GeForce Partner Program Impacts Consumer Choice

heatlesssun said:
Clearly it's anti-competitive because it's restricting the ability for AMD to market its products for their intended purpose which is a speech issue.
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The thing is we know nothing more and whom are in this program. If its Evga, who cares, they are exclusive anyways. Just have to see what happens with Asus, MSI, Gigabyte right? Who else uses different IHV's for graphics products and have the same lines for their gaming products?

Just to keep this on point
NVIDIA will tell you that it is 100% up to its partner company to be part of GPP, and from the documents I have read, if it chooses not to be part of GPP, it will lose the benefits of GPP which include: high-effort engineering engagements -- early tech engagement -- launch partner status -- game bundling -- sales rebate programs -- social media and PR support -- marketing reports -- Marketing Development Funds (MDF). MDF is likely the standout in that list of lost benefits if the company is not a GPP partner.
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This is the part that doesn't make it anti competitive. Because all these benefits are opt in benefits right now anyways ;)

Right now rebates are done a per AIB basis, same with bundles that is nV based solely. AIB's can do their own bundles if they want to. Social media and PR, hey nV has no obligation to help others with their company.
 
Derangel said:
How come EVERY OEM and AIB Kyle talked to hates this program? If its so great and not at all a problem why would the people that would supposedly benefit from it hate it?
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Have you ever known anyone that had it too good for too long not "hate" it when there's any change to the gravy train and it comes to an end? A live-in girlfriend I once had "hated" when I told her to start chipping in for utilities after she'd been living at my place free for 6+ months.

Guess who is banking all that extra profit margin,hand over fist, in this current inflated GPU market? Nvidia? Nope. AIB partners. They've been riding the strength and prominence of Nvidia GPU's to glory for years, are making more money than god, and the only question is what took Nvidia so long to start asking for something in return.
 
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DPI said:
Have you ever known anyone that had it too good for too long not "hate" it when there's any change to the gravy train and it comes to an end? A live-in girlfriend I once had "hated" when I told her to start chipping in for utilities after she'd been living at my place free for 6+ months.

Guess who is making ALL THE EXTRA MARGIN, hand over fist, in this current inflated GPU market? Nvidia? Nope. AIB partners. They've been riding the strengths of Nvidia's GPU's for years, are making more money and more margin than ever, so the only question is what took Nvidia so long to start asking for something in return.
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Okay. That is plausible answer to one question. How about the rest?
 
Derangel said:
How come Nvidia is being so secretive about their "transparent program"?
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Cause it doesn't pertain to the general consumer.

How come everyone Kyle talked to was afraid of losing their jobs by talking about this "transparent program"?
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NDA usually these things come with those attached

How come Nvidia tried to threaten Kyle into not publishing this?
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Did Kyle say nV warned him, no he stated nV had no comment he stated he was warned though it might be from AIB's we don't know

How come Kyle felt that he needed to mentioned being ready to deal with any legal trouble Nvidia might send his way by publishing this article?
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Legal trouble, he didn't say that he stated he might not get review samples.

How come Nvidia refuses to respond to Kyle's concerns?
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No refusal yet, just no comment so far

How come Kyle, someone who has been involved on the press side of this for nearly two decades now, thinks this is a major concern that could have very negative effects for consumers?
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It is concerning what he wrote but without the full particulars we shouldn't put our hand in a shark's mouth ;)
 
Holy Shit Kyle you just love ruffling feathers eh? Wow is all I can say. This totally reminds me of what Intel did to AMD back in the day. Good on you to have the balls to even post this article. Good move to make sure your lawyers were ok with it.

To me as it stands right now, I think we need more info....But something shady is going on no question about it.

TBH I am shocked i haven't seen more posts of people calling Kyle an AMD-Shill.....Remember people Kyle was the first to say AMD and Intel were teaming up....people called it bullshit, I remember no one believed Kyle....And guess what he was proven correct.

In Kyle we trust!
 
Derangel said:
How are they going to talk about how AMD cards perform in games without it being gaming focused? They can't create a new sub-brand and then fill it with information on AMD gaming performance without it being a gaming focused brand. It would have to a brand the focuses on other things and mentions gaming as an afterthought.

