Friday, April 6th 2018
In Aftermath of NVIDIA GPP, ASUS Creates AREZ Brand for Radeon Graphics Cards
Graphics card manufacturers are gradually starting to align their gaming brands with NVIDIA to get admission into the exclusive GeForce Partner Program (GPP). Although there isn't any official confirmation on behalf of the NVIDIA AIB partners, small but significant changes are starting to become evident. The first example comes from Gigabyte's Aorus gaming line. Gigabyte currently offers the Gaming Box external graphics enclosure with a GeForce GTX 1070, GTX 1080, or a Radeon RX 580. If we look at the packaging closely, we can clearly see that the RX 580 box lacks the Aorus branding. However, Gigabyte isn't alone though. MSI is apparently in favor of GPP too as they remove all their Radeon Gaming X models from their global website. Take the Radeon RX 580 for instance. The RX 580 models from the Armor lineup are the only ones present. Surprisingly the US website still carries the Gaming X models.
The latest rumor suggests that ASUS is the third AIB partner to jump on the GPP bandwagon. The Taiwanese manufacturer is allegedly creating the AREZ brand to accommodate their Radeon products. The AREZ moniker probably alludes to the Ares series of dual-GPU graphics cards historically centered around AMD GPUs. If this rumor is true, the Strix, Dual, Phoenix, and Expedition Radeon models are going to fall under the new AREZ branding. ASUS might even go as far as dropping their name from the AREZ models entirely.
Update 17/04/2018: ASUS has officially announced the 'AREZ' brand here.
Source:
VideoCardz
The latest rumor suggests that ASUS is the third AIB partner to jump on the GPP bandwagon. The Taiwanese manufacturer is allegedly creating the AREZ brand to accommodate their Radeon products. The AREZ moniker probably alludes to the Ares series of dual-GPU graphics cards historically centered around AMD GPUs. If this rumor is true, the Strix, Dual, Phoenix, and Expedition Radeon models are going to fall under the new AREZ branding. ASUS might even go as far as dropping their name from the AREZ models entirely.
137 Comments on In Aftermath of NVIDIA GPP, ASUS Creates AREZ Brand for Radeon Graphics Cards
For an example, in a store, you see two cards next to each other, an ASUS Geforce ROG GTX XXX, and an AREZ Radeon XXX, what will you buy, a card from ASUS, a company you've heard of, or AREZ a new name (even though the card, or the cooling itself, is just as good or better?).
If you follow the PC industry, you'll see through the branding and you can make a rational decision and buy whichever has the price/performance, or whatever you're after, regardless of the branding. But if you're just a customer buying a card for that new "gamer" rig, I'm guessing you go for the stuff for "gamers", in this case you get ASUS ROG.
Why are we all so "stunned" ? All these years there have been companies that support ONLY ONE manufacturer.
Palit, Zotac, Gainward etc they support ONLY nVidia , while Sapphire, Asrock(*new addition to the market) etc , they do support ONLY AMD.
So, apparently now, other companies that -untill now- they have been supplying both manufacturers, they are now adjusting their strategy.
Why haven't we been complaining all these past years about Sapphire which only supports AMD, or Zotac which only supports nVidia? If these have the right to support only 1, then why exactly ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI etc, don't have the right to revise their policy at some point as well , if they feel that this revision will serve their interests better?
What will happen with ROG Intel or AMD motherboard or everything else?
Publicly thats what Nvidia is alluding to.
Darn those misleading boxes.
meme time
The only thing that can be said against Nvidia for this is if they do starve supply to those not in the GPP. If so, yes, they should be absolutely hammered by the regulators.
Launching a subsidiary with zero brand recognition to keep the only competitors cards in production is the answer to GPP? Dear lord...
Wonder what sort of lawsuits will unfold in the wake of this "superb" GPP program.
I made this "with your fast efficient popular GPUs"
Also, i'd like to point out that again that none of this has been confirmed yet...It's true there have been some subtle signals from many different sources, some of them being GPP partners themselves, but nothing 100% sure yet, again too fast jumping the gun.
I've said from the start, GPP doesn't prevent anyone from offering AMD hardware. It just asks for Nvidia hardware to have a dedicated branding. Though if I were Asus, I would have kept AMD under the ROG moniker and came up with something else for Nvidia. At least that's what would have made more sense to me.
So yeah if nvidia asked partners just to differentiate their product from their competition's, and asus thought would be wise enough to give their top brand to nvidia and move AMD to something else, then i'd say it's completely on asus. On the other hand if nvidia asked esplicitly to be assigned of ROG or STRIX brand, well...
I guess that is why i don't download GPU-Z with the RoG skin.
Anyone who falls behind is left behind. Get on the bandwagon or start waving good bye to your priority in chip distribution, samples ahead of product launches, or God knows what other benefits you might had prior to GPP. It is a multi-billion dollar segment so you can't afford to get chips per-se 3 months late compared to someone with GPP access.
If Gigabyte, MSI, etc. are on the the GPP express train heading to Gamersmoneyvill, sure as hell ASUS can't afford to follow them on a handcar, if you get my drift...
AMD historically has tremendous problems extracting a profit from its graphics division and this GPP only pushes them further down the drain. Now, I will agree that AMD is letting us down on the GPU side of things (they are more than a full gen behind reality, let's face it), but saying this is 'business as usual' simply is not correct. This is a marketplace with very scarce competition already.
What we have now is Nvidia taking all the premium branding and 'owning' it across the entire marketplace, while AMD product gets relegated to lazy knockoff brands that are just being re-used from the past. Ares was Asus' dual-GPU branding. Now they stuck a Z in there (to appeal to fifteen year olds and no one else, so is that the target market instead of the wealthy 25-35 age group??) and they sell any kind of AMD GPU under that similar branding. Where is the logic? Where is the marketing concept? It just doesn't exist. Its a cheap stand in and that is how many people will perceive it.
I will say I was never a big fan of Asus because its overpriced while not being any better in any way and their branding doesn't appeal to me in the slightest, but many people know Asus as one of the few brands of PC parts, its a company that has been around since forever and their branding has gained a LOT of traction.
Edit: www.hardocp.com/article/2018/03/08/geforce_partner_program_impacts_consumer_choiceSo basically AMD wanted journalists to prod where they legally couldn't (because someone like MSI sees AMD calling about GPP, MSI is obligated to hang up on them). Mission accomplished, I'd say, and now AIBs are bending over backwards for NVIDIA evidencing that the alleged pressure was likely applied.
In the inevitable lawsuit, I hope AMD adds NVIDIA's using software features to lock consumers into NVIDIA hardware as well. NVIDIA said this was in their intent as well:NVIDIA has been inching in this direction for a very long time and it's past time for AMD to use due process to put an end to it.