Friday, May 4th 2018
NVIDIA Ends Controversial GeForce Partner Program (GPP)
NVIDIA late Friday announced that it is ending the controversial GeForce Partner Program (GPP). The "program" was a revision in the terms of sale of NVIDIA graphics processors to AIC (add in card) partners (such as EVGA, ASUS, GIGABYTE, etc.), which in regulator-baiting language, called for AIC partners to keep their gaming-centric brands (such as ASUS ROG, GIGABYTE Aorus, MSI Gaming, etc.) exclusive to NVIDIA GeForce GPUs, thereby de-listing AMD Radeon GPUs. Companies like ASUS went as far as stripping its AMD Radeon products of even the "ASUS" brand, relegating them to a new "AREZ" brand.
Apparently the blow-back was harder than expected, and NVIDIA buckled. The main forces behind NVIDIA withdrawing GPP may not be fear of government regulators, but OEMs, such as Dell and HP, refusing to sign up. AMD is known in the OEM circles for great pricing, which is what scores it design wins with giants such as Apple. That's something big OEMs would never want to let go of. Had Dell, for example, signed up for GPP, it would have meant the end of AMD Radeon GPUs in Alienware desktops.
Far from sounding apologetic, NVIDIA's announcement of "pulling the plug" on GPP reads of the company begrudgingly ending the program, defending its "benefits to gamers" to the very end. NVIDIA didn't even give the announcement the dignity of a formal press-release, but a blog post, pasted verbatim:
Apparently the blow-back was harder than expected, and NVIDIA buckled. The main forces behind NVIDIA withdrawing GPP may not be fear of government regulators, but OEMs, such as Dell and HP, refusing to sign up. AMD is known in the OEM circles for great pricing, which is what scores it design wins with giants such as Apple. That's something big OEMs would never want to let go of. Had Dell, for example, signed up for GPP, it would have meant the end of AMD Radeon GPUs in Alienware desktops.
A lot has been said recently about our GeForce Partner Program. The rumors, conjecture and mistruths go far beyond its intent. Rather than battling misinformation, we have decided to cancel the program.No, NVIDIA, this isn't the way it's meant to be played.
GPP had a simple goal - ensuring that gamers know what they are buying and can make a clear choice.
NVIDIA creates cutting-edge technologies for gamers. We have dedicated our lives to it. We do our work at a crazy intense level - investing billions to invent the future and ensure that amazing NVIDIA tech keeps coming. We do this work because we know gamers love it and appreciate it. Gamers want the best GPU tech. GPP was about making sure gamers who want NVIDIA tech get NVIDIA tech.
With GPP, we asked our partners to brand their products in a way that would be crystal clear. The choice of GPU greatly defines a gaming platform. So, the GPU brand should be clearly transparent - no substitute GPUs hidden behind a pile of techno-jargon.
Most partners agreed. They own their brands and GPP didn't change that. They decide how they want to convey their product promise to gamers. Still, today we are pulling the plug on GPP to avoid any distraction from the super exciting work we're doing to bring amazing advances to PC gaming.
This is a great time to be a GeForce partner and be part of the fastest growing gaming platform in the world. The GeForce gaming platform is rich with the most advanced technology. And with GeForce Experience, it is "the way it's meant to be played."
149 Comments on NVIDIA Ends Controversial GeForce Partner Program (GPP)
Tangentially, I see some posts calling for boycott and some posts expecting/calling for fanboys to defend shady corporate tactics ... is it so hard to learn how to separate comapny's product (gpu arch/silicon/software) and inter-corporate dirty-fighting techniques ... there are mechanisms to punish/fine anti-competitive behavior that should be exercised here and certainly not by reduction of our choice.
After all, as i said at #81 ( www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/nvidia-ends-controversial-geforce-partner-program-gpp.243921/page-4#post-3838330 )
GamersNexus last video implied that likely one of the reasons that some of the big-laptop "industry-gamers" have denied GPP, was that they might already had similar deals with other ones (Intel), and this was causing them a conflict of interest. I can't find his comment unreasonable at all.That's what i find the most laughable part of this hole GPP story , since i keep thinking of it and i can't stop laughing:laugh: , so i have to tell it !! :
What has happened with this GPP case? :
NONE of the major multinational-billion-dollar companies (*AIBs, AMD, DELL, HP... ) "dared" to move against the "dreadful" nVidia except from ....Kyle Bennet !!!:roll:
Kyle doesn't seem to be afraid of this "evil empire" and their "dirty tactics" now does he ?:roll::laugh::roll: So what's the conclusion in all this? :
If Kyle can do it, then ...maaayyybeee ....the multi-billion-multi-national companies can do it as well !!!:roll::laugh::roll: !! They don't have to be "afraid" of the consequences that much!! (*Unless of course .... "something is rotten in the state of Denmark" !! :rolleyes: )
... you may call this fear of poverty if you like
On the opposite side, Kyle wasn't afraid this hole retaliation, although some rumours say that [H] will lose much of the benefits it used to have untill now and its ties with the AIBs, and i even heard that [H] might close !!
