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Nvidia trying to force companies to stop selling AMD GPUs
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/03/08/geforce_partner_program_impacts_consumer_choice
Basically, the claim there is that if an GPU board partner (e.g., Asus, Gigabyte, MSI) or an OEM (e.g., Dell, HP) sells GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia, then Nvidia is threatening that they won't get any Nvidia GPUs until the partners that are Nvidia-only have already been able to get all that they want. When supplies are plentiful several months after launch, everyone will be able to get and sell all of the Nvidia GPUs that they want. But when there's a short supply at launch, companies that also sell GPUs from AMD will get nothing from Nvidia for a while.
Intel was forced to pay over $1 billion several years ago for illegally pressuring companies not to sell AMD CPUs. It looks like Nvdiia wants to repeat that with GPUs, even though they're in a far less dominant position in the GPU market than Intel was in CPUs.
From a consumer perspective, this is unambiguously terrible. I don't know if it's illegal, but it sounds like it could be. Nvidia has proven many times in the past that they don't particularly care about making their customers or business partners hate them, and if the story is accurate, this is one more example of that.
Basically, the claim there is that if an GPU board partner (e.g., Asus, Gigabyte, MSI) or an OEM (e.g., Dell, HP) sells GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia, then Nvidia is threatening that they won't get any Nvidia GPUs until the partners that are Nvidia-only have already been able to get all that they want. When supplies are plentiful several months after launch, everyone will be able to get and sell all of the Nvidia GPUs that they want. But when there's a short supply at launch, companies that also sell GPUs from AMD will get nothing from Nvidia for a while.
Intel was forced to pay over $1 billion several years ago for illegally pressuring companies not to sell AMD CPUs. It looks like Nvdiia wants to repeat that with GPUs, even though they're in a far less dominant position in the GPU market than Intel was in CPUs.
From a consumer perspective, this is unambiguously terrible. I don't know if it's illegal, but it sounds like it could be. Nvidia has proven many times in the past that they don't particularly care about making their customers or business partners hate them, and if the story is accurate, this is one more example of that.
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Comments
Forbes
"The program isn’t exclusive. Partners continue to have the ability to sell and promote products from anyone."
The Nvidia representative added that "The program is transparent and beneficial to gamers, and we have nothing further to add at this time."
If Nvidia is having trouble keeping up with demand, prioritizing exclusive sellers seems less an evil, manipulative scheme and more simply a perk of excluding potential sales from other brands to go all-in with Nvidia.
Now, if they started telling vendors that, regardless of supply, they will receive less or will be unduly delayed, I could definitely see that being an issue.
As it stands, Nvidia is probably more worried about exclusive partners pushing back against their refusing to fulfill orders because another vendor down the street needs some but has a full stock of AMDs to offer customers.
"The crux of the issue with NVIDIA GPP comes down to a single requirement in order to be part of GPP. In order to have access to the GPP program, its partners must have its "Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce." I have read documents with this requirement spelled out on it.
What would it mean to have your "Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce?" The example that will likely resonate best with HardOCP readers is the ASUS Republic of Gamers brand. I have no knowledge if ASUS is a GPP partner, I am simply using the ROG brand hypothetically. If ASUS is an NVIDIA GPP partner, and it wants to continue to use NVIDIA GPUs in its ROG branded video cards, computers, and laptops, it can no longer sell any other company's GPUs in ROG products. So if ASUS want to keep building NVIDIA-based ROG video cards, it can no longer sell AMD-based ROG video cards, and be a GPP partner."
Either Kyle has the story completely wrong, or else Nvidia is being highly deceptive if not outright lying.
By itself, this policy doesn't seem to threaten the consumer. We'll have to see if NVidia tries to get all draconian with this before the consumer sees an impact.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Second - Yes - GPP says, as a partner, your brand needs to be nVidia only. For example - Asus couldn't sell ROG Strix GeForce and ROG Strix RX580s like they do now. The way I read that, it doesn't mean Asus can't sell AMD products. nVidia products would have to have their own distinct branding: either nVidia keeps the Strix lineup and AMD gets something new, or vice versa. I assume it would also apply to motherboards, PSUs, etc. Not that nVidia produces those products, but they very much want the branding to uniquely identify with GeForce (even though the nVidia GeForce brand already does that), and at least in the case of motherboards, you are then promoting Intel or AMD CPUs, which aren't direct competition to nVidia, but both of which do compete with nVidia in the GPU market.
That's from Nvidia's announcement of the program. If only favored partners get early access, then everyone else necessarily gets only later access.
