EVGA Terminates NVIDIA Partnership, Cites Disrespectful Treatment
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Date: 2022-09-17
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Comments and reviews: 14
Aphelion
Man, I'm bummed to hear EVGA is no longer working with Nvidia, but honestly EVGA seems like a shell of it's former self - and I say that as someone who has proudly owned and all-EVGA PC for years up until recently.
Their customer service team has been great to work with in my experience, but their QC has just dwindled to almost nothing in the past few years. My 3080 Hybrid sounds like a lawnmower because the pump is garbage. The kit is only 6 or 7 months old, but this seems to be a very common problem with EVGA 3080 Hybrids.
My EVGA FTW Z370 board still throws a beep code when my 3080 is installed, despite BIOS and firmware on both being up to date. The code suggests that the mobo can't initialize the graphics device, but it does it just fine after throwing a beep fit.
Speaking of that board, EVGAs Z370 boards STILL have BIOS settings that don't work or do what they're supposed to do. You can disable vdroop, but you better believe it's still gonna droop like grandmas tits. Thanks to this, I can only squeak out an OC of 4.8 on my 9900K with this board. I own 2 Asus Z370s that can get it to 5 with stability and reasonable voltage (1.4 or less). The EVGA FTW pushes 1.46v to keep it stable at 4.9....
I also recently built a PC for a friend and his EVGA 3080 came with an extra backplate nut just knocking around in the heatsink (yes, I made sure it's extra). Thank goodness I caught it before installing the card and shorting it, but I guess that doesn't matter because the card died on day 30 anyway. Despite him putting in a support ticket that day, they only offered an RMA, no refund. He bought a cheap open box MSI 3080 and has had no issues, except for not wanting the GPU EVGA is sending back to him after being burnt by the first one.
I purchased an SFX PSU (the GM line) only to find out it was a rebranded FSP, a brand not known for quality PSUs. I'm shocked EVGA would do business with them at all, but EVGA has made/branded some questionable PSUs in the past (remember the N1/N2?). I guess that's on my for not doing more research first.
My CLC280 also just died at almost 5 years. That's kind of how long I expect an AIO to last, so I'm not salty about that - in fact they have a 5 year warranty which is pretty incredible on a product like that. I'm just not even sure if I want to RMA it at this point.
I used to love EVGA. I was probably what you'd call a fanboy. Now I don't think I would buy a card from them whether it's Nvidia, AMD, or god forbid Intel. In fact, I don't think I'd buy ANYTHING from EVGA again after being burned this many times. I'm almost disappointed in myself for not learning earlier.
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Man, I'm bummed to hear EVGA is no longer working with Nvidia, but honestly EVGA seems like a shell of it's former self - and I say that as someone who has proudly owned and all-EVGA PC for years up until recently.
Their customer service team has been great to work with in my experience, but their QC has just dwindled to almost nothing in the past few years. My 3080 Hybrid sounds like a lawnmower because the pump is garbage. The kit is only 6 or 7 months old, but this seems to be a very common problem with EVGA 3080 Hybrids.
My EVGA FTW Z370 board still throws a beep code when my 3080 is installed, despite BIOS and firmware on both being up to date. The code suggests that the mobo can't initialize the graphics device, but it does it just fine after throwing a beep fit.
Speaking of that board, EVGAs Z370 boards STILL have BIOS settings that don't work or do what they're supposed to do. You can disable vdroop, but you better believe it's still gonna droop like grandmas tits. Thanks to this, I can only squeak out an OC of 4.8 on my 9900K with this board. I own 2 Asus Z370s that can get it to 5 with stability and reasonable voltage (1.4 or less). The EVGA FTW pushes 1.46v to keep it stable at 4.9....
I also recently built a PC for a friend and his EVGA 3080 came with an extra backplate nut just knocking around in the heatsink (yes, I made sure it's extra). Thank goodness I caught it before installing the card and shorting it, but I guess that doesn't matter because the card died on day 30 anyway. Despite him putting in a support ticket that day, they only offered an RMA, no refund. He bought a cheap open box MSI 3080 and has had no issues, except for not wanting the GPU EVGA is sending back to him after being burnt by the first one.
