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GeForce Partner Program Impacts Consumer Choice
- Thread starter FrgMstr
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Still would like to know if MSI will have Gaming AMD chipset/socket motherboards? How can they not have Radeon on those motherboards as well since you have APU's with Radeon's. This is getting ridicules having so many unanswered questions for such a supposedly transparent program.
evolucion8
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What a shocker! nVidia is like a mix of Intel's greed behavior and Apple's elitist attitude that feeds the empty braincase of their loyal fanbase. They are a big and mean marketing machine.
TaintedSquirrel
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The difference is, Nvidia's products are actually superior and Apple is generally crap. The closest thing to Apple in the GPU industry is EVGA.
Wait, when you say "The closest thing to Apple in the GPU industry is EVGA" do you mean like ..... EVGA is crap, like Apple? or Elitist?
What do you mean?
evolucion8
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Superior? Like how? Besides power efficiency? Their reliance on driver compilers to perform? Or dragging down the PC gaming as their GPUs are engineered for yesterdays DX11? Or the fact that they don't get any performance gains or as a matter of fact, lose performance on modern APIs like Vulkan or DX12? Or the fact that their Turdgra CPUs were the worst thing ever on tablets and phones? Why Apple is crap? When they have the fastest ARM CPU on the market? Or one of the best cameras on a smartphone? Or the best displays? Battery life etc? Why selective memory or opinionated/biased facts?
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TaintedSquirrel
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It's the fact that AMD took a year and a half to launch a weaker product that costs more and uses more power. And the cycle will repeat itself within a month or two, when Volta launches. In fact this entire discussion could be null in as little as 24 HOURS if Huang announces GTX 1100 tomorrow. That's where we're at with Nvidia's timetable. What's next for AMD? More Vegas? Navi at the end of 2019?
AMD manages to be barely competitive for 6 months out of every 1.5 years... And to clarify, "Nvidia is superior" does not mean "AMD sucks at everything".
The only comparison between Nvidia and Apple is that they're both "big bads" which is apparently enough for some people.
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FearTheCow
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Which has fuck all to do with Nvidia using their position in the market to force agreements on other companies to push AMD out.
Exactly. If Nvidia's products are so amazeballs superior why force a monopolistic marketing agreement on their partners? Just greedy or greedy and sleazey? Or ?
Seriously, does NVidia actually think people are so dumb not to see through this crap program? That their current and previous marketing has earned them 80% of the discrete market? Telling us gamer's maybe confused by a known brand that can have gaming on it for AMD cards and could affect their poor judgement in selection or confusion on buying Nvidia? To me this is beyond Retarded what NVidia is saying in the first place.
NVidia is one company you can definitely love and hate at the same time.
Maybe Intel/AMD should come out with their own gaming restrictions dealing with their chipsets. X470 is only used for Gaming brands and must have Radeon stamped all over it and lights blinking RADEON or some other BS move like NVidia, plus be plastered on the box, GAMING - RADEON POWER and zero support for SLI just CFX. X370 could allow NVidia on the box and SLI
, so NVidia is still allowed for the AIB's and OEMs to have AMD and NVidia marketing, or one or the other.
Edit, additions:
AMD has to pay Nvidia to license SLI for their chipset. To pay NVidia to take away market share from AMD RTG Radeons market. Then R&D, test and implement in the bios the SLI support. I say cancel that BS with the X470, hell cancel that with Intel chipsets as well. Not if the SLI market is huge or even relevant. This would also promote using DX 12 multiple GPU ability.
https://thetechaltar.com/amds-x370-chipset-support-nvidias-sli/
NVidia is one company you can definitely love and hate at the same time.
