AMD and NVIDIA have both had partner programs for a long time and some have always thought that NVIDIA might be using it to get an unfair competitive advantage. A recent report about the current state of the GeForce Partner Program seems to confirm it. It appears that Gigabyte, ASUS, and MSI have all sign on. They have either started to remove AMD badges from their products or removed AMD products all together. HP and Dell are not on board. And finally. Why would Intel care? Because it's Kaby Lake-G CPUs have a Radeon label. If NVIDIA is trying to force companies to remove all AMD brands from their packaging it will hurt Intel and Intel most likely joined forces with AMD to combat the perceived threat of NVIDIA. In response AMD is labeling NVIDIA as an anti-gamer company. https://wccftech.com/nvidia-gpp-opposition-grows-hp-dell-say-no-intel-mulling-legal-action/
I've lost track with Nvidia ever since their gpu prices shot up thanks to all the bitcoin mining. I wonder if that contributed to anything?
Perhaps. I haven't looked at the numbers but AMD is probably having a great year despite having the slightly inferior and less popular VEGA product line. That probably pisses NVIDIA off. It's more likely though, that they are worried about whatever plans Intel has with Radeon branding. Intel actually owns over 70% of the GPU market share. If they were to start branding their products as Radeon Gaming it would probably hurt NVIDIA sales. NVIDIA is also an asshole company. That's my opinion. If left unchecked I think their impact on PC gaming would be pretty terrible.
midrange and high-end GPUs are sold out everywhere and there's massive price gouging going on. Both companies sell GPUs instantly when they come in stock anywhere. I don't see how either company could be hurting.
NVIDIA is twisting the arms of these companies to get an advantage. All three are removing AMD from their gaming brands at the same time. ASUS is moving AMD from Republic of Gamers to a new brand called AREZ. MSI has dropped AMDs high end cards and now only sells the low end stuff in a non-gaming brand called Armor. Gigabyte now says their external AMD video card for laptops is no longer a gaming product.
I mean none of it really matters anyway at this point. No normal human can buy a video card. They are all going to miners who buy them by the hundreds.
You are thinking too short term. This affects long term brand reputation. Eventually the mining craze will simmer down, and when the smoke clears, nVidia will have the added benefit of an anti-competition strategy in place, on top of the fact that their market share has always been much, much greater than AMD. This is especially bad for the consumer, because in the absence of competition, we have seen how tech companies will repackage existing products at premium prices without substantial updates.
This will come up against an anti competition panel at some point soon, especially in Europe. Probably illegal in a lot of the world but nvidia have tried to keep it under wraps, now it's out I am sure it won't take long before someone calls them out on it.
Legally it might not matter. AMD sued Intel for the same thing and finally won $1 billion after 10 years in court. During that same time Intel made about $600 billion. So in the end it was still a smart business move by Intel. It will take a boycott of some sort to make a difference.
It's more shady anti-competitive crap. I have a 1800x and GTX 1080 and like the hardware from both companies, but I'll probably go all-AMD if they push this garbage. It's telling how Nvidia representatives who were cozy with tech YouTubers suddenly went into stealth mode and claimed they don't respond to rumours while refusing interviews or questions despite previously claiming the program was transparent and open.