise towards alleviating this, but as you say you'd still struggle to come close to an RX 6600. I for one really hope AMD pushes their APUs higher in terms of GPU power - 100-150W with a 20CU GPU would be amazing, even with just dual channel DDR5 - but I don't see them taking over PC gaming any time soon, that's for sure.
Every industry player has been admitting this is where it's going. To many outright stating this is what they are going to do. The notion of you owning the hardware is as idiotic as that software isn't subscription based. You're going to rent an RTX, you don't get a vote in this.
And, crucially, you'll struggle a lot to get people to pay anywhere near $100/month even for a "2160p120" cloud gaming plan - 'cause the experience will be noticeably worse and more complicated than dedicated local hardware, access to games will be more limited (and thus more complicated), and you'll be reliant on an unreliable internet connectionto deliver what will always be a noticeably worse quality image. Any game with a dark look is nigh on unplayable from the cloud due to how video compression handles blacks and dark tones, and you can forget about meaningful HDR, let alone clarity and sharpness anywhere near a local game. What you're drawing up might be the fever dream of a bunch of silicon valley types, but it's unlikely to pan out in real life.
- Price gouging customers and partners
- Proprietary bullshit in hardware features, software, API, and of course physical compatibility
- Bribery of devs with tools that are intentionally crippled on competitors' hardware.
- Closed-source everything when they rely on open-source APIs, OSes, and frameworks.
- Manipulation/unfair treatment of independent media who publicise flaws/truth
- Antitrust lawsuits with numerous large-scale global entities
- Running foul of legislation in around half the regions they operate in
- Attempting to monopolise segments that are critical to healthy market operation (ARM was unsuccessful but other buyouts have succeeded and more will surely come)
There's a lot more than just this list, but I think every single point on this list is individually a pretty damning black mark against Nvidia.I've been on Nvidia for most of a decade now, but was using Radeons and even Athlon X4s in the 2000s (after 3dfx started to fail).
The price delta between equivalent upper midrange parts between Nvidia and AMD is growing. I've always said, it's worth an extra $50-$75 to avoid software issues, keep Nvidia's longer support for its cards, and so on. I still believe that to be true. However, the delta is getting too big.
Objectively, the 6700XT performs a little better than a 3060 Ti, and consumes a little less power. Its price is just $20 more than a vanilla 3060.
Although I had planned to wait until after new years for a GPU, I may go for a new one along with a platform upgrade in the next 4-6 weeks. I'd like to see what the A750/A770 can do first though.
For the first time in about 10 years, I'm not really even thinking about Nvidia's cards. My thinking now is all about 6700XT vs whatever Intel winds up releasing.
There's been cries of that shit year's yet here we are, stadia did well.
I won't be surprised if other aibs follow Evga out that door.
Some of the comments on this thread have been an eye opener for me. I was looking forward to RTX 4000 ... i think you guys have weighed down the eagerness in me. But as always, if the price is right im on it like a rabbit!
Just curious any idea when AMD will drop next Gen graphics cards?
This would not be unusual behavior specific to AMD, pretty much all consumer electronics companies keep the holidays in mind. Remember that both PS5 and Xbox Series X|S launched for holiday 2020. Apple likes to have their holiday product lineup finalized by early November at latest.
AMD Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT debuted in mid-November 2020 with the 6900 XT following in very early December.
Without a doubt, AMD will stagger their release over months, starting with their high end models (7900, 7800). I assume Dr. Su's keynote at January's CES tradeshow will include a launch of some mid-range Radeon 70 series models.
Gonna wait this one out until all the reviews/feedback is widely available (esp. the TPU family's input) before pulling the trigger.
Your example of, free market, is all kinda bass ackward.
I'll stick to reality thanks
;)
The things are heavy, the shroud is metal. Anything but wimpy. :)
The gigabyte 1080ti I owned before my 3080 FE (granted not an EVGA) I felt I had to grip it so loose when removing it from case else I would snap the paper like shroud.
I would still buy one... even more so now knowing it's all heatsink, I have the perfect case for it :)