It would appear that Nvidia is losing its partners left, right and center these days, as rumors have it that Nvidia had recently cut loose five more.

According to the Inquirer, industry sources say that both Foxconn and Club 3D are among the casualties, along with three yet unnamed partners. Already Gainward and XFX have left Nvidia, with EVGA stating it would no longer exclusively sell just Nvidia products. Apparently it is somehow not financially viable for Nvidia to continue to have 24 partners anymore while it faces rough times. As the logic behind that decision seems a bit odd, the truth may actually be that the partners just jumped ship on their own accord.

According to a recent article at Tom’s Hardware that reviewed which graphics cards were best for the money, Nvidia was still able to compete with AMD in many of the price ranges. Of course, strong competition from AMD had forced Nvidia to repeatedly slash its prices to remain competitive and Nvidia still continues to lack offerings that can compete with AMD in the high-end market. Strong competition is not the only problem that Nvidia is facing, as a haunting defective chip issue that had affected virtually the entire Nvidia product lineup is taking its toll. Competition is always welcomed, so it is sad to see that Nvidia may be beginning to fall behind.

With tight profit margins, sluggish sales and a possibly unstable future ahead for Nvidia, it seems clear why add-in board partners have been switching sides. According to the Inquirer, so far Nvidia had been trying to keep the news of its partner reductions under-wraps, although partings so far have been said to have been amicable. Keeping things under-wraps for Nvidia seems to be a common strategy these days. For example, when the defective chip fiasco first arose Nvidia played it off as if it were a contained problem. The reality would seem as if the defective chip issue had affected Nvidia’s entire product range, an issue that seems to have been caused by poor engineering and a lack of proper testing on Nvidia’s behalf.