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GeForce Partner Program Impacts Consumer Choice

AMD should just go back to the old days of naming their cards after animals or airplanes ect. Does Nvidia get to dictate how the hardware is designed also?
AMD does not sell cards, so outside of a GPU model name and number, they do not have a retail brand. This is exactly what GPP is about. Not allowing competitors into prolific brands that are synonymous with gaming, which outsells non-gaming brands (or non-established brands).
 
Sorry didn't meant to say AMD specifically, I know they only sell the silicon. Couldn't companies just make a gaming card without calling it a gaming card & let the reviews & word of mouth speak for itself? Not wanting to bombard you with questions, just thinking out loud.
Sure, building brand new entrenched gaming brands is cheap and easy to do. I think I am making one tomorrow. By the end of the week we will be selling it everywhere.

It continually fails me how many people of you fail to see branding and extremely valuable and costly IP to develop. ASUS has spent a decade building its ROG brand. You guys seem to think it is worthless and/or easily duplicated. It simply is not.
 
but there is a reason 'GAMING' is put on everything. you can buy GAMING external HDDs, GAMING routers, GAMING chairs.

the word GAMING and the brands associated with GAMING pretty much get free sales. ANY salesperson or distro would tell you that is PC sales 101.
Yeah but it's silly to compare sales between two completely different cards (cooler & pcb) and then say "it's caused by the name". I know you guys aren't dumb enough to compare sales between the MSI Gaming X, the MSI Armor, and the MSI Founder's Edition and then claim the Gaming X has better sales solely because of the name. It also has a better cooler, PCB, and prettier design.

Take the MSI Gaming X and then change the name to MSI X, but otherwise two identical cards, then compare the sales. The MSI Armor still exists so what exactly does GPP apply to? The word "gaming" by itself?

"ROG", "STRIX" don't contain the word gaming. Neither does "AORUS". The only company effected here is MSI.

This is why I say it makes no sense to me. There's a saying, "you keep moving the goal post", in this case the goal post is not even on the field because you guys don't know where to put it.
 
Yeah but it's silly to compare sales between two completely different cards (cooler & pcb) and then say "it's caused by the name".
Take the MSI Gaming X and then change the name to MSI X, but otherwise two identical cards, then compare the sales. The MSI Armor still exists so what exactly does GPP apply to? The word "gaming" by itself?

"ROG", "STRIX" don't contain the word gaming. Neither does "AORUS". The only company effected here is MSI.

This is why I say it makes no sense to me. There's a saying, "you keep moving the goal post", in this case the goal post is not even on the field because you guys don't know where to put it.

A gaming brand doesn't mean it has to have gaming in the name. ROG and AORUS are well known gaming brands that are heavily pushed in places like Best Buy and other retailers as the top end, defacto thing to get when you want the best gaming card or device. The brands are heavily advertised by ASUS and Gigabyte with all kinds of peripherals, computer components, and prebuilt computers and laptops in the brand.
 
Yeah but it's silly to compare sales between two completely different cards (cooler & pcb) and then say "it's caused by the name". I know you guys aren't dumb enough to compare sales between the MSI Gaming X, the MSI Armor, and the MSI Founder's Edition and then claim the Gaming X has better sales solely because of the name. It also has a better cooler, PCB, and prettier design.

Take the MSI Gaming X and then change the name to MSI X, but otherwise two identical cards, then compare the sales. The MSI Armor still exists so what exactly does GPP apply to? The word "gaming" by itself?

"ROG", "STRIX" don't contain the word gaming. Neither does "AORUS". The only company effected here is MSI.

This is why I say it makes no sense to me. There's a saying, "you keep moving the goal post", in this case the goal post is not even on the field because you guys don't know where to put it.

Gaming brand doesn't mean the single word "game". This makes no sense to you because you fail to understand pretty straightforward legal wording.
 
