Let’s say you order some brand new 911 Turbo and take delivery. Several weeks later your finding-out that those who waited and bought off the lot got a different rear intake grill on the wing. That enhancement was implement to improve cooling and Hp. Now you go back to both the Porsche dealer and factory and they are saying... sorry can’t give you that $250 part even though it's a direct bolt on. Porsche I don’t believe would ever do that, they know the value of a customer and would probably come to the house or business to install it. A $500 card is no different than a 100K Porsche, when it comes to send you a 1o cent bracket!
I see this as BAD P.R. for EVGA... not good, while in the USA a product manufacture cannot withhold warranty because it wasn't registered. :shadedshu
Dunno if your analogy applies, car manufacturers introduce minor improvements to a given car model every year, most of these changes are cosmetic like nicer looking headlights, or a new bumper design, and some are performance enhancements like an improved grille design for better cooling, higher HP, or other body improvements that improve aero dynamics, like Nissan did to the 2012 GTR.
These manufacturers are not required by law to roll those improvements to buyers of previous year models, unless any of these changes address a manufacturing defect that can endanger their buyers, or a quality issue that makes a component break during normal use during it's desired life expectancy, then they have to issue a recall as required by law.
In my opinion I don't think that's the case for this improvement, granted, it may only cost a few cents to produce these improved grills, but the graphic card market is a cutthroat place to be, and card manufacturers receive very small profit margins in the first run of any new GPU, as low yields force them pay a premium to either Nvidia or AMD for each new GPU, sure GK104 is a very small die sized GPU, but that doesn't mean Nvidia is transferring those savings to video card manufacturers, most likely they keep their savings between themselves and TSMC. Just adding a few cents to the cost of each card cuts the margins when you're talking about hundreds of cards.
Oh, and you're not required to register your card on purchase day to ask for the warranty, but of your ever need to RMA your card and it's still covered by the warranty, then you'll have to register it, the same holds true for all video card manufacturers out there.
You can also opt out of their spam list when you register your card
