NVIDIA Pulling Plug on GPP

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So will Asus still be moving forward with the AREZ branding of Radeon cards?

I think it's now going to be called Republic of Honest Gamers where RoG will be reserved for Nvidia cards.
 
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I absolutely agree with and support boxes etc being very clearly labeled and consumers having very clear, and as idiot proof as possible, identifiers on the box.

My big concern and what I found alarming was the 'demand' to co-op existing brands from retail partners.

I am all for Green NV ROG boxes from Asus sitting next to Red AMD ROG boxes from Asus with clear NVIDIA/AMD + ROG logos.

Forcing competitors into another/new/not established brand (if true) and strong arming with supply issues and cash awards is concerning.

When I worked in the Bank Industry one could be fired for the APPEARANCE of impropriety or misconduct (conflict of intrest etc) even if the facts show innocence - just the appearance was a terminable offence.
 
So will Asus still be moving forward with the AREZ branding of Radeon cards?

That is a good question. If they do does that mean nvidia publicly bull shitted about canceling it and lied to everyone. We shall see.

It would be something if nvidia just made a blog post to get everyone off their back and manufacturers continue with the naming scheme. That would be some serious shit they pulled off lol.
 
Someone on the Nvidia blog post comments asked if Nvida was going to give refunds to all the vendors. AIB vendors completely changed the way they market their brands to suit this bastard program and now Nvidia pulls the plug on all that investment.

The AIB vendors got bent over twice by Nvidia from GPP.
 
Someone on the Nvidia blog post comments asked if Nvida was going to give refunds to all the vendors. AIB's completely changed the way they market their brands to suit this bastard program and now Nvidia pulls the plug on all that investment.

May be they they are expecting AIB's to just continue lol. That would be some crazy shit, unofficially canceled and officially active. ROFL
 
Kudos Kyle (and everyone) hopefully some folks think twice before seeing Nv as the "only" option for their $$$$.

due diligence all the way before the purchase ^.^

This is a good thing, time will tell if they actually do this or if they just find another way to be stupid MOFOS about it.

seems to me for all their prancing around, they would be the best of the best which they have proven (at least to me) they are just another proprietary or nothing corporation that seems hellbent on generally doing the minimum possible to ensure repeat sales mega $$$$$$$
vs building the best highest quality product they can.

They take pride in their product which is generally a great thing, but to go out of their way to hobble everyone and everything just to make a sale, nah, that is just weak, not strong.

I sincerely hope that AIB and OEM type vendors "remember this" and stop giving preferential treatment to Nv and just treat them as they deserve to be treated "just another company" especially when Nv went out of their way to make a "do this or else" ultimatum.
 
Yea lol @ "nvidia'' if this was totally optional vendors wouldn't go out of their way to rebrand their entire product line and change their web pages and gigabyte saying Radeon wasn't considered a gaming brand. ROFL. So yea nvidia didn't want to have to be transparent and actually hand out the details about the program so they decided to kill it. So much for gamers transparency rofl.

No brand goes out of their way to kiss Nvidia's ass if their weren't specific conditions that would put them at disadvantage.
 
Good for you Kyle for having the balls to put this program out for people to see. Glad to see Nvidia listened to the public as well, easy for a company sometimes to turn a blind eye to things. Hopefully they learn from this experience.
 
Its all been said already. Well done Kyle. Thanks for doing the work and digging on this. Thanks for protecting the folks that talked to you. I hope Nvidia has thought better of this and really are not planning GPP 2.0. By protecting your sources despite all the name calling and mud slinging, should NV pull this crap again I believe your sources will feel confident they can trust you completely.

I'm still going to vote with my wallet on my next GPU... to be honest though I was going to do that anyway. AMDs drivers have swung quality wise a lot more over the years... having said that their support for open source drivers the last year or so have convinced me its time to go back to AMD for awhile. GPP just reinforced a decision I had already come to. I hope AMD still runs with the extra good will, before Intel steps into the ring.
 
Thanks, Kyle, for being our advocate!

Now, pile onto Patreon, people!!!

Already did when I first read about GPP here. For a tech site to keep writing when someone as big as Nvidia ignores them as far as press releases and review samples is admirable and something I want to support.

Wonderful news!!! (y)
 
Wow. Didn't expect them to just cancel it. Good deal, although I would have liked to see them get smacked down in the courts a la intel.

I'm glad Kyle was able to out nVidia and get enough informed outrage going against nVidia so they were forced to drop the program rather than send it through the courts. Waiting on the courts to get through the whole process would have taken years and the program would have been in force during that time. It would have caused irreparable harm to AMD.

I also believe that victory in this manner is much more profound with a larger impact on nVidia. Going through the courts and getting hit with a fine is just business as usual. This sort of defeat for nVidia is a very different story and possibly stops them from trying again at all or at least not as soon. Kyle reported in the original article that AIBs and OEMs were not happy about the program and adding in pressure from the public and consumers against the program is what defeated GPP. That's not business as usual and the harm to the nVidia brand in the court of public opinion with no offsetting advantages against competition is likely to make nVidia think three times before trying something like this again.

Effectively being forced to drop the program in this way is much more damaging than any typical court case with some fines.
 
Pretty sure Asus already pulled the Arez brand and has the AMD RoG cards listed again.
 