This statement makes no sense to me. The gaming brands are physically better cards, see: Gaming X vs Armor. Of course they sell better, the non-gaming cards are garbage. If you compare them to ref models (Founder's Edition) then it's even more drastic.
You missed it earlier, but we linked to a source that did some research on this and showed just having the word "gaming" on the box makes it sell better, even if its not. So the gaming brands that these AIBs have developed are very valuable.

Also, can you imagine if Dell can no longer put AMD cards in Alienware computers because of an Nvidia program? That is just insane.
 
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You missed it earlier, but we linked to a source that did some research on this and showed just having the word "gaming" on the box makes it sell better, even if its not.
Gigabyte just launched the RX 580 Gaming Box so clearly that's not the issue. And all of the marketing material has "gaming" written all over it. And then Gigabyte said "it's not a gaming product" and we mocked them for it. This happened just a few hours ago. People claimed GPP blocked the "AORUS" brand.

Gaming brand doesn't mean the single word "game". This makes no sense to you because you fail to understand pretty straightforward legal wording.
A gaming brand doesn't mean it has to have gaming in the name. ROG and AORUS are well known gaming brands that are heavily pushed in places like Best Buy and other retailers as the top end, defacto thing to get when you want the best gaming card or device. The brands are heavily advertised by ASUS and Gigabyte with all kinds of peripherals, computer components, and prebuilt computers and laptops in the brand.
Let's say, hypothetically, one of the companies (ASUS/MSI/Gigabyte) launches a new "Elite" series with the RX 600 cards: MSI Elite RX 680. That's a damn cool name. They can't use existing names (ROG/AORUS/GamingX) due to GPP so they invent a new one. It doesn't contain the word "gaming", it's brand new and was never marketed as a "gaming brand". What exactly are the limitations on marketing the "Elite" brand? The answer: You have no idea, no one does. The RX 580 Gaming Box product page disproves basically every argument made about the GPP in this thread.

First, GPP banned the word "gaming". That fell through, so it changed to the "gaming brand". And now we're strugging to define what that even means.
 
Also, can you imagine if Dell can no longer put AMD cards in Alienware computers because of an Nvidia program? That is just insane.

Dell had a eerily similar deal with Intel at one point... well ok it was a bit worse as they didn't sell AMD at all. Even after they did start selling them though they had further deals with Intel for top of the line / server options ect.

We all know where that landed Intel.... 1.25 Billion paid to AMD, and another 1.1 billion fine to the EU. + a bunch of smaller fines around the world.
 
First, GPP banned the word "gaming". That fell through, so it changed to the "gaming brand". And now we're strugging to define what that even means.

When did Kyle ever state GPP blocked the word Game.

From his article.
"Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce."

He has never not been clear.
 
When did Kyle ever state GPP blocked the word Game.

From his article.
"Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce."

He has never not been clear.
A few posts up they pointed out "Gaming" increases sales three fold. According to what we've seen so far, companies can still use the word "Gaming" in the product name and on the box.
 
First, GPP banned the word "gaming". That fell through, so it changed to the "gaming brand". And now we're strugging to define what that even means.
I have zero knowledge of that and never stated that, so you must have better information than I do.

As someone with knowledge of the industry how much do you think this could hurt AMD sales, 10%, 20%?
60M to 100M units over the next 2 years.

When did Kyle ever state GPP blocked the word Game.

From his article.
"Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce."

He has never not been clear.
Thank you sir. Reading is fundamental.
 
Wait, let's revisit that sentence of yours;

This is a very clear and concise explanation of the problem and a direct result of NVidia's manipulation of AIB and OEM marketing options.

I don't know how you can read this and not see it as anti-competitive.

