NVIDIA Controls AIB Launch and Driver Distribution

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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NVIDIA Controls AIB Launch and Driver Distribution

Since NVIDIA's GPP program got exposed to the world, there have been a lot of changes over at Team Green in the way information about its company is controlled. After its heavy-handed NDAs have sought to muzzle journalists that work with the company, now it is pushing back on its AIBs in order to control the AIB's actions with reviewers.

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I am never the first to jump on any company, and always like to take a step back and see/ask why first. However considering the other things that have happened, and now this, no.....Just no.

Sad to say they have not had anyone challenge them in the upper end for a while, and while it's their right to act as they are, I refuse to support that kind of action. I also refuse to support another company that can't keep up. As such, I am still sitting on my 980Ti, and looks like I will be for a while more sadly.
 
Holy shit I just read the article. What the fuck
So you can be guarenteed because they are tightly controlling the drivers, that they are fiddling the numbers
Are nVidia owned by VW by any chance?
 
Chris_B said:
The sign of a company not confident in their product.
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the more they fuck around like this, the more it stands to reason there is fundamental flaws with their products or at the very least, critical flaw with their management direction trying to heavy hand approach lock down absolutely anything and everything they possibly can (even when there is no reason to be doing so outright) stupid mofos that they are, it really does not surprise me either (nothing does to me when it comes to Nv and their BS ways)

they are shitting their pants realizing their days are numbered in PC landscape (which is a big ass amount of product volume) or, they have a feeling that when AMD optimizes the way NV did with 10 series they are in a massive amount of deep shit when AMD "shows them how it is done" and STILL have all the bells and whistles to manage it without having to resort to fancy game tweaks or proprietary nonsense that only serves them.

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will be interesting to see what takes place over the next year or so, that is for damned sure..Nv might have had the loads of money to invest in RnD (in their own way) while AMD was fighting to stay alive, now because of Ryzen (recent announce of 7nm via TSMC) likely AMD now has all the tools they need to really drive the ball home, I honestly and truly hope that Nv is "forced" to cooperate to support some (if not all) of the open source stuff AMD has made happen in the last few years, most of which has been at virtually no profit to them either (FreeSync, Vulkan on similar merits) or they absolutely are going to be paying for wanting to "keep everyone in check"

Nv might be the so called "gpu market leader" or whatever, but, when more and more see that AMD is just a "better option" (as far as keeping more $ in their pocket and away from the big bully) then whatever sales Nv currently enjoys is surely going to start drying up when Nv "buddies" give them the finger and go party at the other guys house ^.^

the more choice we have the better big time, the two horse race is not helping anyone...well except for maybe the ram makers, seems for their "we barely make anything" they all seem to be expanding at crazy levels o_O
 
Is it bad that the only thought in my head at this point is, "Please suck."

Frankly even if its 10x faster then an AMD vega refresh at this point.. I'm still not going Nvidia again.

AMDs open driver team had already won me over... all the NV shenanigans have just sealed that decision for me.
 
I honestly briefly considered dropping Nvidia as well, valid point on behalf of Kyle though.
 
ChadD said:
If nothing else all the NV shenanigans prove that they are at least concerned about what team Red and Blue are up to.
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Well, that was exactly what GPP was about. Locking its competitors out of the gaming market for years to come even if those competitors had a performance competitive product. GPP was a long term plan.
 
scojer said:
This is ridiculous. Why do they need that amount of control?
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Maybe they just want to keep the amount of leaks under control so they can better stick to their roadmaps/launch schedules. Once they get rid of the rotten apples there is a good chance they will lessen restrictions with future launches.

And ofc a bit of intimidation to show who's the boss just because they can is not out of the question either.
 
so fellas, how does that bed you made with Nvidia feel? Their actions are the culmination of a long storied history of bad behavior that people tolerated because their products were good.
 
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Mazzspeed said:
I honestly briefly considered dropping Nvidia as well, valid point on behalf of Kyle though.
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Worth dropping them for this round at least IMO.

Maybe if they eat some crow now, they can come back smarter and better the next go-round.
 
It would have been nice if every single review site told Nvidia to shove the NDA up their ass. Granted, that isn't realistic and every site would now have to purchase their review samples, but it would have put an end to this shitshow.
 
Monkey34 said:
Worth dropping them for this round at least IMO.

Maybe if they eat some crow now, they can come back smarter and better the next go-round.
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There's no way I'm dropping that kind of cash on a 2xxx series card, the pricing's a joke.
 
SickBeast said:
Based on that quote from Guru3D, he said that AMD "even regulates what brand and sample end up at what reviewer". However you could be right. What nVidia is currently doing could be even more heavy handed.
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That is not true. I have never seen this kind of control exerted over AIBs in how it marketed its own products.
 
DPI said:
Just to play counterpoint here, do we know 100% that this is really evil NVIDIA exerting iron fist control and intending to crush any dissenters, or could it be as simple as trying to ensure every reviewer is running the same driver version?
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Running the launch driver version has not been an issue for 20 years.....since they only put out ONE driver for launch that works with the card.
 
Whoever's making these decisions at nvidia is insane. Best case scenario you are spending all these resources and tarnishing your reputation to control media coverage for a few days to maybe a couple weeks?

