nVidia GeForce Partner Program: Well Intention Marketing or Anti-Competitive

[XenosTech]

Well this is not surprising at all... This mostly stood out to me in the gaming monitors at first where the gsync would be the creme de la creme of the line but the freesync ones would be a tier or two below those. Later I noticed it with gaming products in general were like this.

[RagnarokDel]

2 hours ago, manikyath said:

just one thing.. how can this be anti-competitive against intel?

they sell CPUs for gaming devices and are working on creating their own discrete gpus.

[DoctorWho1975]

What would have really helped AMD is if Vega was not a heaping pile of shit.

[ItsMitch]

tl;dr on OP? 

[Jito463]

2 hours ago, AresKrieger said:

given that this is in essence hearsay from a rival company

While AMD did bring this to HardOCP's attention initially, they rejected that story.  The article linked in the OP was from their own research into the program.

49 minutes ago, DoctorWho1975 said:

What would have really helped AMD is if Vega was not a heaping pile of ****.

I don't know why people keep propagating this.  Granted, Vega may be more power hungry than the competition, but that doesn't make it awful.

[DoctorWho1975]

It was awful, incredibly power hungry requiring significant tweaking to get it at best to perform between a 1070 and 1080 made in such low numbers they were more scarce than a feed without vacuum cleaners. Over hyped, over priced and under performing while consuming insane amounts of power that can't touch NVidia's top reference GPU much less AIB's.. that is a pile of shit.

[Dabombinable]

Another possible reason as well is that AMD knows that they would lose a lawsuit, adding to another possible reason for going to the media for the COPO.

[mr moose]

36 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Another possible reason as well is that AMD knows that they would lose a lawsuit, adding to another possible reason for going to the media for the COPO.

So many possibilities for lawsuits,  Nvidia take HardOPC to court for slander, AMD deny everything, board partners were all anonymous "off record" becasue on the record they said nothing.

 

We really haven't got much to go at all.  

[mr moose]

Also how on earth can this be anti-competative against Intel and AMD?  a gaming system is going to have to have one of those CPU's in it.  I mean, it's not like dell or alienware can sign an agreement not to use Intel or AMD products in a "gaming" system. 

 

 

[Dabombinable]

11 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Also how on earth can this be anti-competative against Intel and AMD?  a gaming system is going to have to have one of those CPU's in it.  I mean, it's not like dell or alienware can sign an agreement not to use Intel or AMD products in a "gaming" system. 

 

 

As Linus pointed out on the WAN show, manufacturers can't afford to burn bridges. For example if Dell signed a deal with Intel to only use their CPU exclusively, and Intel badly fucked up the designs of the CPU used, it would hurt their; laptop, OEM PC and server segments significantly.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, Dabombinable said:

As Linus pointed out on the WAN show, manufacturers can't afford to burn bridges.

But they can afford to throw accusations around like water.   Richard huddy did this every chance he got.

[leadeater]

22 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Also how on earth can this be anti-competative against Intel and AMD?  a gaming system is going to have to have one of those CPU's in it.  I mean, it's not like dell or alienware can sign an agreement not to use Intel or AMD products in a "gaming" system. 

Well it has happened before, Intel. It's likely just an issue of bad wording in the agreement or something that can be easily fixed.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, DoctorWho1975 said:

It was awful, incredibly power hungry requiring significant tweaking to get it at best to perform between a 1070 and 1080 made in such low numbers they were more scarce than a feed without vacuum cleaners. Over hyped, over priced and under performing while consuming insane amounts of power that can't touch NVidia's top reference GPU much less AIB's.. that is a pile of shit.

You might want to stipulate which Vega GPU because the Vega 64 is pretty much dead on a GTX 1080 in all but a select few games, about as many as the select few where the Vega 64 is faster.

 

Noise wise a Vega 64 AIB is quieter than Founders Editions cards and the power is higher but last I checked I and most actual people using and playing a game don't care how much power is being used. People bring up power to point at GPU temperatures and noise but both of those are completely fine with AIB cards, so yes more power but so?

 

If you want a 1080Ti level of performance and can pay for it well then guess what you'll be buying, if you don't have that kind of money and are looking at lesser card personal bias interfering with a purchase analysis is a bad thing.

