[H]ardOCP: GeForce Partner Program Impacts Consumer Choice

[KentMan]

That's your post that uses the word blame, mate.

You're using the prefix for it being AMD's fault that this is happened. No, but it's large and part the reason it's been allowed to.

Hope that helps...


Honestly, I'd just bow out until there's some competition. At least that way it'll be easier to construct an argument.

So your basis for your argument is that if AMD were more competitive and did not let Nvidia take over the market then we wouldn't have this stuff happen?

So you have no issues with this business practice otherwise?

Seriously, anyone condoning this behavior is crazy, where does it stop? when Nvidia owns the whole market and your paying £2k for a 1030 tier card? lol

I hated having to buy my 1070 due to the wait for Vega, and was glad i did as Vega is / was a massive let down, but im eagerly waiting on AMD pulling something decent out of the hat in the future so i can get Freesync back, and because quite frankly i hate lining the pockets of Nvidia, if you think they care about giving gamers a good deal your mistaken, and yes, AMD dont care either, but atleast AMD arent concocting all sorts of illegal practices like this to keep the market gold goose locked to them.

At the end of the day, Nvidia are corrupt, this type of behavious does NOT have the enthusiast or gamers in mind, all it has in mind is lining the pockets of Nvidia and those that are willing to join the bandwagon and sell out in the process.

Anyone defending this practice is crazy, or a paid shill, there is zero defending this type of behavior.

 

[DragonQ]

The problem with that is that by your argument I shouldnt own any of the PC components that I own, or a car, or use petrol, or probably even have electric or running water in home. In other words its nonsense to suggest nvidia are the only company doing things that are not in consumers interests. I might not like it but sometimes you have no choice if you want the things you want.

No, things are not black and white. You have to choose what you are comfortable with. For example, if you want to own a smartphone whilst not exploiting underpaid, overworked workers in the far east, you're basically out of luck. If you're not bothered with that, you're fine. In the PC market there is precious little competition, but in some areas it is there. No corporation is squeaky clean but people willingly choose to support pseudo-monopolies, sadly.

 

[KillBoY_UK]

I agree with the first bit, but TressFX was never proprietary and always worked on everything and has been used more recently under the PureHair moniker in Rise of the Tomb Raider and Deus Ex Mankind Divided. Typical AMD: they did not require a developer who uses their TressFX code and modifies it to even acknowledge that it's AMD's code in the game settings menu, hence the confusion.

They've always been very bad at pushing their software even if it's superior as is the case with TressFX. Anyone remember the Bullet physics library? Well that was used in a grand total of 0 games.

wrong, it was used in GTA IV and V at the very least I know for a fact but its a handfull of games that uses it where there are many many more PhysX titles out there (the general library rather than the hardware physics)

Opens source tech is hard to push in a lot of cases, as a commercial company will take it but you make it your own and not send any new developments back, also a lack of a single company pushing it or providing its support

 

[Silent_Scone]

So your basis for your argument is that if AMD were more competitive and did not let Nvidia take over the market then we wouldn't have this stuff happen?

So you have no issues with this business practice otherwise?

Seriously, anyone condoning this behavior is crazy, where does it stop? when Nvidia owns the whole market and your paying £2k for a 1030 tier card? lol

I hated having to buy my 1070 due to the wait for Vega, and was glad i did as Vega is / was a massive let down, but im eagerly waiting on AMD pulling something decent out of the hat in the future so i can get Freesync back, and because quite frankly i hate lining the pockets of Nvidia, if you think they care about giving gamers a good deal your mistaken, and yes, AMD dont care either, but atleast AMD arent concocting all sorts of illegal practices like this to keep the market gold goose locked to them.

At the end of the day, Nvidia are corrupt, this type of behavious does NOT have the enthusiast or gamers in mind, all it has in mind is lining the pockets of Nvidia and those that are willing to join the bandwagon and sell out in the process.

Anyone defending this practice is crazy, or a paid shill, there is zero defending this type of behavior.

That's the joke, I haven't nor have I defended anything they're doing if it transpires to be within confines of the law (which remains to be known and will come down to the fine print). People are up in arms, but the reality could well likely be that if partners join the program, it will probably better them.