And I'll present you with the same questions I posted earlier:

How come EVERY OEM and AIB Kyle talked to hates this program? If its so great and not at all a problem why would the people that would supposedly benefit from it hate it?

How come Nvidia is being so secretive about their "transparent program"?

How come everyone Kyle talked to was afraid of losing their jobs by talking about this "transparent program"?

How come Nvidia tried to threaten Kyle into not publishing this?

How come Kyle felt that he needed to mentioned being ready to deal with any legal trouble Nvidia might send his way by publishing this article?

How come Nvidia refuses to respond to Kyle's concerns?

How come Kyle, someone who has been involved on the press side of this for nearly two decades now, thinks this is a major concern that could have very negative effects for consumers?

Care to provide answers?
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Now first of all let me say before I start "answering" with with is obviously assuming (which is wrong on so many levels) that I like nVidia and their GPU's, but I will always get what is best for my wallet/performance I need. The being said....

1. We actually do not know to whom Kyle has spoken and they probably hate it because they will have to create another brand, which is time, money and loads of writing. Furthermore they will have to either lose their already proven "gaming" branding to one vendor or will have to create an entirely new one for the vendor which can cause low sales at first.

2. nVidia is being secretive as we do not have the full info, as we are not AIB/OEM partners or the program is not finalized?

3. Everyone that Kyle talked to is afraid of losing their job, because this is a program in development and most probably there is some kind of an NDA regarding this. Furthermore "leaking" corporate information is an offense worth being fired for.

4. Kyle said that "It was expressed to me that publishing this article "could damage the relationship" between HardOCP and NVIDIA." This does not make it a threat and you and me don't know if nVidia "expressed" to him that statement. Also I don't think it's a big threat to not sample a GPU to a Hardware review site, as most of them are cherry picked anyway.

5. Kyle is just being on the safe side with that one after the amount of attention the previous editorial got. You have to be a complete fool not to do it.

6. Nvidia has not responded due to ... some stupid reason, but as I have mentioned earlier, this could not be the completed variant of this program anyway.

7. Kyle has consumers in his mind and by being in this "world" of ours for so many years, he have seen things being done that are absolutely disgusting (Intel I am looking at you).

However, I can not seem to grasp how this is a consumer problem. First of all, most of the consumers (and I am being absolutely honest here) are complete and utter idiots, that don't know what the fuck is a GPU.

The only issue I can see here, is if nVidia really pushes this to the extreme and basically fuck up deliveries to non-GPP participants. That being said however, means that they will lose money from not delivering/selling their gpu's, which I can not see happening.
 
razor1 said:
Cause it doesn't pertain to the general consumer.



NDA usually these things come with those attached



Did Kyle say nV warned him, no he stated nV had no comment he stated he was warned though it might be from AIB's we don't know



Legal trouble, he didn't say that he stated he might not get review samples.



No refusal yet, just no comment so far



It is concerning what he wrote but without the full particulars we shouldn't put our hand in a shark's mouth ;)
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Talking about people who think the same way for some stuff...
 
razor1 said:
Cause it doesn't pertain to the general consumer.



NDA usually these things come with those attached



Did Kyle say nV warned him, no he stated nV had no comment he stated he was warned though it might be from AIB's we don't know



Legal trouble, he didn't say that he stated he might not get review samples.



No refusal yet, just no comment so far



It is concerning what he wrote but without the full particulars we shouldn't put our hand in a shark's mouth ;)
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If it doesn't pertain to consumers then why is Nvidia making a big deal about transparency? They're already transparent with their partners. Talking about transparency is for the benefit of the consumer.

Strict NDAs when Nvidia is making a huge deal about transparency? I can understand some aspects being under NDA, but everything?

"It was expressed to me that publishing this article "could damage the relationship" between HardOCP and NVIDIA." Are you seriously going to tell me that isn't Nvidia threatening Kyle?

He directly mentioned that his lawyers were prepared. That isn't something you bring up when talking to a company unless you are actually worried about facing legal retaliation.

He emailed them TEN business days ago. Not giving any kind of reply in that time is a refusal to reply. If they were planning to say something they would have in that time.