Maybe Intel/AMD should come out with their own gaming restrictions dealing with their chipsets. X470 is only used for Gaming brands and must have Radeon stamped all over it and lights blinking RADEON or some other BS move like NVidia, plus be plastered on the box, GAMING - RADEON POWER and zero support for SLI just CFX. X370 could allow NVidia on the box and SLI
, so NVidia is still allowed for the AIB's and OEMs to have AMD and NVidia marketing, or one or the other.Edit, additions:
AMD has to pay Nvidia to license SLI for their chipset. To pay NVidia to take away market share from AMD RTG Radeons market. Then R&D, test and implement in the bios the SLI support. I say cancel that BS with the X470, hell cancel that with Intel chipsets as well. Not if the SLI market is huge or even relevant. This would also promote using DX 12 multiple GPU ability.
https://thetechaltar.com/amds-x370-chipset-support-nvidias-sli/
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TaintedSquirrel
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If it weren't for the leaks then nobody would even know this program existed -- or at least, cared about its existence. There's a tiny little marketing blurb about it on Nvidia's website:
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/03/01/geforce-partner-program/
Aside from that, nothing else. So I think their primary goal was just to keep attention away from it, and have the AIBs drop their gaming brands over time / roll out new ones / adjust their marketing material. If it was a slow drip then nobody would've noticed until the damage was done. It's a lot easier to 'see through it' once you've had it all laid out in front of you.
The real question is, why did they publicize it at all? They didn't even need to announce anything since it's all internal anyway.
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/03/01/geforce-partner-program/
Aside from that, nothing else. So I think their primary goal was just to keep attention away from it, and have the AIBs drop their gaming brands over time / roll out new ones / adjust their marketing material. If it was a slow drip then nobody would've noticed until the damage was done. It's a lot easier to 'see through it' once you've had it all laid out in front of you.
The real question is, why did they publicize it at all? They didn't even need to announce anything since it's all internal anyway.
Because, Nvidia is being so transparent about it - "Our tiny little blurb was on our site forever and it just caught our partners eyes and they rushed to our door to get this great offer from us, willing to throw away years of game brandings to us, the enthusiasm was so overwhelming". That is my first thought anyways.
evolucion8
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So much apologist stuff that it is funny. Power was never a concern back then on the Fermi era as nVidia still sold more cards than AMD and now suddenly power its an issue lol. Inconsistency is the biggest characteristic of nVidia fan girls. The fact that nVidia haven't been able to develop a full DX12 capable card that does not lose FPS when activating such feature says a lot of their simple hardware that runs a complex software structure to make it up what is missing on hardware, do you think efficiency comes through a magic wand? lol
Typical, ignore everything and keep on bashing.
DX 12 is an issue on Pascal, a two year old line. DX 12 is also a steaming pile of garbage as it's locked to W10 and pushes workload onto the developer, highly unlikely many devs will want to put the work into polishing DX12 themselves, most still stick with dx11 and it has nothing to do with Nvidia.
AMD has real problems, they cannot compete in the high end, so they target the mid-range (and do well there performance wise but not watt wise). Electricity is more expensive today than before and that trend looks to be continuing, so it's a factor today when it wasn't a decade ago.
Nvidia has halo status so mid-range amd gets ignored when it shouldn't. That's about the only issue outside of the elephant in the room (GPP).
evolucion8
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Typical fangirl logic instead of addressing the issue wth real facts. Just cause you don'tlike Windows 10, it does not mean that it is useless. It is far more efficient than Windows 8, uses less power, its more optimized for multicore CPUs and supports a newer Driver Model that can't be supported on Windows 8 or Windows 7, OS that are more than five years on. You need to move on or either embrace it or move to Linux. DX12 is an amazing engineering feat which requires a new different programming model and skills and will take time, and so is Vulkan. The fact that a game like Doom, looks so good and runs so well on a wide range of hardware, compared to other games mostly under the nVidia TWIMTBP program which still dragging down the gaming industry with an obsolete DX11 API and its bug infested Gameworks features, leaves a lot to be desired. Doom, Deus EX HK, Hitman are games that looks amazing and can be maxed at 1080p with midrange hardware, try the same thing with the Gameworks infested FFXV, Assassin Creed etc, they look worse, and runs terrible even on a GTX 1080 with its constant lag, stuttering and visual glitches.
I have no time for trolls like you, grow up.
![Zarathustra[H]](https://cdn.hardforum.com/data/avatars/m/9/9298.jpg?1707758471){kind=avatar}
Zarathustra[H]
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Meh.
The improvements in Windows 10 are incremental.
- The SMP kernel improvements were already there in Windows 8.
- DX12 is really only useful on low end CPU's. Anything with a high end CPU and GPU tends to run better in DX11 anyway. At least that is the case with every title with DX12 support I've tested.
