Nvidia Thread

I watched that entire 7 minute video on 2x speed. It was nothing but fluff and I learned nothing more than what the title of this topic said... lol wow that is sad. I'm glad I unsubbed from him a couple years ago.

 

I stopped reading rumors from nvidia, Apple and Intel. Although it sounds super exciting they come up with worse products priced insanely.

 

Yup, it's best to spend time on constructive things than spend it speculating about a reality that never arrives. Why not wait for the arrival itself, and then enjoy that?

 

Report Alleges New Nvidia Program Engages In Monopolistic, Anti-Consumer Practices
Jason Evangelho, MAR 8, 2018 @ 04:03 PM
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasone...ages-in-monopolistic-anti-consumer-practices/

"Kyle Bennett, Editor-in-Chief at tech website HardOCP, just published a story so controversial he only felt comfortable doing so once his lawyers signed off on it. That's because the information he uncovered during a three-week long investigative journey into a new Nvidia program is sure to turn heads industry-wide and open the door for serious blowback if the facts are indeed facts. He seems confident in his story. After 20 years covering the PC industry, Bennett believes this will, at the very least, put a swift end to his relationship with Nvidia.

This is not a story Bennett just stumbled onto. Several weeks ago AMD approached Bennett (and other undisclosed journalists) about a new Nvidia program launching called the GeForce Partner Program. I know firsthand how these pitches work as I've received them from both sides. The journalist will get a little breadcrumb, a vague clue. The company won't divulge more, although it's highly possible they know more based on their relationships with the same companies you'll end up speaking to throughout your investigation.

Bennett writes that after being pitched by AMD representatives, there was no story to be told. But he decided to investigate further, spending three weeks talking to a total of seven companies that "do business with Nvidia on a large scale" about the details of the GeForce Partner Program. These was an undisclosed mixture of AIBs (companies who produce AMD and/or Nvidia graphics cards) and OEMs (PC companies like Dell, HP and Lenovo).

None of the seven companies agreed to speak on the record. "The ones that did speak to us have done so anonymously, in fear of losing their jobs, or having retribution placed upon them or their companies by NVIDIA," Bennett says.

Bennett says that everyone he did speak to shared the same concerns about GPP: "1.) They think that it has terms that are likely illegal. 2.) GPP is likely going to tremendously hurt consumers' choices. 3.) It will disrupt business with the companies that they are currently doing business with, namely AMD and Intel."

The goal of the GeForce Partner Program reminds me a bit of Nintendo's old "Seal of Approval." According to Nvidia's own statements and the results of Bennett's research, the goal is to show transparency to gamers, ensure quality at all levels and make them confident in the products they're buying. For Nvidia partners, the program is set to deliver social media promotions, engineering and marketing support, and early access to new Nvidia GeForce technologies. That all sounds great and beneficial to everyone in the loop.

The root of the issue seems to lie in the disparity between Nvidia's public statements about the program and the contractual obligations its partners must allegedly adhere to.

In the company's official blog, Nvidia's John Teeple writes: "The program isn’t exclusive. Partners continue to have the ability to sell and promote products from anyone. Partners choose to sign up for the program, and they can stop participating any time. There’s no commitment to make any monetary payments or product discounts for being part of the program."

Bennett's research tells a different tale. He writes that he has seen documentation requiring members of the GPP to have their "Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce" and argues that this could put enormous pressure on companies like ASUS who own a gaming brand (Republic of Gamers) for both Nvidia and Radeon cards. Why the pressure? Because the perks of the program supposedly include high-profile launch support, game bundling and "marketing development funds" among others.

There are many more layers and details to this story and I think it's unfair to Bennett to reduce his three weeks of research into a highlight reel. So I strongly encourage you to read his entire report and decide for yourself.

I reached out to an Nvidia representative regarding this story, and he pointed me back to their blog post, particularly the line "The program isn’t exclusive. Partners continue to have the ability to sell and promote products from anyone."

The Nvidia representative added that "The program is transparent and beneficial to gamers, and we have nothing further to add at this time."

I've started reaching out to my own industry contacts, and will be conducting independent research with AIBs and OEMs to further uncover what's really happening here."

 

GeForce Partner Program Impacts Consumer Choice
Kyle Bennett, Thursday , March 08, 2018
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/03/08/geforce_partner_program_impacts_consumer_choice

"While we usually like to focus on all the wonderful and immersive worlds that video cards and their GPUs can open up to us, today we are tackling something a bit different. The GeForce Partner Program, known as GPP in the industry, is a "marketing" program that looks to HardOCP as being an anticompetitive tactic against AMD and Intel."

" GeForce Partner Program Impacts Consumer Choice

To open up this bit of reporting, which will contain some editorial as well, I think our motives should be clear. In discussions with NVIDIA over the last few weeks, NVIDIA asked us exactly what our concerns were about the GPP program. This was our reply and should frame exactly why we are writing this.

Kyle Bennett: " I think it [GPP] is going to greatly, and negatively, impact consumer choice in the AIB and OEM computer market. Consumer choice is going to be decimated. Looking at the program guidelines, I truly think that is what will happen and is where my concern lies."

Before we go any further, in the effort to be as transparent as possible, we need to let you know that AMD came to us and presented us with "this story." AMD shopped this story with other websites as well. However, with the information that was presented to us by AMD, there was no story to be told, but it surely pointed to one that was worth looking into. There needed to be some legwork done in collecting facts and interviews.

At this point you're probably wondering, "What is NVIDIA GPP?" A couple of weeks after we began questioning NVIDIA on GPP, it put up an article on its blog.nvidia.com domain entitled, " GeForce Partner Program Helps Gamers Know What They're Buying." Here what John Teeple, Director - Partner Marketing at NVIDIA, has to say about GPP.

In our latest effort to better serve gamers, we're introducing our GeForce Partner Program.

The GPU and software of a gaming PC make all the difference in a gamer's experience. And together with our add-in card and system partners, we're dedicated to building the best PC gaming platform bar-none -- this is the GeForce promise.

The GeForce Partner Program is designed to ensure that gamers have full transparency into the GPU platform and software they're being sold, and can confidently select products that carry the NVIDIA GeForce promise.

This transparency is only possible when NVIDIA brands and partner brands are consistent. So the new program means that we'll be promoting our GPP partner brands across the web, on social media, at events and more. And GPP partners will get early access to our latest innovations, and work closely with our engineering team to bring the newest technologies to gamers.

Partners are signing up, fast. They see the benefit of keeping brands and communication consistent and transparent.

The program isn't exclusive. Partners continue to have the ability to sell and promote products from anyone. Partners choose to sign up for the program, and they can stop participating any time. There's no commitment to make any monetary payments or product discounts for being part of the program.