We should be making a ruckus about it now. If enough people make a big enough deal about it it will force Nvidia to respond and try to ease people's fears.
 
Dan_D said:
My understanding is that if MSI sells video cards with NVIDIA GPU's and is part of the GPP, it can't sell AMD GPU's in any shape or form. Whether or not this would include APU's in notebooks, I couldn't say. I don't know if sub-branding like Republic of Gamers or Aorus counts either. It may be like GMC and Chevrolet being different, but with the same parent company. I don't know. It's an interesting question for sure.
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Reading the article,it seems to me that ASUS or MSI or whomever, could sell AMD products equally, as long as it had it's own branding.
ROG might be exclusive to nvidia,while Bubba Gump or something else would be exclusive to AMD.
 
EuphoricRage470 said:
No you weren't because they're perpetually out of stock.
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They are not. I almost jumped on one a couple weeks back and probably would have if I didn't need a bed. It was in stock for nearly an entire week at that point. Just today Nvidia sent an email stating they had stock of them to buy. So, yes, he could have been about to buy one.
 
I remember Nvidia going all ape crap about AIB's doing custom boards and restricting them from having overclocks above certain levels and all of getting real mad. I assume this is just the next step down that nasty dirty road. I used Nvidia from Geforce to the 570. A lot of boards and years. But I noticed that older reporting about restricting AIB's making competing products with better cooling etc. I still havn't forgiven Nvidia for that and thus have not bought an Nvidia product since the 570. This article further cements my thinking. I hope all the lawsuits that come from this upon their heads produces a shakeup that corrects the helm of Nvidia to the point that I would consider their products again.

Time will tell. I got your back Kyle as do we all.
 
Derangel said:
If it doesn't pertain to consumers then why is Nvidia making a big deal about transparency? They're already transparent with their partners. Talking about transparency is for the benefit of the consumer.

Strict NDAs when Nvidia is making a huge deal about transparency? I can understand some aspects being under NDA, but everything?
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The particulars of a business deal is never transparent to the consumer, the transparency that the GPP provides is not the business dealings........
"It was expressed to me that publishing this article "could damage the relationship" between HardOCP and NVIDIA." Are you seriously going to tell me that isn't Nvidia threatening Kyle?

He directly mentioned that his lawyers were prepared. That isn't something you bring up when talking to a company unless you are actually worried about facing legal retaliation.

He emailed them TEN business days ago. Not giving any kind of reply in that time is a refusal to reply. If they were planning to say something they would have in that time.

We should be making a ruckus about it now. If enough people make a big enough deal about it it will force Nvidia to respond and try to ease people's fears.
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If nV threatened Kyle, you don't think he wouldn't have stated that? At this point you need to ask him if he was threatened by nV, I doubt he was, because if he was, he would have stated it was nV, from what it read like it sounded like an AIB guy that he talked to stated that and that AIB guy wanted to be anonymous so he kept his name out of it.
 
Derangel said:
How are they going to talk about how AMD cards perform in games without it being gaming focused? They can't create a new sub-brand and then fill it with information on AMD gaming performance without it being a gaming focused brand. It would have to a brand the focuses on other things and mentions gaming as an afterthought.

And I'll present you with the same questions I posted earlier:

How come EVERY OEM and AIB Kyle talked to hates this program? If its so great and not at all a problem why would the people that would supposedly benefit from it hate it?
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Because it is an ultimatum, not a promotion: "Give Nvidia exclusive 'gaming branding, or you won't get early access to new silicon, extra bundled value-adds, prime advertising and other things that you have previously gotten as just being a normal vendor"

I mean, really, this is pretty self explanatory and I'm wondering why you have to ask.

How come Nvidia is being so secretive about their "transparent program"?
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Because it's presenting practices that are 'unsightly' at best and 'down right illegal' at worst.

How come everyone Kyle talked to was afraid of losing their jobs by talking about this "transparent program"?
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Because no matter how you slice it, the decision to join, not join, or leak information regarding this could cost the company literally millions of dollars. If you were holding that kind of money over an open flame, it would make you slightly nervous,

How come Nvidia tried to threaten Kyle into not publishing this?
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They didn't They tried to talk him out of it.

