I highly doubt that cause most people would overlook the reference coolers to begin with and go straight to an aftermarket model so i call BS on this being the proper reason behind the Founders edition.
Nvidia screwed up on the fan profile and didn't do a good job of making a premium cooler, they concentrated on design over function. That doesn't disprove anything nvidia said about the the FE edition.
You could flip the argument to: how would it look for an AIB to sell something cheaper than the founders edition when the founders edition is already pretty bad in the cooling and power department? would look inferior in some peoples eyes even if it is not.
It would look like a bargain and the AIBs will get lots of sales and be very happy.
Just because system builders want a card doesn't make the founders edition price more sensible. If demand is high price go down not UP. Well atleast that is how the tech industry works for the most part these days.
I ever said that the FE is sensible or that the System builder desires are justification. The issue is if Nvidia sell cheap reference cards for the lifetime of Pascal then the AIB partners are always in competition with a cheap reference card. Normally the reference cards disappear after a few months. To please the systems builders would mean to annoy the AIB partners further. TO keep both parties happy nvidia raised the price of the reference card, with the added bonus they would see increased profits. This has no advantage to consumers of course, so nvidia aimed to make the cooler a premium product to justify the cost. They screwed up badly.
How is a more expensive reference model, which btw offers only the most barebone of features in terms of cooling and power delivery, equal to more flexibility when they(AIB) are pretty much forced to release at least some of their models at MSRP since nvidia already claimed that would happen. If anything that gives them less flexibility. Since nVidia has established the FE as a sort of HALO product its pretty clear that they want to sell more of them, which in term will take some sales away from board partners because marketing.
Because quite simply an AIB partner can sell cheaper more basic cards at lower costs, or make their own premium products at higher costs. the nvidia FE cards ae no longer in such a competitive price point. AIB's can even under cut the FE cards, selling better cooling options for less money than the FE.
The first part i agree with you on, the cooler should have been better. What i also feel is missing is a proper power supply with more than 5 phases and more than 1x 8 pin. But i dont think engineering screwed up. I dont think these things go unnoticed unless your name is AMD(sorry could not help myself here its a joke btw). This has been done deliberately to gain as high a profit margin as possible. One thing i think we can all agree on is that nVidia is good at running their company.
Undoubtedly the single 8pin saves money and is also used to demonstrate the low power draw of the GPU, but that really isn't an issue for the commercial sale of the 1080. Very few people overclock, 1x8pin is perfectly sufficient for the vast majority of users.
The bolded part is wrong, the card will throttle even in on an open test bench if you dont mess with the fan speed and/or temp target and power target.
Not seen that forma reliable source. But again it comes back to the point that NVidia lowered the fan speeds too make the card quieter than the 980Ti, which would make sense given the 50W less power draw. The problem is the reduced power comes from a smaller chip which is actually harder to cool.
Single 8-pin.