GPP ensures our engineering and marketing efforts support brands consumers associate with GeForce. That transparency will give gamers the confidence needed to make their purchase, whichever products they choose.

Admittedly, GPP sounds like a good program on the surface, but after digging into documentation and interviews with OEMs and AIBs in the past weeks, the warm and fuzzies quickly subside. HardOCP has been in the computer hardware review business for over 20 years now, and we have made an abundance of contacts along the way. In order for our preparation to write this article, we have spent the last three weeks talking to OEMs and AIBs in the industry that do business with NVIDIA on a large scale. Given how GPP is all about "transparency," you might think that those OEMs and AIBs would be chomping at the bit to get some free press on how those companies are part of the GPP program.

We have contacted seven companies about their part in NVIDIA GPP and not one of the seven would talk to us on the record if they spoke to us about it at all. The ones that did speak to us have done so anonymously, in fear of losing their jobs, or having retribution placed upon them or their companies by NVIDIA. All of the people that I did interview at AIBs and at OEMs did however have the same thoughts on GPP. 1.) They think that it has terms that are likely illegal. 2.) GPP is likely going to tremendously hurt consumers' choices. 3.) It will disrupt business with the companies that they are currently doing business with, namely AMD and Intel.

The crux of the issue with NVIDIA GPP comes down to a single requirement in order to be part of GPP. In order to have access to the GPP program, its partners must have its "Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce." I have read documents with this requirement spelled out on it.

What would it mean to have your "Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce?"

The example that will likely resonate best with HardOCP readers is the ASUS Republic of Gamers brand. I have no knowledge if ASUS is a GPP partner, I am simply using the ROG brand hypothetically. If ASUS is an NVIDIA GPP partner, and it wants to continue to use NVIDIA GPUs in its ROG branded video cards, computers, and laptops, it can no longer sell any other company's GPUs in ROG products. So if ASUS want to keep building NVIDIA-based ROG video cards, it can no longer sell AMD-based ROG video cards, and be a GPP partner.

NVIDIA will tell you that it is 100% up to its partner company to be part of GPP, and from the documents I have read, if it chooses not to be part of GPP, it will lose the benefits of GPP which include: high-effort engineering engagements -- early tech engagement -- launch partner status -- game bundling -- sales rebate programs -- social media and PR support -- marketing reports -- Marketing Development Funds (MDF). MDF is likely the standout in that list of lost benefits if the company is not a GPP partner.

As you might recall, we have seen onerous terms such as those contained in GPP to have many similarities to Intel's once monopolistic business practices (versus AMD) in withholding MDF to partners. The results of that situation were huge multi-billion dollar fines for Intel. GPP has some striking similarities.

What is disturbing is that we have been told that if a company does not participate in GPP, those companies feel as if NVIDIA would hold back allocation of GPUs from their inventories. From all we have talked to, the issue of not allocating GPU inventories to non-GPP partners have not been spelled out contractually, but is rather done on a wink and a nod.

The motivations behind this GPP move by NVIDIA is somewhat confusing at first blush. Why would a company that owns ~70% market share, and has no true high-end competition make a move like this? Many people that I have spoken to fully question the legality of the GeForce Partner Program. Interestingly enough, we think that the roots of GPP makes it way all the way back and somewhat dovetails with our From ATI to AMD back to ATI? A Journey in Futility article published in May of 2016. That was the first time that the world got wind of AMD getting into bed with Intel to do some GPU business. We believe at that time NVIDIA put another "exclusive" plan into place, however by a different name, and the GeForce Partner Program we are seeing now is somewhat an extension of that previous program.

One thing we know is that NVIDIA has made a lot of enemies over the years. You can easily put AMD, Apple, and Intel on that list. We think that GPP is somewhat the result of those "feuds" with NVIDIA attempting to gain more control over the market as it is seeing its competitors developing products (ie AMD and Intel partnerships on products) that will not be open to NVIDIA.

As mentioned above, NVIDIA questioned my concerns and I copied and posted those above. There was however a lot more in that email that I wrote to NVIDIA on February 22nd and I am going to quote that below. To date, NVIDIA has never responded to that email or the concerns put forth in it.

This is a big story, but it all goes much further than consumer choice, however it does not matter to me on a personal level beyond that. I am just being my tech journalistic self, which I have to do from time to time. And after the story I wrote about AMD in 2016 on the Intel/AMD deal and the politics attached to that, this story is going to get a LOT of exposure now that HardOCP's credibility has been returned, if not exalted since all the truth came out on that. I am making sure all my I's are dotted and T's crossed and have already prepared my lawyers with what I need to win any sort of lawsuit that might come out of this. They feel I am on solid ground and have signed off on moving forward.

There will certainly be follow up stories written by many websites though, that have a much better grasp of the financial side of this.

I would highly, actually, almost assuredly suggest that GPP is going to open NVIDIA to lawsuits from AMD and Intel. That alone is going to cause NVIDIA to shoulder financial burden. The OEMs and AIBs will not sue NVIDIA, but they will be deposed for years on this and the concerns about that are already being voiced in a very big way. Intel paying $1B+ for anticompetitive practices is one thing, but Jensen having to explain it to your shareholders is going to be a very big deal in terms of NVIDIA stock price. I have to guess that AMD and Intel's latest foray into business together has gotten Jensen worried enough to roll the bones though.

It is my opinion that GPP is not a good business plan for a company that is dominating in terms of both product performance and market share.

As for the timeline for my story, I am wrestling with timing on its publication currently. Publishing before GPP contracts are signed or after GPP contracts are signed? I still have not decided on that.

At publication time, NVIDIA has not returned our request for the list of companies that will be involved in its GeForce Partner Program.

There is no doubt that NVIDIA GPP has some striking similarities to what Intel has done in the past that has been deemed "anticompetitive conduct" by the Federal Trade Commision. We would not be surprised to see regulators in the US, Europe, and Asia want to take a closer look at GPP as well.

It was expressed to me that publishing this article "could damage the relationship" between HardOCP and NVIDIA. As noted previously, we have been reviewing computer hardware for quite a while. What "damaging the relationship" means to us is that HardOCP will very likely not be doing any NVIDIA GPU reviews at launch time. It is very likely that AIBs and OEMs will be instructed to not to sample HardOCP for reviews on any of their video card products as well. If you do see NVIDIA video card reviews on HardOCP in the future, those will likely be fully funded in-house, as we will be required to purchase all of the review hardware from retail sources. We feel however that this story surely needs to be told.

Discussion"

 

It seems after all of that, he still trying to understand what is happening?!

 

Kyle Bennett: " I think it [GPP] is going to greatly, and negatively, impact consumer choice in the AIB and OEM computer market. Consumer choice is going to be decimated. Looking at the program guidelines, I truly think that is what will happen and is where my concern lies."
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...right-now-nvidia.806608/page-21#post-10692438
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/03/08/geforce_partner_program_impacts_consumer_choice

 

Yes I saw all of that, I'm just wondering why he said that at the end of his article?!

