4 ms·

Yeah wait, what happened with EVGA? (guess I can search it up, of course) I was browsing gaming PC hardware recently and noticed none of the GPUs were from EVG

Yeah wait, what happened with EVGA? (guess I can search it up, of course) I was browsing gaming PC hardware recently and noticed none of the GPUs were from EVGA .. I used to buy their cards because they had such a good warranty policy (in my experience)... :\

theshackleford 1y ago
In 2022 claiming a lack of respect from Nvidia, low margins, and Nvidia's control over partners as just a few of the reasons, EVGA ended its partnership with Nvidia and ceased manufacturing Nvidia GPUs. > I used to buy their cards because they had such a good warranty policy (in my experience)... :\ It's so wild to hear this as in my country, they were not considered anything special over any other third party retailer as we have strong consumer protection laws which means its all much of a muchness.
- kbolino 1y ago
  The big bombshell IMO is that, according to EVGA at least, nVidia just comes up with the MSRP for each card all on its own, and doesn't even tell its partners what that number will be before announcing it to the public. I elaborate on this a bit more in a response to a sibling comment.
izacus 1y ago
EVGA was angry because nVidia wouldn't pay them for attempts at scalping which failed.
- kbolino 1y ago
  I've never seen this accusation before. I want to give the benefit of the doubt but I suspect it's confusing scalping with MSRP-baiting. It's important to note that nVidia mostly doesn't sell or even make finished consumer-grade GPUs. They own and develop the IP cores, and they contract with TSMC and others to make the chips, and they do make limited runs of "Founders Edition" cards, but most cards that are available to consumers undergo final assembly and retail boxing according to the specs of the partner -- ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, formerly EVGA, etc. MSRP-baiting is what happens when nVidia sets the MSRP without consulting any of its partners and then those partners go and assemble the graphics cards and have to charge more than that to make a reasonable profit. This has been going on for many GPU generations now, but it's not scalping. We can question why this "partnership" model even exists in the first place, since these middlemen offer very little unique value vs any of their competitors anymore, but again nVidia has the upper hand here and thus the lion's share of the blame. Scalping is when somebody who's ostensibly outside of the industry buys up a bunch of GPUs at retail prices, causing a supply shortage, so that they can resell the cards at higher prices. While nVidia doesn't have direct control over this (though I wouldn't be too surprised if it came out that there was some insider involvement), they also never do very much to address it either. Getting all the hate for this without directly reaping the monetary benefit sounds irrational at first, but artificial scarcity and luxury goods mentality are real business tactics.
  - izacus 1y ago
    Then you didn't follow the situation, since majority of EVGA anger was because nVidia wouldn't buy back their chips after EVGA failed to sell cards at hugely inflated price point. Then they tried to weaponize PR to beat nVidia into buying back their unsold cores they thought they'll massively profit off with inflated crypto hype prices.
    - kbolino 1y ago
      Ok, this seems to be based entirely on speculation. It could very well be accurate but there's no statements I can find from either nVidia or EVGA corroborating it. Since it's done by the manufacturer themselves, it's more like gouging rather than scalping. But more to the point, there's still a trail of blame going back to nVidia here. If EVGA could buy the cores at an inflated price, then nVidia should have raised its advertised MSRP to match. The reason I call it MSRP-baiting is not because I care about EVGA or any of these other rent-seekers, it's because it's a calculated lie weaponized against the consumer. As I kind of implied already, it's probably for the best if this "partner" arrangement ends. There's no good reason nVidia can't sell all of its desktop GPUs directly to the consumer. EVGA may have bet big and lost from their own folly, but everybody else was in on it too (except video gamers, who got shafted).
      - Tijdreiziger 1y ago
        NVIDIA doesn’t make a lot of finished cards for the same reason Intel doesn’t make a lot of motherboards, presumably.
        kbolino 1y ago
        Maybe, but that's not a great analogy. The standardized, user-accessible sockets mean many different CPUs can be paired with many different motherboards. There's also a wide variety of sizes and features in motherboards, plus they have buses for connecting various kinds of peripherals. GPUs have none of this flexibility or extensibility.