 

All that being said Vega 64 is not the optimal configuration of the GPU on a technical analysis level, that goes to the Vega 56 and if you buy a 1070 over that card the price better back it up.

[mr moose]

40 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Well it has happened before, Intel. It's likely just an issue of bad wording in the agreement or something that can be easily fixed.

Bad wording or dodgy reporting?

 

EDIT:  I mean what Intel did was straight up blackmail and anti consumer, however this reads that OEMS can't use AMD products in a "gaming" system, which would leave the only option being Intel for the CPU.  But the original article also claims this would disadvantage Intel.  ??

[leadeater]

16 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Bad wording or dodgy reporting?

Can't know for now, doesn't look like we can actually get access to the documents to read them ourselves. I looked at the Terms and Conditions of the Nvidia Partner Program but that appears to be different to this one.

 

This is the troublesome part

Quote

NVIDIA will tell you that it is 100% up to its partner company to be part of GPP, and from the documents I have read, if it chooses not to be part of GPP, it will lose the benefits of GPP which include: high-effort engineering engagements -- early tech engagement -- launch partner status -- game bundling -- sales rebate programs -- social media and PR support -- marketing reports -- Marketing Development Funds (MDF). MDF is likely the standout in that list of lost benefits if the company is not a GPP partner.

The issue comes in if there is good reason to not want to be in GPP and why that is.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Can't know for now, don't look like we can actually get access to the documents to read them ourselves. I looked at the Terms and Conditions of the Nvidia Partner Program but that appears to be different to this one.

 

This is the troublesome part

The issue comes in if there is good reason to not want to be in GPP and why that is.

That's not a quote from Nvidia though.  Where does that come from?

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, mr moose said:

That's not a quote from Nvidia though.  Where does that come from?

From HardOCP and the documents they were reading, but like above hard to know since we can't read them. For all we know they are fake or HardOCP is doing a massive stretch of interpretations to get views.

[Derangel]

30 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Bad wording or dodgy reporting?

 

EDIT:  I mean what Intel did was straight up blackmail and anti consumer, however this reads that OEMS can't use AMD products in a "gaming" system, which would leave the only option being Intel for the CPU.  But the original article also claims this would disadvantage Intel.  ??

Its pretty obviously for GPUs. How it effects things like APUs, if at all, is unknown. If it does effect APUs then that means it would account for AMD AND Intel chips with integrated graphics. Meaning that unless a Nvidia chip is in a laptop with those products it could not be called a "gaming" laptop.

[Guest The Viking]

3 hours ago, DoctorWho1975 said:

What would have really helped AMD is if Vega was not a heaping pile of shit.

 

2 hours ago, Jito463 said:

I don't know why people keep propagating this.  Granted, Vega may be more power hungry than the competition, but that doesn't make it awful.

 

2 hours ago, DoctorWho1975 said:

It was awful, incredibly power hungry requiring significant tweaking to get it at best to perform between a 1070 and 1080 made in such low numbers they were more scarce than a feed without vacuum cleaners. Over hyped, over priced and under performing while consuming insane amounts of power that can't touch NVidia's top reference GPU much less AIB's.. that is a pile of shit.

 

I can beat a gtx1080 in half the games with 10%+ fps at 200-250W. Not sure what you are on about. The other half are... gamework titles 

 

Granted, I paid a premium for it (750e for the watercooled vega 64), but so far I've loved my vega. Wouldn't give it up even for a lifetime of free top-tier gtx cards.

 

Spoiler

And at least we have nice-looking driver software with better options than novideo... I would pay extra just for that 

 

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

From HardOCP and the documents they were reading, but like above hard to know since we can't read them. For all we know they are fake or HardOCP is doing a massive stretch of interpretations to get views.

 

Maybe they should release said documents, I mean they spent a 1/3 of the article trying to cover their arse with letters they have sent and explanations to the readers regarding possible future fall out (even to the point of claiming any future Nvidia reviews will likely be funded in house).

 

2 minutes ago, Derangel said:

Its pretty obviously for GPUs. How it effects things like APUs, if at all, is unknown. If it does effect APUs then that means it would account for AMD AND Intel chips with integrated graphics. Meaning that unless a Nvidia chip is in a laptop with those products it could not be called a "gaming" laptop.

