GeForce Partner Program Impacts Consumer Choice

heatlesssun said:
That's completely unenforceable as it would be a 1st Amendment violation that would prevent AMD's freedom of speech to market its gaming GPUs as gaming GPUs.
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AMD can market however they want, this is Nvidia stopping AIBs from marketing their AMD cards as gaming. Of course this is illegal, companies do illegal stuff all the time.
 
Derangel said:
Its not that easy. A new brand takes years to develop fully. Along with millions of dollars in marketing and promotion. On top of that there is a reason every hardware company slaps "gaming" on their products. They sell more. With GPP AIBs are not allowed to market AMD cards under any gaming oriented branding. How many casual buyers do you think they're attract if they promote that Redmaxx as a compute card or something else? Losing out on that gaming tag is a big loss. There is a reason no one Kyle has talked to likes this program.
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I agree it's not easy. The most obvious way to read this is that specific gaming brands for GPP members that use nVidia GPUs must only use nVidia GPUs and that forces partners to create new brands for AMD and this new branding along with the time and money is clearly part of nVidia's thinking here and it's insidious without question.
 
Meanwhile at EVGA

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heatlesssun said:
I agree it's not easy. The most obvious way to read this is that specific gaming brands for GPP members that use nVidia GPUs must only use nVidia GPUs and that forces partners to create new brands for AMD and this new branding along with the time and money is clearly part of nVidia's thinking here and it's insidious without question.
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Yeah. Nvidia's intention seems to be to create a situation where it forces the companies that sell both brands into a position where they have to choose between getting screwed by Nvidia or dropping AMD all together. I can't imagine the immense cost associated with creating a new brand specifically for AMD cards would be worth it for most of those AIBs.
 
Derangel said:
AMD can market however they want, this is Nvidia stopping AIBs from marketing their AMD cards as gaming. Of course this is illegal, companies do illegal stuff all the time.
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AMD makes GPUs for gaming, nVidia can't tell a 3rd party to not use AMDs marketing for AMD products. Clear 1st Amendment violation.
 
Derangel said:
Yeah. Nvidia's intention seems to be to create a situation where it forces the companies that sell both brands into a position where they have to choose between getting screwed by Nvidia or dropping AMD all together. I can't imagine the immense cost associated with creating a new brand specifically for AMD cards would be worth it for most of those AIBs.
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I imagine most partners would some up with new names rather than drop AMD. Of course there's nothing stop a partner to use it's existing names for AMD stuff and putting the burden on nVidia to market those new names.
 
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Thanks for bringing this to our attention kyle. Thought i suspect MANY of those brainwashed into the mindset of intel &/or nvidia are the ONLY things to buy cause there the best ( both companies for years let alone decades have promoted themselves endlessly that " its not a pc " or " your games play best on " ) wont care about business ethnic's or being "pro consumer " Will still say here's my money give me the stuff.

This also further leads me into wondering if its maybe why companies like E-vga dont offer AMD videocards cause of maybe this kinda backdoor dealing in place. This is soooo intel-dell of the early 2000's & there needs to be something done about it asap as well as consumers made aware of it that DO care so they can stop supporting that company if they choose to do so.

Thanks again Kyle & further showing why your 1 of the top pc sites online for reviews n such !! :)
 
The only thing I can see here that would be illegal would be if they do indeed withhold inventory from those who choose not to be a partner. The rest of it - marketing funds, co-marketing campaigns, etc, are how the industry has run as long as I've been in it and likely long before (and that's a long time).

Fake people out? How many so-called 'enthusiasts' buy RAM, or a particular cooler because it lets their system generate a single digit increase in synthetic benchmarks and not one bit of visible performance increase? So you buy the "super duper gamer edition" video card because it gets 85FPS at full detail in your favorite game and the reference version card for $150 less only gets 83FPS. You can;t tell the difference! It's ALL marketing! And we the sheep consumers fall for it, some more than others. Somehow we broke the cycle with large items liek cars - there was a time when cars were different EVERY model year. Now the same model remains mostly unchanged for 7-10 years - because the cost of changing the design every year wasn't recouped by people buying a new car every year. It's hitting smartphones now - the changes from one year's model to the next no longer justify the upgrade to most people, the previous model is still plenty fast enough. The smaller the changes become, the fewer people will upgrade every year. Niche markets though are heavily marketing driven.
 
