I read in here a lot of people having a
HORRIBLE confusion about AMD's "reference design board" and nVidia's "FE" cards: nVidia FE cards
ARE NOT reference boards and they
ARE NOT* made by any of the board partners, nor can be made by any of them. AMD reference cards are exactly that: the minimum you can expect from the design and they allow partners to make them like for like (as base reference designs should).
This is a HUGE difference in how nVidia positions their FE cards vs AMD reference boards in the eyes of the partners. This is also more evidence of nVidia just not giving two rats about their partners as they're directly competing with them using specialty hardware their partners have no access to. You have to ask yourselves that, at some point, being a partner of nVidia is basically a losing game in the long run and I'm baffled EVGA took this long to bail out on them. Keep in mind XFX did so a long time ago.
References:
Recently I had already posted some information about the new graphics card generation from NVIDIA and also processed it in the video, but I was still a little bit reserved concerning the currently…
www.igorslab.de
https://www.pcgamesn.com/how-nvidia-amd-graphics-card-are-made
We often hear about the battles between ATI and NVIDIA but, in his first press interview for four years, Sapphire's CEO K D Au tells an insider's story
www.hexus.net
EDIT: The WAN show, via Linus, actually has a great way of explaining all this kerfuffle. I suggest investing your time in the first 3rd of the video where they talk in great length about it:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QADCRdzqOH0
Regards.