- The new driver model doesn't appear to do anything at all, except break backwards compatibility. I have yet to see any improvements from it. I don't know why you list this as a feature.
Windows 10 does have some notable improvements. The base install uses less disk space than any version of Windows since XP. It also uses RAM more efficiently.
The question is, are these improvements really sufficient to convince me to switch to a system with forced preinstalled freemium apps, windows store, online accounts, forced Xbox integration, as well as clock apps, camera apps, weather apps as if I have some goddamned tablet? And that's not to mention data collection and other junk that I don't want. Probably not. If I still used windows as my primary OS, I'd rather just buy a larger SSD and more RAM and stick with Windows 7 (or Windows 8.1 with classic shell)
The truth is, I switched to Linux as my primary OS in ~2001 and haven't looked back since. I started with Redhat, used Gentoo for several years, then tried Ubuntu. For the last few years I have been using Mint.
I still dual boot to Windows, but only for games. I never browse the web or run any kind of other software under windows. If I feel like running a game, I reboot into windows, and launch my game, and when done, I immediately reboot again back into Linux. I don't even have a Microsoft account. Only local machine accounts. If I were forced to get an online Microsoft account, I'd probably just wipe my Windows partition.
The thing is, if - as an individual - I could buy a copy of the Enterprise edition, I probably wouldn't mind Windows 10 that much. If I could even uninstall all of the junk I don't want in the Pro edition, I wouldn't mind it that much, but as it is, I hate it. I don't want an ecosystem a la Apple's OSX or Googles Android. I just want a standalone OS.
evolucion8
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Nope, Windows 10 has several improvements not found on Windows 8. DX12 removes the biggest bottleneck on DX11, the draw call main thread which is single theraded. The new driver model offers higher efficiency, better multi core performance, smoother animations and so on. Don't try to mix your disgust of Windows 10 with the facts. I also hate a lt of stuff like it, having duplicate applets for doing the same thing, the increased VRAM usage on the latest updates, the Freemium thing etc.
Airoth - Cry me a river.
Zarathustra[H]
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Every single title I have tried that has DX12 support runs slower in DX12 mode than in DX11 mode on a system with a fairly capable CPU, like most of us use here.
Presumably this is because a strong core is able to muscle through the DX draw calls in DX11 without hitting a bottleneck so it doesn't see these DX11 slowdowns.
Enable DX12 and now you have these draw calls bouncing around from core to core and presumably thrashing the cache, and thus forcing the CPU to keep getting data from relatively slow system RAM.
Presumably DX12 is a huge improvement on a low end power saving CPU where a core gets pinned by the draw calls in DX11, but on an enthusiast system I have found DX11 to be notably faster.
I have a few titles with DX12 support, and whenever I get one that supports it I do a performance test of DX11 vs DX12 and select the fastest one. Thus far I have not wound up running any title in DX12 mode.
This is on my [email protected] and Pascal Titan X.
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All the talk about can AMD compete and NV is holding cards back ect.
Of course they are. Its simple economics. AMD and NV both have massive supply constraints right now on their top end silicon. NV doesn't even wanna try and make a main stream market Volta based card, they are having a hard enough time producing enough fully operational chips to meet demand for their Pro server grade Volta lines. Frankly AMD is in the same situation, they are also struggling to meet demand for things like the SSG.
With both offering that 2 year old middle range of cards to gamers... yes NV performance looks great right now, and NV has likely been better at supplying manufacturers chips for gaming cards the last year or two. So they have been in a great position to try and lock things down. So far it looks like they are going to get away with it. With everyone clamming up and not many other journalists trying to fish the real story out, NV looks like they will win this one.
Of course they are. Its simple economics. AMD and NV both have massive supply constraints right now on their top end silicon. NV doesn't even wanna try and make a main stream market Volta based card, they are having a hard enough time producing enough fully operational chips to meet demand for their Pro server grade Volta lines. Frankly AMD is in the same situation, they are also struggling to meet demand for things like the SSG.