Derangel said:
No, the casual buyer wants something they can "trust". The casual buyer is heavily influenced by word-of-mouth and marketing. You vastly underestimate just how important these brands are to companies. They're not spending several million dollars promoting them just for the hell of it.



Its not that easy. A new brand takes years to develop fully. Along with millions of dollars in marketing and promotion. On top of that there is a reason every hardware company slaps "gaming" on their products. They sell more. With GPP AIBs are not allowed to market AMD cards under any gaming oriented branding. How many casual buyers do you think they're attract if they promote that Redmaxx as a compute card or something else? Losing out on that gaming tag is a big loss. There is a reason no one Kyle has talked to likes this program.
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Umm, duh. I've been in this business for 20 years now. I know exactly how a customer thinks, even furthermore most of the customers want the ferrari for the price of a bicycle if possible. Basically, the casual buyer wants what is cheap and working well, i've heard so many times the words "some casual gaming, nothing extreme" and they buy almost always sub mid-range products. They don't care about the lights or how much you can clock this and that, they don't even care that for some dollars you can purchase something more. For the CASUAL customer, those dollars will go somewhere else. This is the thinking, I've seen in my 20 years of experience in the business. People who prepare money and know what they want, this is the real target group of nVidia with this thing. It's the same reason why I purchased a RoG mobo for my latest build and not cheaper one. Because i've got very good lottery on an i5 silicon.

And in regards to the new brand taking years to develop, that is the "tone" if I may say here for nVidia. They want the already established branding, and if the rumors about a "mining gpu" are true, than well why the hell not? Plus don't disregard the marketing help the AIB partners will receive for going GPP. This will free funds for opening another "brand" for AMD, or I am wrong?
 
heatlesssun said:
AMD makes GPUs for gaming, nVidia can't tell a 3rd party to not use AMDs marketing for AMD products. Clear 1st Amendment violation.
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Going way off tangent with the 1st amendment violation since 1st amendment is only applies government censorship. Private companies can censor anyone without repercussion since it is not a violation of the 1st amendment. Not saying this isn't a dick move by Nvidia, but 1st amendment violation, hardly.
 
Megaslug said:
The only thing I can see here that would be illegal would be if they do indeed withhold inventory from those who choose not to be a partner. The rest of it - marketing funds, co-marketing campaigns, etc, are how the industry has run as long as I've been in it and likely long before (and that's a long time).

Fake people out? How many so-called 'enthusiasts' buy RAM, or a particular cooler because it lets their system generate a single digit increase in synthetic benchmarks and not one bit of visible performance increase? So you buy the "super duper gamer edition" video card because it gets 85FPS at full detail in your favorite game and the reference version card for $150 less only gets 83FPS. You can;t tell the difference! It's ALL marketing! And we the sheep consumers fall for it, some more than others. Somehow we broke the cycle with large items liek cars - there was a time when cars were different EVERY model year. Now the same model remains mostly unchanged for 7-10 years - because the cost of changing the design every year wasn't recouped by people buying a new car every year. It's hitting smartphones now - the changes from one year's model to the next no longer justify the upgrade to most people, the previous model is still plenty fast enough. The smaller the changes become, the fewer people will upgrade every year. Niche markets though are heavily marketing driven.
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They will not withhold anything, just prioritize amounts for GPP partners. Nobody can tell them nothing about priorities, as if someone can tell a private company "you must send 100 gpu's on release date to everyone otherwise..." yeah right, can't happen. Priorities are the companies own choices and whom they deliver first and how many is always a deal between the company and the AIB partner. In this case, priority will get the GPP partners, end of story.
 
This will not work here in the U.S. These assholes will be slapped with anti competitive lawsuits quicker than they can blink , but if the crypto craze continues. it makes a lot of sense to make lets say $ 200 million more and end up paying $ 50 million loosing in court. :D
 
Modred189 said:
Let me play devil's advocate here. Though I've made my opinion clear, let's imagine for a moment away that this could play out in a good way.

Let's imagine a fictitious graphics card company. We can call it RockAss. Currently, they sell cards from both Nvidia and AMD. They do so under their gaming brand, Black Max. They have a bunch of tiers of Cards within this brand, each tier with its own cards from both Team Green and team red.

