Graphic card industry and everyone associated with it are in one hell of roller coaster ride. It has literally been months since people have been waiting for the cryptocurrency mining wave to settle down a bit just so they can build an affordable gaming PC. As if that wasn’t enough Nvidia drops the Nvidia GPP.
So what’s Nvidia GPP ?
Nvidia GPP stands for Nvidia Geforce Partner Program.
It is a program taken up very recently by Nvidia wherein it provides incentives to AIBs in term of engineering support, technical inputs, innovations and most importantly marketing support before, in and after product launches.
To quote them,
the new program means that we’ll be promoting our GPP partner brands across the web, on social media, at events and more. And GPP partners will get early access to our latest innovations, and work closely with our engineering team to bring the newest technologies to gamers.
That was a lot of gibberish for people who don’t talk a lot of PCs.
In other words, let me explain the whole scenario so that everyone including non-geek community understands.
So Nvidia is this big and awesome company (people have been having second thoughts about that lately) that manufactures GPUs or graphical processing units.
Yes, those chips in your computer that does heavy mathematics and geometrical operations to produce, Holy Hell look at those graphics !!! on your computer.
Now chips alone can’t do anything, can they??
So, they partner with third parties or companies (called AIBs) to create a card around that GPU that can in turn be deployed in a computer for it to function. So a GPU becomes a graphic card.
If you would have just thought about gaming on a pc in your life you would have heard of them. Yup, that’s how big they are.
The other big guy,
The other name that you might have heard about is AMD.
Yet, another company that manufactures GPUs in a similar way and deals with AIBs in a similar way.
So, here’s what happened.
Nvidia released this blog post wherein it tells everyone that it has released Nvidia GPP.
They also go ahead and show in brief details as to how will the program function.
You know what before going ahead read it. I don’t want re-write the original post. Let it go inside your head absolutely fresh.
Done reading good.
Everything seems nice and easy right. Just a simple program by a big company. No big deal.
Where things went haywire in Nvidia GPP,
In between when all this was happening Kyle Bennet from HardOCP also published this blog post that actually pointed out some probable things that maybe happening in the background.
Again, read the blog post. It’s very important.
If you are lazy like me and didn’t read its TL; DR is According to Kyle,
- Nvidia via nvidia GPP want all the partnered companies to associate their core gaming brand (that involves nvidia and AMD GPUs as of now) with just nvidia.
- Although, Nvidia claims that it is totally up-to the partners to decide whether they would want to join the program or not, it looks like they won’t have any other choice. That is because nvidia anyway holds the majority of market share. And anyone not joining the program will miss out on a lot of crucial aspects involved in product development and roll out it seems.
MDF is likely the standout in that list of lost benefits if the company is not a GPP partner.
And as always, all hell broke loose all over the internet.
Forums and videos talking about how nvidia is trying to use its position to strong arm AIBs to crush the competition.
There’s even a reddit thread wanting to AIBs to boycott Nvidia GPP program.
If still the picture is not clear as to what will be the predictable consequence of all this would be, its like this;
Say someone wants to get a graphic card for his build, which one would he go for the one with the famous gamer title that the AIB has been built up till the time or the one with a title nobody knows.
Moreover, consider you create GPUs with the help of an AIB which is also in partnership with your competitor.
And the AIB can’t involve with you to the extent it involves with your competitor because of the incentives being offered to it.
If you really pay attention to that aspect, you will understand how difficult unnecessarily things may get for you as manufacturer.
Moreover, when it comes to the consumers they will be having less choices to choose from.
The person who holds the torch will dictate what you pay for, how much you pay for, what quality of product to offer and how to control that quality.
That’s why all the heated discussion you may have been seeing all around.
Let’s disregard all of this
Yup, you heard me.
Everything thing that I just told you was just news right ?.
Something that every other blog on the planet will give you. I don’t wish to waste your time with something that you already know.
But I told you all of that just so we can have the background for what we really wish to look into.
So for the course of this post let’s just say, all of this news is false.
