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
The reality is, this is just an anomaly that got out in the wild and because of that it is priced high. End of story. I know its great fun to twist that into a news post about GPP somehow being alive and kicking but you guys need to stop deluding yourself. This is just the market at work. Something is unique, it costs more. /thread
About ripping people off... if you go out to buy a Vega card and you end up with this overpriced POS in your PC, did you get ripped off? Yeah that makes total sense. People should try using their brain a bit instead of just whining about prices.
Its no different from buying that 883 EUR GTX 1080 11 Gbps because of its faster memory (2-4% performance over a normal version) that I pointed out in my first post, and its no different than buying a GPU based on its higher amount of RAM when benches show it makes no difference in performance (RX580 examples) nor is it any different from people buying the highest factory OC'd 580 for a mere 60mhz bump over a much cheaper alternative. Those, too are ripoffs in the very same way - there is no realistic relation between price and relative performance to be had.
So, can YOU find a reason why this overpriced Vega would be detrimental to anyone's wellbeing? I sure can't. You just avoid it.
But, you guys can enjoy winding yourselves up over 'GPP' for all eternity, I really don't care a whole lot... I tried my best getting some common sense in here. If you want to enjoy a daily dose of outrage be my guest... it just looks a bit sad. Its called beating a dead horse.
As for Newegg listing, they are so bad when they come to pricing. This is nothing to do with naming or what Asus has changed. This is only Newegg listing on how they do this.
Point is , you're saying we are beating a dead horse. If that's the case then you are doing the same thing , it's just that you are kicking it from the opposite side.
Did you know AMD ASUS boards are branded CROSSHAIR and Intel Asus boards are branded MAXIMUS in the higher end segment?
The MAXIMUS brand is a lot more expensive than the CROSSHAIR.
There, i gave you something else to cry about.
I can go to any supermarket and show you 2 bottles of WATER with different branding, one will be 20cents per bottle and one will be 1.5$.... nobody crying about that.
Personally I'd refrain from pulling the fanboy card, but that's just me... All I see here is clickbait. No, just no. I was one of the people who was of the stance that GPP had to die fast. And it did... quite fast and rightly so. It has no place in this market, there is no need for it, and branding *does* matter to many people. My story has never changed in this topic either. People pay for branding, and there is a good reason to pay premium for a rare AREZ branded card as a collector's item, its just not a reason I'd personally go for. Would the person buying this card be 'ripped off'? Not any more or less than buying any other GPU, if they choose to pay premium for this branding power to them. Its a different discussion than the one about what's good for a marketplace or market/mindshare. I view this as no different than Gold Edition MSI cards of a few years back or a Star Wars lightsaber RGB Titan.
You know me longer than today right... you can find me advocating either company, I really don't have a preference except for top performance and I'm the last one to pull out the fanboy argument... what I try to do is what I always do, consider the facts and draw a conclusion. Is it always the right one? No. But quite often it does turn out as such by the time we collectively managed to weed out the bullshit and inflated press noise. What bugs me is the fact TPU jumps on the bandwagon at every turn lately, and how so many of us here just follow that reasoning without even thinking clearly.
Or
B) probably on sale
It may rake in page hits, but I've quit other forums when there was nothing to discuss besides "Intel is evil, AMD is good" and "Nvidia is evil, AMD is good". It gets really nauseating after a while.
BREAKING NEWS, my fart really smells, GPP at fault! News at 11.