This is nice for the company, because they only have to maintain one brand line for each type of card. However for the GPU manufacturers, it artificially pits gpus against one another that may not actually be equal or the target competition.

So, under GPP, RockAss has to come up with two different brand lines of graphics cards.. let's call them RedMaxx and GreenMaxx. The GreenMaxx cards are all under the GPP program, and the other cards are not, because they're made by AMD. Now RockAss does have to maintain two brand lines with their own marketing and advertising Etc. However, Nvidia no longer has to worry about what cards it makes are being slotted into the same tier as amd's cards.

This does not necessarily limit customer choice, and it doesn't necessarily hurt the brand other then the minimal cost of maintaining the two separate gaming lines. The question is does it limit customer Choice when compared to other companies that don't wish to participate and don't wish to bifurcate their gaming lines like this?

If Nvidia is actually and truly holding marketing funds hostage and potentially inventory, commensurate with w a company's participation in this this program, then it clearly does. But if they aren't, then this may just be a brand management move gone awry.

Which of course would be their own fault because they've gone radio silent.
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There are a couple of issues with the hypothetical example which should be noted.

First of all, the company would not abandon the Black Max branding. It would be completely stupid to do so after the years and money spent into building the brand. It's very likely that the Black Max brand would turn into the nVidia brand with the RedMaxx line turning into the AMD line. This would automatically hurt AMD simply because the older, well known brand is going to have much more "worth" than a new, unknown branding. This assumes that the RedMaxx line can even be marketed as a gaming line of cards and leads into the second possibility.

While nVidia takes over the well known and respected Black Max line exclusively, AMD is relegated to the new, unknown RedMaxx line. You now have the Black Max Gaming Supreme cards and then you have RedMaxx cards. You can't advertise the RedMaxx cards as gaming cards anymore and that lack of branding will hurt the uptake of the brand and its long term viability as a brand. Additionally, the Black Max brand will have a much larger advertising budget since it's likely the normal advertising budget would be required to be continued as well as having addition money from nVidia being poured into it. That is going to make a huge difference in which products are seen.

You also can't ignore AMD's reaction in the second scenario. The new, non-gaming branding for their cards is almost guaranteed to hurt AMD sales for RockAss. In turn it may not be in AMD's interest to provide the same support to RockAss as before. This could quickly turn into a situation where it's no longer in RockAss's interest to even carry AMD cards anymore since AMD has prioritized giving resources and support to companies who aren't part of this program and will likely sell more AMD cards.

No matter which way you look at it this is a shitty situation if the GPP program goes through. People will end up losing in the long run. In some cases you will find your trusted brand no longer carries the card you want to buy. You may find companies dropping one GPU company or another which limits company diversification as well as consumer choice. It can even be something as simple as no longer being able to match up your RockAss Black Max motherboard with a Black Max GPU because this generation of nVidia GPU flopped.

There are a lot of ramifications people haven't been looking at and many we haven't even seen yet. As Kyle stated in the article he hasn't even touched on the financial implications of this program long term or short term which will have probably the biggest impact in the long run.
 
Chimpee said:
Going way off tangent with the 1st amendment violation since 1st amendment is only applies government censorship. Private companies can censor anyone without repercussion since it is not a violation of the 1st amendment. Not saying this isn't a dick move by Nvidia, but 1st amendment violation, hardly.
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AMD is free to call and market its gaming GPUs gaming as GPUs. Not trying to get off tangent either but nVidia creating a circumstance where AMD can't do that I think falls within 1st Amendment protection as it's been generally interpreted for some time.
 
heatlesssun said:
AMD is free to call and market its gaming GPUs gaming as GPUs. Not trying to get off tangent either but nVidia creating a circumstance where AMD can't do that I think falls within 1st Amendment protection as it's been generally interpreted for some time.
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This might fall under an anti-competitive statute, but has nothing to do with the first- government is not limiting speech here.
 
heatlesssun said:
AMD is free to call and market its gaming GPUs gaming as GPUs. Not trying to get off tangent either but nVidia creating a circumstance where AMD can't do that I think falls within 1st Amendment protection as it's been generally interpreted for some time.
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I agree that Nvidia is screwing with AMD by limiting their exposure to AIB or OEM, but any 1st amendment violation always involves the government and another entity. What Nvidia is doing could be an anti-trust issue, and it will be easier for the Court to accept that is an anti-trust issue rather than a 1st amendment issue.
 
heatlesssun said:
AMD is free to call and market its gaming GPUs gaming as GPUs. Not trying to get off tangent either but nVidia creating a circumstance where AMD can't do that I think falls within 1st Amendment protection as it's been generally interpreted for some time.
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AMD can do whatever they want in this scenario but the OEMs are under whatever this contract stipulates.

