EVGA, popular graphics card maker, splits with Nvidia in messy split

And now for something no one saw coming: EVGA, one of the most prominent third-party PC graphics card providers and a favorite brand among PC gamers for quality parts and reliable warranties backed by solid customer service, is ending its long-standing relationship with NVIDIA. In addition, the company reportedly said it would not seek partnerships with competing silicon giants like AMD or Intel either. It seems like EVGA is only done with GPUs.

kotaku has reached out to EVGA for comment.

News of EVGA’s seemingly sudden decision to stop producing GPUs spread across popular YouTubers PlayerNexus and Jayztwocents. Personalities from both channels say they have been invited to a private meeting with EVGA employees, including CEO Andrew Han. At the meeting, EVGA reportedly laid out its desire and intention to break away from Nvidia, citing several frustrations with the partnership.

These sore points mainly concern what Han describes as Nvidia’s reluctance to share essential information about its products with partners until the same information is released to the public, often on the stage of a press conference; that it believes Nvidia is undercutting partners like EVGA by selling its own “Founders’ Edition” cards at a lower price; and a feeling among partners that Nvidia just doesn’t value their patronage.

PlayerNexus has a very thorough breakdown of the meeting and this news his video.

EVGA’s top management made their decision to part ways with Nvidia back in April, but kept the decision strictly confidential. Although EVGA, a company so often known and respected for great GPUs and reliable customer service, is exiting the GPU market, the company reportedly intends to stay in business. However, it will not be extended to new product categories, PlayerNexus reports. And while the company makes and sells other PC components like motherboards, cases and power supplies, losing the GPU side of its business is likely to pose challenges for its 280 employees worldwide.

PlayerNexus‘ Steve Burke reports that EVGA tries to assign employees to different projects to keep everyone busy. The company laid off 20 percent of its Taiwanese employees earlier this year, and now several people whose jobs revolved solely around manufacturing and developing GPUs have no obvious job to do.

While EVGA will continue to sell RTX 30 series cards, it expects to run out of inventory by the end of the year and will be holding additional inventory to meet warranties and repairs. EVGA’s promise to honor warranties for existing customers of these cards.

Today is a bittersweet day for PC gamers as EVGA’s presence in the GPU arena will be sorely missed. On the other hand, the crypto mining craze that has plagued the industry by buying up countless cards for mining rigs seems to be coming to an end. The prominent crypto Ethereum has finally, finally moved away from it the GPU-hungry “proof-of-work” algorithms that have contributed to the virtual decimation of the available GPU inventory over the past two years. As you’ve probably noticed, GPUs are back for sale and pricedg has finally started falling back to earth. With the Ethereum switch, this trend will hopefully accelerate.