 

It's important to attribute a quote to the writer, which wasn't me, it was the author of the quote from the Forbe's article:

" I've started reaching out to my own industry contacts, and will be conducting independent research with AIBs and OEMs to further uncover what's really happening here." - Jason Evangelho

I would take it as Jason is looking for additional comment, confirmation, and further fallout from Nvidia's GPP.

 

Understood, thanks for the explanation .

 

Nvidia Screws Everyone with GeForce Partner Program

Published on Mar 11, 2018
Read the original story: https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/03/08/geforce_partner_program_impacts_consumer_choice
Discussion
Nvidia's blog post: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/03/01/geforce-partner-program/

 

Inno3D Leak Confirms NVIDIA P102-100 ‘Pascal GP102’ Crypto Mining Cards – 3200 Cores, 5 GB G5X Memory, Up To 47 MH/s in Ethereum

It looks like the rumors regarding NVIDIA’s Pascal GP102 going EOL hold no truth to them as a recent leak has just confirmed that mining specific P102-100 graphics cards will be hitting the market real soon.

NVIDIA GP102 ‘P102-100’ Crypto Mining Graphics Cards On The Way – 3200 Cores, 5 GB G5X With 400 GB/s Bandwidth, Upto 47 MH/s in Ethereum, 660 Sol/s in ZCash and 879 H/s in Monero
The leak comes from the cryptomining blog who have been tipped that NVIDIA P102-100 mining specific graphics cards will be hitting market real soon. One specific variant has been fully detailed which seems to be an Inno3D discrete board.

Previously, we have heard rumors that NVIDIA would EOL their enthusiast geared GP102 GPU but that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. The P102-100 SKU is based on the GP102 GPU and comes with a new albeit cut down core, aimed at crypto miners.

 

Why won't this crap just die already... ugh... so frustrating. I really need to the Republicans in the USA to get butthurt that they missed on Cryptos and have a knee jerk reaction to ban all of it and ban all exchanges. That would deal it a nice blow to chin bone at least.

 

In honor of a @Papusan type of post... Let me fix that for you.

But I think you and I probably agree that crypto is a waste of time and real money. And it probably is safe to say we both wish it would hurry up and get to where it is heading... the way of bag phones, fax machines, beepers, VHS, and 'My Space'.

But who knows how long this will take. Especially with virtualized cats as one of the driving forces for the need for crypto cash - https://beta.techcrunch.com/2017/12...ying-virtual-cats-on-the-ethereum-blockchain/

 

I am AI Docuseries, Episode 5: On the Fast Track to AI-Powered Driving - Roborace

 

yawn fest 2018, i know the banking world is corrupt. who cares anymore, i just want my hobbies and let the rest of it burn

 

GDC 2018 SHOWGUIDE
Review our showguide to prepare for groundbreaking updates on Ansel, Shadowplay Highlights, Artificial Intelligence, and more. This year’s lineup of partner presentations and technology demos will leave you


GDC 2018 SHOWGUIDE
Review our showguide to prepare for groundbreaking updates on Ansel, Shadowplay Highlights, Artificial Intelligence, and more. This year’s lineup of partner presentations and technology demos will leave you excited about the future of gaming – you won’t want to miss a moment.
READ MORE



NSIGHT VISUAL STUDIO EDITION 5.5
This release extends support to the latest Volta GPUs and Win10 RS3. The Graphics Debugger adds Pixel History(DirectX 11, OpenGL) and OpenVR 1.0.10 support as well as Vulkan and Range Profiler improvements…
READ MORE



NVIDIA DRIVER SYMBOL SERVER
Our driver symbol server can serve you NVIDIA driver binaries from any driver release within the previous 3 years (at the time of writing this article), and includes all the binaries we distribute in our release driver package -- so whether you're developing for DirectX 11, DirectX 12, OpenGL, Vulkan or CUDA and more, you should be covered!
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NVIDIA COLLABORATES WITH MICROSOFT TO BRING DX12 DEVELOPMENT & DEBUGGING TO THE NEXT LEVEL
Here at NVIDIA, we focus on the best experience for our customers and powerful tools that empower developers to produce high quality software faster and easier are one of the key parts of a great developer experience.
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THE PEAK-PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS METHOD FOR OPTIMIZING ANY GPU WORKLOAD
Figuring out how to reduce the GPU frame time of a rendering application on a PC can be a challenging task, even for the most experienced PC game developers.
READ MORE

 

About time. I need to update to new CUDA 9.2 for better performance.

 

I don't know if this will help:

NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit Release Notes
http://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-toolkit-release-notes/index.html

CUDA Toolkit Documentation v9.1.85
http://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/index.html

 

I like him because many are hating him
NVIDIA's GeForce Partner Program Is Bad News!

 

There are lot of bugs 9.1.85, I will wait for CUDA 9.2.x and RS4 support.

 

The GeForce Partner Program - Nvidia Better Serving...Nvidia

Nvidia Making OEMs an Offer They Can't Refuse (Part 1)

GPU Mafia is Born. Nvidia's Geforce Partner Program (GPP) (Part 2)

 

GPP-> Great Guinea Pig Program.

 

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TOP-TIER SESSIONS ON THE BLEEDING EDGE OF GAME DEVELOPMENT
Gaming Leaders are envisioning how AI and deep learning will transform the industry. GTC 2018 will unveil what will be the hottest GDC topic in 2019.

Choose from 19 game-relevant sessions Monday from Remedy, EA SEED, NVIDIA, and many other innovative companies.

Playing FPS
Games with Deep Reinforcement Learning
Explore the first architecture to tackle 3D environments in FPS games that involve partially observable states.

Deep Reinforcement Learning for 3D Multiplayer Games
See an overview on the potential of neural nets in game development.

AI Disrupting the Future of Content Creation for Games
Learn how AI-accelerated workflows can reduce the required manpower of next-gen development.

 

What is NVIDIA's GPP?

 

Graphics Cards Prices May FINALLY Go Down Soon!

 

NVIDIA Allegedly F***ing Everyone - WAN Show Mar. 16 2018
00:12:50 - GeForce Partner Program

 

I...WANT...AMD....TO...SLAY..NVIDIA'S..ECONOMY..BUT...THEY...AREN'T... WORKING...NICE...ENOUGH....CRAP!!!!

 

NVIDIA's new RTX technology!

NVIDIA will soon announce RTX technology for games; real-time ray tracing will soon be real!


NVIDIA hasn't briefed press on their upcoming RTX technology just yet, but VideoCardz is reporting that the GeForce giant will announce RTX on Monday.