I purchased an SFX PSU (the GM line) only to find out it was a rebranded FSP, a brand not known for quality PSUs. I'm shocked EVGA would do business with them at all, but EVGA has made/branded some questionable PSUs in the past (remember the N1/N2?). I guess that's on my for not doing more research first.
My CLC280 also just died at almost 5 years. That's kind of how long I expect an AIO to last, so I'm not salty about that - in fact they have a 5 year warranty which is pretty incredible on a product like that. I'm just not even sure if I want to RMA it at this point.
I used to love EVGA. I was probably what you'd call a fanboy. Now I don't think I would buy a card from them whether it's Nvidia, AMD, or god forbid Intel. In fact, I don't think I'd buy ANYTHING from EVGA again after being burned this many times. I'm almost disappointed in myself for not learning earlier.
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kdawg3484
Good for Andrew Han. 23 years running a business like this would be like multiple lifetimes for the average person. He's allowed to just be sick of it all. It takes an incredible amount of guts to walk away from 80% of your business instead of continuing to lick boot. The morality of how you treat your employees during and transitioning to post-employment does not in any way conflict with the fact that businesses exists to make money, NOT to employ people. And the latter thinking is a surefire way to total failure. My dad ran an engineering company for 40 years, and I was VP for 12. He always tried to take care of our people well beyond what they had earned as employees and as humans. Should've actually been more willing to let people go for the overall health of the business, which ultimately went bankrupt. But looking at it from the perspective of the business owner, something few rarely do (Steve is a rare exception), the absolute gigaton of shit you have to deal with along the way just breaks you down. Stuff that standard employees will never have to deal with like paying bills and salaries out of your own pockets and dealing behind the scenes with customers and vendors that just eat you alive from both ends. In our case, our customers would just destroy us by never paying on time while we racked up continued cost, and in EVGA's case, Nvidia's doing the same thing from the other side: preventing them from actually doing their business by not giving them prices and specs and then undercutting them on top of it. I hope everyone that worked for EVGA finds a good next step in their life, but I also hope the same for its owner, because I can only imagine the size of the iceberg under what Steve just told us.
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Good for Andrew Han. 23 years running a business like this would be like multiple lifetimes for the average person. He's allowed to just be sick of it all. It takes an incredible amount of guts to walk away from 80% of your business instead of continuing to lick boot. The morality of how you treat your employees during and transitioning to post-employment does not in any way conflict with the fact that businesses exists to make money, NOT to employ people. And the latter thinking is a surefire way to total failure. My dad ran an engineering company for 40 years, and I was VP for 12. He always tried to take care of our people well beyond what they had earned as employees and as humans. Should've actually been more willing to let people go for the overall health of the business, which ultimately went bankrupt. But looking at it from the perspective of the business owner, something few rarely do (Steve is a rare exception), the absolute gigaton of shit you have to deal with along the way just breaks you down. Stuff that standard employees will never have to deal with like paying bills and salaries out of your own pockets and dealing behind the scenes with customers and vendors that just eat you alive from both ends. In our case, our customers would just destroy us by never paying on time while we racked up continued cost, and in EVGA's case, Nvidia's doing the same thing from the other side: preventing them from actually doing their business by not giving them prices and specs and then undercutting them on top of it. I hope everyone that worked for EVGA finds a good next step in their life, but I also hope the same for its owner, because I can only imagine the size of the iceberg under what Steve just told us.
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BuildN
To be honest, I would rather continue my brand loyalty with EVGA and more strongly consider a move to intel GPUs if they actually treat their partners right. For the similar reasons I do not tend to use Apple products because of their stance on right to repair. EVGA needs to come strong if they are to continue without falling into obscurity and have them branded more like Lian-Li where it is known that they may have quality products but they may fall out of the public eye due to lack of variety of product.
That's just my personal stance. NVIDIA seems to be playing both sides and coming out on top. It is up to the customers to stop buying those products if the manufacturer is going to strong arm the vendors helping make their products better by allowing them to do research on their products before launch AS WELL AS under cut those vendors. I have used NVIDIA GPUs since the 8800GTS. I like NVIDIA GPUs. But I would rather support a company that values the companies and partnerships they create. Especially when by proxy they are helping each other.