Here's an explanation of some relevant US laws from the FTC:
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/exclusive-supply-or
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/refusal-deal
Apparently whether it's a violation of the law depends substantially on how widely applicable the agreements are. If Nvidia were trying to make it impossible to buy AMD GPUs at all, that would be a clear violation of the law. If they had just one favored partner to help them get reference boards ready, that clearly wouldn't be. Nvidia already has a special relationship of sorts with EVGA, as does AMD with Sapphire.
As I read it, Nvidia is trying to get perhaps half of board partners, most OEMs, and basically all gaming laptop vendors to drop discrete AMD GPUs entirely, or perhaps only to drop the higher end GPUs. Presumably Nvidia would be fine with partners having a Jaton-like relationship with AMD that avoids the gaming-focused video cards.
Nvidia would just claim ,that if supply is low ,then some will be left off the mailing list.The key phrase in that GPP is saying "partners have their own choice to sign up".If there is a drawback to not signing up,it sounds like a monopoly move to me.
What disappoints me however is that these interviews and documents should have gone straight to the hands of several government agencies and not put it out in the open so Nvidia lawyers can start working on a defense.
Then the problem of anyone in the know,they would likely be under a NDA,however unless changed,NDA cannot circumvent the law,a business is not saved by any NDA if it asking employees to cover up illegal activities.
Still bottom line,how do you prove this?I will mention this...How do people think Nvidia got to the top in the first place?They put a hefty legal team versus 3DFX and put them at the time their main competitor out of business.
There is always people in power that manipulate laws and leave loopholes just so other corrupt people can find holes to get off from illegal activity.
Nvidia and Soundblaster have always been scum in my books,both got to the top by utilizing money/power to eliminate competition.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I mean if Nvidia want's to have their own partnership program, or not to sell cards to a specific OEM, aren't they within legal rights?
I mean OEM's such as HP, Dell, or Alienware can always decline the partnership, and consumers can always buy graphics cards of their choice online I don't see what the problem is.
Personally, AMD sucks anyways, only the Ryzen seemed faster, but that was in Multicore performance Intel still wins Single Core, and AMD Graphics cards and Open CL / GL issues = Nvidia hands down.
For example AMD can't currently seriously compete against GTX 1080 and 1080 Ti. If NVidia were to dictate that stores which sell RX 580 aren't allowed to buy any of their GTX 1080 or GTX 1080 Ti cards, stores would have to make a choice between dropping RX 580 in favor of GTX 1060 or losing most of their top-end sales as GTX 1080 -level GPU buyers head to other stores.
That kind of competition isn't healthy, and if you have a monopoly it's illegal.
Second, Nvidia and AMD don't sell GPUs directly to stores. Rather, they sell them to board partners who assemble the cards, laptop vendors, and probably OEMs who build complete computers.
The impression I get is that Nvidia is trying to just barely stay legal here. The law is murky enough as to exactly what constitutes an anti-competitive practice that they're risking 9 or 10 figure fines if their lawyers are slightly wrong about something.
This has nothing to do with CPUs. Companies that sign up for the GeForce Partner Program would readily be able to sell Intel and/or AMD CPUs if they like. I'd be very surprised if Nvidia tries to stop them from selling integrated AMD GPUs or older, lower end AMD GPUs. Hence Nvidia's above claim of, "Partners continue to have the ability to sell and promote products from anyone." That claim doesn't state that they can sell and promote arbitrary other products from anyone, however.
While I have less experience with OpenGL, I have a lot of experience with OpenCL. From a development perspective, you'd have to be nuts to not try your OpenCL code on GPUs from both vendors, as that's a huge aid in debugging. But even then, I tend to run into more problems with Nvidia GPUs than AMD, from dragging their feet on support to driver bugs to being terrible at PCI Express data transfers.
Just one example:
On the HardOCP forum, Kyle, who broke the story, said:
"I have not spoken with any OEM or AIB that is a fan of this program. Quite the opposite in fact."
But if the company has a monopoly they're forbidden some actions so that they couldn't prevent others from competing by their sheer market power.
So yes, AIBs can sell every card they can produce. However, GPU chip manufacturers (nV/AMD) could probably get enough manufacturing capability to crank out enough GPUs if they wanted to. My understanding is that nV has stopped P102/104 production recently anyway, in order to start ramping up for ~whatever~ is supposedly coming next (Ampere/Turing/Volta/whatever they are calling it now). And AMD is gunshy of ramping up production to meet demand, because they got burned when they did that for the 7970.
Now, there have been points in the not to distant past where GPU production was the bottleneck - that was almost always connected to a paper launch by the manufacturer though. I can only think of a couple of times where it was due to something else: the 6970 and 7970 where scarce for a while there because of mining, iirc. But I can't think of any nVidia chip that did the same, apart from paper launch issues.