The company has teamed up with Microsoft for a new API for RTX, something that will allow major game engines to support it, including Unreal Engine, Unity, and DICE's Frostbite engine. VideoCardz reports that there are already three developers that are working on RTX: EA Games, Remedy, and 4A Games

 

NVIDIA RTX Real-Time Ray Tracing Tech Demo From Remedy Entertainment

NVIDIA RTX Technology, Volta-architecture GPUs, the GameWorks SDK, and the Microsoft DirectX Raytracing API make real-time ray tracing a reality for games. Check out this Northlight-engine tech demo from Remedy Entertainment for an early look at how real-time ray tracing can vastly improve the quality of lighting and shadowing in games. Learn more on GeForce.com: https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/art... Please note that a ray-tracing denoiser module is coming to the GameWorks SDK, which will enable developers to remove film grain-like noise without any additional time-sapping development work, meaning the end result will look even better.

 

Graphics Cards Are About To Get WAY More Expensive, And Not Because Mining!

 

Intel Labs: Wolfenstein Gets Ray Traced, On a Laptop! | Intel

Published on Sep 11, 2010
Research project Wolfenstein: Ray Traced gets demonstrated inside Intel Labs in Santa Clara, CA. See the highly detailed chandelier model with near realistic glass reflecting and refracting with amazing clarity. Also see a shiny car reflect movement from its surroundings, and other potential game-play enhancing features. The demo setup consists of four machines using Intel's Knights Ferry card as rendering server that feeds a small laptop with the stunning visualizations playing at a high frame rate.

Intel shows off Wolfenstein: Ray Traced at IDF 2010
BY MATTHEW HUMPHRIES 09.14. 2010 :: 7:04AM EDT
https://www.geek.com/games/intel-shows-off-wolfenstein-ray-traced-at-idf-2010-1284101/

Intel Software - Embree Ray Tracing Framework at SIGGRAPH 2017
August 16, 2017


Embree High Performance Ray Tracing Kernels
https://embree.github.io/

 

AMD Announces Real-time Ray Tracing Support for ProRender and Radeon GPU Profiler 1.2
by Nate Oh on March 19, 2018 8:15 PM EST
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1255...cing-for-prorender-and-radeon-gpu-profiler-12

"First disclosed this evening with teaser videos related to a GDC presentation on Unity, today AMD is announcing two developer-oriented features: real-time ray tracing support for the company's ProRender rendering engine, and Radeon GPU Profiler 1.2.

Though Microsoft’s DirectX Raytracing (DXR) API and NVIDIA’s DXR backend “RTX Technology” were announced today as well, the new ProRender functionality appears to be largely focused on game and graphical development as opposed to an initiative angled for real-time ray tracing in shipping games. Similarly, while Radeon GPU Profiler (RGP) has not received a major update since December 2017, as it is AMD’s low-level hardware-based debugging/tracing tool for Radeon GPUs this is likewise purely for developers.

In any case, for Radeon ProRender AMD is bringing support for mixing real time ray-tracing with traditional rasterization for greater computational speed. As with today's other real-time ray tracing announcements, AMD's focus is on capturing many of the photorealism benefits of ray tracing without the high computational costs. At a basic level this is achieved by limiting the use of ray tracing to where it's necessary, enough so that it can be done in real-time alongside a rasterizer. Unfortunately beyond a high-level overview, this is all AMD has revealed at this time. We're told a proper press release will be coming out tomorrow morning with further details.

As for the new version of RGP, 1.2 introduces interoperability with RenderDoc, a popular frame-capture based graphics debugging tool, as well as improved frame overview. The update also brings detailed barrier codes, relating to granular regulation of graphical work among DX12 units.

Regardless, AMD has yet more to say on the ray-tracing topic. Along with tomorrow's press release, AMD has a GDC talk scheduled for Wednesday on “Real-time ray-tracing techniques for integration into existing renderers,” presumably discussing ProRender in greater detail."

Expanding DirectX 12: Microsoft Announces DirectX Raytracing
by Ryan Smith on March 19, 2018 1:02 PM EST
...see posting here:
GDC 2018 - March 19th - 23rd Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...center-san-francisco-ca.814686/#post-10698182

 

Nvidia GPP's first victim(s)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/85n378/nvidia_gpps_first_victim/
"
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/gigabyte-intros-rx-580-gaming-box.242482/#post-3815677
GIGABYTE just intro'd a new AMD oriented external GPU box and look at the branding. AMD box is a generic GIGABYTE while the Nvidia box get's the AORUS branding. This definitely looks like confirmation that the GPP is real.
This is really bad for all consumers.

EDIT **

Huge update, I went looking through many partner cards and It appears that this is in not the first. Please note that unlike the first part of this post, the following is not a direct confirmation of a product and is not a large enough sample size to confirm participation in the GPP with 100% certainty. I thought it was important to add this small grain of salt. Do note that ASUS and MSI have already been confirmed as having signed onto the GPP by Kyle Bennett, the author of the original GPP article.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...iption=asus+rx+580&ignorear=0&N=-1&isNodeId=1

It appears as though ASUS has removed it's ROG AMD cards. When I did a google search the listing was named "ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 580" but it brings you to the non branded "ASUS Radeon RX 580"

This means that ASUS simply removed ROG AMD cards, as per the GPP. In addition, when you go to the Amazon page

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-ROG-STRIX-RX580-O8G-GAMINGOC-GDDR5-Ready-Graphics/dp/B071D8YQJD?th=1

It's the same unbranded video card but they still haven't removed the "ROG STRIX" from the title yet.

And here's an example of all the MSI Gaming X cards being gone from both Newegg and Amazon. They aren't even listed as being out of stock on of stock on newegg.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...TMATCH&Description=msi+rx+580&N=-1&isNodeId=1

https://www.amazon.com/MSI-RX-580-GAMING-8G/dp/B06Y19NMP3

Just looking at the Nvidia cards right now, it appears that all the Nvidia cards still have the ROG and GAMING branding from MSI and ASUS.

Images: https://imgur.com/a/dcxDt
628 comments "

Nvidia Sucks!!

 

Nvidia has been sneaking in slower GeForce MX150 '1D12' variant onto some Ultrabooks-Notebookcheck.net

Be on the lookout for notebooks shipping with the MX150 'N17S-LG-A1' or '1D12' variant as GPU performance can be 20 to 25 percent slower than a "standard" MX150. The '1D12' label is essentially the Max-Q version of the MX150 and Nvidia has not been explicitly distinguishing between the two distinct MX150 versions in any of its promotional material thus far.



Casual gamers or heavy users looking for full performance out of the MX150 should double-check new notebooks before committing to a full purchase.Aka, be aware on NVIDIA*S Scam and futher milking!!