I one hundred percent support EVGA and wish them the best but seriously and sincerely hope they at least have a clarity wank before talking with Intel or AMD. Sorry I know the middle is hard to follow.
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To be honest, I would rather continue my brand loyalty with EVGA and more strongly consider a move to intel GPUs if they actually treat their partners right. For the similar reasons I do not tend to use Apple products because of their stance on right to repair. EVGA needs to come strong if they are to continue without falling into obscurity and have them branded more like Lian-Li where it is known that they may have quality products but they may fall out of the public eye due to lack of variety of product.
That's just my personal stance. NVIDIA seems to be playing both sides and coming out on top. It is up to the customers to stop buying those products if the manufacturer is going to strong arm the vendors helping make their products better by allowing them to do research on their products before launch AS WELL AS under cut those vendors. I have used NVIDIA GPUs since the 8800GTS. I like NVIDIA GPUs. But I would rather support a company that values the companies and partnerships they create. Especially when by proxy they are helping each other.
I one hundred percent support EVGA and wish them the best but seriously and sincerely hope they at least have a clarity wank before talking with Intel or AMD. Sorry I know the middle is hard to follow.
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John
Yeah, revenue does not equal profit. It doesn't matter that 80% of a companies revenue is from a certain source if it's not making them money. When you are a manufacturer you HAVE to have good profit margins. Nvidia didn't provide that opportunity for EVGA, while on the other hand Nvidia's last Q statement showed a profit margin of I think 57%. I couldn't be an AIB making 2% profit margin no matter how many products I sell when the company who's chips I'm making a product for is making 57% margins.
And I'm going to disagree with the whole worker mentality standpoint on this topic. If you don't have a job for workers, you can't keep paying them forever, because that will be the demise of the company and then NO one is getting a paycheck. It's tough people lose jobs, but there are other jobs in these countries.
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Yeah, revenue does not equal profit. It doesn't matter that 80% of a companies revenue is from a certain source if it's not making them money. When you are a manufacturer you HAVE to have good profit margins. Nvidia didn't provide that opportunity for EVGA, while on the other hand Nvidia's last Q statement showed a profit margin of I think 57%. I couldn't be an AIB making 2% profit margin no matter how many products I sell when the company who's chips I'm making a product for is making 57% margins.
And I'm going to disagree with the whole worker mentality standpoint on this topic. If you don't have a job for workers, you can't keep paying them forever, because that will be the demise of the company and then NO one is getting a paycheck. It's tough people lose jobs, but there are other jobs in these countries.
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KDark
I haven't bought anything EVGA since they screwed me over on a warranty for a 300 motherboard I sent in back in 2006 by claiming a small amount of white silicone thermal grease that was around part of the CPU socket from being squeezed out by the heatsink constituted physical damage to the motherboard and voids the warranty. I haven't used a single EVGA item in dozens of PC builds I've done for friends, family and co-workers (along with a few for myself) since then. I warned others off of them and my brother stopped using them a few years later when he eventually had his first warranty issue that they dodged on him as well. (We were both A+ certified techs and not amateur builders since we both had professional jobs building and supporting PCs and servers for different companies.)
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I haven't bought anything EVGA since they screwed me over on a warranty for a 300 motherboard I sent in back in 2006 by claiming a small amount of white silicone thermal grease that was around part of the CPU socket from being squeezed out by the heatsink constituted physical damage to the motherboard and voids the warranty. I haven't used a single EVGA item in dozens of PC builds I've done for friends, family and co-workers (along with a few for myself) since then. I warned others off of them and my brother stopped using them a few years later when he eventually had his first warranty issue that they dodged on him as well. (We were both A+ certified techs and not amateur builders since we both had professional jobs building and supporting PCs and servers for different companies.)
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Paul
EVGA has to partner with AMD and has to do the deal soon. If I was EVGA I'd be suspicious that Nvidia was going to screw them over with the 40 series and Nvidia's argument would be that they would make up their losses with the other product lines. Reading between the lines on Nvidia's last earning call with shareholders it's obvious that the 40 series is going to be a bust. The games market and therefore the users are not going to need the 40 series and the millions of mining CPU's are going to flood the market. I'm sure that EVGA was deeply suspicious that Nvidia was going to try to strongarm them into loss situation and EVGA didn't want to bite. AMD on the other hand will sweeten the pot to get EVGA on board. ARM who?
