NVIDIA's New GPP Program Reportedly Engages in Monopolistic Practices

[Prince Valiant]

Would be funny if AMD and Intel only make PCIe 2.0 x4 available to Nvidia cards. They could have their chipsets force that speed when an Nvidia card is detected. Fair is fair, right Nvidia?

I'd be laughing my arse off.

It'd suck for Nvidia users but it'd be funny to watch everything that came after.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

^^^ Asus' gaming brand is ROG. EVGA arguably doesn't even have gaming brand. That's why I said I'm not sure about the implications of that phrase.

Well its really quite straightforward to see now its been named as a thing we can just look at the list of nvidia board partners and see how many make Amd cards and what those brands are called compared to their nvidia bretheren, asus had Rog AMd cards upto a point pure rog , i had a 7970 matrix platinum that was Rog i cant recall the ones after that but not saying anything really and gigabyte ,not many make both brands of Gpu all in and that's a fact, plain as day.

But it also explains to a degree AMD's big slant the last few generations towards a named platform ie from not really mentioning Architecture to noting polaris Big time to the next level of Vega being the card brand, clear evolution to adapt to just this.

@Prince Valiant Nvidia made nvlink as the safe gaurd against the threat of exactly that from intel, why do you supose intel consumer grade chips have so few pciex lanes natively, intel dont really want discrete Gpus ,thats not changed ,they want that revenue though some, no anyhow.

 

[Xzibit]

I like @the54thvoid possibility too. What if all AIB banded together and said NO to Nvidia? Then they would have to abandon this preferential treatment and status quo exists.

Big IF that is unlikely

EVGA, PNY, Zotac have everything to gain since they are exclusive to Nvidia. They don't have to change anything to benefit from GPP.

The losers are the AIBs/OEMs that deal with both, ie Asus, MSI, Gigabyte. Even if they don't sing on to GPP and maintain their status quo they are relegated to a lower tier.

EVGA, PNY, Zotac would love to get more of Asus, MSI & Gigabyte sales.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Big IF that is unlikely

Oh I know, my statement was pure fantasy. It was posed as the only way to get Nvidia to stop, and like you said, some AIB’s are already exclusive partners.

 

[bug]

Big IF that is unlikely

EVGA, PNY, Zotac have everything to gain since they are exclusive to Nvidia. They don't have to change anything to benefit from GPP.

The losers are the AIBs/OEMs that deal with both, ie Asus, MSI, Gigabyte. Even if they don't sing on to GPP and maintain their status quo they are relegated to a lower tier.

EVGA, PNY, Zotac would love to get more of Asus, MSI & Gigabyte sales.

A fair point, there's that sort of fragmantation among builders already. Still, imho Asus, MSI and Gigabyte together have enough market share to stop this if they work together. Then again, who's to say that if they work together, they can't be accused of creating a cartel? I hate it when it comes down to lawyers...

So, up until now, the only downside of joining this program seems to be that you need to have a gaming line branded for Nvidia specifically. Kinda thin for four pages of comments/rage.

What really puzzles me is the lack of a motivation for GPP. I mean, ok, you get more support from Nvidia if you join. But if they really want to make their products look as good as possible, wht stops them from providing said support without GPP in place. Which, btw, they are doing right now. I cannot shake the feeling that there's more to this story, yet everybody seems content to scrape only the surface.

 

[Fluffmeister]

I guess at the moment all cards are selling, why would any AIB go out of their way to create seperate lines, when they all sell out instantly anyway?

Gamers are victims and have a lack of choice anyway, Nvidia, AMD and their AIB partners are racking it in regardless.... no wonder Asrock want to join in, and it isn't for the benefit of gamers.

 

[bug]

I guess at the moment all cards are selling, why would any AIB go out of their way to create seperate lines, when they all sell out instantly anyway?

The thing is, all we have till now is

In order to have access to the GPP program, its partners must have its "Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce."

And even that is part from the actual agreement, part from HardOCP's Kyle.
That could very well mean that the manufacturer doesn't have to have a gaming brand at all (can anyone say which is EVGA's gaming brand?). But if they do, they mustn't throw both Nvidia and AMD under the same brand. I'm not sure how dumb they think the average use must have gotten to need this kind of delineation, but that's what I understand from the little we have.

 

[windwhirl]

... I can't believe we, as consumers, have to go through this crap all the time, whether it is Intel vs AMD, Nvidia vs AMD, etc.

I'm kinda expecting an investigation for anti-competitive practices after this.

 

[Steevo]

The other factor to consider here is Nvidia trying to weed out competition for it's own high priced OEM cards. Why sell a core and have to support it, provide engineering support, help pay for advertising, and biggest of all, take the dead die loss for cards used for mining.

 

[evernessince]

If the article on hardcop end up to be spot on, I must say, this is a pretty stupid move from Nvidia.
- "We are making a lot of money, we are the leader in the segment, so what should we do next ?"
- "What about openly abusing our dominance, and crush the competion to the ground by a making a deal with AIB that will be illegal on some aspect, sure to be heavily debated by the community, and would probably be closely watched by the juridic system of several continent/country ?"
- " Give this man a cookie !"