 

3DMark's next benchmark will show how badly your PC's GPU copes with real-time raytracing
By Dave James, March 21, 2018
https://www.pcgamesn.com/futuremark-3dmark-raytracing-demo

"Futuremark are introducing a new 3DMark real-time raytracing benchmark later this year to test Microsoft’s DirectX Raytracing API on your graphics card. And it is going to give your current-gen hardware a serious kicking.

The big tech news coming out of the Game Developers Conference this week has been around the advent of real-time raytracing for games. Nvidia and Microsoft have teamed up to bring about this long sought-after feature, with the big M launching the DirectX Raytracing standard and Nvidia doing their classic, GeForce-only, proprietary thing with RTX acceleration for the Nvidia Volta GPU architecture exclusively.

Futuremark have also been working with Microsoft to show the power of their DXR API, even without the hardware acceleration of Nvidia’s RTX or AMD’s own Radeon Rays tech. Their real-time raytracing tech demo just uses the DirectX 12-based DXR feature, and they have stated that it’s been run in real-time using current GPU hardware.

That said, all of the real-time raytracing demos we’ve seen this week have been run on current GPU hardware, it’s just that GPU hardware has been a $3,000 Volta-based Titan V.

Futuremark have reiterated that the DirectX Raytracing features are likely to only be used for effects such as accurate reflections and enhanced shadows to begin with, and traditional rasterization rendering will continue to dominate. But they do point out that modern GPUs are now capable of still carrying out the rasterization workloads while running small amounts of raytracing on the side.

Current GPUs will be able to run the DirectX 12 compute workloads that make up the bulk of the DirectX Raytracing tasks, but how well they’ll continue to render is still up for debate. But we’ll know by the end of the year as Futuremark are looking to include a DXR-based benchmark in an upcoming 3DMark update.

At the beginning I expect most graphics cards will seriously struggle with the increased demands of raytracing, and it's going to be fascinating watching the technology and the hardware develop towards the day when real-time raytracing is the de facto standard in game rendering.

But even if your current DX12 graphics card can’t cope with doing both the raytracing and the rasterization of a game, it may still be worth keeping it around when you upgrade your GPU. Future gaming rigs could have old graphics cards sitting next to new ones, acting purely as AI and compute co-processors."

Thanks to @hfm for finding this one
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-san-francisco-ca.814686/page-3#post-10699337

DirectX Raytracing tech demo - accurate real-time reflections

Published on Mar 21, 2018
DirectX Raytracing is a new feature in DirectX 12 that opens the door to a new class of real-time graphics techniques for games. At GDC this year, we showed how game developers can use DirectX Raytracing to improve the quality and accuracy of real-time reflections in games.

WATCH OUR NEW DIRECTX RAYTRACING TECH DEMO
MARCH 21, 2018
https://www.futuremark.com/pressreleases/watch-our-new-directx-raytracing-tech-demo
"...
Practical real-time raytracing for games
Raytracing is not a new technique, but until recently it has been too computationally demanding to use in real-time games.

With modern GPUs, it's now possible to use rasterization for most of the rendering and a smaller amount of raytracing to enhance shadows, reflections, and other effects that are difficult to achieve with traditional techniques.

Our DXR tech demo runs in real-time on current GPU hardware and, because it builds on existing methods, it was relatively easy to implement into our DirectX 12 game engine.

We are proud to be one of the first developers chosen to work with DirectX Raytracing and excited about the opportunities for this new API.

We are happy to announce that we will be using DirectX Raytracing in a new 3DMark benchmark test that we hope to release towards the end of the year. "

 

2 + 2 = 4, er, 4.1, no, 4.3... Nvidia's Titan V GPUs spit out 'wrong answers' in scientific simulations
Fine for gaming, not so much for modeling, it is claimed
By Katyanna Quach 21 Mar 2018 at 17:03
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/21/nvidia_titan_v_reproducibility/

"Nvidia’s flagship Titan V graphics cards may have hardware gremlins causing them to spit out different answers to repeated complex calculations under certain conditions, according to computer scientists.

The Titan V is the Silicon Valley giant's most powerful GPU board available to date, and is built on Nv's Volta technology. Gamers and casual users will not notice any errors or issues, however folks running scientific software may encounter the glitches.

One engineer told The Register that when he tried to run identical simulations of an interaction between a protein and enzyme on Nvidia’s Titan V cards, the results varied. After repeated tests on four of the top-of-the-line GPUs, he found two gave numerical errors about 10 per cent of the time. These tests should produce the same output values each time again and again. On previous generations of Nvidia hardware, that generally was the case. On the Titan V, not so, we're told.

We have repeatedly asked Nvidia for an explanation, and spokespeople have declined to comment. With Nvidia kicking off its GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California, next week, perhaps then we'll get some answers.

All in all, it is bad news for boffins as reproducibility is essential to scientific research. When running a physics simulation, any changes from one run to another should be down to interactions with the virtual world, not rare glitches in the underlying hardware.

Collisions
Take for instance software that models molecular interactions. This sort of code uses Newtonian equations to predict the state of a system at any given time, such as calculating the position of particles after collisions. If a simulation has the same environment and starts with the same conditions, the output should be the same, again and again. But that isn’t always the case when using Nvidia’s Titan V GPUs to crunch the numbers.

An industry veteran, who alerted us to the issue, reckoned this is due to a memory issue. Chip companies normally push their high-end silicon to the limit to maximize performance. Nvidia may be overclocking or red-lining its Titan V in some way, causing read errors from memory. These mistakes are carried forward in calculations, resulting in numerical errors. Another cause could be a design blunder.

It is not down to random defects in the chipsets nor a bad batch of products, since Nvidia has encountered this type of cockup in the past, we are told. The moneybags biz released patches for some of its older GeForce and Titan models that exhibited similar problems to address these errors. There was no issue with its Titan X card based on its Pascal architecture, we're told.

Unlike previous GeForce and Titan GPUs, the Titan V is geared not so much for gamers but for handling intensive parallel computing workloads for data science, modeling, and machine learning.

And at $2,999 (£2,200) a pop, it’s not cheap to waste resources and research time on faulty hardware. Engineers speaking to The Register on condition of anonymity to avoid repercussions from Nvidia said the best solution to these problems is to avoid using Titan V altogether until a software patch has been released to address the mathematical oddities.

We understand Nvidia has been made aware of the Titan V reproducibility issue."