No, this is not anti-competitive. AMD can still compete with Nvidia but not using the same premium gaming brand. What Nvidia has done is made their cards much more attractive to customers than AMD cards. This is what every company seeks to do. They want their products to significantly outsell the competition and they market their products in order to do so. I reiterate again as I have done several times already, Nvidia is not stopping the sales of AMD cards. They are not forcing AIBs with threats like Intel did to completely stop selling AMD cards. What they have done is purchase the premium gaming brands. I don't see anything wrong with this. AMD is free to do exactly the same if they have the money to do so. This is so simple, I don't see why you refuse to get it.
 
No, this is not anti-competitive. AMD can still compete with Nvidia but not using the same premium gaming brand. What Nvidia has done is made their cards much more attractive to customers than AMD cards. This is what every company seeks to do. They want their products to significantly outsell the competition and they market their products in order to do so. I reiterate again as I have done several times already, Nvidia is not stopping the sales of AMD cards. They are not forcing AIBs with threats like Intel did to completely stop selling AMD cards. What they have done is purchase the premium gaming brands. I don't see anything wrong with this. AMD is free to do exactly the same if they have the money to do so. This is so simple, I don't see why you refuse to get it.

Intel did not stop the sale of AMD CPUs back in the day, they just made it make absolutely no sense to do so.

This is Anti-competitive in the same way: taking a market of products (gaming branded cards) and forcing out a competitor not by the merit of their product, but through contracts and threats.

If this wasn't Anti-competitive, why do you think LITERALLY EVERYONE INVOLVED is so hush-hush about it? I've heard people confirm Nvidia is doing the rounds calling various tech youtubers asking them NOT to talk about it. the reason? "It's no big deal, nobody will care, nobody really wants to know..." In other words: there is no legal reason you can't talk about it, but nvidia would REALLY LIKE IT if nobody talked about it.
 
Intel did not stop the sale of AMD CPUs back in the day, they just made it make absolutely no sense to do so.

This is Anti-competitive in the same way: taking a market of products (gaming branded cards) and forcing out a competitor not by the merit of their product, but through contracts and threats.

If this wasn't Anti-competitive, why do you think LITERALLY EVERYONE INVOLVED is so hush-hush about it? I've heard people confirm Nvidia is doing the rounds calling various tech youtubers asking them NOT to talk about it. the reason? "It's no big deal, nobody will care, nobody really wants to know..." In other words: there is no legal reason you can't talk about it, but nvidia would REALLY LIKE IT if nobody talked about it.

Didn't Intel force motherboard manufacturers to ship AMD motherboards in plain nondescript boxes? I seem to remember that happening.
 
So a brand that a company used to define their premium/enthusiast products and they used this branding for lines from amd and nvidia. now in order to get the latest nvidia gpu allocation and nvidia help in board design they must sign this contract that states they can only sell nvidia cards under their premium/enthusiast products branding. now in order to sell amd cards they have to come up with completely new branding for their premium/enthusiast cards.... yeah nothing to see here move along.... i await the usage of the hammer for some of these nvidia apologists!

I don't see a problem with that. Companies are not static entities. They grow and adapt based on prevailing marketing conditions, technology, etc. A companies brand does not have to be rigid. Just because a premium brand has housed Nvidia and AMD does not mean it should do this forever! Nvidia has not forced AIBs into GPP. They are perfectly fine not signing up but of course they will be at a disadvantage to other AIBs under GPP. Companies give preferential treatment to their partners they have good working relationships with. This is nothing new.

If AMD was not being locked out of AIB's existing branding we would have seen that by now from credible sources (for example the AIB partners) all of which are conspicuously quite.

Silence often speaks louder than words.

You completely missed the meaning of my statement. When I say "locked out" I mean locked out of being sold by a particular AIB. Of course AMD is locked out of the premium brands. That's the whole point of GPP! But I don't see anything wrong with it. Nvidia is offering an optional service and paying AIBs to use the service. Pure and simple.

Threatening to cut off supplies of chips as well as cut off engineering help regarding those chips as well as cut off advertising dollars if the companies do not turn over their established gaming brands to nVidia is somehow not extortion? You should look up the definition of extortion since you don't seem to understand what it is. Extortion is illegal.

