Pulling the Plug on GeForce Partner Program
blogs.nvidia.com
blogs.nvidia.com
Requiring Partners to make their gaming brands Nvidia exclusive way obviously intended to hurt AMD.
Maybe they got a serious call from the FTC about anticompetitive practices.
Also see: https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/03/08/geforce_partner_p...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12565/nvidia-silently-rolls-o...
I find that hilarious. Trying to make themselves sound like the victim here.
"Last month, some of those who had complained claimed in online forums that they had been contacted by regulators, including the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and European Commission, and had been told the authorities were looking into the reports."
Anyway, I'm a little surprised that Nvidia didn't ride out the complaints and press their current GPU advantage, but I assume they're working with a more complete picture of the landscape than I am.
They already do and have all along. For example, if you search for something like Strix (a gaming brand) every product has either "GeForce" or "Radeon" in the name. The "transparency" that NVidia wants already exists.
If they are pulling it, I wonder why. I suppose it probably meant all their AIB partners hated them.
user: i would like to order ummmmmm....a GPU seller: we got this high performance gaming GPU that is compatible with direct X, uses DDR5 8gig memory and base clocked at 1600 MHz, memory speed is 10gbps, supports open gl has high bandwidth memory. we call it {asus/msi/...} GPX10000000x user: i just want the one with Nvidia Pascal. thx. ;)
Could somebody TL;DR the situation to someone who doesn't follow GPU markets?
There was a lot of hypocrisy from NVIDIA in all of this and anti-consumer practices.
After capitulating to the GPP requirements from nVidia, all of ASUS’s AMD card offerings are rebranded under the name AREZ. The boxes hide the ASUS branding in dim gray, off in the corner, where you won’t notice it at all. It looks like an entirely different company and makes it look to a casual observer like ASUS (a famous brand like it or not) doesn’t even sell AMD cards. Only nVidia. And of course, AREZ is just some new no-name brand who can even trust it? And all they sell is AMD, probably some budget garbage right?
It’s stupid. nVidia makes it sound like they were innocently trying to promote their products when they were actually forcing well known brands to entirely divorce their trusted names from AMD products. No matter what way nVidia tries to spin this, the outcome was anticompetitive in every way.
source that one caused the other?
We're not talking about commodity widget makers vying for market share here. This is a company at the absolute forefront of computer science and engineering, pushing the boundaries of what is possible for humanity.
Oh please.
There's a ton of competition in the GPU space, heck Nvidia isn't even in one of the more popular modern consoles. There's other GPU markets as well where Nvidia is far from the dominant player.
This is precisely my point. If you are in the market for a top end consumer GPU, there is only one choice. It's not a matter of competition, no other company has an even remotely viable product.
It does sadden me to see NVidia acting like a sore winner like Intel and Microsoft before it. I suppose they won't stop until they have 97% market share (they need to keep AMD alive to preserve the appearance of competition).
There will be no goalpost moving here.
AMD, ARM, Qualcomm and PowerVR all build compelling GPU solutions.
My point from the very beginning is that there is only one viable option for a top end consumer GPU, as would be desired by the gaming community.
I don't agree with OP, but NVidia's Tegra _does_ power the Nintendo Switch. And if you don't think it's "one of the more popular modern consoles" you haven't seen it's sales numbers.
In the mobile space Nvidia has been third to PowerVR and Adreno for a long time and has only recently started closing that gap. In that space mW/FLOP is almost as important as raw power.
XBox One and the PS4 use AMD CPU and GPU (basically modified AMD desktop chips with beefy on-die graphics).
Nintendo's last gen console was PPC (from IBM) with an AMD GPU. So since 2012ish AMD has been killing it in the console space. NVidia needed that win with the Switch. Its a good fit for Tegra IMO.
A duopoly is bad, but better than a monopoly and anti-competitive practices are still anti-competitive practices. You don't get to flout the law and do something bad just because the market currently sucks.
And they do their work at a crazy intense level! /s
They're resting on their laurels in the gaming market (no new architecture since 2016) and do dominate the high throughput (and high power consumption) GPU space utilized by deep learning/AI.
But as noted by other commenters this is only part of the GPU market. Qualcomm ships a hell of a lot more Adrenos than NVidia ships Tegras. The Tegra brand is 10 years old and they haven't moved in volume until the release of the Nintendo Switch.
Nvidia has some fascinating technology, it's fun to read about the architectural differences/choices between them and AMD and inspiration each take from the other. But NVidia has always played the bully with it's position. It could very well be AMD would have done the same if they had the lead. But that doesn't mean one has to excuse NVidia bullying just because they have good technology.
Whatever hardware advantage Nvidia is offering is pretty much useless without drivers.