When it came out that NVIDIA would be selling own-brand video-cards, our thoughts quickly turned to how partners would react to the news. Even though the company only plans to sell the boards in Best Buy stores in the US, AIB partners have traditionally been quite sensitive about competing with chip-suppliers.
However, EVGA has responded to the reports by taking a seemingly level-headed approach. Speaking to CNET, company spokesman Joe Darwin said that "it's something [NVIDIA] has always talked about, and now it's finally here".
He added that EVGA's level of service and support would differentiate its products from anything that NVIDIA could offer, citing 24-7 in-house - as opposed to outsourced - tech-support and RMA turnaround averaging two or three days. In essence, he passed the news off as a non-issue.
Though Darwin refused to comment on the impact that the move would have on either company's business strategies moving forward, he commented that "we're going to keep building NVIDIA cards, and we're going to keep offering the best service".
It was obvious that the company would refrain from publicly slating its supplier, so we may never know if the top-brass at EVGA actually harbours any resentment. However, since EVGA exclusively builds NVIDIA graphics-cards, it doesn't exactly have any alternatives at this point.
At the same time, competition may not bother the AIB partner, as it is becoming part of an increasingly small group of companies making NVIDIA cards. Not only did BFG Technologies exit the market earlier this year, but rumours this week are suggesting that XFX is being cut out of the GeForce-ecosystem all together.
Having been denied access to the Fermi-based GPUs - presumably in response to its decision to start selling AMD cards - HardOCP is reporting that XFX has been removed from the list of approved NVIDIA partners, effectively making it an AMD-exclusive manufacturer.
