Friday, March 9th 2018
NVIDIA's New GPP Program Reportedly Engages in Monopolistic Practices
A report from HardOCP's Kyle Bennet aims to shake NVIDIA's foundations, with allegations of anti-competitive business practices under its new GeForce Partner Program (GPP). In his report, which started with an AMD approach that pushed him to look a little closer into GPP, Bennet says that he has found evidence that NVIDIA's new program aims to push partners towards shunning products from other hardware manufacturers - mainly AMD, with a shoot across the bow for Intel.
After following the breadcrumb trail and speaking with NVIDIA AIBs and OEM partners ("The ones that did speak to us have done so anonymously, in fear of losing their jobs, or having retribution placed upon them or their companies by NVIDIA," Bennett says), the picture is painted of an industry behemoth that aims to abuse its currently dominant market position. NVIDIA controls around 70% of the discrete GPU market share, and its industrious size is apparently being put to use to outmuscle its competitors' offerings by, essentially, putting partners between the proverbial rock and a hard place. According to Bennet, industry players unanimously brought about three consequences from Nvidia's GPP, saying that "They think that it has terms that are likely illegal; GPP is likely going to tremendously hurt consumers' choices; It will disrupt business with the companies that they are currently doing business with, namely AMD and Intel."
The crux of the issue seems to be in that NVIDIA, while publicly touting transparency, is hiding some not so transparent clauses from the public's view. Namely, the fact that in order to become a part of NVIDIA's GPP program, partners must have its "Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce." Bennet says that he has read NVIDIA papers, and these very words, in internal documents meant for NVIDIA's partners only; however, none of these have been made available as of time of writing, though that may be an effort to protect sources.
But what does this "exclusivity" mean? That partners would have to forego products from other brands (case in point, AMD) in order to be granted the GeForce partner status. And what do companies who achieve GPP status receive? Well, enough that it would make competition from other NVIDIA AIBs that didn't make the partner program extremely difficult - if not unfeasible. This is because GPP-branded companies would receive perks such as: high-effort engineering engagements (likely, aids to custom designs); early tech engagement; launch partner status (as in, being able to sell GeForce-branded products at launch date); game bundling; sales rebate programs; social media and PR support; marketing reports; and the ultimate kicker, Marketing Development Funds (MDF). This last one may be known to our more attentive readers, as it was part of Intel's "Intel Inside" marketing program which spurred... a pretty incredible anti-trust movement against the company.
As a result of covering this story, HardOCP's Kyle Bennet says he expects the website to be shunned from now on when it comes to NVIDIA or NVIDIA partner graphics cards being offered for review purposes. Whether or not that will happen, I guess time will time; as time will tell whether or not there is indeed any sort of less... transparent plays taking place here.
Sources:
HardOCP, NVIDIA GeForce Partner Program
After following the breadcrumb trail and speaking with NVIDIA AIBs and OEM partners ("The ones that did speak to us have done so anonymously, in fear of losing their jobs, or having retribution placed upon them or their companies by NVIDIA," Bennett says), the picture is painted of an industry behemoth that aims to abuse its currently dominant market position. NVIDIA controls around 70% of the discrete GPU market share, and its industrious size is apparently being put to use to outmuscle its competitors' offerings by, essentially, putting partners between the proverbial rock and a hard place. According to Bennet, industry players unanimously brought about three consequences from Nvidia's GPP, saying that "They think that it has terms that are likely illegal; GPP is likely going to tremendously hurt consumers' choices; It will disrupt business with the companies that they are currently doing business with, namely AMD and Intel."
But what does this "exclusivity" mean? That partners would have to forego products from other brands (case in point, AMD) in order to be granted the GeForce partner status. And what do companies who achieve GPP status receive? Well, enough that it would make competition from other NVIDIA AIBs that didn't make the partner program extremely difficult - if not unfeasible. This is because GPP-branded companies would receive perks such as: high-effort engineering engagements (likely, aids to custom designs); early tech engagement; launch partner status (as in, being able to sell GeForce-branded products at launch date); game bundling; sales rebate programs; social media and PR support; marketing reports; and the ultimate kicker, Marketing Development Funds (MDF). This last one may be known to our more attentive readers, as it was part of Intel's "Intel Inside" marketing program which spurred... a pretty incredible anti-trust movement against the company.
As a result of covering this story, HardOCP's Kyle Bennet says he expects the website to be shunned from now on when it comes to NVIDIA or NVIDIA partner graphics cards being offered for review purposes. Whether or not that will happen, I guess time will time; as time will tell whether or not there is indeed any sort of less... transparent plays taking place here.