With both offering that 2 year old middle range of cards to gamers... yes NV performance looks great right now, and NV has likely been better at supplying manufacturers chips for gaming cards the last year or two. So they have been in a great position to try and lock things down. So far it looks like they are going to get away with it. With everyone clamming up and not many other journalists trying to fish the real story out, NV looks like they will win this one.
Gatecrasher3000
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Is Nvidia pulling an Ajit Pai move with GPP? "This allows for 'better' service, and that's all, trust us."
Peppercorn
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Moved on hey? Sounds like a great opportunity to hang nvdia with a sticky meme. Are they telling us to move on to moveon.org?
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Wait ..... You trying to sell us on the idea that AMD has a more efficient hardware solution for what NVidia does in software, and yet the end result remains a slower net solution? NVidia still is faster even in DX12, less efficient but more capable?
This is what you are trying to sell us on?
If I have the facts wrong please enlighten, I'm all ears.
IdiotInCharge
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Gonna address this one specifically, I do hope that Kyle doesn't mind.
Power was absolutely a concern; whenever one solution is providing similar performance but with significantly different power usage, that is absolutely a point of consideration.
It's obviously not a problem for many enthusiasts- most of us run systems, at least our primary gaming systems, that have power supply and cooling resources to spare. However, it is certainly a problem for:
- Enthusiasts concerned with building small and quiet, which are opposing goals after a certain point
- Enthusiasts concerned with energy efficiency, which is a two-fold problem for any computing: you have to use power to utilize computing resources, and you have to use power to cool the heated air- air conditioning can be expensive!
- System integrators, ranging from local custom builders, botiques of various sizes, on up to the Apple's and Dell's- less efficient parts either mean giving up performance to the competition or increasing the BOM for more power supply capacity and more cooling (and potentially noise damping, which means more weight and higher shipping costs...)
TaintedSquirrel
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I'll just say it: Power "isn't a concern" when it's also the fastest GPU.
Power "is a concern" when a GPU is both slower and uses more power.
Fermi held the flagship crown, Vega does not.
(I owned a 5870 and 6950)
Power "is a concern" when a GPU is both slower and uses more power.
Fermi held the flagship crown, Vega does not.
(I owned a 5870 and 6950)
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I can't agree more. When ATI released the first Radeon card and I saw higher benchmarks and lower power requirements I knew that it was simply the best engineered card and it dominated sales for years. NVidia couldn't touch the Radeons for awhile. Later it was NVidia's turn to create a better engineered product. This is the mark I look for when I need a new card, it's how I know it's time to buy early instead of waiting for prices to drop.
I'll switch brands when it's time to switch, and this is the kind of signal I look for to know when it's time to do so.
FearTheCow
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So in relation to the topic, what you are saying is you support anti-competitive practices and companies.
This may come as a shocker, but people do buy what they perceive to be the better product. Regardless of a companies ethics. Its happened with Intel on a massive scale over last decade when they cornered 90% of the CPU market. Did not see many folks pulling the ethics argument over that.
Well you could argue that Intel was able to dominate the market due to their previous illegal actions vs the competition. The 2-3 billion in collected fines and awards where simply not harsh enough. Considering they almost put AMD under... and for sure set them back by reducing the amount of R&D money they could use to keep up. Its very nice to now see AMD regain that edge thanks in no small part to Intel themselves. They fell asleep with no hard core competition... I have no doubt after seen Intel have to pay a small fraction of one years sales in legal judgements to lock down an entire industry for years NV has figured wth, even if this is illegal no way we have to pay up anything close to what we stand to make.
Yes, you could argue that. As it applies to the masses who dont know much about hardware or how to choose it. But enthusiasts who know their stuff go by benchmarks and overall performance. Those folks overwhelmingly went Intel as they are now been going Nvidia for quite some time. The GPP thing will certainly hurt AMD, but wont make an iota of difference to enthusiasts who gravitate towards the best hardware regardless. I doubt any of them will be swayed by ethics. I believe even Kyle himself said he would recommend Nvidia to those looking for the best. Personally dont like GPP and they way its been pushed onto the AIBs. But unless AMD can make some worthwhile (upper tier) GPUs for me to choose over Nvidia, they wont be getting my business any time soon.
FearTheCow
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Nvidia having the better product isn't what this is about, Nvidia is being anti-competitive and trying to grow a monopoly, which is never a good thing for consumers, including hardware enthusiasts.
