Rumor: HP and Dell Refuse to Join Nvidia’s GeForce Partner Program

HP and Dell refuse to sign the contract for Nvidia’s GeForce Partner Program and thus reserve the right not to associate their gaming brands exclusively with GeForce graphics cards. That is what HardOCP claims.

HardOCP has learned from sources that HP and Dell are not participating in the GeForce Partner Program. What Lenovo will do is not yet known. The site points to the arrival of desktops and laptops that HP releases under the Pavilion Gaming brand, and that are equipped with both GeForce and AMD Radeon cards.

Under the terms of the GeForce Partner Program, or GPP, that would be prohibited, HardOCP previously reported. The site then claimed that it had seen documents containing that requirement. Nvidia denies enforcing exclusivity with GPP.

The question is what HP is doing with its premium gaming brand Omen and how Intel will respond. Since the introduction of Kaby Lake-G with AMD GPU, Intel has been regarded as a Radeon partner. Not participating in GPP would risk losing discounts when purchasing Nvidia products and low priority in delivery.

A number of developments seem to support HardOCP’s claims. According to rumors, Asus would create a game brand Ares to house AMD Radeon products. Gigabyte does use its Aorus brand name with an external GeForce video card, but not with the AMD variant and MSI no longer has Radeon cards in the Gaming X series on its site.