Friday, February 9th 2024
ASRock Dives Into Why it Lacks NVIDIA GeForce Graphics Cards; Doesn't Rule Out Making Them in the Future
ASRock, ODM giant Pegatron's retail channel brand, built its reputation over its high cost/performance motherboards, and got into graphics cards rather recently (less than 5 years ago), beginning with AMD Radeon graphics cards, before expanding into Intel Arc GPUs. The company has shown with its high-end AMD Radeon cards that it can design complex custom-design graphics cards with heavy cooling solutions, especially given that AMD Radeon boards tend to have more elaborate power designs than NVIDIA. So then, where are the ASRock GeForce RTX graphics cards? Korean tech publication QuasarZone set to find out from ASRock.
Put simply, ASRock does not rule out making custom design GeForce RTX graphics cards in the future, but says that getting into that market right now, is "challenging." NVIDIA now commands the vast majority of discrete GPU market, and as such most of the top DIY PC retail channel brands (such as ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE), sell both GeForce and Radeon products. They started making GeForce graphics cards decades ago, and have built market presence over the years. NVIDIA also has a set of board partners that exclusively sell GeForce—such as PNY, Palit-Gainward, Galax-KFA2, and Colorful, which make it all the more tough for ASRock to break in. On the specific question asked by Quasar Zone, here was ASRock's answer (machine translated to English by VideoCardz).
Sources:
VideoCardz, QuasarZone
Put simply, ASRock does not rule out making custom design GeForce RTX graphics cards in the future, but says that getting into that market right now, is "challenging." NVIDIA now commands the vast majority of discrete GPU market, and as such most of the top DIY PC retail channel brands (such as ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE), sell both GeForce and Radeon products. They started making GeForce graphics cards decades ago, and have built market presence over the years. NVIDIA also has a set of board partners that exclusively sell GeForce—such as PNY, Palit-Gainward, Galax-KFA2, and Colorful, which make it all the more tough for ASRock to break in. On the specific question asked by Quasar Zone, here was ASRock's answer (machine translated to English by VideoCardz).
What are your plans for the future product lineup? Are there any plans to include NVIDIA graphics cards?
ASRock: This is quite a challenging question. Companies that have both NVIDIA and AMD are ASUS, GIGABYTE, and MSI. These brands have been in operation for a longer time than us, and back when there were founded, there were not only ATI and NVIDIA, but also Elsa and Voodoo. No one had a monopolistic position at the time. However, as time passed, NVIDIA's market dominance became overwhelming, and a world where the production of NVIDIA VGA became influential emerged. I believe there are complex reasons for this. From the perspective of ASRock, currently producing AMD and Intel VGA, it seems challenging for us to immediately start manufacturing NVIDIA VGA.
37 Comments on ASRock Dives Into Why it Lacks NVIDIA GeForce Graphics Cards; Doesn't Rule Out Making Them in the Future
Well, maybe except that they're not ruling this out but I'd argue that this is the default position unless explicitly stated otherwise.
This could've been an e-mail...
*4090(chip) = U$ 300 x 0,74 = U$ 222
4090 = U$1600 x 0,30 = U$ 480
*Don't expect it to be accurate.
Considering this, it's nothing more but percentage, that doesn't show the real amount of cards sold in retail consumer market. Hence, the number could be inflated by massive load of top end GPUs/cards like 4090, which still being sold by pallets to AI specific companies (even to PRC) $2K or more.
Thus I recon that the lower class GPUs like 4070/Ti/S and 4060 respectively, have even less impact on these magic margin numbers. Considering the prices for 4090 and so, these lower end cads might barely make any dent in the total %% of profit margins number.
Best regards!
Having AIBs willing to take that burden for a tiny piece of their margin (they've been really screwing them over for years now) is a small price to pay for a much more flexible and less risky supply chain.They're not swallowing any loss, if they were they would just drop nvidia like EVGA did. What they're swallowing is a lower margin than they would like (and deserve) because they're such a huge manufacturer of gpus that they can spread the development cost better than a smaller operation like EVGA
Over the past couple years, we have had multiple sources and industry research reports stating that AIBs' profit margin on gaming cards has dropped to the 5-10% range while NVIDIA's profit margin on game cards averages in the 65-70% range.
Like I explained above, NVIDIA controls the profit they make even on AIB cards.
It's always a fuzzy number with lots of caveats and definitions.
Either way, terrible for the AIBs since NVIDIA controls the price of the most expensive components and controls the price of the competing final product.
I only found that out because I had been looking at upgrading from my original NU Audio (which I must admit, you have to pry it from my cold dead hands, I love it) to the second generation 7.1 model around the time I last overhauled my PC and got the i9-13900KS, only to find out they stopped making them. No driver updates have been released since then either, leaving them pretty much dead in the water. I hope that there's no compatibility issues any time soon - thankfully, it seems that audio drivers aren't exactly something that tend to break over time.
Most of EVGA's businesses have folded or collapsed in one way or another. With the exception of their power supply business (which also changed considerably, since EVGA is no longer synonymous with quality after several straight garbage PSU series ranging from non-rated to the lower-end 80 Plus Gold models), EVGA had been committing a series of blunders and they've just about come to pay the price for it. Don't you think that if it was really a case of Nvidia charging extortionate prices for the chips, making their life hard, etc. - they'd not have a whole series of Radeons, including an RX 7900 XTX Kingpin out by now? There's no loyalty in business, anyone who believes that excuse is beyond silly. The way I see it, the reason EVGA often gets a pass and blame is shifted elsewhere is because they're a darling brand.
If that hypothetical 7900 XTX Kingpin existed, I would have one. I wouldn't even care about the usual trillions of bugs and performance issues(*). I'd have it, fullstop.
(*) i'm obviously joking here, ease up usual suspects