If you're in the market for a new graphics card, you probably know that for the time being,
you have only two options when it comes to a GPU,
AMD or NVIDIA. But once you've made your decision
and you go to buy the actual graphics card, you're inundated with a ton of options
from different companies like ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and a bunch of others.
Why are there so many and why don't AMD and NVIDIA
just make the entire card themselves?
And yes, obviously both companies make their own reference design cards you can buy,
but cards from add-in board or AIB partners
remain the most popular choice. Let's start by looking at this
from the perspective of the chip maker. For example, CPUs for a desktop PC
are sold separately from other boards. Although it wouldn't exactly be difficult for Intel or AMD
to make their own PCB and slap a CPU on it,
the issue is that manufacturing a complicated processor,
whether that's a CPU or a GPU is a lot more involved
than putting together a PCB with some traces on it. But if manufacturing the board is simple,
how does that then tip the scales in favor of outsourcing that work to an AIB partner?
Unsurprisingly, cost is a big consideration.
Because the GPU itself is the big determining factor
of performance for a home gamer and high performance models are difficult to design
and produce, margins on GPUs are quite high.
By contrast, a PCB is a rather low-cost, low-margin product.
It's not hard to turn out lots and lots of them, but the amount of profit a company makes per board
just on the board itself is quite low. But how about from the AIB partner's point of view?
The calculus is similar, but just works the other way around. These companies are rarely just making graphics cards
and are already in the business of making PCBs for lots of other components.
Just think about how many AIB partners you know also make motherboards,
which of course are just PCBs with capacitors and slots soldered on,
as well as power supplies, mice, cases, et cetera, things that also need PCBs, albeit smaller ones.
So doing this makes economic sense for both parties. NVIDIA and AMD get to pour money and resources
into innovating where it really counts in the GPU itself.
Meanwhile, AIB partners whose expertise is on the commodity,
PCB side of things, can buy the GPUs from Team Green
and Team Red, solder them onto a board and resell them to consumers for a healthy profit.
And of course, there's also money to be made by competing in the AIB space itself.
Partner companies can set themselves apart with out of the box over clocks,
variety of cooling solutions, advanced power delivery built into the board
to better serve enthusiasts and tweakers, and other features that result in a broad product stack
within the same GPU family. So if you just need a certain GPU model
that simply functions, you can pay something near the bottom of the pricing stack.
But the companies can also make money from selling cards with more advanced features stuck on the PCB
for a higher price. Not convinced by the theory? Here's a cautionary tale of what can happen
if you try to do everything yourself. If you are a little older,
you might remember when a company called 3DFX was a big player on the GPU scene.
However, the company went on a business in the early 2000s and a big part of why was that they insisted
on making their own cards after acquiring a PCB manufacturer
and attempting to control the entire process top to bottom,
vertically integrating. However, this decision led to cost and quality problems
that could have been avoided if 3DFX had used multiple AIBs
and the company soon collapsed under the weight of fierce competition from NVIDIA and ATI.
So remember, there's absolutely no shame in not doing everything yourself.
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