However when looking at the antitrust case of Intel:
- They weren't fined by the FTC, they just got a small slap on the hands.
- They never admited having done something wrong, and in september 2017 they managed to get a review on the European fine.
- In the end it never really mattered, as long as the product is good, people won't care if it was made by a company doing shady stuff, Intel is still "THE BRAND" for many people.
So i guess that Nvidia is trying his luck to see how much of a benefits they can make before getting sued.

I would try it too if I were Nvidia. The current US administration doesn't give 2 cents about corruption. You know this is true when they are pulling back the equifax probe. The EU on the other hand has but fining companies pretty hard. They will get away scott free in the US but I doubt they will be safe in the EU, especially with the impending trade war between the US and it's allies thanks to Trump tariffs.

 

[the54thvoid]

This all made me think, and it is OT.

If Nividia (or any other partner surely), had PCB design interests, could a bespoke 'Gaming' card not be designed with a PCB that monitors power use? This would allow a dedicated, non-crunching/folding, non-mining design which looked for unusually high and constant power use. Such a design would throttle and ocasionally 'kill' the power through put after 'x' hours of constant high use. This would kill the demand for 24/7 mining rigs and make it perfectly usable for games which do not generally run for constant hours at full loads.

Now, you may bitch that would annoy people but how many games run for 4-6 hours at 90-100% load? But would such a design be appealing to a mining farm? Or is such engineering wizardry null and void?

You get two lines - Gaming power limited (cheaper) and Mining power unlimited (more expensive).

Just a tangent.

 

[dyonoctis]

This all made me think, and it is OT.

If Nividia (or any other partner surely), had PCB design interests, could a bespoke 'Gaming' card not be designed with a PCB that monitors power use? This would allow a dedicated, non-crunching/folding, non-mining design which looked for unusually high and constant power use. Such a design would throttle and ocasionally 'kill' the power through put after 'x' hours of constant high use. This would kill the demand for 24/7 mining rigs and make it perfectly usable for games which do not generally run for constant hours at full loads.

Now, you may bitch that would annoy people but how many games run for 4-6 hours at 90-100% load? But would such a design be appealing to a mining farm? Or is such engineering wizardry null and void?

You get two lines - Gaming power limited (cheaper) and Mining power unlimited (more expensive).

Just a tangent.

This would really piss off all the motion designer, studio using rendering based on gpu. A mid range Quadro to drive the main display is nice, but for rendering geforce are really more cost effective.

 

[bug]

... I can't believe we, as consumers, have to go through this crap all the time, whether it is Intel vs AMD, Nvidia vs AMD, etc.

I'm kinda expecting an investigation for anti-competitive practices after this.

You can't believe what? No matter how clearly you draw the rules, companies will always try to find grey areas and exploit them. It's their job.
Only socialism behind the Iron Curtain adressed this from the root (i.e. the state took over the law, the courts and the economy). Trust me, that really, really hurt customer choice.

 

[medi01]

Market grabbing like that doesn't need any other motivation, besides greed, which nVidia has more than enough.

Yeah i've been hearing this for the last decade or more...

Well, why, Fermi was wonderful, wasn't it?

Well, that's exactly what they should do, instead of crying to journalists like little girls.

That worked well against Intel, didn't it?

There have been a ton of complaints about the drivers for AMD's cards not being up to snuff or being rough at the time of introduction, which is another area they need to work on.

"What year is this" ffs.

 

[oxidized]

Well, why, Fermi was wonderful, wasn't it?

Fermi 5xx was pretty good yes, surely better than the ATi/AMD counterpart. Aside from that you have anything else?

 

[Vya Domus]

Well, why, Fermi was wonderful, wasn't it?

What's ironic is that Fermi was in fact the most rushed and unpolished architecture Nvidia ever made in response to a vastly more efficient design that TeraScale was at the time.

 

[oxidized]

What's ironic is that Fermi was in fact the most rushed and unpolished architecture Nvidia ever made in response to a vastly more efficient design that TeraScale was at the time.

What's even more ironic is that as unpolished and rushed as it was, was still better than series 4000 and 5000 from ATi... to find something good we must go back to 2000 series or even before that, or forward to 7000 series and 200/300 to nowadays and even there they were still behind nvidia.

 

[Power Slave]

Surprise surprise surprise said gomer pyle.

But really Nothing to see here, move along or move to AMD. They burnt a lot of loyal fans with 970's 3.5 GB of RAM and their response was that of a monopolistic company, so we already knew how they handle things. Let's not get started on Gimpworks made specifically to gain an leverage over their competition by using a developers platform.

Locked overclocking and the Ge"forced" experience is what you get.

I miss the GTX 580 days. Good times with competition and pricing was high but justifiable. ..... and there was NO MINING. Good times.

 

[oxidized]

Surprise surprise surprise said gomer pyle.

