1., The superior claim is inarguable at the top end ... look at the numbers in TPUs tests, add the significant overclocking advantage and compare. Numbers are not subject to interpretation. Lower scores are never better
2. Why is that techies expect tech companies to act different than any other company in America ? Capoitalism, it has a definition... look it up. That's the American way .... corporate mantra is dog it dog, crush the competition. The mindset that they 'should be nice' or "invest billions in R & D and than "share the results" does not fit in any corporate culture.
3. The naming thing is being misreported and misinterpreted. here we have nVidia and AMD cards sharing a model line "Gaming X"
MSI 480 Gaming X -
https://us.msi.com/Graphics-card/Radeon-RX-480-GAMING-X-8G.html
MSI 1060 Gaming X -
https://us.msi.com/Graphics-card/GeForce-GTX-1060-GAMING-X-6G.html
nVidia has significantly ightened what vendors can do with their cards, both with card design and legally, with last few successive generations. What they are now saying, is that they are willing to work with partners to "loosen up those restraints" on partners. In exchange for the time, effort and money invested in that program, it is expected that "both partners" will benefit from increased sales and greater "mindshare" from this endeavor. And like their technical proprietary technology, they don't want that investment in any way benefiting their competition.
So if they work with MSI and allow MSI to make PCB improvments providing better VRMs, nmore phases, fatser memory, better cooling. nVidia can say "OK, when our driver detects the "MSI Usain Bolt (male track star) 2080 Ti", we will allow Boost 3 to clock an extra xxx MHz, allow power limiter to hit 150% and allow voltages of +xx mv. A card with those advantages will no doubt be sought after by reviewers and gaming enthusiasts. So all nVidia is saying is ... after we helped MSI gain recognition for the UB line of cards, you can't use the UB naming convention on competition's cards ... So if MSI wants to do a hi end line for AMD, they can issue the "MSI Lolo Jones (female track star) Vega 72" line w/o complaint.
As far as the subject site ... I expect we'll find that it was a hack, a whacko employee or MSi corporate takes some kind of disciplinary action.
As far as brand loyalty ... it's a fools errand to rely on personal experiences and apply them over time. Its like betting on the Yankees in baseball to take it all this year because they won 3 World Series in a row from 1998 - 2000 or the Cubs hadn't won in 100 years. The only record you can go by is "what did they do last year" and what's changed there as well as the competition. We were strictly an Asus shop for 10 years but our experiences with Z87 and Z97 and since the 6xx series were horrible. Returing a WS board resulted in a banana shaped replacement twhereby yiu couldn't bend the board back enough to get the IO panel thru the case opening. It took 3 months to rplace that baord. Other builds had the BIOS clock freeze bug for which the promised BIUOS fix never arrived. Meanwhile MSI had done a lot innovation and quality wise since then and Gigabyte remains strong with many model lines. Asus has since pretty much returned almost to the level of the glory years.
If ya look at reliability, the brands overall are remarkably close (1.48 - 1.63% return rate). The best the user can do is avoid the board and cards with failure rates well above the ave5age... in most recent analysis
5,71% ASUS Z170I-PRO Gaming
5,59% ASUS X99 Strix Gaming
4,70% MSI B150M PRO-VDH D3
4,17% ASUS B150I PRO GAMING/WIFI/AURA
3,81% ASRock FM2A58M-VG3+
3,45% MSI X99A Gaming 7
3,17% ASUS X99-A II
2,23% MSI Z170A Gaming M3
2,19% ASUS Z170-A
2,08% GIGABYTE GA-Z170XP-SLI
7,69% Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 480 4G
7,00% Inno3D iChill GeForce GTX 1070 X4
6,69% Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 480 8G OC
5,98% Sapphire Radeon RX 480 8GD5
5,08% MSI Radeon RX 470 GAMING X 4G
5,00% Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 480 8G
4,79% ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! Extreme
3,02% ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 - ROG STRIX-GTX1080-8G-GAMING
2,54% MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition
2,13% EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW GAMING ACX 3.0
Overll failure rates for GFX cards by brand .. again mist within the 1.13 and 1.30 spread ... Sapphire being way out due to the problematic 480
Zotac 1,13%
EVGA 1,19%
Gigabyte 1,19%
MSI 1,29%
Asus 1,30%)
Palit/Gainward 1,49%
Inno3D 1,56%
Sapphire 2,90%