Comments

 

The Ultimate 44 Used GPU Benchmark & Price Guide

Published on Mar 21, 2018
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hardwareunboxed

***WARNING*** Only buy graphics cards from known brands!!!
Best value options, ordered by cost per frame:
GeForce GTX 570: http://ebay.to/2FRUsFE
GeForce GTX 670: http://ebay.to/2pvzP7e
Radeon R7 260X: http://ebay.to/2FVHFSo
GeForce GTX 760: http://ebay.to/2pv08uW
GeForce GTX 660 Ti: http://ebay.to/2u9FPrD
GeForce GTX 580: http://ebay.to/2FTkA30
GeForce GTX 750: http://ebay.to/2HQSy4M
Radeon HD 7870: http://ebay.to/2HSM31g
GeForce GTX 770: http://ebay.to/2FYJ8U6
Radeon HD 7850: http://ebay.to/2FSc8kq
Radeon R7 265: http://ebay.to/2IEahgZ
Radeon HD 7770: http://ebay.to/2pwKXAL
Radeon HD 7790: http://ebay.to/2GRBPz0
GeForce GTX 660: http://ebay.to/2HWtXeW
GeForce GTX 680: http://ebay.to/2ptVEEK
GeForce GTX 950: http://ebay.to/2pwdZ3w
GeForce GTX 780: http://ebay.to/2FSyGS9
Radeon R9 285: http://ebay.to/2FRV3am
GeForce GTX 750 Ti: http://ebay.to/2pv5eY3
GeForce GTX 780 Ti: http://ebay.to/2DLdjw2

The Ultimate 44 Used GPU Benchmark & Price Guide
https://www.techspot.com/article/1596-ultimate-used-gpu-benchmarking/

 

$60,000 worth of GPUs power Unreal Engine ray tracing demo
We all know this system could easily run Crysis!
By: Anthony Garreffa | Gaming News | Posted: 2 hours ago
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/6129...wer-unreal-engine-ray-tracing-demo/index.html

"Epic Games had one of the best demonstrations of real-time ray tracing technology at this years Game Developers Conference, with a peek into their "Reflections" ray tracing demonstration.

The new real-time ray tracing demonstration runs inside of Epic Games' own Unreal Engine, and was powered by NVIDIA's incredible DGX station which packs four Tesla V100s and costs a huge $60,000.

Remember that RTX, NVIDIA's real-time ray tracing technology, is exclusive to the Volta GPU architecture until NVIDIA releases their next-gen GPU, which should be unveiled next week at GTC 2018.

The Reflections demo uses next-gen experimental lighting and rendering techniques in Unreal Engine, with Epic Games working closely with NVIDIA and ILMxLAB.

It looks absolutely out of this world, but with $60,000 worth of hardware behind it, you'd kind of expect it."

Reflections Real-Time Ray Tracing Demo | Project Spotlight | Unreal Engine


Thanks to @Convel for finding this one
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-san-francisco-ca.814686/page-3#post-10699473

 

NVIDIA Reveals Collaboration with 4A Games on RTX Technology at GDC 2018
http://www.4a-games.com.mt/4a-dna/2...n-with-4a-games-on-rtx-technology-at-gdc-2018

"We are happy to announce our collaboration with NVIDIA using RTX technology to include real-time ray traced Global Illumination in our upcoming game, Metro Exodus.

During the NVIDIA press conference at GDC 2018, NVIDIA and Microsoft announced a graphic technology that video game developers have been waiting for. At 4A Games, we have always strived to be at the cutting edge of technology with the 4A Engine, and we’ve had a long standing relationship with NVIDIA that has always enabled us to achieve that goal.

Rather than create a theoretical tech demo to showcase this new RTX technology running in the 4A Engine, we wanted to explore a practical application in an in-game scenario that our fans could directly benefit from. This demonstration shows RTX implemented and running in Metro Exodus, on our proprietary 4A Engine, using actual game content - you might recognise this environment from our 2017 E3 trailer! We have utilized true raytracing to render both Ambient Occlusion and Indirect Lighting in full realtime, in a practical in-game scenario. The demo can be seen running at NVIDIA’s booth at GDC 2018.

“For many years, proper global illumination has been the holy grail of real-time rendering. There have been various solutions in the past, but all have had to compromise in some critical area.

Offline pre-rendered GI offers a great visual target, but sacrifices flexibility in production, in-game dynamics, and uses a lot of memory. Prior realtime solutions were always limited by distance of light propagation, lack of data behind objects or screen edges and produced visual issues like leaks or unnatural lighting.

But this is the point where hardware steps in bringing truly scale-independent ambient occlusion by allowing brute force tracing of multiple rays from each pixel several hundreds of meters each frame.

Dynamic lighting has always been a priority for the Metro series. We intentionally avoided pre-baked data and were relying on real-time methods to build our visuals to support more flexible, dynamic gameplay. Global Illumination is highly important for the proper "grounding" of objects and readability of shapes, which in turn create improved ease of navigation and enhanced visual impact for the player.

Previously, we had utilized a mix of several custom-made systems to satisfy our hungry demand for dynamic content of varying scale. Now we are able to replace it with one single system that covers all our needs and outputs the quality of offline renderers.” - 4A Games’ Chief Technical Officer, Oleksandr Shyshkovtsov.

Check out our GDC demo below, using RTX Technology."

GDC 2018 Tech Demo - NVIDIA RTX Real-Time Ray Tracing in Metro Exodus

Published on Mar 22, 2018

Spoiler: Details...

We are happy to announce our collaboration with NVIDIA using RTX technology to include real-time ray traced Global Illumination in our upcoming game, Metro Exodus.

This demonstration shows RTX implemented and running in Metro Exodus, on our proprietary 4A Engine, using actual game content - you might recognise this environment from our 2017 E3 trailer! We have utilized true raytracing to render both Ambient Occlusion and Indirect Lighting in full realtime, in a practical in-game scenario.

“Previously, we had utilized a mix of several custom-made systems to satisfy our hungry demand for dynamic content of varying scale. Now we are able to replace it with one single system that covers all our needs and outputs the quality of offline renderers.” - 4A Games’ Chief Technical Officer, Oleksandr Shyshkovtsov.

Check out the full blog post on our website for more information:

NVIDIA Reveals Collaboration with 4A Games on RTX Technology at GDC 2018
http://www.4a-games.com.mt/4a-dna/2...n-with-4a-games-on-rtx-technology-at-gdc-2018

Metro Exodus is an epic, story-driven first person shooter from 4A Games that blends deadly combat and stealth with exploration and survival horror in one of the most immersive game worlds ever created.

Flee the shattered ruins of dead Moscow and embark on an epic, continent-spanning journey across post-apocalyptic Russia in the greatest Metro adventure yet.

Explore the Russian wilderness in vast, non-linear levels and follow a thrilling story-line inspired by the novels of Dmitry Glukhovsky that spans an entire year through spring, summer and autumn to the depths of nuclear winter.

Metro Exodus will be departing Autumn 2018 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC!

