OK this is a copy paste from an older thread of mine.
Short simple explanation :
They are the same thing in many ways, but are made by different parties with the main design coming from Nvidia.
Really long explanation :
How the GPU industry works :
1. The GPU or chip :
This is the internal brain of the graphics card that is VERY similar in many ways to a CPU. most notably the differences that most people can understand is core count. Think of the GPU as many tiny single cores that work separately on different parts of the image that you see on your monitor.
Here is a video that outlines the making of a silicon wafer (multiple chips) at Globalfoundries, they make all AMD chips.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm67wbB5GmI
This process takes up to a month for CPUs, newer tech has dropped that time, but not by much.
2. The board partners or manufacturers :
These include companies like Asus, MSI, XFX, Sapphire and many more.
These companies basically make a deal with AMD / Nvidia for the actual GPU chip, with this deal they receive a certain amount of chips including the reference design (on paper blueprints mostly) that AMD / Nvidia has built for this chip.
The reference design look like this for example :
http://wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/AMD-Radeon-R9-290X-Hawaii-GPU.jpg
This reference design is then effectively studied and reverse engineered by the board partners.
They then use their own designed or purchased components like PCB(green board part), VRMs (voltage regulators), coolers and other circuits to complete a design of the card.
The board is then built and the chip from AMD / Nvidia is added to the finished card.
Board partners even modify the "software" or firmware of the cards from AMD initial design to get different clock speeds.
Non-reference example :
http://www.techpowerup.com/img/12-03-15/167a.jpg
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