I love this alt-history, because the contemporary view at the time was that the 10-series MSRP was "fake", that it was impossible to find cards under the $700 MSRP, and that the whole thing was a scheme from NVIDIA to market a lower number than you could pay in practice and upcharge for the blower cooler.
Partner cards were stacking up in the $725-800 range for 6 months after launch, so they came in above the MSRP, which people justified because they were "premium cards". Very few vendors offered any products at the actual MSRP, EVGA had one that was "only" $20 above MSRP and Zotac had something similar and those two low-cost models were impossible to find for a long time.
Now it has gone from "NVIDIA wants to upcharge you for a blower cooler" and it's a dastardly plan from NVIDIA to undercut partners.
everyone is real riled up by that EVGA ceo's tantrum but even GN told you to take it with a grain of salt, and other board partners have confirmed that in the last 2 years they've been running 10x their usual profits due to mining. The EVGA ceo spinning it like partners been losing hundreds of dollars per card for years now is false and untrue. Being a partner is generally around 10% margin and even a smaller partner like EVGA should be able to get around 5%. Losing hundreds of dollars per card is something that happened in like, the last month, partners made very healthy margins selling into the mining boom, and the CEO is being disingenuous by pretending that they've lost a bunch of money on it/are running super low margins. Mining was great for margins.
Partner cards were stacking up in the $725-800 range for 6 months after launch, so they came in above the MSRP, which people justified because they were "premium cards". Very few vendors offered any products at the actual MSRP, EVGA had one that was "only" $20 above MSRP and Zotac had something similar and those two low-cost models were impossible to find for a long time.
Now it has gone from "NVIDIA wants to upcharge you for a blower cooler" and it's a dastardly plan from NVIDIA to undercut partners.
everyone is real riled up by that EVGA ceo's tantrum but even GN told you to take it with a grain of salt, and other board partners have confirmed that in the last 2 years they've been running 10x their usual profits due to mining. The EVGA ceo spinning it like partners been losing hundreds of dollars per card for years now is false and untrue. Being a partner is generally around 10% margin and even a smaller partner like EVGA should be able to get around 5%. Losing hundreds of dollars per card is something that happened in like, the last month, partners made very healthy margins selling into the mining boom, and the CEO is being disingenuous by pretending that they've lost a bunch of money on it/are running super low margins. Mining was great for margins.
https://www.igorslab.de/en/evga-pulls-the-plug-with-loud-ban...