Hardware manufacturers seem to be taking away game brand names from AMD products
Some hardware manufacturers seem to be taking their game brand names away from AMD hardware based products. This may have to do with the GeForce Partner Program, with which Nvidia would like to bind such brand names exclusively.
Gigabyte RX 580 Gaming Box
So far there are concrete examples of two brands that game brand names are no longer mentioned on AMD products. It’s about Gigabyte and MSI. The former announced the Gigabyte RX 580 Gaming Box this week, an external video card that is equal to the variant with GeForce GTX 1070 except for the GPU. The variant with Nvidia GPU is called Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1070 Gaming Box, Aorus is the brand name that Gigabyte used for its products aimed at gamers.
ComputerBase has asked Gigabyte why the RX 580 variant does not have the Aorus brand name and told the German website that this is because the AMD variant “is not aimed at gamers”. That statement does not match the product page, where Gigabyte clearly promotes the external video card for gamers.
References of Radeon video cards in the Gaming X series seem to have disappeared from MSI’s website. For example, if you view the selection of RX 580 video cards on the website, you will only see models in the Armor series, which are cheaper variants. MSI has previously released Gaming X cards with AMD Radeon GPUs and their product pages are still online, but are not visible in the overview. The cards in question don’t seem to be for sale anymore. For example, the MSI Radeon RX 580 Gaming X 8GB is no longer available and the RX 570 Gaming X 4GB variant is only available at one shop.
MSI Radeon RX 580 Gaming X 4G
Users on Reddit claim that other brands no longer sell their AMD video cards with their game brand names. The claims are based on the listings at webshops such as Amazon and Newegg, where, for example, the brand name Republic of Gamers or the abbreviation ROG from Asus is not always present with video cards with an AMD GPU. The claims are not substantiated further.
Asus still has AMD video cards with its Republic of Gamers brand name on its website. The same goes for Gigabyte, by the way; Although the new Gaming Box with AMD GPU does not have an Aorus name, existing products such as the RX 580 Aorus video card are still on the website.
The disappearance of the gaming brand names at MSI and the Gaming Box from Gigabyte is said to be related to Nvidia’s GeForce Partner Program. HardOCP came out with this earlier this month, after the site was approached about it by AMD.
The GPP would work differently than Nvidia itself describes in a blog post. According to HardOCP, which relies on multi-brand sources, partner gaming brands must be fully affiliated with GeForce. This would mean that manufacturers participating in the GPP may only use their game brand names for products with Nvidia hardware. In return, GPP members would receive marketing budget, among other things.
Whether the GeForce Partner Program just causes manufacturers to rename their products with AMD hardware, or whether there are other influences as well, isn’t clear. Hardware manufacturers would have indicated that they had the feeling that they would be allocated less GPU stock if they were not GPP members. hardOCP says currently unable to follow up on the story because everyone involved is silent about it.