The only people who lose out are AMD. Which rolls back to what I've been saying all along. If there were products that truly competed in the field then this program would get laughed out of the boardroom.

 

[KentMan]

That's the joke, I haven't nor have I defended anything they're doing if it transpires to be within confines of the law (which remains to be known and will come down to the fine print). People are up in arms, but the reality could well likely be that if partners join the program, it will probably better them.

The only people who lose out are AMD. Which rolls back to what I've been saying all along. If there were products that truly competed in the field then this program would get laughed out of the boardroom.

I think until there is actual clarity on what the situation is, its just going to be speculation for both sides of the argument.

Kyle alluded to the fact that he has seen "documentation" that proves Nvidia is not telling the entire story on their site, as what they are sending partners does not match up with what they have on their website.

Unless a solid bit of info like a document comes forth or a worker at a partner company who can confirm this behaviour, i really think this will just be hot air for a few days and then disappear.

That does not mean i dont think its happening, because i do.

 

[subbytna]

https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/03/08/geforce_partner_program_impacts_consumer_choice

Nvidia "doing an Intel" then...

 

[KillBoY_UK]

At the end of the day, Nvidia are corrupt, this type of behavious does NOT have the enthusiast or gamers in mind

And AMD do? bigging up Vega with poor volt advertising when releasing something not up to scratch with pascal, Releasing Vega saying its one price but not making it clear it was only a temp rebate backed priced until a patucular number of cards was sold. One moment saying they want there cards to be for the gamer, then they release a mining optimised driver.

and that's just the past year

All big companies do "poo" things some more than others and they are all out to get as much money as they can from you they just have different methods

 

[DragonQ]

That's the joke, I haven't nor have I defended anything they're doing if it transpires to be within confines of the law (which remains to be known and will come down to the fine print). People are up in arms, but the reality could well likely be that if partners join the program, it will probably better them.

The only people who lose out are AMD. Which rolls back to what I've been saying all along. If there were products that truly competed in the field then this program would get laughed out of the boardroom.

Not just AMD. If an already near-monopoly business increases their market share even more, consumers ultimately suffer.

 

[subbytna]

So if I'm reading it right, if you want to be a part of the GPP you are not allowed to make cards with AMD/Intel GPUs you have to be Nvidia exclusive, and if you're not part of the GPP your ability to produce/sell Nvidia based cards will be hamstrung?

That's super sketchy, but on a positive side maybe it will backfire on them and result in some companies that produced both Nvidia/AMD based cards having enough and ceasing Nvidia production like XFX did...

Intel did the same thing with DELL and paying DELL not to use AMD or DELL would lose money from Intel if DELL used any AMD cpus in a sliding scale.

 

[Silent_Scone]

You're not going to see vendors like ASUS and MSI simply not sell AMD cards. It's not a plausible outcome. There's a lot of information missing here. Kyle might well have gone off half-cocked. It wouldn't be the first time. Wouldn't be the 5th time, either.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I think people are missing the point here - it possibly means if you are making a prebuilt laptop/desktop,any products orientated towards gaming have to have a Nvidia GPU,and perhaps even an Intel CPU.Why do I say that - AMD has strongish IGPs which are starting to encroach on lower end cards,which is more noticable in laptops. A number of gaming laptops have lowish end Nvidia graphics cards.

Remember as time progresses,not only will AMD CPUs be more viable for more and more gaming laptops and PCs,even their IGPs might become viable too,especially if they plan to integrate HBM2 or some high speed cache in a future release,to get over bandwidth limitations. So that means,sure you can sell an AMD GPU or even perhaps even a CPU,but only for "non-gaming" products.

The other aspect is for DIY graphics cards - outside the lower end media cards and professional cards,almost all consumer DIY cards are sold under gaming brands of one kind or another. Will that mean a company like Gigabyte(for example) will only put the better coolers,PCBs,etc on Nvidia cards and only release AMD cards using the basic reference design with no fanfare??!!

