The new Geforce experience (for partners)
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The rumors of Nvidia being a notoriously difficult company to work with had today taken another turn: The largest partner model maker, EVGA, a company who has 80% of their revenue being Nvidia graphics cards, has terminated the relationship, right before the 4000-series launch.
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...
and in video form
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV9QES-FUAM
EVGA cites Nvidia being a really shitty company towards their partners as the deciding factor, and based off a few years of rumors that would hold up. Apple dropped working with Nvidia. Most consoles use AMD hardware. Even Intel partnered with AMD for a few Intel CPU-AMD GPU chips, rather than trying to collaborate with Nvidia. Also, the tidibits of grumbling from the other partners like Asus, MSI, Gigabyte etc.
There is also the persistent rumors of Nvidia wanting to drop third-party Geforce cards altogether, but they are stuck with their partners because Nvidia doesn't have the resources to do that (yet). To me it does feel like Nvidia are shooting themselves in the foot if they would go down that path, as it tends to be the partners who makes the interesting cards and a world of only Nvidia cards would make things rather boring.
Either way, Nvidia being dumped by their largest partner is a rather big thing and it makes me wonder what kinda ripples this will send through the industry. It certainly is not a good thing to come right before the 4000-series launch and will probably take some edge off of that. Time will tell I guess.
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If I wasn't in the energy crisis shit creek without a paddle, I'd be very upset.
