Since AMD bought ATI in 2006, the original friendly relationship with NVIDIA was lost. AMD took over the Red Empire ATI's guns and competed with Intel for the graphics card market.
Both have a lot of fans. A rice and N rice are also on the network. They also have nicknames for A and N. AMD is called a farmer company, and NVIDIA is nicknamed "King Granville". These are two nicknames. It's fun and not fun. We also said, but from these two nicknames we can also see that the image of NVIDIA in the minds of netizens is absolutely strong, and AMD is much weaker in comparison.
In recent days, both sides have once again experienced friction due to the NVIDIA-led GPP policy. The impact of this incident may be very different. If you follow NVIDIA's plan, the future AMD graphics card may not be compatible with the 'game' brand.
What is GPP? NVIDIA's ambition to dominate the game market?
Earlier this month, NVIDIA announced the GPP project on its official blog. The full name is the GeForce Partner Program (GeForce Partner Program). They stated that the predecessor of this project is the GPU, and the software has a huge impact on the game player experience. NVIDIA and graphics vendors, System vendors are committed to providing the best PC gaming platform, which is the significance of the GeForce brand.
The launch of the GPP project is to ensure that gamers have complete transparency on the GPUs and software they purchase, and that they can more confidently choose products that NVIDIA GeForce promises (the right experience).
To achieve this goal, then NVIDIA's brand and partner brand must be consistent, so there is a GPP project, participate in the GPP project will have the opportunity to get NVIDIA's latest innovations, together with NVIDIA engineers to put the latest technology Presented to consumers.
The target of the GPP project is very good, NVIDIA is clearly doing a good job for gamers, and ensuring that the video card they buy can achieve the desired experience. Why is it causing so much controversy? The root cause is that in addition to these superficial rhetoric, if you want to join the GPP project and get NVIDIA support, the graphics card manufacturer may have to give up something.
NVIDIA emphasized that participating in the GPP project is voluntary and not exclusive. The vendor can withdraw at any time. It looks like a fair and unfair trade. It is a fair deal, but the foreign peer website HardOCP did research on the GPP project and they learned about some NVIDIA blogs. There is no open agreement -
For graphics card manufacturers to join the GPP, there is a limit that requires the manufacturer to do 'Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce' (game brand and GeForce exclusive correspondence), which means that the graphics card manufacturer's game brand can only be used for GeForce products, which What effect will the point have? We will explain it later.
The problem now is that NVIDIA said that the GPP project is free to choose, but the HOP site has dug deeper protocols, and these protocols have exclusive attributes. And now the key is that neither NVIDIA nor any of the vendors disclose the true GPP protocol. HOP interviewed seven graphics card vendors, but none of them dared to publicly express their opinions. , The original said graphics card manufacturers are very worried about this, because GPP may hinder the consumer's right to choose. In NVIDIA's blog post, the reader comments below are mainly in the dispute part.
In addition to a few media such as HOP who are still questioning GPP, NVIDIA, the graphics card manufacturer is now low-key, and does not boast about this issue, but this does not mean that the GPP project is no longer advancing, on the contrary its impact may be emerging.
GPP is in effect, A card is gradually insulated from the 'Games' card
After the GPP project was publicized, the author has been keeping an eye on it. In the past two days, searching for the corresponding AMD graphics card on the US New Egg Network has seen some changes.
Search MSI RX 580 video card, no Gaming brand RX 580 video card.
Search the Gigabyte RX 580 graphics card, the situation is different, AORUS brand still, Gaming suffix is also.
Sohu RX 580, ROG, Strix brand seems to be in, the screenshots of the above three are cut at noon on Thursday, but the following picture is only the following three when the screenshot on this Tuesday, no ROG brand .
The information transmitted from the beautiful egg does not seem to be complete. Let's look at another thing. The official website of MSI's graphics card introduces:
MSI Worldwide has no Gaming RX 580 on the official website
Gaming brand RX 580 graphics card on US official website
Judging from this official website, there are also differences. There is no Gaming RX 580 graphics card on the global official website, which is still available on the US official website. However, the NVIDIA camp graphics card does not have this change and is not affected.
Judging from these signs, NVIDIA's GPP policy seems to be in effect, and the end is that AMD's graphics cards should be decoupled from various Gaming brands pushed by vendors, verifying that the above-mentioned "Game Brand and GeForce Brand Exclusively" clauses are verified. .