That is not extortion. Extortion implies a mandatory requirement with no option to refuse. Nvidia has said that AIBs are free not to sign up for GPP. Can you show me proof that Nvidia will stop shipments of GPUs to AIBs not on GPP? And even if this is true, so what? Nvidia is free to sell their GPUs to whomever they choose based on whatever criteria they want. You have to remember that this is a capitalist society striving for a free market. Players are free to do what they want as long as they do not break financial regulations.

Small 'coincidences' are starting to add up.
Nvidia/aibs going dark, the Gigabyte box, AMD cards glitching out on MSI's website, Newegg/Amazon appears to be missing exclusively Aorus/ROG/Gaming AMD cards. All within the last few days.

Wow, you simply do not get my statement. We can conclude that all your "coincidences" are infact due to GPP. So what? Nvidia and AMD are free to give money to AIBs to exclusively use their premium gaming brands. Nvidia chose to do so while AMD did not. It is that simple.
 
Intel did not stop the sale of AMD CPUs back in the day, they just made it make absolutely no sense to do so.

This is Anti-competitive in the same way: taking a market of products (gaming branded cards) and forcing out a competitor not by the merit of their product, but through contracts and threats.

If this wasn't Anti-competitive, why do you think LITERALLY EVERYONE INVOLVED is so hush-hush about it? I've heard people confirm Nvidia is doing the rounds calling various tech youtubers asking them NOT to talk about it. the reason? "It's no big deal, nobody will care, nobody really wants to know..." In other words: there is no legal reason you can't talk about it, but nvidia would REALLY LIKE IT if nobody talked about it.

Care to explain exactly how Intel made it make no sense to sell AMD? Nvidia could be hush-hush not because it is anti-competitive but because of the potential PR nightmare. And we can see examples of this with all the hilarious nerd rage in this thread, LMAO.
 
Care to explain exactly how Intel made it make no sense to sell AMD? Nvidia could be hush-hush not because it is anti-competitive but because of the potential PR nightmare. And we can see examples of this with all the hilarious nerd rage in this thread, LMAO.

Intel were offering unofficial incentives to OEMs (the only ones with actual figures on public record were to HP) to the tune of 1 Billion dollars a year (that Billion with a B) (That's also just for HP, Dell, Acer, and others were part of "the mother of all incentives" program) if the OEMs did not include AMD CPUs in their catalogue. Thus proving that paid incentives for product exclusivity is an anti-competitive act.
 
No, this is not anti-competitive. AMD can still compete with Nvidia but not using the same premium gaming brand. What Nvidia has done is made their cards much more attractive to customers than AMD cards. This is what every company seeks to do. They want their products to significantly outsell the competition and they market their products in order to do so. I reiterate again as I have done several times already, Nvidia is not stopping the sales of AMD cards. They are not forcing AIBs with threats like Intel did to completely stop selling AMD cards. What they have done is purchase the premium gaming brands. I don't see anything wrong with this. AMD is free to do exactly the same if they have the money to do so. This is so simple, I don't see why you refuse to get it.

In your own post you just used the text book description of anti-competitive practice, and exclusive dealing. The brand in question does NOT belong to NV. It is their customers brand. Taking it over by force in a contract... with the implication that not signing will hamper your business, is illegal.

Are their cards more attractive to customers... well some of you right now I guess that may be true, that doesn't give them the right to tie vendors to them in exclusive deals. AMD is not free to do exactly the same thing because it is ILLEGAL. AMD is not allowed to say to companies selling Radeon Pro for workstations that they can't give them supply if AMD doesn't OWN their premium workstation brand... that would be 100% illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_dealing
"In competition law, exclusive dealing refers to an arrangement whereby a retailer or wholesaler is ‘tied’ to purchase from a supplier on the understanding that no other distributor will be appointed or receive supplies in a given area."