We anyway don’t yet know the intricate details behind all of this but still let’s just assume that all of this is false.
Let’s also just remove nvidia from our minds too.
Now let’s look at history with an absolute untainted perspective.
All through history, whenever wherever something is forced, it has never ended well for anyone.
It doesn’t matter.
If the religious leadership forced something things got ugly. When military leadership after that forced something things got ugly.
We now live in times where more or less we are seeing the rise of business leaderships.
Business leaderships truly have the power to really influence every human being on the planet.
It doesn’t matter whether the human being is in business with the concerned leadership.
If a celebrity generates one thought, the outcome of that single thought will resonate with every man, woman and kid that looks up to him.
So at that level of responsibility the concerned entity, individual or business, holds power that goes beyond some stupid business.
It’s life influence.
And life is always all inclusive.
When sun comes up, it doesn’t say I will not give my sunshine to you because you are a bad guy.
It showers sunshine for everyone and everything.
Now once we truly look into what we are doing in an exclusive manner which includes business, whatever we may think we are doing, human well being is just not in our basis.
When we say all inclusive in business I don’t mean to say that you invite your competitor to a tea party everyday. That’s absurd.
For you and the tea.
All inclusive means if you do something you do that for the collective human well being.
Doesn’t matter you are creating a tooth brush or computer.
So when you have this all inclusive outlook towards competition, you will realize in your blood that you are competing not to thrash your competitors but to create something that is better than anything people have ever seen.
You know what happens in this case.
Both the competitors will realize that on paper you may seem like competitors but in the very core you have the same aim.
Human/Consumer well being.
Now it may just happen that your competition may turn into collaboration without you even knowing it. That’s because you are working towards the same goal.
And that’s what everyone wants don’t they big guys working towards the same goal with joyful zest ?.
Innovation will just be a consequence of that. No extra effort needed.
In conclusion,
Of-course you can label all of this as non-sense and do what you want.
That’s also an option. There is nothing wrong or right with that.
After all you are the boss, but know this. Never had exclusiveness won. I don’t say that.
History says that.
And we have proof for that too, if we talk on business terms Intel had to face a billion dollar lawsuit for something executed on similar grounds.
What can we as consumers do,
I have a dell Inspiron laptop that houses an nvidia gt525m.
Am I going to give it up ?. Hell no.
Who do you think I am. Crazy ?. It’s a great laptop and a great card. I mean considering all things :P.
I want you to understand, Nvidia is a brilliant company manufacturing best in class products.
Especially in the high end graphic card segment, it has no competition till date.
No question about that.
The numbers alone show how effective the giant is.
All over discussion forums and blogs I see people fighting and calling all kinds things to each other just because they support Nvidia or AMD or whatever.
There is no point to that. Not because you can’t do that. You can if you want to.
But the thing is that isn’t a solution is that ?. Big corporations face blames and support like that everyday.
So the question is what the hell should we do ? Drink our coke and just shut up ?.
Absolutely not, that’s even worse.
Let me bring your attention to a very recent case from apple, wherein apple released an apology for slowing down iPhones without due message propagation.
In the conclusion of that post, I ended with this,
Consumer won.
A few guys actually put forth the discussion as to what issues were they facing with the phone.
The discussion took a wave so big in magnitude that the concern reached Apple HQ for resolution and clarity that followed.
We can do something similar right ?.
Let’s discuss it. Make noises everywhere we can but without cussing any company and more importantly each other. Because that doesn’t solve shit.
Especially those people who love Nvidia and its products. Its even more important that they speak up if they consider the issue important so that the company that they love and cherish keep providing you with better products in the future.
There’s no need to go to an extreme as to boycott the nvidia products I feel. Its your choice if that’s what you want.
But not raising your opinions on the matter. That’s just not okay.
Tell me what do you think your opinions are on the matter ?.
Would love to hear what graphic cards you currently use and if you are looking to upgrade. What your choices are going to be ?.
And I will see you in the next one. Namaskaram 🙂 _/\_
