EVGA’s decision to stop making Nvidia graphics cards in 2022 came as a major surprise, especially since the company had spent years building a strong reputation among PC gamers. Now, a former EVGA product manager has shared more details about the difficulties the company was already facing years before it eventually left the GPU market.

Brendon Ray Hedrick, who worked at EVGA between 2016 and 2019, recently discussed his time at the company and how its relationship with Nvidia changed during those years. According to Hedrick, one of the biggest problems was simply making enough money from graphics cards, with some models apparently being sold at a loss.

A little more insight into why EVGA left the GPU market

EVGA reportedly needed to offer at least one graphics card at Nvidia’s advertised starting price. Hedrick says failing to do so could potentially affect how many GPUs Nvidia allocated to the company, making it important for EVGA to keep a cheaper model available even when selling it wasn’t profitable.

The situation meant EVGA had to rely more heavily on its expensive custom graphics cards. These models could feature better cooling systems, upgraded circuit boards, stronger power delivery, and other improvements developed by EVGA itself. Unlike the cheaper cards, these premium models gave the company some room to actually make money.

However, this created another problem. Customers would see Nvidia’s advertised starting price and then compare it with significantly more expensive EVGA models. While those cards included better hardware, the difference in gaming performance wasn’t always large enough to make the higher price easy to justify.

Hedrick says improvements to Nvidia’s own designs made this situation increasingly difficult. Technologies such as GPU Boost automatically adjusted clock speeds depending on temperature and power limits, while Nvidia’s reference designs continued improving. As a result, spending significantly more on custom cooling and circuitry didn’t necessarily provide the same real-world performance advantages that enthusiasts had seen from heavily customized cards in earlier generations.

Another source of tension was Nvidia becoming a more direct competitor to its own partners. Hedrick recalls concerns within EVGA when Nvidia introduced its Pascal Founders Edition cards in 2016. EVGA depended on Nvidia to supply the GPUs it needed, while simultaneously competing against Nvidia’s own finished graphics cards for the same customers.

The situation reportedly became even more difficult around the RTX 20-series generation. By that point, Hedrick felt EVGA’s graphics card business was becoming increasingly difficult to sustain, alongside other changes inside the company. He eventually left EVGA in December 2019.

EVGA wouldn’t leave the graphics card business until around three years later. The company chose to end its partnership with Nvidia rather than begin producing AMD or Intel graphics cards, bringing an end to one of the most recognizable names in the enthusiast GPU market.

About the Author

Abdul Haddi

Abdul is a tech writer and Editor for PC Guide, specializing in all things tech, gaming, and hardware.