I said what I said and nothing more.
Kindly take your words out of my mouth.
EDITED: I wish to continue.
Your perceived moral high ground has to find a place in the real world.
Any man with a family has to justify what he spends. Oh I am perfectly happy buying whatever I really want to buy, but I don't live alone and I have others who depend on my actions and on my income.
I will not spend money on lesser things knowing that I will have to spend more sooner rather than later. I've done it before because the wife bitched and made me settle for less, it always cost me more in the long run. So now, I bull my way through it and make the smart choice knowing that it is the right one for all of us.
Compared to our futures, my wife's and my security, and my children's future opportunities, this story just doesn't even rate.
Fortunately I am in a much better position these days then when I first had to learn these lessons. Kids are grown, two houses with no mortgage, cars paid off. Enough in savings I never have to pay anyone interest to buy anything, not even houses.
Now you can argue that if I have all this money then I can afford to take the high ground. I'll tell you that I didn't get where I am by doing foolish things with my money.
It's about keeping perspective.
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This. ^
AMD fans are gonna buy the AMD GPU whether or not Asus puts Strix on it or not. It could be labeled "Asus Dog Turd" and the AMD fans would be F5 F5 F5 until they wore the keys out. I don't like that Nvidia appears to be trying to monopolize the brand names, but it's also like griping that there's not a Ford Camaro as well as a Chevy Camaro - the AIBs should develop different names for the different GPU manufacturers' lines.
Here is the issue with your argument. You assume that enthusiasts are a large market. We are not. If we where AMD would have rocked Intel and taken over the market 20 years ago. AMD instead had Intel place a very illegal choke hold on them with OEMs and by the time the legal wrangling forced Intel to release... years had passed and AMDs cash flow was choked stifling their R&D budget. Intel used those years to develop the products the superior products they then sold you for years.
If we allow Nvidia to put the same type of choke hold on OEMs that keeps the competition in the back seat with the real main stream market that makes all the money we invite the same situation. To be honest I'm not to worried about that... AMD already has the superior GPU tech imo (even if they haven't released a main stream gaming product at this point to highlight that). I have seen clients using Radeon Pro 9100 and SSG cards and NV has nothing in the same ball park imo. The vega shrink is coming very shortly... and yes NV is I am sure going to push some volta gaming parts out even if they trickle out the actual stock shipments to OEMs. The die shrink Vega will be far more power efficient and it will no doubt incorporate more of the Core AI type enhancements they developed for the zen. It is sad that a bunch of the big name OEMs are going to have to mess around with marketing names on those cards as they may well be the fastest gaming cards on the market very shortly.
I dislike the car metaphor, there are not multiple competitors in the GPU arena, there are two. The problem is not in who is the best today, but what happens when there is only one. The GPP is a blatant attempt to insure there is only one, at which point you, I and everyone else will be lucky to get incremental increases, and if that happens the enthusiast community will die.
I dislike this program immensely, but fail to see what can be done about it as AMD is hardly in a position to get GPU's to most AMD fans, let alone others that would flout the GPP. I do not want a single GPU manufacturer, but if it happens I can at least content myself knowing that my upgrade cycle will increase to 6-10 year increments.
Monopolies, contrary to popular belief, are not inherently bad. There have been quit a few monopolies over the years that have actually been quit beneficial for everyone, which is one of the criteria that the FTC uses when determining that a monopoly requires action.
I don't like the GPP and I am not defending it, but if it get's too far off what is acceptable I do trust that the FTC will correct it.
Now to be safe, I did do something that I feel is more effective and appropriate than something silly like joining a boycott. I wrote the FTC and my Senators and my Representative for my district. I told them of my concerns and that I don't think what NVidia is doing is right. You might think that it's a waste of time and effort, but as of right now I am at least certain that they are aware of it if they weren't before. And they know that someone who votes is paying attention.
But I'm not the one willing to sacrifice for the greater good. I'm not as forceful as you are. I mean shit, you must have bought two or three AMD cards in the last week or so since Kyle broke this story to the world.
I applaud you, a real stand up guy. You really know how to put your money where your mouth is.