How come Kyle felt that he needed to mentioned being ready to deal with any legal trouble Nvidia might send his way by publishing this article?
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Because that's how individuals deal with disputes of a legal nature in a system of law that allows judicial representation of the people.

How come Nvidia refuses to respond to Kyle's concerns?
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The Streisand effect. Also, they responded to Forbes.

How come Kyle, someone who has been involved on the press side of this for nearly two decades now, thinks this is a major concern that could have very negative effects for consumers?
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It's anti-competitive. Anti-competitive actions are direct offences against the consumers in a capitalist economy. Because of this, anti-competitive actions are strictly illegal in most modern countries.
 
KazeoHin said:
Because it is an ultimatum, not a promotion: "Give Nvidia exclusive 'gaming branding, or you won't get early access to new silicon, extra bundled value-adds, prime advertising and other things that you have previously gotten as just being a normal vendor"
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Mm nope. The early access to new silicon, extra bundled, prime advertising all this comes with the GPP. Probably only "access to new silicon" is what they now get.
 
FearTheCow said:
I choose to believe the [H], I can't remember a single time they have been wrong, whether it affected them negatively or not.
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I can, but it was a long time ago and I think they've more than made up for it since then. Again, a great piece and it took some serious balls to do it...plus I guess I was wrong and I DID live to see the day Kyle went full out against nVidia. Kudos.

Brian_B said:
And if a large AIB decides not to play - that will kill the program. nVidia is ~trying~ to show they don't need AIBs (all that nonsense with FE)... but all the best cards are undoubtedly AIB models.

If someone like EVGA or Asus decides not to play ball, nVidia absolutely won't kneecap them, and it completely kills this as any sort of threat to all the other companies.
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Does that second "B" stand for "Burke"? If yes that explains a lot, plus I'd like to know if we should treat these as official statements. :)
 
WCCF just did their own post, the interesting thing is at the bottom of the article, WCCF states AMD did reach out to them,
In the interest of complete disclosure and transparency I will also mention that AMD reached out to me stating that they had received tip-offs from multiple partners who stated (on the condition of anonymity) that the program existed a few weeks back.

The initial information provided to me seemed very interesting so I picked up the thread and reached out to some of my contacts and do my due diligence. Unfortunately pretty much any OEM/AIB I reached out to refused to talk about GPP on-the-record and only one AIB, on the condition of anonymity, hinted at the existence of the program. Armed with just one anonymous record and NVIDIA’s complete denial, it was hard to roll out an unbiased piece, but it looks like Kyle has had a lot better luck than us (and elbow grease!) and has done enough legwork to finally move forward with a fleshed out story.
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1st- I don't know Kyle personally, only have been a long time follower of this forum. To me, I wouldn't stick my neck out that far unless I was damn sure convinced that this is actually going on. While yes, we haven't seen the fine print or nV's response, I'm willing to trust in Kyle that this thing is very anti-competitive. No company would refuse a response of this much damaging information unless they are afraid of what can be used against them in a lawsuit. 2nd- Essentially strong-arming everyone to associate your GPU with gaming brands is anti-competitive. They stepped in with their exclusives and marketing budget and said that this brand which has proven sales for years now (and who knows how much in branding and R/D) is now our brand, the other guy can get the scraps is anti-competitive. 3rd- Don't we have an nV rep here somewhere? I'd be curious if said rep will get his/her leash yanked from corporate to back out. This is my opinion, and I completely understand where the opposition is coming from as well.

On a side note- Patreon incoming because I support people who fight for what is right (even if it's a possibility that nV isn't actively doing this).
 
Why would nVidia want to pump money into growing a brand which is vendor agnostic like ROG. I can kind of understand it really. ROG is (supposedly) a brand dictating high gaming performance, which is built on nVidia kit, lets face it. It would piss me off a bit too if my competitors used that shine to rub off on their own products.

Still, they could label the nVidia cards up as "the banana brand" and they would still be better than AMD in every way. People who care enough to drop $1000 on a bit of processed sand and metal will still know the difference. Any idiot who buys a card specifically for the marketing is pretty stupid. The manufacturers are just pissed they need to make a choice of getting the free marketing money or playing both sides. I think it's good that you guys will have to buy the cards retail, you should wear that as a badge of pride.