www.google.nl/search?q=HP+no+GPP&rlz=1C1GCEA_enNL780NL780&oq=HP+no+GPP&aqs=chrome..69i57.2847j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
it was implied that one of the reasons that some of the big-laptop "industry-gamers" have denied GPP, was that they might already had similar deals with other ones (Intel), and this was causing a conflict of interest. ( give a look at16:00m of GN's last video)
EDIT: You misunderstood my intents..... first of all he wasn't 100% certain,he has just gave a possible explanation. Secondly,... the only reason i'm accepting a lot of youtuber's "word" is ONLY because most people seem to have no problem to accept Kyle's word !! So, Kyle's word is fine but Steve's is wrong? no, doesn't go that way, at least in my opinion.
Kyle actually had something he could not let go off and actually took a huge risk because he felt the truth was more important than his website, and because he also felt that a line was crossed. Thát is taking a stance, not what GN is doing.
As to your edit above, I think my ninja edits already explain it nicely why one person is credible and the other, for all I care, can go die in a hole. All GN does is feed on another one's headline, carefully avoiding any risk to its own operation.
Personally, whenever i think of it i can't stop laughing !!!;):laugh:
Best hits of his résumé(thanks to Tottentraz at B3D)
Of course Kyle is afraid. But he's one person, and will likely be okay even if HardOCP goes bust and he'll have to find another job. For all we know he already has more than one source of income. And while losing the site you've invested heaps of time and work into is devastating, many journalists would be willing to risk that to unearth a wrongdoing of a big enough scale. That's journalistic integrity. It's about principles. And principles can be - and often are - stronger than "rational" worries.
As for myself, as i have already said in a previous post, i have personal reasons to have doubts.
--The first and most obvious (for the other people) reason, is that i was given a warning by Kyle, simply because i was asking questions and didn't simply take his word !!
After my "warning" i sat down and i counted my posts at his thread and compared it with the number of posts of other [H] forum members, and i can assure you that several other [H] members have overpassed by far the number of my own posts, but they never received a personal warning. Only myself and Razor1 received a personal warning (*curiously , we were also the basic ones who were expressing arguments/questions that were favourable towards nVidia) .
So you can make your own conclusions. My conclusions was that Kyle didn't want to have "opposition" to what he was saying and he used an excuse to give me a warning.
Apparently he wanted me to simply take his word, BUT as a character i don't do that!! The only reason i've done it with other tech-journalists , is because i'm seeing people accepting Kyle's word, so i'm responding with the same way in order to show you that this is not a valid argument !!
And indeed, i already saw several members which have already reacted when they see me take the word of some other tech-journalists so yeah...... point proven i believe;) !!
--The second one is more important reason, about why i'm having doubts to simply take Kyle's word. Let's just say that i don't like the "self-proclaimed" titles. If Kyle happens to read this, i'm sure he'll understand what i'm talking about. ;)
Especially my last 2 comments before i get the warning ,was just a reply towards 2 people who said something to me. I don't know about you, but when someone says something to me, i tend to respond and not ignoring them .
If you think that this is a logical behaviour on Kyle's behalf , then fine.
EDIT: P.S. And of course, i have to clarify, that after the warning, my behaviour changed a lot, since i was offended!! Especially, when at several issues i had spoken to Kyle privately through pm, in order to avoid bring him in a difficult position. But apparently, he didn't consider it as a good faith from my behalf:(
What you are doing is remarkably close to trolling and dragging things off topic, but you've convinced yourself you are seeking a truth nobody cares about because simple enough, this is about GPP and not the machinations of your thoughts, echoing questionable youtube videos.
Its really simple: this is bad taste and you should stop.
I just told you that receiving a warning has offended me and this affected the way i posted afterwards!!
Let's take this step by step:
Critical thinking is good.
The tech world is far too dominated by tribalism and brand loyalty, and tech journalists are too often journalists only in name, due to being utterly beholden to OEMs to get review samples. "TechTubers" are particularly egregious here. Still, some journalists have actual integrity.
Corporations are not our friends; they're out to make money and beyond public perception and how that might affect business they generally don't give a damn about users. Still, some corporations from time to time turn out not to be complete a******s.
Occam's razor is a great logical tool in the vast majority of cases.
So, the main questions are then:
1) Is Kyle believable, or is he out to gain a reputation?
2) Is Nvidia believable, or are they trying to hide malfeasance/criminality?
3) What other commentary is worth listening to, and why? What other perspectives are relevant?
