I'm curious... I know that EVGA is HQ'd in California and the products are designed in the USA...But are the components build in the US as well or shipped overseas to Taiwan? I've always been under the impression that, just like Apple where the products are designed in San Francisco but then manufactured in Korea and China- and just like much of everything else these days...I would have thought that EVGA follows suit.
Otherwise, things would not be nearly as expensive up here in Canada as they are, because of the NAFTA. But with overseas manufacturing, the NAFTA doesn't necessarily apply....and the FTW2 I just bought about a month back wouldn't have cost me nearly as much if it were simply going across the border. When all was said and done, I spent 1150.00 CDN on the FTW2. I see now it is at NCIX for 821.98+13% tax which comes to 929.00. That's 221 dollars less than what I actually paid for it. That is almost exactly the difference in price between the FTW2 and the new Ti FTW3, so at that cost...the better buy is the new Ti FTW3. But, if it were simply going across the border, even with the CDN Dollar the way it is the cost would have been substantially less because we wouldn't have to pay for the overseas duty incurred by the US when they imported the final product back from Asia. Yet, that is why things are so expensive to order from the US to Canada, because we pay tax and duty, plus currency conversion/exchange on whatever the original US price was after they added their cost of the import tax.
Don't get me wrong, I am exceedingly pleased my FTW2....The best card I've ever owned-and I just sold two 980 FTWs to pay for it, which were amazing cards in their own right. Had I known the FTW2 was going to be the cost that it is here in Canada, I would have held out for it to arrive. And had I know the cost difference between that and the Ti, I wuld have bought the Ti instead. But I was in a tight spot back in march because I didn't want to be caught without a card...so I made the purchase for the FTW2 by ordering from EVGA. I just wish it could have been less expensive.
In any case can anyone clarify where the manufacturing is done, for the sake of my curiosity?
And another question I have that is more to the point of this thread....If the .zip BIOS files are designed for certain cards like the FTW2 or SC2, why wouldn't they work? "The updates might not work on a small percentage of cards..." why not? That doesn't make sense to me. They are apparently written to work with this model or that model, so when then say "they might not work...." What then would be the point of doing all this? It would be better to just leave the cards as they are. And if there is any risk of malfunction, or performance loss or anything else negative....Why do this at all?
I've downloaded the updates for my FTW2...But I am hesitant to go ahead with them because I don't want to damage the card in any way. To be honest, I've never done anything like this; I don't even do any overclocking. Ever. Nor would I be happy if I saw a loss in performance, because the updates would have been pointless if that were to happen.
Thoughts?