In case you still don't think this is a legal issue....

https://www.theantitrustattorney.com/files/2013/12/ICN-Exclusive-Dealing-Workbook-Chapter.pdf

"2. Exclusive dealing arrangements can take a number of forms. One possibility is a contract between the seller and buyer that requires the buyer to purchase all units of a particular product from the seller (sometimes called a ―requirements contract‖). More typically, however, a reseller agrees to sell only the product sold by the seller or a downstream manufacturer agrees to use only the seller‘s input in goods sold downstream. The exclusivity need not be expressly stated in a formal agreement but may rather be the de facto result of agreements or a seller‘s policy not to deal with a purchaser that purchases its rivals‘ products."

"3. Among the practices considered in this chapter under the rubric of ―exclusive dealing arrangements‖ are those that do not contractually require total exclusivity but have many of the same characteristics. Such arrangements include provisions that require a distributor or retailer to purchase a high percentage (rather than all) of its needs for a particular good and/or provide for limited exceptions to selling only the product of the upstream seller. For example, this may be the case with a stocking requirement or a minimum purchase requirement."

Or in this case.... a requirement to align a companies most PROFITABLE best selling brand;
"Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce."

The law in most countries in this area is a freaking mess and all over the place... still this type of contract is no doubt covered by more then a few laws in the US the EU Australia and Asia. If AMD where to bring suit they would likely win eventually... I am sure they would rather simply be able to supply parts to the industries gaming brands, then wait 10 years for a NV payout.
 
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Care to explain exactly how Intel made it make no sense to sell AMD? Nvidia could be hush-hush not because it is anti-competitive but because of the potential PR nightmare. And we can see examples of this with all the hilarious nerd rage in this thread, LMAO.

Like how Intel gave rebates to companies like Dell, Gateway, Acer, Samsung, etc to specifically not sell AMD CPUs. Intel's payouts made up 38% of Dell's operating profit in 2006.
 
Care to explain exactly how Intel made it make no sense to sell AMD? Nvidia could be hush-hush not because it is anti-competitive but because of the potential PR nightmare. And we can see examples of this with all the hilarious nerd rage in this thread, LMAO.

I think he means Intel contracts never (accept in the case of Dell anyway) stated flat out don't sell AMD. They said Intel must be the sole supplier of PREMIUM brands. So I think you can understand.... replace premium with gaming and there you are. They offered co-marketing money (not payoffs) in most cases... again Dell where the main slime balls that accepted "rebate" payments. lol
 
That is not extortion. Extortion implies a mandatory requirement with no option to refuse. Nvidia has said that AIBs are free not to sign up for GPP. Can you show me proof that Nvidia will stop shipments of GPUs to AIBs not on GPP? And even if this is true, so what? Nvidia is free to sell their GPUs to whomever they choose based on whatever criteria they want. You have to remember that this is a capitalist society striving for a free market. Players are free to do what they want as long as they do not break financial regulations.

You obviously did not look up the definition of extortion. If you had, you wouldn't have posted this. I'll advise you again to look up the definition. The GPP is the textbook definition of extortion.

GPP to AIBs: Give us your gaming brand or that nVidia silicon you've been getting is going to dry up. That engineering help you've been getting is going to be non-existent. Those advertising dollars are going to disappear. You're perfectly free not to sign up but you won't be able to do business with us anymore.

Businesses are not free to set any terms they feel like for selling their products. Anyone with even the smallest amount of legal knowledge knows this.
 
Let's not forget Intel manipulating benchmarks.

https://www.theverge.com/2014/11/2/...llegedly-manipulating-benchmarks-15-years-ago

I mean this all worked out perfectly for Intel. It cost them what? A billion dollars and some lawyer fees for a almost complete monopoly in the CPU market for over a decade? Intel still hasn't paid the $1.25 billion it owes to the EU for this.