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EVGA has to partner with AMD and has to do the deal soon. If I was EVGA I'd be suspicious that Nvidia was going to screw them over with the 40 series and Nvidia's argument would be that they would make up their losses with the other product lines. Reading between the lines on Nvidia's last earning call with shareholders it's obvious that the 40 series is going to be a bust. The games market and therefore the users are not going to need the 40 series and the millions of mining CPU's are going to flood the market. I'm sure that EVGA was deeply suspicious that Nvidia was going to try to strongarm them into loss situation and EVGA didn't want to bite. AMD on the other hand will sweeten the pot to get EVGA on board. ARM who?
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John
I realize AMD is no saint in the industry, but by comparison in terms of partnerships, treatment of hardware reviewers, and misleading consurmers, my commitment to Radeon has been based largely on principle. I'd hate to see Vince get blind-sided by this... I'd love to see a KIngpin 7900XT one day, and it puzzles me that their tarnished experience with Nvidia has soured them on staying in the GPU space full stop. I hope they will consider working with AMD or Intel and stay in business... if EVGA approached them, it's likely they will be given a lot of autonomy and latitude, if for no other reason than to stick it to Nvidia.
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I realize AMD is no saint in the industry, but by comparison in terms of partnerships, treatment of hardware reviewers, and misleading consurmers, my commitment to Radeon has been based largely on principle. I'd hate to see Vince get blind-sided by this... I'd love to see a KIngpin 7900XT one day, and it puzzles me that their tarnished experience with Nvidia has soured them on staying in the GPU space full stop. I hope they will consider working with AMD or Intel and stay in business... if EVGA approached them, it's likely they will be given a lot of autonomy and latitude, if for no other reason than to stick it to Nvidia.
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Gimli
I applaud EVGA's CEO for taking that stance against toxic business relationships but, unfortunately, I don't see it having much of an effect on the market for one simple reason; there is virtually no competition in that market. AMDs products are lackluster at best and have nowhere near the same set of features as NVidia products and Intel well, they're at least 5 years at best from having anything competitive, if they even stay in the market that long, which recent news make doubtful.
Hopefully AMD comes out with amazing, competitive NAVI 3 products to give consumers who want to follow EVGA's lead a viable alternative.
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I applaud EVGA's CEO for taking that stance against toxic business relationships but, unfortunately, I don't see it having much of an effect on the market for one simple reason; there is virtually no competition in that market. AMDs products are lackluster at best and have nowhere near the same set of features as NVidia products and Intel well, they're at least 5 years at best from having anything competitive, if they even stay in the market that long, which recent news make doubtful.
Hopefully AMD comes out with amazing, competitive NAVI 3 products to give consumers who want to follow EVGA's lead a viable alternative.
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DataDrifter
Most likely EVGA has seen that Nvidia might not be the best horse to bet on in the long run and instead of staying with a partner that has no interest of taking care of them they cut their losses and evacuate. GPU sales will plummet at least for 1-2 generations, Nvidia has all it's eggs in one basket unlike AMD and Intel and will take the biggest hit and will fight tooth and nail to keep it's margins, this again will only hurt Nvidia's partners when reference cards sell first.
After the GPU market stabilizes EVGA will most likely look into working with AMD/Intel but right now transiting to that makes no sense.
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Most likely EVGA has seen that Nvidia might not be the best horse to bet on in the long run and instead of staying with a partner that has no interest of taking care of them they cut their losses and evacuate. GPU sales will plummet at least for 1-2 generations, Nvidia has all it's eggs in one basket unlike AMD and Intel and will take the biggest hit and will fight tooth and nail to keep it's margins, this again will only hurt Nvidia's partners when reference cards sell first.
After the GPU market stabilizes EVGA will most likely look into working with AMD/Intel but right now transiting to that makes no sense.