 

[sideways14a]

There's a lot of information missing here. Kyle might well have gone off half-cocked. It wouldn't be the first time. Wouldn't be the 5th time, either.

Thats less than likely, as apparently AMD tipped him and others off to this - they wont have made mistakes with it.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Thats less than likely, as apparently AMD tipped him and others off to this - they wont have made mistakes with it.

That doesn't mean anything. AMD isn't going to give away any more information than what they want you to know. They also would have chosen calculatingly who to give this story to. So all we've currently got to go on is his first piece and a handful of undisclosed opinions, whose accounts he hasn't even quoted. It's all conjecture till it sees the light of day. It's the same tit for tat we've witnessed time and time again.

 

[DragonQ]

You're not going to see vendors like ASUS and MSI simply not sell AMD cards. It's not a plausible outcome. There's a lot of information missing here. Kyle might well have gone off half-cocked. It wouldn't be the first time. Wouldn't be the 5th time, either.

IIRC the article mentions that it's all about the branding, using Asus' ROG branding as an example. If they sell nVidia products as part of the ROG brand, they can't sell competitors' products under that brand too. This isn't about Asus as a whole not being able to sell AMD or Intel GPUs, so in that regard it's not as brazen as what Intel did back in the 2000s.

 

[Aretak]

So if I'm reading it right, if you want to be a part of the GPP you are not allowed to make cards with AMD/Intel GPUs you have to be Nvidia exclusive

That's not what this is, but Nvidia have certainly taken that approach in the past, with XFX being the prime example. They used to make Nvidia cards exclusively, but decided to branch out and start making ATI cards as well. Nvidia were furious about this and in retaliation refused to let XFX have any Fermi GPUs, along with booting them from their official partner list. As a result, XFX became an AMD-exclusive vendor almost overnight and have been ever since.

https://web.archive.org/web/2010122.../item/20453-xfx-officially-stops-doing-nvidia

 

[Samwell]

Yeah, and i don't see where it should be illegal. Creating exclusive brands together with a partner is not forbidden and nothing special. Look at monitors. Adaptive sync is the technique, amd made the brand freesync and are marketing this with partners. Would Nv be allowed to join Freesync if they wanted to? I pretty much doubt it, it's under AMD trademark. So AMD is "paying" monitor manufacturers by joining their marketing efforts. As long as partners are free to sell stuff from both vendors, nothing is illegal here.

 

[ltron]

wrong, it was used in GTA IV and V at the very least I know for a fact but its a handfull of games that uses it where there are many many more PhysX titles out there (the general library rather than the hardware physics)

Opens source tech is hard to push in a lot of cases, as a commercial company will take it but you make it your own and not send any new developments back, also a lack of a single company pushing it or providing its support

I stand corrected then. I had no idea bullet physics was in GTA and I don't remember seeing any logos to that effect. It should have been front and centre so the consumer knows, especially since the physics in GTA 5 are really good.

Is it possible with open source to say "okay you can use it, but you have to advertise our name and the technology in the game particularly if you want our engineers' help with it"?

 

[D1craig]

this is probably the reason their mind share is so high. we all know (ok have our suspicions) they pay off all the reviewers on youtube for good reviews.

didnt intel do something and got revealed not so long ago? paid all the PC makers ie. HP etc. to use their cpus and not offer any from AMD?

 

[james.miller]

Yeah, and i don't see where it should be illegal. Creating exclusive brands together with a partner is not forbidden and nothing special. Look at monitors. Adaptive sync is the technique, amd made the brand freesync and are marketing this with partners. Would Nv be allowed to join Freesync if they wanted to? I pretty much doubt it, it's under AMD trademark. So AMD is "paying" monitor manufacturers by joining their marketing efforts. As long as partners are free to sell stuff from both vendors, nothing is illegal here.

You missed the part where Nvidia 'suggested' that partners would lose launch-partner status and mpp funding. In other words, "we'll bung you money If you drop AMD products from your gaming range. Don't do that and you might not be a launch partner any more. And the bungs will stop"

As for NV joining freesync...It's royalty free.

 

[Bazzards]

Not to name it “freesync” I would imagine.