The tech websites and tech enthusiasts didn't care. They carried on as usual without batting an eye. "Buy Intel because frame rate." It'll be the same with Nvidia, maybe a billion settlement to AMD for control of over 95% of the GPU market with lots of tech websites and enthusiasts saying "buy Nvidia because frame frate."
 
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You need to have a product worth giving a premium brand. AMD got nothing and the entire 2018 is completely dead for them not to mention 2019. Being 3 generations behind is a problem.

Then people can make up whatever the excuse they want for why it is as it is and make up whatever stories they need as an excuse.

https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/03/05/asus_rog_strix_rx_vega_56_o8g_gaming_review/
Granted good luck finding one in stock... but I would take one over a 1070ti happily. Equals it in games... gives me true open drivers in Linux, and superior compute performance.

https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/02/08/asus_rog_strix_rx_vega_64_o8g_gaming_video_card/

3 generations behind ?

The only issue has been supply AMD as NV is having a hard time keeping up with the mining / ai compute demand. Vega is right in line with 1070 / 1080. The vega die shink is coming this year, not that those chips will hit retail cards for awhile... as AMD is likely to use most of those in the Radeon Pro lineup. Their Navi GPU likely won't hit till 2019 sure, and there is a very good chance its design will cater more to compute stuffs.

Anyway to get back to the topic. Even if everyone where to agree that AMD sucked right now... what if Navi really is some radical design that destroys anything NV has on offer. I guess NV will be quite happy they locked all the OEMs into not putting AMD parts in their top tier brands.
 
First, GPP banned the word "gaming". That fell through, so it changed to the "gaming brand". And now we're strugging to define what that even means.
You are just making a strawman argument here.
Btw. the precise words in the GPP document which Kyle read aloud during the PCWorld Interview were "agreed gaming brand" (around 0:12:00).

You need to have a product worth giving a premium brand. AMD got nothing and the entire 2018 is completely dead for them not to mention 2019. Being 3 generations behind is a problem.
And that would not be something we can blame NVidia for. However the GPP prevents even competitive AMD cards from using the gaming brands, thus impacting consumer choice.
 
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Wow there is a whole lot of unable to think syndrome with this one...

KYLE... Can we PLEASE have a "Dislike" button in the forum, people like this remind me that Ignorance needs punishing...
It must be hell living without being able to tell the difference between a "gaming brand" (eg: ROG, Alienware) and the word "gaming" Nah, what am I thinking I've been told ignorance is bliss.
 
What would sell better, a $400,000 Ferrari or a $400,000 Ferrari without the Ferrari emblem, branding and without any reference or marketing that it is a Ferrari?
 
What would sell better, a $400,000 Ferrari or a $400,000 Ferrari without the Ferrari emblem, branding and without any reference or marketing that it is a Ferrari?
We actually have a real world example for that. The Dino. And it is still to this daynot mentioned on par with "real" Ferraris.
 
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No, this is not anti-competitive. AMD can still compete with Nvidia but not using the same premium gaming brand. . .... They are not forcing AIBs with threats like Intel did to completely stop selling AMD cards. .....What they have done is purchase the premium gaming brands.

Several questions for you

Who owns the premium brands ....who does the ROG brand actually belong to?

Future supply of nVidia chips was threaten if AIBs did not sign up. Is that a threat or just an kindly invitation to join in your mind?

If they have 'bought' the ROG brand from Asus ....what was the price and did Asus willingly sell?
 
We actually have a real world example for that. The Dino. And it is still to this daynot mentioned on par with "real" Ferraris.

True. So it's basically missing the prestige, which is associated with the Ferrari name, which is accomplished through branding/image.
 
It must be hell living without being able to tell the difference between a "gaming brand" (eg: ROG, Alienware) and the word "gaming" Nah, what am I thinking I've been told ignorance is bliss.

In my Defense, I was replying to Gigabyte's claim that the card was not for gamers, not that the gpp limits the word 'game'.
 
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