The people you're speaking to probably don't want to say anything because the nail that's stuck out the furthest gets hammered down first. Why say anything at all? It doesn't benefit them
 
davethehedgehog said:
Why would nVidia want to pump money into growing a brand which is vendor agnostic like ROG. I can kind of understand it really. ROG is (supposedly) a brand dictating high gaming performance, which is built on nVidia kit, lets face it. It would piss me off a bit too if my competitors used that shine to rub off on their own products.

Still, they could label the nVidia cards up as "the banana brand" and they would still be better than AMD in every way. People who care enough to drop $1000 on a bit of processed sand and metal will still know the difference. Any idiot who buys a card specifically for the marketing is pretty stupid. The manufacturers are just pissed they need to make a choice of getting the free marketing money or playing both sides. I think it's good that you guys will have to buy the cards retail, you should wear that as a badge of pride.

The people you're speaking to probably don't want to say anything because the nail that's stuck out the furthest gets hammered down first. Why say anything at all? It doesn't benefit them
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You do realize their is a whole lot more to it than just marketing funds right? Or are you going to conveniently ignore everything else so you can keep trying to white knight Nvidia?
 
DTabakov said:
Mm nope. The early access to new silicon, extra bundled, prime advertising all this comes with the GPP. Probably only "access to new silicon" is what they now get.
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Vendors get prime advertising with Nvidia now: when a new series is released, they get primetime placement, mentions, etc, they also get game bundles with free Nvidia GameWorks games, which are (at the moment) tied to GPU, not vendor.
 
Wow, what a change of attitude in this place, considering that every fucking time i said anything about how much nvidia like to play dirty like this, everyone here just rallied in defense of poor and innocent nvidia...

What a joke.
 
KazeoHin said:
Vendors get prime advertising with Nvidia now: when a new series is released, they get primetime placement, mentions, etc, they also get game bundles with free Nvidia GameWorks games, which are (at the moment) tied to GPU, not vendor.
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Not that I'm aware of, AIB's pay for those right now, most do too. The price is tacked on to the GPU costs. By no means does nV give these things away for free right now, game bundles costs nV at least 15 bucks per game code. That adds quite a bit of overhead for them, when they are only selling GPU's, they split that cost with AIB partners. By giving them the GPU with the markup + game code cost, at cost. There is no way nV is eating the cost of the game code right now, not with the margins they have been getting ;). And its silly to do so. This is always why cards that come with game codes, usually cost a bit more.

About the advertising stuff, yeah nV does a little bit of that but usually not at launch, they haven't been promoting partner cards for quite some time actually, the last ones I can remember at launch was pre keplar. Fermi think it was. Social media, they haven't been doing that for very long at all, started maybe 2 gens ago.
 
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Kudos to Kyle and HardOCP. Once again, they blaze the trail on a story that needs to be broken wide open. I've been reading and commenting on the [H] since the turn of the century, and it's stories like this that keep me coming back. Good luck with this, Kyle!
 
grtitan said:
Wow, what a change of attitude in this place, considering that every fucking time i said anything about how much nvidia like to play dirty like this, everyone here just rallied in defense of poor and innocent nvidia...

What a joke.
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Every... Everyone...

Sorry bro, not buying it. There's at least a half-dozen perspectives to consider here, and we're not going to ignore the ones that make you feel uncomfortable or conflict with your personal computer piety.
 
At a time when Nvidia's public face is trying to tell the world that they are gamer gpu first (not crypto), you think they would be happy to go on record with Kyle to show just how their program works inside and out, to enable a fair market for gamers, instead of turtling up. Now we have Kyle's article spreading like wildfire across every hardware related site on the internet further confirming the sentiment he expressed. Nvidia is pretty much going to have to go with the public outcry and try to convince us that they would never have asked another company to sell only one gaming brand, and this orignaly GPP guideline might actually get shot dead where it stands.
 
Brian_B said:
I haven't read all 5+ pages of responses, but...

