Nvidia $NVDA lately:Nvidia: stop it with GPP - GeForce Partner Program. You will lose customers this way. Stop it now.When technology companies push proprietary and closed environments, they end up failing and hurting the business. $NVDA, NVIDIA Corporation / H1 User @talpss explains GPP:...Okay, so you know how MSI, ASUS, and Gigabyte make both Nvidia and AMD GPUs? Well, the Geforce Partner Program (GPP) is a supposedly voluntary agreement that is intended to make it more clear what GPUs are using Nvidia hardware and what's using AMD. Sounds good, right? After all, not everyone knows what's what unless they're well read, right? Wrong. What Nvidia wants to do is essentially usurp brandings from their partners. We know ASUS uses ROG for both companies, MSI uses Gaming X for both companies, and Gigabyte uses AORUS for both companies. Nvidia feels that since they sell the most GPUs, and since the branding is identical for both AMD and Nvidia, Nvidia should have exclusive control of ROG, Gaming X, and AORUS. So in order for these products to be more clearly Nvidia, Nvidia wants to kick AMD out of these brands and force them to make new ones. People have said "Okay, whatever, AMD can just have their own gaming brand." Well, it's actually not that simple nor fine and dandy for AMD. Nvidia, according to HardOCP, wants the entire lineup of these manufacturer's gaming brands, which means that AMD might not even be able to get a new brand at all, instead being relegated to something generic like "gaming" (which isn't a brand, just a descriptor) or just "GPU". Recently, however, ASUS has created the "AREZ" branding for AMD exclusively. You might think "Great, AMD is happy, Nvidia is happy, ASUS is happy, this whole GPP thing doesn't matter." Sadly, branding isn't just about exclusivity. Why did Nvidia want ROG, Gaming X, and AORUS for themselves? Because the brand is worth alot of money, and it's worth alot because people know the brand. People buy ROG, Gaming X, AORUS just for the name. AREZ might not even have the ASUS logo on it. Who in the world is gonna buy some brand called AREZ, a brand they've never heard of? AMD is effectively getting pushed out of the gaming market, and consumers will suffer by being forced to either go with the ultra expensive gaming Nvidia GPUs or the knock off quality (or at best decent quality) AMD GPUs that might not even be sold under a brand name. No GPU manufacturer worth anything will produce AMD GPUs and Nvidia GPUs equally if they work with both companies. And these companies can't refuse Nvidia's demands either, if they refuse they might lose critical funds for marketing and supply of GPUs in favor of GPP partners. And because EVGA, Palit, Galax, Zotac, and other Nvidia exclusive companies will 100% become GPP partners, MSI, ASUS, and Gigabyte will also become GPP partners in order to compete. This will also likely affect laptops, so you might stop seeing AMD GPUs in many gaming laptops, even Kaby Lake G (which HardOCP thinks is the root cause of the GPP, as a sort of preemptive strike on AMD and Intel). There's basically nothing the average consumer can do other than buy Sapphire, XFX, or ASRock for their AMD GPU needs, because ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte will undoubtedly not be making very many good AMD GPUs. You might wanna boycott Nvidia or whatever, but there's really no point because most people don't really care if Nvidia is doing this legally or not. So buy your Nvidia cards, don't feel guilty about it, wait for Intel and AMD to file charges and hope that AMD comes out on the other side okay. I personally won't buy any Nvidia GPUs, but I never planned on it anyways."