Once the product is in the wild people will know the truth regardless. Why make yourself out to be an ass in the process.......?
 
I still dont understand them. Their performance is there, more so if money is no objection. No need for any of this.
Shit, how would it really affect them if they shipped out cards at the same time, no nda, no nothing, just set a date and out they go... Who gives a shit.. reviews are free advertising if the product is nice.
 
DPI said:
Gotcha. Just trying to rationally understand both sides, beyond the brigading "Nvidia are literally Hitler u guys and AMD could use some love" noise that permeates these threads.

What strikes me as a bit unique now that hasn't been the case for the past 20 Nvidia years, is that a subgroup of the technoblog and youtube-review sphere have calibrated themselves not to be first with a review, but first with FUD and negativity because of the pressure to stand out these days. Factor in Nvidia's 20-series expectations at a fever pitch, a seemingly intentional performance-stat vacuum Nvidia left in order to clear Pascal inventory, and that vacuum is one that the FUD-sphere has been all too happy to fill.

I'm not saying Nvidia's current practices shouldn't receive closer examination - and asses nailed to walls as applicable - but let's face it, shitting on things and assuming the worst is big business now.
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Sounds an awful like the MSM "news" networks.
 
DPI said:
Gotcha. Just trying to rationally understand both sides, beyond the brigading "Nvidia are literally Hitler u guys and AMD could use some love" noise that permeates these threads.

What strikes me as a bit unique now that hasn't been the case for the past 20 Nvidia years, is that a subgroup of the technoblog and youtube-review sphere have calibrated themselves not to be first with a review, but first with FUD and negativity because of the pressure to stand out these days. Factor in Nvidia's 20-series expectations at a fever pitch, a seemingly intentional performance-stat vacuum Nvidia left in order to clear Pascal inventory, and that vacuum is one that the FUD-sphere has been all too happy to fill.

I'm not saying Nvidia's current practices shouldn't receive closer examination - and asses nailed to walls as applicable - but let's face it, shitting on things and assuming the worst is big business now.
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I think Turing is going to be a great product. Will it hold value? For some most certainly. As for the rest of what you said above, dunno. Don't really care. We do us, let them do them...
 
DarkLegacy said:
While I have not seen Kyle be called out directly, I have seen the site itself is being called out by several YouTube content creators as well. I'm on the fence about this situation myself but will keep the unfavorable opinion that I currently have to myself for the moment.
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Posted this in the other thread and I will repost here:

Well first of all, "AMD does it too," is not much of an argument as they are not laying out facts in how all this happens.

When AMD runs GPU launches, it many time invites AIBs to have their cards be part of the launch when it has not produced its own cards. It is AMD's launch, not the AIBs. I have never seen AMD use the driver controls put in place either. That said, recently AMD has built its own cards for launches, so AIB cards were not included.

What is different here is that AIBs are handling its launches for its cards. NVIDIA is dictating to the AIBs who and more importantly who cannot be sampled directly by the AIBs. And then NVIDIA is requiring the AIBs to identify who is getting the AIB cards, asking for names, phone numbers, and emails, so that it can control who gets the driver, most likely through a secured GeForce Experience site. These are two very different things. If those people are not able to comprehend that, and the only thing they have to say is "AMD does it too," then they do not understand what exactly is going on.
 
gulguran said:
Remember Vega? The utter games they played to keep it completely quiet. This thing must be a real turd.
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That is my thinking, the games nVidia is playing leading up to the 2000 series cards makes me think they are going to be shit. Gold plated shit, but still shit.
 
Aireoth said:
That is my thinking, the games nVidia is playing leading up to the 2000 series cards makes me think they are going to be shit. Gold plated shit, but still shit.
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I doubt that they are gong to be "shit," more likely 20-30% better then the replacement (ex 2080ti vs 1080ti) but at one huge price increase for that relatively small percentage increase and the new ray tracing features will likely cause a performance hit to that of below the replacement performance at the same settings with it not enabled (due to not having the feature or having really large performance hit to enable it). Nvidia is promoting this as the next best thing since sliced bread, it is not. Sure the ray tracing thing is cool, but not $200 premium cool, more like $50 premium cool (at the 2080ti level, less so at the lower end cards).

All of the people who were part in the GPP and the NDA rules need to be called out in public and fired or Nvidia will start to loose more market share to AMD. The heads at Nvidia are being extremely shortsighted with their actions. It is just bad business on their part.
 
Denpepe said:
Elric beeing missinformed as usual, mentions Hardocp also

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So the usual NDA is totally different than the new one? If it is different, he made no mention of it. In fact he said it's just business as usual on the NDA side, nothing new.
Yes, he mentions Kyle, but does not have his info correct. IIRC Kyle said for strictly reviewers, it's fine.
 
Hagrid said:
So the usual NDA is totally different than the new one? If it is different, he made no mention of it. In fact he said it's just business as usual on the NDA side, nothing new.
Yes, he mentions Kyle, but does not have his info correct. IIRC Kyle said for strictly reviewers, it's fine.
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He makes no mention of the 5 year duration and the implications of that.
 
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