But really Nothing to see here, move along or move to AMD. They burnt a lot of loyal fans with 970's 3.5 GB of RAM and their response was that of a monopolistic company, so we already knew how they handle things. Let's not get started on Gimpworks made specifically to gain an leverage over their competition by using a developers platform.

Locked overclocking and the Ge"forced" experience is what you get.

I miss the GTX 580 days. Good times with competition and pricing was high but justifiable. ..... and there was NO MINING. Good times.

Don't forget nothing is confirmed, as of now it remains a claim made from someone who's been tipped from AMD itself, so i'd expect everyone to bash AMD the same way everyone's ready to bash nvidia, in case everything gets busted like it previously happened with gameworks stories about the witcher and other games...

 

[bug]

Don't forget nothing is confirmed, as of now it remains a claim made from someone who's been tipped from AMD itself, so i'd expect everyone to bash AMD the same way everyone's ready to bash nvidia, in case everything gets busted like it previously happened with gameworks stories about the witcher and other games...

Tbh it's not just onr guy's claim. Kyle has spoken to people from the manufacturers before making his claims. But the thing is most of his sources have spoken in anonymity and mostly about things they "fear would happen" if not joining GPP. So you see, no matter how accurate Kyle's claims are we don't have the full picture.

 

[oxidized]

Tbh it's not just onr guy's claim. Kyle has spoken to people from the manufacturers before making his claims. But the thing is most of his sources have spoken in anonymity and mostly about things they "fear would happen" if not joining GPP. So you see, no matter how accurate Kyle's claims are we don't have the full picture.

Nor does he, probably, but he thinks he does, if this is confirmed by many other source as important tech sites, and nvidia gets in trouble i'll be happy to eat my words, but as of now it's nothing but sh*ttalk, and wouldn't be the first time, and probably not even the last.

 

[bug]

Nor does he, probably, but he thinks he does, if this is confirmed by many other source as important tech sites, and nvidia gets in trouble i'll be happy to eat my words, but as of now it's nothing but sh*ttalk, and wouldn't be the first time, and probably not even the last.

Well, the guy and his site are both respectable. Doesn't mean they're 100% foolproof, but they're not wtftech either.

Partnerships like this have existed since forever, all we have right now is this one could be fishy and needs to be watched closely.
For all we know, this can be a marketing stunt from AMD: look, they're so scared of us, they're planning to break the law to keep us at bay. Obviously I'm making stuff up, but if I wanted to start a(nother) crapstorm, I could coroborate the above with the fact that it was AMD who tipped Kyle (interestingly enough manufaturers weren't as bothere by the GPP) and I could start a page conspiracy theorists will love.
So let's not do that here on TPU and try to concentrate on what we know, instead of what our gut or bias tells us.

 

[oxidized]

Well, the guy and his site are both respectable. Doesn't mean they're 100% foolproof, but they're not wtftech either.

No doubt the guy and his site are respectable.

Partnerships like this have existed since forever, all we have right now is this one could be fishy and needs to be watched closely.
For all we know, this can be a marketing stunt from AMD: look, they're so scared of us, they're planning to break the law to keep us at bay.

I don't think that honestly, AMD is respectable, a move like that could completely make them disappear, if it was to get busted, that is.

Obviously I'm making stuff up, but if I wanted to start a(nother) crapstorm, I could coroborate the above with the fact that it was AMD who tipped Kyle (interestingly enough manufaturers weren't as bothere by the GPP) and I could start a page conspiracy theorists will love.
So let's not do that here on TPU and try to concentrate on what we know, instead of what our gut or bias tells us.

That's exactly what i'm saying. What we know is basically nothing besides public's desire for blood when there's some rumor/article/claim that puts nvidia under bad light, and victimizes AMD, that and some article on a usually respectable tech website.

 

[Xzibit]

Nor does he, probably, but he thinks he does, if this is confirmed by many other source as important tech sites, and nvidia gets in trouble i'll be happy to eat my words, but as of now it's nothing but sh*ttalk, and wouldn't be the first time, and probably not even the last.

Kyle has the agreement or portion of. He talked to Nvidia about his concerns before he published the story. Its the Yellow text in the article in-case you missed it.

I have documents with the program terms and I discussed the one that was worthy of noting in the article.

He sure sounds like he dotted his i's and crossed his t's.

That's exactly what i'm saying. What we know is basically nothing besides public's desire for blood when there's some rumor/article/claim that puts nvidia under bad light, and victimizes AMD, that and some article on a usually respectable tech website.

We know Nvidia isn't being transparent about their transparent program at the moment. They responded in the Forbes article.

 

[oxidized]

Kyle has the agreement or portion of. He talked to Nvidia about his concerns before he published the story. Its the Yellow text in the article in-case you missed it.



He sure sounds like he dotted his i's and crossed his t's.



We know Nvidia isn't being transparent about their transparent program at the moment. They responded in the Forbes article.

Yeah? What did they say? "We're not being transparent with you about GPP" Cmon people, you gotta stop this crusade against nvidia, every damn time something weirds comes up everyone is always instantly grabbing their pitchfork.