Metro:
Web: http://www.MetroTheGame.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/MetroVideoGame
Facebook: http://facebook.com/MetroVideoGame
Instagram: http://instagram.com/MetroVideoGame

4A Games:
Web: http://4a-games.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/4agames
Facebook: https://facebook.com/4aGames/

 

NVIDIA GPP Ignites Uproar & Calls for Boycott as AIBs Begin Signing on
By Khalid Moammer, March 23, 2018
https://wccftech.com/nvidia-gpp-ignites-uproar-calls-for-boycott-among-pc-gamers/

"PC gamers have been on-edge ever since Kyle Bennet of HardOCP published his chilling report about NVIDIA’s allegedly anti-competitive GeForce Partner Program. The investigative report alleges that NVIDIA’s new program, dubbed GPP, demands that graphics card makers and OEMs align their gaming brands — MSI Gaming, Asus ROG and Gigabyte AORUS for example — exclusively with the company. In other words, it requires add-in-board partners to drop AMD from their gaming brands.

The report further claims that graphics card makers and PC builders who do not join NVIDIA’s GPP are denied “ high-effort engineering engagements — early tech engagement — launch partner status — game bundling — sales rebate programs — social media and PR support — marketing reports “.

To put it bluntly, if the allegations are accurate, NVIDIA’s GPP makes it so that OEMs and card makers that don’t join the program are put at a crippling disadvantage that would render them almost entirely unable to compete in the PC gaming market with other OEMs that do join the program.

It’s important to note that to date, NVIDIA denies these allegations.

NVIDIA GeForce Partner Program Allegedly Hurting Consumer Choice – Evidence Suggests Some AIBs May Have Already Joined
Now that we got that brief recap out of the way, let’s delve into a very interesting development. As of last week, gamers have been noticing a very peculiar trend beginning to occur with MSI and Gigabyte that suggests they might have joined NVIDIA’s GPP. These occurrences may qualify as very direct examples of how NVIDIA’s GPP may have already begun hurting consumer choice, as Kyle Bennet’s report warned it would.

Let’s start with Gigabyte, the company recently launched a new gaming graphics enclosure powered by an AMD Radeon RX 580. Unlike Gigabyte’s previous enclosures which carry the AORUS brand, Gigabyte’s premium gaming brand, this enclosure only gets a generic Gigabyte sticker.

Later, when Gigabyte was asked about this strange decision, the company made a bizarre statement saying this external graphics enclosure isn’t for gamers, despite the fact that Gigabyte is branding it a “Gaming Box”, go figure.


via Computerbase.de

“ComputerBase asked Gigabyte why the model with Radeon RX 580 is the only in the series which does not come with the “Aorus” gaming branding. The manufacturer states that the product is not gamer focused. This however is inconsistent with the product page, whose headings are “Turn Your Ultrabook to Gaming Platform” and “Upgrade the Game Experience”

As I’ve mentioned earlier, this strange occurrence wasn’t limited to Gigabyte, MSI has also seemingly stripped all previously branded AMD graphics cards of their “MSI Gaming” brand.

All MSI Gaming Radeon graphics cards are seemingly gone.

Jason Evangelho of Forbes writes :
When viewing the MSI products page for AMD GPUs, however, their “Gaming X” branded Radeon cards are conspicuously absent. All that remains are reference versions of Polaris 500 series and Vega cards, or MSI’s “Armor” lineup. That’s beyond interesting.

NVIDIA GPP Ignites Anger & Calls For Boycott Among PC Gamers
Suffice to say, after the HardOCP report was made public immediate backlash ensued. Anger and even calls for boycott of NVIDIA and its GPP partners erupted in PC hardware and gaming communities, forums, facebook, reddit and all over the techsphere. [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

• 
• 
• 
• 

Satirical meme created by reddit user Dowju to mock the GPP

A wccftech.com reader summed up his views on the whole GPP situation in a succinct message that he sent us a couple of days ago. Shaun Fosmark writes :

(Disclaimer : The statement contained herein represents the personal views of Mr. Fosmark and not necessarily those of wccftech.com)

Here’s the deal with the GPP.

It has nothing to do with performance. That’s a ridiculous notion. What it does have to do with is market control. AIB control. You see, all of the things in the GPP all of these AIBs already had access to. You can be assured that Nvidia was already doing everything it could to make sure these AIBs were putting out the best Geforce they could. That is, up until now where it has grown large enough, fast enough to shrug off that necessity. The GeForce 1080 launch was a show of power to these AIBs. It was designed to say “we dont need you at all, you need us” when they launched their “founders” edition cards weeks before their AIBs could. You can be dammed sure these AIBs got the message and werent going yo let that happen again.

Enter the GPP. This isnt an agreement that says “heres a list of all you GET” by joining up, is says “heres everything we will TAKE AWAY if you don’t sign this contract and do what we say”. It says ” We expect you to align with our brand from here on out and drop radeon from any of your premium branding completely if you want to launch cards when we launch, got it?”.

This leaves AIBs with a hard decision. Now Asus’s parent company is working around it by switching radeon products to asrock, which itself enjoys a position of power tier in the premium lineup. These other companies dont even have that option. What they will resort to is having to simply name radeon products exactly what they are, just whatever branding AMD has with no affiliation to any of their premium gaming brands. Regardless of performance this makes it impossible for AMD to present any of their products in an equal light to consumers and this is exactly what Nvidia intends. To make it impossible for AMD to ever compete now, and in the future by placing market controls in place that make it very difficult to.

MSI Rep Admits to Company Joining NVIDIA GPP, Infers Lack of Choice Over Matter

Much to the dismay of many MSI fans, a representative inadvertently confirmed in a reply to a user on facebook that the company had joined NVIDIA’s GeForce Program. He also inferred that the company didn’t have much of a choice on the matter.

The whole situation is quite depressing to say the least if you’re an AIB. Overnight they have found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place. Their choices were either to join the GPP and face the backlash, or not and end up at a severe competitive disadvantage versus every other NVIDIA partner that does. Damned if you, damned if you don’t. This is the reality that NVIDIA has allegedly created with its GeForce Partner Program."

Official Boycott of NVIDIA GPP Partners
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/86o2bn/official_boycott_of_nvidia_gpp_partners/

"To all of you who see the tremendous harm that NVIDIA's potentially anti-competitive GeForce Partner Program could inflict on our choices as consumers, please let us join together.

We as gamers must stand united, we must take matters into our own hands. We have to vote with our dollars.

Companies only care about their bottom lines, we have to hit them where it hurts, we have to make our voices heard.

We have to organize and spread this message.

Please spread the message to your PC gamer friends and any and all PC hardware/gaming communities that you're a part of.
So far evidence suggests that MSI and Gigabyte are the first two victims of NVIDIA's GPP. Both companies have ostensibly began stripping AMD products of their gaming brands.