So AMD is left with a sportscar but no roads.
 
Thank you for your work here [H]ardocp. I know what it feels like to stand alone while others choose to benefit from actions that hurts the industry.

However, I want to warn users out there. Judge these tech companies by how they're using their technology, what impact this has for you, where tech's future is heading. Don't let tech products and marketing feed your ego.

Furthermore, don't let this affect your view of AMD. AMD is no good guy / gal here, far from it. They're a corporation just like Nvidia and AMD's behavior can be just as bad.
 
No, way you must be mistaken [H] has always been anti AMD, no wait ...anti intel, no, I mean ant-applie, damn... anti-android.

Oh now I get it, its becuase of the chinesse new year, this is the year of anti-nvidia. :D:D:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:


I really don't get what's the fuzz...

Many manufacturers and OEMs have partner programs where they favor certain customers that apply, this has happened for as long as I can remember. we are in several programs with HP, intel, sophos, watchguard, trend-micro, dell, CISCO, synology just to name a few.

As I don't know the details of the program and how or why it might be illegal, I won't make a final judgement, but just in case nvidia legal team better have its bases covered.

I'm eager to know more details about this and how this story develops.
 
Stoly said:
No, way you must be mistaken [H] has always been anti AMD, no wait ...anti intel, no, I mean ant-applie, damn... anti-android.

Oh now I get it, its becuase of the chinesse new year, this is the year of anti-nvidia. :D:D:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:


I really don't get what's the fuzz...

Many manufacturers and OEMs have partner programs where they favor certain customers that apply, this has happened for as long as I can remember. we are in several programs with HP, intel, sophos, watchguard, trend-micro, dell, CISCO, synology just to name a few.

As I don't know the details of the program and how or why it might be illegal, I won't make a final judgement, but just in case nvidia legal team better have its bases covered.

I'm eager to know more details about this and how this story develops.
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[H] is just anti-bullshit from companies pulling shenanigans, gotta call out on bullshit when you see it.
 
Stoly said:
No, way you must be mistaken [H] has always been anti AMD, no wait ...anti intel, no, I mean ant-applie, damn... anti-android.

Oh now I get it, its becuase of the chinesse new year, this is the year of anti-nvidia. :D:D:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:


I really don't get what's the fuzz...

Many manufacturers and OEMs have partner programs where they favor certain customers that apply, this has happened for as long as I can remember. we are in several programs with HP, intel, sophos, watchguard, trend-micro, dell, CISCO, synology just to name a few.

As I don't know the details of the program and how or why it might be illegal, I won't make a final judgement, but just in case nvidia legal team better have its bases covered.

I'm eager to know more details about this and how this story develops.
Click to expand...
Chimpee said:
[H] is just anti-bullshit from companies pulling shenanigans, gotta call out on bullshit when you see it.
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When at some point you've been called either a shill or a hater of every tech company there is, you're doing it right
 
Stoly said:
No, way you must be mistaken [H] has always been anti AMD, no wait ...anti intel, no, I mean ant-applie, damn... anti-android.

Oh now I get it, its becuase of the chinesse new year, this is the year of anti-nvidia. :D:D:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:


I really don't get what's the fuzz...

Many manufacturers and OEMs have partner programs where they favor certain customers that apply, this has happened for as long as I can remember. we are in several programs with HP, intel, sophos, watchguard, trend-micro, dell, CISCO, synology just to name a few.

As I don't know the details of the program and how or why it might be illegal, I won't make a final judgement, but just in case nvidia legal team better have its bases covered.

I'm eager to know more details about this and how this story develops.
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There is a big difference between a mutual agreement to provide certain software with computers or signing a purchase agreement with a company and being essentially blackmailed. This is like what Intel did years back. Nvidia is using their leverage over the dedicated GPU market to bully and blackmail AIBs and OEMs into agreeing with their terms. If companies do not comply they lose out on a lot of stuff, including all that marketing funds and priority access to chips. Imagine a situation where Nvidia tells a non-GPP company "Sorry, we don't have enough product for you this round, you will have to wait until the next shipment, but in the next shipment you will be in the back of the line behind all of our GPP members".
 
