Efforts by Nvidia to push sales of its own-brand Founders Edition graphics cards are likely to affect the profitability of graphics card suppliers in Taiwan and China in 2017 and beyond, according to industry sources.
Increasing sales and profits earned by Nvidia from PC-use graphics cards has prompted the company to actively promote sales of the Founders Edition graphics cards, said the sources.
While supplying GPUs to graphics card makers, including Taiwan-based Asustek Computer, Gigabyte Technology, Micro-Star International (MSI), Palit Microsystems, Hong Kong-based Zotac and China-based Colorful, Nvidia is also competing with these clients in the PC-use graphics card market, noted the sources.
Excluding Nvidia, the sum of profits earned by the world's top-six graphics card suppliers totaled about NT$5 billion (US$159.49 million) in 2016, encouraging Nvidia to step into the segment to slice part of the growing earnings, said the sources.
 
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20170124PD209.html 

Increasing Sales Of Nvidia Graphics Cards To Affect Profitability Of Other Suppliers

Long story short, graphics card companies are getting heat from Nvidia’s controversial Founders Edition, which is reportedly being pushed aggressively. It remains to be seen just how much of an effect these cards will have on the financials of Asus, Gigabyte, and other popular manufacturers, but what seems to be certain is that Nvidia sees no issue in competing with their own clients. Of course, this is not the first time Nvidia has attempted to look past its partners. Thanks to cageymaru for the link.
 
http://www.hardocp.com/news/2017/01/25/increasing_sales_nvidia_graphics_cards_to_affect_profitability_other_suppliers 

Nvidia planning to take a bite from the market share of its own AIBs in 2017, Founders Edition graphics cards will continue to be made
Will Be Competing With Add-In-Board Partners
 
http://wccftech.com/nvidi...w-competing-aibs-2017/
 
 

Nvidia: Competing With GPU Video Card Partners Will Help Improve Designs

Summary

-Increasing sales and profit from in-house Founders Edition computer graphics cards is inspiring Nvidia to market them more actively.
 
-Founders Edition GPU cards are the higher-end products for performance-centric PC gamers.
 
-The current PC Gaming Hardware market is favorable to this move of Nvidia. Forty-three percent of PC gaming hardware industry’s revenue is from high-end products.
 
-Nvidia competing with its add-in board GPU partners will inspire those companies to keep improving their own designs.
 
 
 
http://seekingalpha.com/a...l-help-improve-designs
 
 
yep... sounds like stick it to AIB's

More surprised EVGA isn't upset over this, or if they are they're keeping it tightly under wraps.
 
ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI already sell both Red & Green brand GPUs, which means this primarily hurts EVGA the most more than any of the other brands. If EVGA began selling both brands NVIDIA would have practically no green-only suppliers left. PNY and Zotac are not huge players.

Wow didn't know the founder editions were that popular.