theshackleford 1y ago

In 2022 claiming a lack of respect from Nvidia, low margins, and Nvidia's control over partners as just a few of the reasons, EVGA ended its partnership with Nvidia and ceased manufacturing Nvidia GPUs. > I used to buy their cards because they had such a good warranty policy (in my experience)... :\ It's so wild to hear this as in my country, they were not considered anything special over any other third party retailer as we have strong consumer protection laws which means its all much of a muchness.

kbolino 1y ago
The big bombshell IMO is that, according to EVGA at least, nVidia just comes up with the MSRP for each card all on its own, and doesn't even tell its partners what that number will be before announcing it to the public. I elaborate on this a bit more in a response to a sibling comment.

izacus 1y ago

EVGA was angry because nVidia wouldn't pay them for attempts at scalping which failed.

kbolino 1y ago
I've never seen this accusation before. I want to give the benefit of the doubt but I suspect it's confusing scalping with MSRP-baiting. It's important to note that nVidia mostly doesn't sell or even make finished consumer-grade GPUs. They own and develop the IP cores, and they contract with TSMC and others to make the chips, and they do make limited runs of "Founders Edition" cards, but most cards that are available to consumers undergo final assembly and retail boxing according to the specs of the partner -- ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, formerly EVGA, etc. MSRP-baiting is what happens when nVidia sets the MSRP without consulting any of its partners and then those partners go and assemble the graphics cards and have to charge more than that to make a reasonable profit. This has been going on for many GPU generations now, but it's not scalping. We can question why this "partnership" model even exists in the first place, since these middlemen offer very little unique value vs any of their competitors anymore, but again nVidia has the upper hand here and thus the lion's share of the blame. Scalping is when somebody who's ostensibly outside of the industry buys up a bunch of GPUs at retail prices, causing a supply shortage, so that they can resell the cards at higher prices. While nVidia doesn't have direct control over this (though I wouldn't be too surprised if it came out that there was some insider involvement), they also never do very much to address it either. Getting all the hate for this without directly reaping the monetary benefit sounds irrational at first, but artificial scarcity and luxury goods mentality are real business tactics.
- izacus 1y ago
  Then you didn't follow the situation, since majority of EVGA anger was because nVidia wouldn't buy back their chips after EVGA failed to sell cards at hugely inflated price point. Then they tried to weaponize PR to beat nVidia into buying back their unsold cores they thought they'll massively profit off with inflated crypto hype prices.
  - kbolino 1y ago
    Ok, this seems to be based entirely on speculation. It could very well be accurate but there's no statements I can find from either nVidia or EVGA corroborating it. Since it's done by the manufacturer themselves, it's more like gouging rather than scalping. But more to the point, there's still a trail of blame going back to nVidia here. If EVGA could buy the cores at an inflated price, then nVidia should have raised its advertised MSRP to match. The reason I call it MSRP-baiting is not because I care about EVGA or any of these other rent-seekers, it's because it's a calculated lie weaponized against the consumer. As I kind of implied already, it's probably for the best if this "partner" arrangement ends. There's no good reason nVidia can't sell all of its desktop GPUs directly to the consumer. EVGA may have bet big and lost from their own folly, but everybody else was in on it too (except video gamers, who got shafted).
    - Tijdreiziger 1y ago
      NVIDIA doesn’t make a lot of finished cards for the same reason Intel doesn’t make a lot of motherboards, presumably.
      - kbolino 1y ago
        Maybe, but that's not a great analogy. The standardized, user-accessible sockets mean many different CPUs can be paired with many different motherboards. There's also a wide variety of sizes and features in motherboards, plus they have buses for connecting various kinds of peripherals. GPUs have none of this flexibility or extensibility.