Monday, July 16th 2018
Pay $160 for the AREZ Sticker: The Mess GPP Landed AIC Partners and Consumers in
The same exact graphics cards, made by the same exact manufacturer, in the same exact factory, with the only difference being the "AREZ Strix" branding, priced a whopping USD $160 apart - that's the kind of mess NVIDIA GPP (GeForce Partners Program) left in its wake. Newegg lists the ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX Vega 64 (STRIX-RXVEGA64-O8G-GAMING) graphics card at USD $589.99. This card was made before ASUS decided to re-brand its AMD Radeon graphics cards under the AREZ Strix brand, necessitated by NVIDIA GPP. The post-rebrand AREZ Strix Radeon RX Vega 64 (AREZ RXVEGA64-O8G-GAMING), is priced at $749.99 on the same site, a whopping $160 premium for what is basically a sticker. Just to make sure this isn't a discrepancy between the various sellers from Newegg's marketplace, we also post screenshots that confirm both listings are "sold and shipped by Newegg" (and not a marketplace partner).
We noticed this anomaly on Newegg last week (the week of 9th July), and initially dismissed it for a listing error that would be resolved by the retailer in a couple of days. The week passed, and the listings didn't change. NVIDIA triggered a strong backlash for the language of its GeForce Partners Program (GPP), which implicitly forced its AIC (add-in card) partners to keep their well-established gaming hardware brands (eg: ROG, Aorus, MSI Gaming, etc.,) exclusive to GeForce GTX graphics cards, forcing them to re-brand their AMD Radeon products (and stripping them of those well-established brands, thereby putting AMD at a disadvantage). NVIDIA eventually cancelled GPP, but not before the likes of ASUS and MSI committed changes to their product stacks. AREZ is the Frankenstein's monster that was too late to abort, which now threatens to rip off uninformed consumers.
We noticed this anomaly on Newegg last week (the week of 9th July), and initially dismissed it for a listing error that would be resolved by the retailer in a couple of days. The week passed, and the listings didn't change. NVIDIA triggered a strong backlash for the language of its GeForce Partners Program (GPP), which implicitly forced its AIC (add-in card) partners to keep their well-established gaming hardware brands (eg: ROG, Aorus, MSI Gaming, etc.,) exclusive to GeForce GTX graphics cards, forcing them to re-brand their AMD Radeon products (and stripping them of those well-established brands, thereby putting AMD at a disadvantage). NVIDIA eventually cancelled GPP, but not before the likes of ASUS and MSI committed changes to their product stacks. AREZ is the Frankenstein's monster that was too late to abort, which now threatens to rip off uninformed consumers.
77 Comments on Pay $160 for the AREZ Sticker: The Mess GPP Landed AIC Partners and Consumers in
This has nothing to do with GPP. Stop baiting.
I don't know if the above prices are an error in Newegg's pricing, or if it has to do with the original MSRP price those two models came out. The Strix edition could have an MSRP price much lower than the AREZ card, because it is a pre-mining madness card. AREZ came out while cryptomining was still hot, if I am not mistaking, so maybe came out at a much higher MSRP, so this could just be the proof that shows how partners are profiteering in the expense of their customers because of cryptomining and have nothing to do with GPP.
But it could easily be just Nvidia's money that affect pricing of all or most AREZ cards, it could be a repeat of the first paragraph I wrote, this time in the GPU market. If Nvidia is covering what money ASUS expects to lose by making this line of cards and this brand specifficaly uncompetitive, we could be seeing a repeat of how partners where treating AMD the time that Intel was playing ball without any kind of competition.
The problem is a lot of individuals have no voice even if we say solely, I'M NOT BUYING NOW.
It needs to be made a global movement to agree not to buy or even broader to include all consumer electronics. Lets face it, we could all afford to skip buying for a month.
Should we blame the bully or the bullied? I think the answer is obvious.The sheeple will never boycott. If they need something they buy the first shiny that fits their requirements.
It was an example of how minute or 'fake' differences are sufficient to create different 'products' with different prices. This Arez stuff is just more of the same and has little to do with GPP. Its Asus strategy above all, and Asus is not alone in this either. EVGA is another good example, MSI too. And it happens with Nvidia ánd AMD SKUs.
I could also argue that 'I'd want the AREZ' Vega because of its collector's value. There is a VERY small number of cards with that specific sticker and I'm a real enthusiast.. There you go - a difference.
Anyway, we should be boycotting AMD for selling out the x86 licence to China by means of a backdoor bungle.
As for that Arez pricing? That will be a collector piece soon. An anomaly, like a Star Wars figurine with a different paint job.
If anything it should give people money off, it's like putting a Celeron sticker on a CPU haha.
Even if the contracts are not gonna happen between nvidia and AIBs, The message has been sent - "remove AMD branding from your flagship gaming series or we would make sure you gonna regret that".
It's done. Hardware Mafia in full force, with no way to police and regulate as those who do are a part of the exact same system. That's the kind of grim reality we have to accept.
So, "sheeple" may be sheep-like because they don't feel they stand much of a chance of being successful with something like a boycott. Instead of looking down at them, which is what we are trained to do in individualist cultures (it's always the few bad apples who are to blame, not systemic flaws), we should probably ask ourselves how likely a boycott would be to succeed.
The China IP example, for instance, seems to be a case where a boycott would be completely ineffective. Not only is the cat out of the bag, China is just too big of a profit target for a company like AMD to pass up.
FWIW, I'm not heavily invested in either, but objectively, one is worse.
Take a step back and broaden your view a bit. The reason all this branding exists is precisely to extract a premium price for the same product. And Arez is a collectors' item even if just for the community backlash.
Also... about priorities? Selling out IP versus a price hike on a graphics card and you consider the latter of greater importance?! What are you smoking?:toast: At least some people see things as they are.
Gotta love how some people here are already screaming 'GPP is still alive'... TPU "news" reporting doing a number on people here.
There is a link between GPP and the price hike, though: Asus jumped onto the GPP bandwagon, poured money into the Arez branding and was left out in the cold when Nvidia canceled GPP. But the decision to make their money back from customers, that's solely on Asus.
I don't know if you intentionally refuse to see how things really were or that you really can't understand what happened but I would go by your words as well and tell you to broaden your view a bit as well.
The root cause of this whole Arez garbage thing wasn't ASUS trying to rip off consumers , it was Nvidia trying to rip off consumers or rather to make sure that the number of consumers than are being ripped off doesn't go down.Well let's see , can you come up with a concise reason why those IPs would be detrimental to your well being at some point in time ? We all like to talk about big things and how it will affect us greatly. Meanwhile the price hike is already there and directly affecting some consumers. Boycotting one is just as worthless as boycotting the other and therefore I see no importance in neither one of them.