I don't see why any AIB would go into such a program, it cuts themselves off to 30% of the market. Larger AIB's should stay away from such programs.

From the sound of it, this is quite different from what Intel did to AMD thought, Intel's "exclusivity" wasn't for a line of products, it was for anything and everything a OEM did. Legality of this is based on that. One line for nV products, one line for AMD products.

What Intel did with Dell, was, the amount of kick backs if based on the allocation amounts of ANY AMD products.

This is pretty shady yeah, but I don't see how it forces AIB's to limit them to one brand.
 
Derangel said:
So you're entire argument against monopolistic, anti-competitive, anti-consumer, blackmail tactics is "they're not entitled to it"?
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No that isn't his argument, his argument is simple, anything nV does to promote their cards, is not something their partners get for free is his argument.
 
razor1 said:
I don't see why any AIB would go into such a program, it cuts themselves off to 30% of the market. Larger AIB's should stay away from such programs.

From the sound of it, this is quite different from what Intel did to AMD thought, Intel's "exclusivity" wasn't for a line of products, it was for anything and everything a OEM did. Legality of this is based on that. One line for nV products, one line for AMD products.

What Intel did with Dell, was, the amount of kick backs if based on the allocation amounts of ANY AMD products.

This is pretty shady yeah, but I don't see how it forces AIB's to limit them to one brand.
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Its not just AIBs. Why do people keep focusing on the AIB part of it? Kyle stated OEMs and AIBs. That includes companies like Dell.
 
razor1 said:
No that isn't his argument, his argument is simple, anything nV does to promote their cards, is not something their partners get for free is his argument.
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Your attempt to explain is just as stupid as his original point.
 
Derangel said:
Its not just AIBs. Why do people keep focusing on the AIB part of it? Kyle stated OEMs and AIBs. That includes companies like Dell.
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OEM's are in the same boat man, it doesn't force OEM's not to use other's products, they just have to distinguish them differently.
 
razor1 said:
OEM's are in the same boat man, it doesn't force OEM's not to use other's products, they just have to distinguish them differently.
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Yeah. They JUST have to not use terminology that ensures attention from the largest group of people that purchase these cards. That's all. No big deal. After the mining craze ends I'm sure marketing AMD cards as general purpose or compute devices will be a big fucking seller for these companies.
 
Derangel said:
Your attempt to explain is just as stupid as his original point.
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Tell me how that is stupid?

If company A pays for bundling, and Company A's partner is selling company A's products, but doesn't give any benefit to Company A, out side of said sale, what incentive does Company A have to give those bundles to its partner? They don't need that partner if another partner will market their products better.
 
razor1 said:
Tell me how that is stupid?

If company A pays for bundling, and Company A's partner is selling company A's products, but doesn't give any benefit to Company A, out side of said sale, what incentive does Company A have to give those bundles to its partner? They don't need that partner if another partner will market their products better.
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And nothing you said remotely addresses what is happening here.
 
Now if things go side ways like nV starts to limit which partners get what allocation of GPU's and cards, yeah that is bad, does this type of program do that, I would need to see the contract, but what Kyle has written it certainly looks it can be used in that way, but we can't say for sure at this point.
 
razor1 said:
OEM's are in the same boat man, it doesn't force OEM's not to use other's products, they just have to distinguish them differently.
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Distinguish by not labeling the competitors product as "gaming" and screwing over any OEM or AIB that doesn't sign up.

All you have to do is look at the difference between what the blog post says and what Nvidia is dictating to know they are up to shady shit, they are hiding the requirements for a reason.
 
Derangel said:
And nothing you said remotely addresses what is happening here.
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That is exactly what is happening. Any extra benefits that nV does for selling its cards, don't pass over to a partner unless they participate in that program. To participate in that program, they must dedicate that line what ever it is, to only their products.
 
FearTheCow said:
Distinguish by not labeling the competitors product as "gaming" and screwing over any OEM or AIB that doesn't sign up.

All you have to do is look at the difference between what the blog post says and what Nvidia is dictating to know they are up to shady shit, they are hiding the requirements for a reason.
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Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups, can't assume things. Does it look shady, yeah, but don't know yet.
 
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