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Goran
Long story short - while mining boom was high nvidia do everything to take as much from end price but when everything collapse they spit in a face of own AIBs and again try to take what was left from a market to them in desperate need to polish numbers for quartal report. Big AIBs probably can swallow that and accept a loss but for smaller ones like EVGA it's just too much. And this is probably second time it happened in just a few years.
I'm not surprised they don't want to have anything with GPUs again. But after last two years I can't spent a tear on any GPU manufacturer also.
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Long story short - while mining boom was high nvidia do everything to take as much from end price but when everything collapse they spit in a face of own AIBs and again try to take what was left from a market to them in desperate need to polish numbers for quartal report. Big AIBs probably can swallow that and accept a loss but for smaller ones like EVGA it's just too much. And this is probably second time it happened in just a few years.
I'm not surprised they don't want to have anything with GPUs again. But after last two years I can't spent a tear on any GPU manufacturer also.
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SP
This is not good. Not good for EVGA obviously but also not good for NVIDIA. EVGA makes high quality products and I've used their graphics cards in many of my builds over the past 20 years. The 3090Ti I have now might be the best single PC component I have ever purchased. I'd love to see EVGA partner with AMD or even Intel. This seems like Oriental honor over riding everything else and EVGA's CEO would rather kill the company than do business with NVIDA. It's his company and he has every right to do that but losing a quality manufacturer like EVGA would suck for enthusiasts.
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This is not good. Not good for EVGA obviously but also not good for NVIDIA. EVGA makes high quality products and I've used their graphics cards in many of my builds over the past 20 years. The 3090Ti I have now might be the best single PC component I have ever purchased. I'd love to see EVGA partner with AMD or even Intel. This seems like Oriental honor over riding everything else and EVGA's CEO would rather kill the company than do business with NVIDA. It's his company and he has every right to do that but losing a quality manufacturer like EVGA would suck for enthusiasts.
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Gemel
I'm glad your video is a bit more balanced because the reality is if these companies weren't making money they wouldn't be in the partnership. I full understand being frustrated with lack of communication but how would the company limit information being leaked. I'm just not seeing the logic in this because if they gave the information to EVGA they would have to give it to everyone and from a business standpoint that makes no sense. Perhaps it speaks to a larger issue in the industry
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I'm glad your video is a bit more balanced because the reality is if these companies weren't making money they wouldn't be in the partnership. I full understand being frustrated with lack of communication but how would the company limit information being leaked. I'm just not seeing the logic in this because if they gave the information to EVGA they would have to give it to everyone and from a business standpoint that makes no sense. Perhaps it speaks to a larger issue in the industry
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Rodox2k10
I'm happy they chose to speak out on the matter via GN. Unbiased & Professional news, as always. Love you guys.
As for EVGA.. yea that was a bold decision, make no mistake. And as Steve put it, relevancy does degrade over time, so why not just put Nvidia in the past and move on with AMD? Why does this need to be such a painful and slow transition, as the company bleeds profit, revenue and customers in the process?
EVGA needs to pick their next partner. Fast.
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I'm happy they chose to speak out on the matter via GN. Unbiased & Professional news, as always. Love you guys.
As for EVGA.. yea that was a bold decision, make no mistake. And as Steve put it, relevancy does degrade over time, so why not just put Nvidia in the past and move on with AMD? Why does this need to be such a painful and slow transition, as the company bleeds profit, revenue and customers in the process?
EVGA needs to pick their next partner. Fast.
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CyberMew
never used evga ever since my first 4 purchases (iirc it was 4xx and 5xx series) were dead within 1-2 years (lifetime doesnt mean anything to me if the card keeps failing, and after that i learn to read proper technical comparison reviews instead of picking a popular brand). but props to them for doing things right by customer. regardless, hope they can survive this and do better with the direction they are taking, and do right by their staff.
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never used evga ever since my first 4 purchases (iirc it was 4xx and 5xx series) were dead within 1-2 years (lifetime doesnt mean anything to me if the card keeps failing, and after that i learn to read proper technical comparison reviews instead of picking a popular brand). but props to them for doing things right by customer. regardless, hope they can survive this and do better with the direction they are taking, and do right by their staff.
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