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Honestly, ryzen mobile isn't much a threat to the 1060+ anyways, it's only a threat to intel's integrated graphics. And on the desktop side nvidia is already outselling AMD substantially for gaming and machine learning. Seems like GPP was just asking for anti-trust.
 
The cynic in me still thinks Nvidia will still try to pull something else, but hey, a victory is a victory, and we can use all the victory we can get as consumers.
 
Im betting it was a combinations of legalities + those getting known to signing the deal being told ... you signed .. so we are NOT buying your products anymore ..... again at the end of the day ... the mighty $ trumps all !!
 
The cynic in me still thinks Nvidia will still try to pull something else, but hey, a victory is a victory, and we can use all the victory we can get as consumers.

The optimist in me wants to think they learned a lesson but the realist wants to agree with you... something quieter and harder to detect. Shadyness doesnt go away it just scurries under cover till the lights go out again and then they will be back.
 
aaaaaaaaaaaand they can still simply cut off MDF and those promises of early access to GPUs for board development to AIBs whose branding is not to their liking.
 
Personal note:

Still not buying shit from Nvidia.

This is where things get tough as an informed and experienced consumer. Obviously GPP was only good for nVidia and I hate when companies pull these stupid tricks. I bought a pair of nVidia FE 1080 Tis from nVidia at launch at MSRP and they've been brilliant cards. It would be dishonest for me to say that I wasn't happy with the purchase. As long as nVidia can supply parts like 1080 Tis at reasonable prices, I'm gonna by from them even if I don't like the stupid tricks.
 
The only problem I have with all of this, is that people that buy NVidia will use this as an excuse to continue buying NVidia because they aren't "currently" evil. The company is still evil, it couldn't even properly save face by saying "we were trying to provide clarity but it looks like we stepped over a line, we're sorry" instead they blame the problem on the press.

This will likely impact the vendors they suspect of sharing their contracts, and this will likely still have negative impact on the industry. I still have problems with MSI, ASUS, and Gigabyte for giving into this obvious anti-competitive BS because those brands could have stopped this but decided not to. This entire thing leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I haven't liked NVidia since they implied all of their customers were idiots after selling them a defective product (6800GT's I think, maybe the 8800) and then condescendingly replied 'we know it doesn't work but out customers will just buy the next one anyway' in regards to it.

I don't buy the top end because my entire build was only $1400 so I don't need a 1080TI. AMD has been competitive at every price point I care almost every time I've looked (the "almost" is because of miners though). And, I don't currently feel like AMD thinks of me as an idiot that will just keep shelling out more money. So, I'll continue to buy AMD, hopefully they remain competitive, and hopefully my money helps them do so. You're free to spend your money how you like, you're free to be as ignorant as you like, and you're free to forget or just not believe that you enable this kind of anti-competitive BS when you support companies like NVidia.
 
The only problem I have with all of this, is that people that buy NVidia will use this as an excuse to continue buying NVidia because they aren't "currently" evil.

Lots of people have their beef with large and powerful corporations and it is often deserved. GPP was a bad thing, I have no question in my mind of that. When I look at the tech that goes into building a powerful gaming rig these days, nVidia, Intel, Microsoft, it's kind of hard to take all of those political considerations in account and actually play games on PC.
 
This whole thing really gets me thinking. There are a few other top tier tech websites that must also have the connections to know what NVIDIA was pulling. They must have known what was going on, yet said nothing. Only Kyle had the guts to tell us the truth.

How am I supposed to trust reviews and commentary from these other websites, when they obviously won't say anything that might cause NVIDIA to cut them off? Well, the answer is: I don't trust them. Not any more. Hats off to you, Kyle.
 
The entire blog post reads like a shot at the people who just wanted to hear the terms as they were written, because y'know, they claimed they were being transparent. This still feels like they're trying to be ambiguous, rather than transparent.

I wonder what the sticking points were for the AIB partners and OEMs who disagreed since Nvidia say it themselves here "Most partners agreed."
I think that's mostly rhetorical because it seems obvious to me that the OEM/AIB partners would've disagreed because despite what Nvidia might claim, if the brand has to be aligned exclusively with Nvidia how can it be anyone but Nvidia's brand?
There was definitely things happening behind closed doors, I very much doubt the online backlash was the only thing pressuring Nvidia.

That said, taking Nvidia at their word and assuming the GeForce Partner Program has been ended without any GPP2, it can't be seen as anything other than a win for the consumer in my opinion. Taking a company like Nvidia at their word after this is a hard thing to do, maybe they won't be as transparent next time and we'll never get a blog post announcing that their next GPP even exists.

Edited typos
 
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This whole thing really gets me thinking. There are a few other top tier tech websites that must also have the connections to know what NVIDIA was pulling. They must have known what was going on, yet said nothing. Only Kyle had the guts to tell us the truth.

How am I supposed to trust reviews and commentary from these other websites, when they obviously won't say anything that might cause NVIDIA to cut them off? Well, the answer is: I don't trust them. Not any more. Hats off to you, Kyle.
I would suggest to you that there was more of that going on than you think.
 
So that money they allocated for the program needs to be spent somehow now. Incoming ridiculous rebates in the future maybe?
 
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