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AMD Wants To Hear From GPU Resellers and Partners Bullied By Nvidia (forbes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: Nvidia may not be talking about its GeForce Partner Program, but AMD has gone from silent to proactive in less than 24 hours. Hours ago Scott Herkelman, Corporate VP and General Manager of AMD Radeon Gaming, addressed AMD resellers via Twitter, not only acknowledging the anti-competitive tactics Nvidia has leveraged against them, but inviting others to share their stories. The series of tweets coincides with an AMD sales event held in London this week. This was preceded by an impassioned blog post from Herkelman yesterday where he comes out swinging against Nvidia's GeForce Partner Program, and references other closed, proprietary technologies like G-Sync and GameWorks.
AMD's new mantra is "Freedom of Choice," a tagline clearly chosen to combat Nvidia's new program which is slowly taking gaming GPU brands from companies like MSI and Gigabyte, and locking them exclusively under the GeForce banner. The GeForce Partner Program also seems to threaten the business of board partners who are are not aligned with the program. Here's what Herkelman -- who was a former GeForce marketing executive at Nvidia -- had to say on Twitter: "I wanted to personally thank all of our resellers who are attending our AMD sales event in London this week, it was a pleasure catching up with you and thank you for your support. Many of you told me how our competition tries to use funding and allocation to restrict or block [...] your ability to market and sell Radeon based products in the manner you and your customers desire. I want to let you know that your voices have been heard and that I welcome any others who have encountered similar experiences to reach out to me..." The report adds that Kyle Bennett of HardOCP, the author who broke the original GPP story, "says that Nvidia is beginning a disinformation campaign against him, claiming that he was paid handsomely for publishing the story."
AMD's new mantra is "Freedom of Choice," a tagline clearly chosen to combat Nvidia's new program which is slowly taking gaming GPU brands from companies like MSI and Gigabyte, and locking them exclusively under the GeForce banner. The GeForce Partner Program also seems to threaten the business of board partners who are are not aligned with the program. Here's what Herkelman -- who was a former GeForce marketing executive at Nvidia -- had to say on Twitter: "I wanted to personally thank all of our resellers who are attending our AMD sales event in London this week, it was a pleasure catching up with you and thank you for your support. Many of you told me how our competition tries to use funding and allocation to restrict or block [...] your ability to market and sell Radeon based products in the manner you and your customers desire. I want to let you know that your voices have been heard and that I welcome any others who have encountered similar experiences to reach out to me..." The report adds that Kyle Bennett of HardOCP, the author who broke the original GPP story, "says that Nvidia is beginning a disinformation campaign against him, claiming that he was paid handsomely for publishing the story."
This is the land of OEMs. You want to to make products that are in high demand, and have decent markup? Then you need to sign the contract with the supplier of those parts, and kiss the appropriate ass.
Nvidia has ALWAYS demanded more of OEMs over the years, WITHOUT ever giving a clear picture of what tthe rules are. . The give preferential treatment to different OEMs based on the days of the week! Remember when XFX was a PREFERRED NVIDIA OEM? Pepperidge Farms fucking does!
Or how about that time that Nvidia unleashed the pricing gauntlet,, forcing all OEMs to not drop below minimum pricing levels, basically stopping all entry-level competition?
OEMs are getting raped by Nvidia selling direct, but nobody complained about Founders Editions.
So now you lazy fucks suddenly care about Nvidia swinging their balls around the OEMs yet again? When the end result is just them forcing rebrands? I personally feel like having the exact same brands across chip lines makes shopping for cards confusing, so this isn't NEARLY the biggest dick Nvidia has made in their entire history. But the whiners will have you believe that ir's the END OF DAYS, even though they're still allowing everyone to continue to sell both Nvidia and AMD cards if they want.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Asus just introduced another brand for selling their high-end AMD gear: Arez. They're still selling the EXACT SAME GPUs, just without the ROG branding.
Just like they mysteriously introduced the STRIX brand of video cards about 5 years ago, and have for some fucking reason started selling motherboards under the brand (even though they are already silent)
If rebranding a product line is so fucking hard, why do OEMs do it every few years? Like Asus introducing STRIX, or AsRock introducing Taichi a couple years back, or MSI going crazy with Carbon and Mortar for their motherboards and Duke and Lightning for their GPUs? Or Gigabyte making up AORUS recently and sticking it on every fucking product they sell?
Rebranding is the easiest part of marketing a product. It's creating the RIGHT motherboard/GPU and getting it out there in reviews - THAT is the hard part of being an OEM.
Why do you people pretend that rebranding is hard? BECAUSE YOU DON'T LIKE CHANGE.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.