 

Which just doesn't sound like a good proposition from any angle.    I get why Intel did it, the case was much simpler and the power they held over OEMs was immense, but in this case it is not quite the same.  It's like a very big legal gamble for a company already at the top by such a good margin. 

[Derangel]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

Maybe they should release said documents, I mean they spent a 1/3 of the article trying to cover their arse with letters they have sent and explanations to the readers regarding possible future fall out (even to the point of claiming any future Nvidia reviews will likely be funded in house).

 

 

Which just doesn't sound like a good proposition from any angle.    I get why Intel did it, the case was much simpler and the power they held over OEMs was immense, but in this case it is not quite the same.  It's like a very big legal gamble for a company already at the top by such a good margin. 

Them having the top is part of why they're doing it. They need to keep pushing more to keep shareholders satisfied. Right now the dedticated GPU market is one of their biggest money makers. Until other avenues hit off they need to keep relying on it doing better and pleasing shareholders. On top of that I can't imagine Jensen was happy about that Intel-AMD partnership. So this is a chance to cripple that from effecting their gaming laptop market. Plus, I doubt Nvidia has ever been happy with some AIBs making cards from both brands.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Derangel said:

Them having the top is part of why they're doing it. They need to keep pushing more to keep shareholders satisfied. Right now the dedticated GPU market is one of their biggest money makers. Until other avenues hit off they need to keep relying on it doing better and pleasing shareholders. On top of that I can't imagine Jensen was happy about that Intel-AMD partnership. So this is a chance to cripple that from effecting their gaming laptop market. Plus, I doubt Nvidia has ever been happy with some AIBs making cards from both brands.

It's still a very big gamble.  We know the dGPU market is shrinking (all markets are shrinking), This has effected everyone in the industry.   Nvidia's market is essentially 50/50 data centre and GTX branded cards.  They have many more options than to risk billion dollar fines on a poorly executed attempt to corner the market.   Don't get me wrong,  I strongly believe this is the easiest legal mistake not to make, So if it turns out nvidia did exactly what people are accusing them of, I will be the first to mock them publicly. 

[Derangel]

Just now, mr moose said:

It's still a very big gamble.  We know the dGPU market is shrinking (all markets are shrinking), This has effected everyone in the industry.   Nvidia's market is essentially 50/50 data centre and GTX branded cards.  They have many more options than to risk billion dollar fines on a poorly executed attempt to corner the market.   Don't get me wrong,  I strongly believe this is the easiest legal mistake not to make, So if it turns out nvidia did exactly what people are accusing them of, I will be the first to mock them publicly. 

Its a gamble but not that big. Its the same thing all companies do when they take illegal actions or actions that could cost them a lot of money. Risk assessment. What is the cost of being caught vs the profit to be made. If the profit potential is high enough then who cares about the law? Every major company breaks the law and probably does so fairly often. Intel got fined billions of dollars but they made many times that.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Derangel said:

Its a gamble but not that big. Its the same thing all companies do when they take illegal actions or actions that could cost them a lot of money. Risk assessment. What is the cost of being caught vs the profit to be made. If the profit potential is high enough then who cares about the law? Every major company breaks the law and probably does so fairly often. Intel got fined billions of dollars but they made many times that.

I get that, that's why Intel did it.   However everything they are making is selling (shelves are empty).  Right now even if they could wrestle another 10% potential market share from AMD (at the expense of a lawsuit from Intel) they are not going to actually sell that many more GPU's, because they'd have to find a way to step up production first.

[Derangel]

37 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I get that, that's why Intel did it.   However everything they are making is selling (shelves are empty).  Right now even if they could wrestle another 10% potential market share from AMD (at the expense of a lawsuit from Intel) they are not going to actually sell that many more GPU's, because they'd have to find a way to step up production first.

Its selling now, but it won't be forever. Right now is the best time for them to do it. When things stabilize they could be in a position to entirely sink AMD in the GPU market. The right time to do something like this isn't in the middle of new launches or when shelves are flush with products. Right now they can use this to bully AIBs and OEMs with threats of getting even less allocation.