The report comes from GamersNexus, a reliable source (and friend of the PCWorld team) in a 30-minute report. The video features live interviews with EVGA leaders and features founder and CEO Andrew Han and chief branding officer Joe Darwin. PCWorld finds no reason to doubt the accuracy of the information presented. GamersNexus founder Steve Burke cites EVGA sources as to why the company made this decision. According to EVGA, long-standing dissatisfaction between the company and its most critical supplier led to a permanent shutdown. Apparently, this was known by Nvidia’s leadership as early as April. EVGA complains that it was consistently given product information too late in the development cycle, even failing to disclose the price of the chips until the MSRP of the Nvidia-branded graphics cards was announced to the public. EVGA also claims that Nvidia restricts its partners from selling cards to retailers below price floors for some models and above price ceilings for others. This is a common practice in the electronics industry to maintain the perception of market value, but EVGA says the policy has prevented the company from creating unique, high-quality designs at more profitable price points. EVGA representatives also complained that Nvidia’s co-branded Founders Edition cards are priced lower than cards from third-party vendors, directly competing with companies like EVGA, Asus, Gigabyte and Zotac with an unfair advantage. EVGA claims that the current downturn in the GPU market is causing them to lose “hundreds of dollars per video card” on high-end designs. Many of Nvidia’s GPU manufacturing partners are known to have similar complaints, if not as passionately. According to GamersNexus, EVGA made the decision to exit the graphics card market entirely, not just part ways with Nvidia as a business partner. The company has categorically stated that it has no interest in making new graphics cards based on chip designs from AMD or new rival Intel. Nvidia graphics cards account for a whopping 78 percent of EVGA’s current business, and GamersNexus reports the company has no plans to expand into new product lines. That means an inevitable downsizing and downsizing of the California-based company, which currently employs about 280 people worldwide. Darwin claims no layoffs are planned at this time, and employees will be transferred to other departments, though company leaders expect a “furthering” of workers as this news comes out. At the time of writing, EVGA’s non-graphics products include other desktop components such as power supplies (20 percent of its remaining sales) and motherboards, cooling equipment and some cases, as well as gaming mice, keyboards and video capture cards . EVGA has said it intends to keep the company together and is not seeking a merger or acquisition. Existing owners of EVGA graphics cards will reportedly continue to receive customer service, and the company has GPUs and parts in stock for RMA and warranty repair purposes. While there are some engineering samples of EVGA-branded RTX 4000 cards, retail products will not be produced or sold, and the existing supply of EVGA RTX 3000 cards is expected to sell out before the end of 2022.