This doesn't sound all that sinister to me.

Yeah, it's not a great deal. And you won't have ROG branded nVidia cards ~and~ ROG branded AMD cards.

But it doesn't stop Asus from having ROG branded nVidia cards ~and~ Strix branded AMD cards? (just a for-instance).

I can understand nVidia doesn't want it's cards branded the same as the competition, and that I actually think makes some sense.

The rest of it, sounded like most of it was wrapped up with brand recognition. Doesn't sound like it's a big hurdle to get over, but maybe I'm missing part of it.
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My take on it is Nvidia says if you join the program, you cannot market other brands as "gaming". Earlier we discussed some other site showed "gaming" cards sell significantly better. So by forcing a company like Asus to not market Radeon cards as "gaming" that will likely lead to an increase in Nvidia "gaming" GPU sales. Also, if chips are rare right now and there is a "wink and a nod" that program members get first dibs, well, that adds to this problem because it seems like Nvidia is twisting the arms of AIB's and OEM's to join.

So far Nvidia has not commented. If this story was full of lies or half-truths, where is Nvidia at to clear it up on behalf of their transparent beliefs, if you've read their blog.
 
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My first thought reading that article was that this has shades of Intel written all over it. I’m not sure how this wouldn’t be deemed anti-competitive by governing bodies.
 
digitalwanderer said:
Does that second "B" stand for "Burke"? If yes that explains a lot, plus I'd like to know if we should treat these as official statements. :)
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Sorry, afraid I don’t have that privilege. I did know a Brian Burke once upon a time, but almost certainly not the one you are referring to.
 
bigdogchris said:
My take on it is Nvidia says if you join the program, you cannot market other brands as "gaming". Earlier we discussed some other site showed "gaming" cards sell significantly better. So by forcing a company like Asus to not market Radeon cards as "gaming" that will likely lead to an increase in Nvidia "gaming" GPU sales. Also, if chips are rare right now and there is a "wink and a nod" that program members get first dibs, well, that adds to this problem because it seems like Nvidia is twisting the arms of AIB's and OEM's to join.
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That is a good point I didn’t fully catch about Gaming marketing.

My understanding on the GPU scarcity right now was that it has more to do with global RAM supplies than GPU chips. Doesn’t mean nVidia couldn’t make it so, and we’ve all seen plenty of paper launches where GPU supply was scarce for a long period in the past. So it is a point to consider, I’m just pointing out it’s not explicitly stated, “wink and nod” doesn’t carry much weight until it’s able to be documented.
 
Business is ruthless. Survival of the fittest and all that but Radeon has been on the ropes for a couple of release cycles at this point and really need to get back into the game obviously. But NOW Nvidia is seemingly fighting dirtier than ever? Aint that some shit! They are raking it in hand over fist already. I don't care how the lawyers spin this but "it isn't a good look" for sure.

Thanks again for braking the news Kyle and this is something to keep a close eye on.
 
davethehedgehog said:
I'm not white knighting anybody. Least of all a multi billion dollar corporation. I'm just saying people are getting all upset over something that's seems fairly standard to me, if not a little tame to be honest. I see the same people come in here defending Microsoft, for example, who do FAR worse stuff. Probably since they pretty much invented the cornering a market game. But whatever, yur big bud nvidia are being so mean. What does it even matter. Just market the AMD ones as "Pro" cards, or vice versa. Who's even going to care. Are people all upset they're not going to get their glowy-red LED's or something if one of the vendors isn't labelled as "gaming". Nvidia more than likely don't give a shit anyway, since they own the future market pretty much for compute, which is where the real money will be.
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Yes, people will care. Companies brand things as "gaming" because it works. Consumers see something as "gaming" and they think it will be better for their gaming systems then normal parts. Pro has an entirely different meaning in the market. Pro means professional, meaning something beyond general use. It is going to turn off casual buyers. On top of that companies have spent years building up their gaming brands and spent a lot of time getting good word of mouth for them. Having to start from square one and convince the casual consumer that something not gaming branded is good for them is going to go against all of their marketing for the past decade (at least).
 