For me, it goes something like this:
1) Yes, he is believable, as he stands to lose far more (both personally and professionally) than he stands to gain. Also, if this was somehow a hatchet job with no basis in truth, wouldn't it be amazingly easy for Nvidia to supply some of these less scrupulous "journalists" with proof to the contrary? Yes, it would, yet this has not appeared. Instead, Nvidia has clammed up and gone into "blame everyone else"-mode. This makes them look guilty, and Kyle look like he's onto something. Also, Occam's razor tells us that it's far more logical to assume that giant corporations are (still) corrupt than to assume that Kyle is somehow doing this to profit personally. There would be far too many "?????"s before "Profit" in that business plan. As for the use of off-the-record statements from unnamed sources, my stance on that is explained in detail in a previous post.
2) Nvidia has gone out of their way to not give out information. Shouting "transparency" is, believe it or not, not the same as being transparent. Nvidia has produced absolutely nothing of substance to counter Kyle's claims. And if they could, they would, as that would counteract damage to their brand and potentially boost sales (or at least make them lose fewer sales). Nvidia is clearly in damage control mode, so the fact that they aren't doing the most obvious form of damage control (presenting something to the tune of "Kyle was wrong, here's some proof") is itself telling.
3) This is rather tricky. Even entertainment-first "influencers" like LTT and Jay's 2 Cents have approached this case in a rather serious manner. That doesn't make them the most believable sources, though. The main issue here is that their main industry "contacts" are PR reps, and the "information" they get access to is carefully curated PR. Steve of Gamers' Nexus is, for me, in a league above these. By no means a perfectly serious journalists, but he's the only 'tuber I know of who is genuinely critical of pretty much every product reviewed, and has a well reflected and seemingly informed view of how the industry works. I would never suspect him of being a shill (well, outside of stupid "sponsored content" videos, which are essentially YT's version of "advertorials" - I can't remember if GN does these, but I would assume so). GN's "GPP info dump" video was, at least according to the video, based on off-the-record conversations with both new and established industry contacts. I don't see any major reason to not believe that - essentially, just like with Kyle's original report. In fact, the off-the-record insinuation that HP and Dell's main reason for refusing the GPP was that they already had similar deals with Intel is a very, very, very substantial claim, and I sincerely hope that someone is able to follow this up further. If investigation into the GPP leads to an antitrust case against Intel, that would be ... poetic justice? Kind of hilarious, at least.
The silence from serious sites like AnandTech (which has contact very deep within most major tech companies, and is often given access where others aren't, at least on the engineering side) is for me another indication that there's something here. If Nvidia had a way of disproving this, they would instruct any and every relevant person to lay this out clearly and concisely so that it'd get wall-to-wall coverage. This hasn't happened. Which means that either Nvidia and AIB partners aren't talking, that they're talking but strictly off-the-record and not enough to make a case (perhaps beyond saying "We think Kyle might be right", which serious news sites wouldn't really post), or that they're being given bland non-answers like the "GGP is dead" blog post by Nvidia. This would make anything they post either opinion or speculation, which sites like this rarely post.
Tl;dr: Critical thinking is good, but needs to be checked by reason. The GPP was, at best, borderline anti-competitive and a rather BS approach to "fixing" a nonexistent "problem". At worst, it was a clear attempt at unfairly disadvantaging competitors by pressuring common partners to disadvantage the competition. Which is true? We likely won't know anything of substance until official investigations play out, but logic and the available evidence (and lack of evidence to the contrary) seems to tip the scales towards the latter.
Yes, we're going OT here, but I'll keep it to one post. Promise.
Firstly: Intel has a massive grip on the market. No doubt of that. Might that be caused by some sort of malfeasance? GN sure seems to think so. But beyond that, a huge reason is the abysmal performance(/- per watt) of previous APUs. That's something that can't be brushed off, no matter how fond one might be of AMD. I have an A8-7600 in my HTPC, and it's ... okay. But I'm pining for an upgrade to a 2200G or 2400G. Anyhow, previous mobile APUs were really not good - they used as much power as a 15W i5 or i7, yet at best performed similarly to an i3 or Pentium. The iGPUs were a strong point, but were useless in the end due to the weak CPU performance. This alone would exclude these chips from the vast majority of laptops.
Now, this doesn't really explain why we've seen so few Raven Ridge laptops. There's just barely been movement there since the initial launch. This might indeed be indicative of what GN reported. It might also be indicative of other things. One is the relatively weak battery performance of RR. AnandTech speculated that a large part of this is due to the lack of support for LPDDR3, pushing base platform power very high. After all, the Acer AT tested used as much power while idling as the Surface Book 15", which has a display panel drawing almost 4x the power of the Acer's panel. If the RAM alone is the culprit, or if we're seeing evidence of a more generaly under-optimized system, is still not known. But battery life is a big selling point, and this might push OEMs away from RR, at least in this generation.
In other words, even this isn't cut-and-dried. I for one hope LPDDR4 arrives sooner rather than later, and shows up in some sweet 13" RR-powered convertible laptops or tablets. Preferably with cooling on par with the new XPS 13, and thus a 25W power limit.
But, let's bring this back to discussing the GPP, no?