Remember NVIDIA's fear of games?
Is NVIDIA launching GPP this policy shocking? After learning about AMD, NVIDIA's competitive history players may remember another thing -NVIDIA's 'Game of the Game', the foreign name is 'The Way it's meant to be played', and domestic players have translated a very interesting name, that is, 'this road means being played'.
The plan was proposed in 2002, and the official stated that its purpose is to draw attention to those games that were developed on Nvidia graphics cards or developed specifically for NVIDIA graphics cards. The project allows game players to know that using Nvidia’s GPU to run these games can be obtained. A superb gaming experience. Running games on Nvidia hardware not only achieves better picture quality but also makes it more realistic to play, allowing players to experience the way the game developer wants to express the game.
This set of rhetoric is not as familiar as it sounds? NVIDIA is also emphasizing that its graphics card is the best gaming graphics card in the game. Through cooperation with game manufacturers, running games on NVIDIA hardware has better picture quality, etc. Wait.
However, the official said so, the The Way game has caused a lot of controversy, the game to join The Way often use some of NVIDIA's 3D technology, and even their exclusive technology, such as Hairworks hair rendering in GamerWorks and so on, especially NVIDIA Gameworks development tools.
On the one hand, it can simplify the workload of game developers and facilitate them to call various library files. However, this implementation process is closed, and even programmers cannot control the code themselves. This has caused some media and developers to question, because With NVIDIA's development tools, the game will perform well on the N card. However, on the A card, NVIDIA-based special effects tend to seriously affect the performance of the A card, such as the PphysX physics acceleration of the Batman series, the Hairworks effects in the wizard 3, and so on.
In short, on this issue, it is not the first time that NVIDIA has used GPP-like policies to draw together graphics cards and game companies to form a coalition. It was not the first time that the incident was technical. The current GPP is a brand cooperation. , Marketing.
Joining GPP can get various support from NVIDIA, apart from public relations promotion, early adopters, and optimized graphics/games, More importantly, there are game bundles, rebates and marketing fees compensation, etc. These are particularly important for graphics card manufacturers, especially policies such as rebates. This is an important financial compensation for manufacturers. , But rebroad this marketing strategy is also the most likely to be criticized, when Intel was investigated by the FTC monopoly of the market, there is a sales rebate, Intel to this to draw to the majority of manufacturers, and sometimes even forced them not to choose AMD processors.
Summary: The domestic market may have limited or limited impact. AMD needs to be hard on its own.
Controversy about GPP is hot and cold at home and abroad. There is no heated debate in the country. There is no change in the A card of the graphics card manufacturer. The product model of ASUS in the domestic electronic mall is still there. There is still ROG, Strix. Name the brand.
For GPP incidents, the domestic influence may be very limited, but this matter is also related to the special domestic environment, because the mainstream graphics card manufacturers in the world, can cross AMD, NVIDIA camp is not much, that is, ASUS, MSI , Gigabyte, domestic radium wind, but the presence of the two years is very low.
Currently Gigabyte, MSI does not sell A-cards in China, and the only one selling A-cards at the same time is the Asustek. Therefore, the impact of domestic GPP is limited. Sapphire and Dylan are originally AMD camp exclusive and will not be affected by GPP. Instead, they may instead. Is the beneficiary of GPP Because GPP once strengthened the control of N-card manufacturers, it may make consumers more inclined to A-card.
In fact, AMD officials seem to be very cool to GPP, and they do not see the practice of official attacks on affiliates. This is in contrast to the previous game, Gameworks.
For AMD, if we want to reverse the current situation, we have to rely on ourselves. NVIDIA is now able to control the graphics card market so strongly. The root cause is that their graphics cards are in the gaming market. The computing market has advantages. Both performance and energy efficiency are better than AMD. There are better products, Maxwell to Pascal these two generations of products to help NVIIDA conquer the high-end graphics card market, while AMD here to rely on the 14nm Polaris architecture RX 400 series graphics cards began to regain some of the field, but their market share with NVIDIA is still 37 Open, while the gap in the high-end market is even greater.
A few days ago we reported the VR platform share of Oculus Rift's statistics. AMD graphics cards only accounted for about 8% of the market. NVIDIA high-end cards had a 92% share. The gap is quite obvious. AMD urgently needs powerful products to reverse market share.