Derangel said:
Yes, people will care. Companies brand things as "gaming" because it works. Consumers see something as "gaming" and they think it will be better for their gaming systems then normal parts. Pro has an entirely different meaning in the market. Pro means professional, meaning something beyond general use. It is going to turn off casual buyers. On top of that companies have spent years building up their gaming brands and spent a lot of time getting good word of mouth for them. Having to start from square one and convince the casual consumer that something not gaming branded is good for them is going to go against all of their marketing for the past decade (at least).
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Pro was just an example. You could pick anything really. Make something up as a marketing term like they did with "ultrabook" and "cloud"

Are you saying that if, for example, all the vendors decided to not play ball and make AMD the "gaming" brand, that all of a sudden Vega's would become top dog for gaming and Nvidia's market share would plummet? I doubt that to be honest. As obsessive as gamers are, I'm pretty sure the marketing BS is very quickly burned through by looking at a few reviews. Recall the few times some product finds a niche it wasn't supposed to have and turns that in a good position. The old coppermine celerons, for example, or people buying 1700's to overclock into higher models.

I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like Nvidia's products by the way, or the company. I think they're stale. I just buy whatever's got the best reviews and is a reasonable cost. I would like to see AMD do what they've done in CPU's, but they haven't yet. I don't think this will make a blind bit of difference to that fact.
 
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davethehedgehog said:
Pro was just an example. You could pick anything really. Make something up as a marketing term like they did with "ultrabook" and "cloud"

Are you saying that if, for example, all the vendors decided to not play ball and make AMD the "gaming" brand, that all of a sudden Vega's would become top dog for gaming and Nvidia's market share would plummet? I doubt that to be honest. As obsessive as gamers are, I'm pretty sure the marketing BS is very quickly burned through by looking at a few reviews. Recall the few times some product finds a niche it wasn't supposed to have and turns that in a good position. The old coppermine celerons, for example, or people buying 1700's to overclock into higher models.

I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like Nvidia's products by the way, or the company. I think they're stale. I just buy whatever's got the best reviews and is a reasonable cost. I would like to see AMD do what they've done in CPU's, but they haven't yet. I don't think this will make a blind bit of difference to that fact.
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All of the top five GPU manufacturers on the planet make cards for both brands.

Palit, which owns Daywood, Gainwood, Galax, Vivkoo, Yuan, and XpertVision (mostly Asian brands)
PC Partner which owns Sapphire and Zotac
ASUS
MSI
Gigabyte

Palit is also a major OEM for other companies.

Imagine all five of them pulling support for Nvidia cards over night and relegating them to an after thought on some unknown little brand, ceasing any and all marketing surrounding gaming for them. How fast do you think there would be a swing in marketshare? It might take a couple years but it would have a pretty serious effect.
 
Derangel said:
Imagine all five of them pulling support for Nvidia cards over night and relegating them to an after thought on some unknown little brand, ceasing any and all marketing surrounding gaming for them. How fast do you think there would be a swing in marketshare? It might take a couple years but it would have a pretty serious effect.
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So it sounds to me, if the agreement is so onerous and debilitating, that those manufacturers won't want to do it and nVidia are shooting themselves in the foot? AMD should swoop in with a market leading product and take the market by storm!
 
Interesting Article.

Will be interesting to see if Nvidia Respond publicly about this.

Anti-Competitive practices when they already hold the majority of market share, is just silly. Greeedy bastards.
 
davethehedgehog said:
So it sounds to me, if the agreement is so onerous and debilitating, that those manufacturers won't want to do it that nVidia are shooting themselves in the foot? AMD should swoop in with a market leading product and take the market by storm!
Click to expand...

I think most folks on this forum (myself included) would LOVE to have AMD swooping in with a "market leading GPU", but they are a few years behind on the R&D front to NVIDIA, as Vega showed (the mining craze pulled Radeon out of the fire, for now). Not going to happen overnight.

This really "seems" like NVIDIA overreaching itself here, in regards to shutting out AMD from the "gaming video card" market. Heck, if NVIDIA had just said nothing and rolled on until releasing in Q4 2018, most of us would probably end up getting Turing/Ampere/whatever at that time (the rumor mills already had me somewhat resigned to that direction).
 
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