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
corporations are not your friends
AMD aren't the good guys, they exist to make as much money as possible something they suck at compared to intel or nvidia
I could write a lengthy post breaking down AMDs corporate culture and the potential devisationg effects underdogs syndrome can create
but I have a feeling the point would be lost on you
good day sir
After having watched the following, I'm wondering if EVGA has a plan they have not revealed yet..
This EVGA situation is starting to set in... I've taken stock. Most of my GPU inventory is EVGA. At home, most of my cards are EVGA. This is a serious problem!
I can echo much of what Jay expressed..
as always the best independent perspective. This one was clearly not on the EVGA payroll like GN or Jayz.
In fact, NV is probably the world champion.
The Nvidia stuff is being announced on Sept 27th I think. That probably means that you can buy a 4080/4090 in late October/November if you don't mind being price-gouged and fighting over the first wave of stock.
Less is known about the RDNA3 cards, but I believe they are slated for official launch announcement in 1H October and presumably will on the market, priced to compete with RTX4000-series before the end of the year.
The midrange stuff, presumably in the sub-$600 range, is unlikely to be available for 6-9 months at least, and AMD are rumoured to be respinning RDNA2 cards like the 6600 and 6700 on TSMC 6nm to save costs, improve power efficiency, and hold down the fort for the mid-to-low end this generation.
Nvidia have this hideously-backhanded "allocation system" whereby AIBs can only get allocation if they jump through hoops and sign pretty unfair contracts that stipulate, effectively, that Nvidia can shit all over them if they don't accept the terrible terms. There have been videos on this in the past covered by various other channels but it's an abusive relationship that Nvidia ties AIBs into. AIBs can't order silicon as needed, they have to promise to buy stuff several months ahead of ordering to earn favour for allocation and risk losing everything if they default on those promises.
If I had to describe it in leyman terms, Nvidia are passing their risk of market volatility over to their AIBs, without passing on the rewards of market volatility by both undercutting AIBs with their FEs and limiting what the AIBs can do with their flagships through driver and silicon chokes. All AIBs, not just EVGA, are screwed over by this process - and it's something that companies like Asus and Gigabyte - who manufacture for both Nvidia and AMD simultaneously - have called out as an Nvidia-exclusive issue.
And it's nothing new, same old story as it has always been. Once the people who run a 'news / review' site needs clicks/views/sponsors to make a living, keep their employees employed, and feed their family their reporting becomes (necessarily) slanted in order to facilitate that, and their data becomes suspect.
I think 3080 is the first card I would say can play CP2077 or Control at 1440p60 with raytracing enabled. I know DLSS/FSR can help but IMO they're a crutch and they both still look worse in motion than the equivalent, low-resolution native output. Opinion, yes - but I game at 1080p120 native in preference to 4K60 with DLSS by choice every time.
This is a failure to manage sales and stock on the part of EVGA and just shifting blame to Nvidia seems exaggerated. Nvidia is not blameless, is to big and the big guy will always flex against the smaller ones, but this is BS as it is presented.
You can't ask Nvidia to take back stock, as much as Nvidia can ask Samsung to take back stock of the dies. These are public companies, they have to answer to shareholders. There is a chain and everyone plays it's part.
That's not the way it looks to be.
The way i see it AIB's are going to AMD to retain atleast some control and margins while Nvidia bleeds them dry.
And, crucially, you're entirely ignoring the power dynamics in play here. Nvidia is the only company involved in these transactions with the economic power to hold any kind of buffer stock of products - AIB partners don't have the scale or margins to do so, which also makes it unreasonable for Nvidia to push that responsibility onto them. If one wants fair business practices, it is then entirely reasonable for Nvidia to bear the burden of holding such stock and setting up a system for dynamically allocating stock to AIB partners as needed. Such deals can still include long-term purchase agreements, they just need some built-in flexibility. Nvidia's deals with chip fab owners are an excellent example of this: Nvidia agrees to buy a certain amount of wafers over a certain time period - with some flexibility, but not a lot. But crucially, they have a lot of freedom in deciding on the fly what those wafers will be made into, despite this being far from trivial to implement in practice. What we're seeing inklings of here is Nvidia not giving the same type of flexibility to their downstream partners as they themselves enjoy from their upstream partners - instead passing the buck downwards to (strongly implied: replaceable) "partners" who are thus forced to bear the burden of risk rather than the much more financially stable Nvidia.
The core point here being: you're arguing from an explicitly naïve perspective that seems utterly blind to power and its implications and consequences - a blindness that's endemic to people espousing the virtues of "free markets", and the same blindness that renders these people fundamentally unable to see why said markets aren't free at all. Ignoring power relations in business doesn't get you closer to any kind of truth or justice or freedom, it just makes you blind to the realities of the world, and thus makes your analyses of how the world works deeply flawed.
The facts of the matter are these: without Nvidia, AIB partners have no GPUs to sell, and without Nvidia, Samsung has real trouble selling all their wafers (or at least has to take the increased cost of managing hundreds of smaller scale customers rather than one major one, if they are able to sell them and don't have to scale back production). Nvidia doesn't have all the power - they're still reliant on both chip supply, other components, and AIB partners for selling their products - but they have significant advantages in both relations (when the chip supplier is TSMC you could argue that they're pretty evenly matched on that side, as TSMC has no trouble selling every wafer they can make, unlike Samsung). And, crucially, Nvidia is widely documented to use this power for all it's worth, having no scruples about going into outright anticompetitive practices if they see the opportunity to gain from this. This isn't saying that AMD would necessarily be better if the tables were turned, but we literally can't know that, so such speculation is nothing more than meaningless equivocation - the fact of the matter is, Nvidia is a market juggernaut that loves to throw their weight around at the cost of their business "partners" for the sole purpose of enriching themselves and their shareholders.
>Nvidia: I want x wafers, but if i can't sell them i want a discount.
<TMSC: so you don't want wafers, got it.
Stop this silly fanboy love with nvidia. It's getting ridiculous!