317 Comments on NVIDIA's New GPP Program Reportedly Engages in Monopolistic Practices
That seems and odd thing to do though. They are already in a position of power, and something like "MSI gaming green dragon" isn't going to do much. People already know who they are, I've never heard of anyone who buyed a radeon when he wanted a geforce...
edit: It's purely marketing, nvidia seems really just dead on making their products stand out. If PCGamesN is right, all they want is better communication by having an exclusive brand, and maybe an exclusive shroud design from AIB selling both brands. Put a strix 580 and a strix 1060 side by side, and you wouldn't be able to tell them apart. That might be what they are after.
AMD, as far as I can tell, have done pretty well with their CPUs lately; Ryzen, Threadripper, etcetera, but they have to become more competitive with their graphics cards. They have lost ground to Nvidia, if not in solely graphics processing then in efficiency and power usage.
If I love computers and I am thinking of building a system with a discreet graphics card, even at today's insane prices, and at purchase time I am barely giving a thought to AMD because I know their graphics cards have underwhelmed, for a while, that's bad.
Nvidia, right now, in my opinion, just has the better reputation and the superior product, and they know it. That's one reason they've jacked up their prices, even before the Bitcoin craziness.
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.
AMD still needs to work on getting investors interested in them, they're still getting outgunned by Intel and AMD. They are doing much better competing with Intel these days but they have to channel more resources into the GPU side of the company. Nvidia has too much muscle, financially and intellectually and AMD isn't going to be able to counter that and regain mindshare without an awesome product that is also as efficient as Nvidia's stuff, if not more so.
But the initial idea of having the "premium" gaming brand being Nvidia only, just seems too bold...I just don't see why they would try to pull out something that could backlash, when they don't have any reason to do so.
Essentially Nvidia in this scenario is asking to piggy back on the reputation of others well established gaming brands through association with exclusivity and non-GPP loosing out on launch-day availability. Might be weeks. months for a non-GPP is able to produce and put a product on the shelves.
As I understood it after reading the [H] article earlier, MSI (and others) will not receive preferential optimization help from NVIDIA because they also sell AMD (I corrected because I accidentally wrote MSI again). This can translate into not being to match Nvidia exclusive brands like EVGA in performance. This is assuming Nvidia doesn’t hold back chips, which is left vague.
Yeah, I’ve got a problem with it.
1. Nvidia has been clamping down both physically and legally on what "board partners" are permitted to do.
2. Several generations back, a Classified, Lighting, etc would have a significant performance advantage because of the leeway that partners had back then.
3. The added value provided by such "supercard" has been insignificant since the 7xx series.
4. Since Boost 3 came along ,... and no BIOS editor to boot... there's been only a teeny performance difference between the numerous card lines offered by manufacturers. Often the next model up, has better cooler, an All all the fancy hi end componentry ya want to the PCB, it can't do beans if the control settings are going to limit speeds regardless.
5. With max temps at 82C, we have many cards operating on the mid 60s ...so there's way more room cause Boost3's controls apply to the reference card on up with few exceptions.
So given this situation as today's base point... it would be a smart move on nVidia's part to open up certain tweaks to "special partners" who agree to these terms. Nvidia could say to MSI ... hey we love what you've been doing with the Lightning ... as a "special partner", if you agree to limit the usage of the line to only nvidia cards, we believe that we can relax the boost clock limits and allow significantkly higher performance limits for that line... when the driver detects its a Lightning ... you will get +40 bost clocks..
MSI can become an nVidia partner with their "Cofee" line ... but not of they call their AMD based cards "Cofee" also
MSI "Coffee" for nVidia cards is fine as long as it's MSI "Doughnuts" for the AMD line .Wow talk about left field ... I wasn't expressing a personal opinion. I just took the time to read the link in post 25 and summarize what it said. If you have an issue with it, take it up with them.
P. S. I did make an error on the MSI. I’m glad you understand I meant AMD.
So, if you dont sign up to GPP, you keep going as normal? If MSI, Asus and Gigabyte don't sign they can still do all the things they do. The only anti-competitve part will be if Nvidia withhold the OEM boards/chips that they buy up to produce their AIB cards (and that would lead them straight to court if it was found to be so). Conversely, if you do sign up you must brand your AIB cards with the Geforce/Nvidia logo and you get help with marketing and engineering help. Kyle has used anonymous sources to say Nvidia will not allow you to sell AMD. That can't be trusted at face value unless we're being utterly hypocritical. How often do we criticise TPU for 'unsourced' news material yet we're willing to believe Kyle because he says it on the back of his report?
This one has to be watched as it develops. I'm not bothered either way. If I want the best AMD card, I'd probably buy from AMD only brand Sapphire anyway (the largest supplier of AMD graphics cards in the world).
Kyle is like W1zzard saying he has done a 3 week investigation speaking to companies and is writing the story himself on it. Not like the News writers doing click-bait pieces without a source.
There is one caveat to everything and that would be if Kyle ends up with a surprise job offer from AMD. lol - look at me making fake news!
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.