NVIDIA has evolved over the past few months no friends made. It was not until March that the US chip manufacturer made its Geforce partner program talk about yourself. The idea: Partner manufacturers like ASUS, Gigabyte or MSI should offer their gaming brands like RoG or Aorus use only for NVIDIA cards – to avoid customer confusion. The portal heise.de is now reporting on one mysterious non-disclosure agreement and the German press reacted.
Geforce Partner Program already discontinued
We begin with the events of the beginning of the year. NVIDIA's idea was relatively obvious. By tying its partners and their brands to its own cards, AMD has to take a hit at the same time. Years of marketing from the manufacturers then only flow in the direction of NVIDIA. The outcry was correspondingly loud. So loud that NVIDIA has since scrapped the obviously misunderstood plans. Incidentally, the story was published by journalists who learned the information first-hand - allegedly competitor AMD drew attention to the plans. Because the Geforce Partner Program and the benefits still open to this day were subject to an NDA (non-disclosure agreement, Nondisclosure Statement). This brings us to our transition to the next topic.
NDA in focus
Yesterday on 25.06. heise.de published the article "On our own behalf: Nvidia NDA as a muzzle for journalists' in which the magazine sharply criticized the approach of the world's largest graphics processor manufacturer. More precisely, it was about a new confidentiality agreement that NVIDIA issued on June 20.06th. sent to various journalistic media. Heise saw the lack of concrete products and an exact expiry date of the NDA as particularly problematic. From our own experience we can confirm that a missing expiration date is uncommon, however the NDA in question seems to be more of a general statement. The exceptions set out in point 3 enable reporting after information has become known. The restriction allows NVIDIA to give selected journalists access to their latest products. In this way, detailed reviews, videos and tests can be made available ready for the release of the new hardware. In a perfect world, all of this would be possible without an NDA. However, similar behavior can also be observed in video games. In 2016, Bethesda announced they wanted all players, journalists and fans alike, to experience their games at the same time. In other words: no reviews should appear before the release of games. After all, bad ratings can radically reduce the success of games. But is it fair that consumer impatience can be exploited? In stationary retail, customers are dependent on the goodwill of the retailer if they are not satisfied. Steam does allow refunds, but only up to a certain amount of game time. The general problem of NDAs is also visible in other areas. However, in the case of NVIDIA, other journalists come to the rescue. As well as computer base as well as PC Games Hardware do not see any problems with the confidentiality declaration mentioned. PCGH Editor-in-Chief Thilo Bayer even accuses heise of portraying himself as a "martyr".. So the situation remains somewhat confusing.
Mining Flattens - Time for GTX 1180?
Today (03.07.18/5.694/17) the bitcoin is at €35,44. The downward trend of the cryptocurrency continues. This of course reduces the miners' income considerably. In December 2018, 10,49 million US dollars were still turned over by all Bitcoin miners worldwide. In June XNUMX it was only XNUMX million. This fact can be seen in the hardware market. graphics Cards become cheaper again. However, the ideal time for the urgently needed upgrade has still not come. After all, the trade press expects the next generation of NVIDIA's chip in August. There is speculation about a release of the Founders Edition of the 1180, or maybe 2080, at Gamescom in Cologne. The first partner cards will therefore be available in September. Innovations are said to be the jump to GDDR6 RAM and the increase in shader units to 3584. With that, the new card would exceed the 1080 by 40%. Also about a possible one HDMI 2.1 port dedicated to Virtual Reality is speculated. The price is said to be over $700. So we can be curious if NVIDIA will live up to the high expectations and if the next generation of GeForce will bring us closer to the ultimate 4K experience. After all, the first monitors with 4K resolution and high frame rates will appear this year.