There's speculation that Asus may have also joined the program, but there's no clear-cut evidence as of yet. We will have to keep a very close eye on Asus going forward to determine if they should be added to the boycott."

 

Nvidia, stop being a DICK 2

Published on Mar 23, 2018
Nvidia are at it again with something else that, although probably legal, and although just 'business', is somewhat dickish. And I think is worth knowing.

HARDOCP Article - https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/03/07/geforce_partner_program_impacts_consumer_choice

See my original video here:
Nvidia, stop being a DICK

Published on Dec 22, 2015
"Sorry guys, this video took me much longer than I expected it to take because the amount of dickery went so deep. It's not as though I previously didn't know about this stuff, but investigating properly... jeez, poor AMD Time and time again, it's the same story. I investigate.

0:08 - PhysX
1:16 - Tessellation (Important to understand later examples)
1:45 - Crysis 2's DX11 upgrade
2:31 - Fallout 4's Godrays
2:51 - Witcher 3's Hairworks
3:02 - Nvidia Gameworks Controversy
3:42 - Why hasn't AMD prepared for this? + Nvidia's defence
4:08 - AMD's competing technologies and open sourcery
4:59 - OPENGPU VS Gameworks... but will Nvidia accept?
5:36 - 3D Vision and Gsync
6:36 - Shadowplay XOXOXOX
7:15 - Conclusion

Spoiler: Details...

I knew this would happen, but there are a number of recurring responses from people. I'm pleased with this video because it says what I wanted to quickly and without getting off-topic to defend myself. But I'll do it here:

'Nvidia's a company! They're not meant to play nice!!!'
...no, which is why they're DICKS. What they're doing isn't illegal, but it's anti-competitive. It's not about using their own technologies. It's about deliberately making life hard for everybody else, which DOES have a knock-on effect for users of competing products.

'Nvidia is more than half the audience!!!11'
Doesn't change what I said tbh. But if you factor in Intel, who also does graphics, then they are about 50-50.

'AMD HAS RAPTR!!!!'
Yeah I mention this. Raptr's video capture is GVR. It's good, but can't support EVERY application or desktop use, which is very useful for me on a day-to-day basis. It's also only HD, and the limitations in other areas are lower as well. It's not quite good enough.

I would have included links to all of the sources but a quick google search of them works just as well. This video originally started off as a comparison between Nvidia and AMD technologies but naturally evolved into this as I investigated them.

Brought to you by an Nvidia user."

Nvidia, stop being a DICK 2
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/86ofi5/nvidia_stop_being_a_dick_2/

 

The Nvidia MX150 GPU Is Massively Slowed Down in Some Laptops
By Ryan Whitwam on March 23, 2018 at 1:57 pm
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/266286-nvidia-mx150-gpu-massively-slowed-laptops

"...If you need something in between integrated graphics and a GTX module, you might go looking for a machine with an Nvidia MX150 dedicated GPU. However, it turns out not all MX150 systems offer the same version of the GPU. Some are much, much slower, and it’s hard to know which one is which..."

 

Well thank god for returns being easy at most retailers. After enough are returned maybe the MANUFACTURERS of the laptops will label which MX150 you’re getting. Last time I check Nvidia doesn’t sell laptops.

Thank god AMD has never done this... O wait RX560 shenanigans.

 

Nvidia has been sneaking in slower GeForce MX150 '1D12' variant onto some Ultrabooks
by Allen Ngo, 2018/03/19
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidi...12-variant-onto-some-Ultrabooks.289358.0.html

"Be on the lookout for notebooks shipping with the MX150 'N17S-LG-A1' or '1D12' variant as GPU performance can be 20 to 25 percent slower than a "standard" MX150. The '1D12' label is essentially the Max-Q version of the MX150 and Nvidia has not been explicitly distinguishing between the two distinct MX150 versions in any of its promotional material thus far.

TL;DR: We've discovered two distinct versions of the GeForce MX150 with wide performance differences and power demands. The second version is notably slower and less demanding than the "standard" MX150 with underclocked clock rates, Boost rates, and VRAM not unlike a Max-Q GPU. This slower "MX150 Max-Q" can only be found on 13-inch Ultrabooks so far. We recommend being cautious if purchasing a notebook with the MX150 GPU as neither Nvidia nor the manufacturers have been explicitly advertising the slower GPU version.

Please see our dedicated page on the GeForce MX150 for more technical information on the two versions of the GPU.

10 W and 25 W Versions of the GeForce MX150 Exist
When the GeForce MX150 was announced early last year, our initial tests and sources pointed to a 25 W TDP to be in line with the outgoing GeForce 940MX that the new Pascal GPU directly replaces. Nvidia never explicitly mentioned, however, that there would be two distinct versions of the MX150 beyond the simple VRAM differences that we've become accustomed to in the past.

Our first laptop with the MX150 was the MSI PL62 and it was there where we recorded core clock, Boost clock, and VRAM speeds of 1469 MHz, 1532 MHz, and 1502 MHz, respectively. Curiously, a select few notebooks have also been shipping with underclocked MX150 GPUs rated for significantly slower clock rates across the board. Our two GPU-Z screenshots below compare the Asus Zenbook UX430UN and Lenovo IdeaPad 320S each equipped with the same MX150 GPU by name but with very different clock rates.

Asus Zenbook UX430UN with "standard" '1D10' 'N17S-G1-A1' GeForce MX150.

Lenovo IdeaPad 320S-13KBR with slower 'N17S-LG-A1' MX150 variant. Note the dissimilar Device ID '1D12'
Notebooks Shipping with the Slower "MX150 Max-Q" Are Not Advertised as Such
The base clock rate alone is 36 percent slower on the '1D12' variant of the MX150 when compared to the initial '1D10' model that the MX150 debuted with. This is not limited to the IdeaPad 320S either, as we've spotted the same MX150 '1D12' variant on a handful of notebooks including the ZenBook 13 UX331UN, Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 13.3, HP Envy 13, and the ZenBook UX331UA thus far.

Raw graphics performance is unsurprisingly faster on notebooks with the '1D10' variant of the MX150. Our 3DMark 11 chart below compares 13 notebooks all equipped with either the '1D10' or '1D12' variant of the MX150 and all 5 notebooks with the slower GeForce MX150 are conveniently at the very bottom of the list. The ZenBook UX430UN sits comfortably in the center of the chart since its '1D10' GPU regularly throttles as detailed in our review, but users can generally expect a significant performance drop of about 20 to 25 percent between the two versions of the MX150.

3DMark 11 | 3DMark
3DMark 11 - 1280x720 Performance GPU
Acer Swift 3 SF315-51G-57E5
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 8250U
4742 Points ∼100%+32%
MSI PL62 MX150 7700HQ
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 7700HQ
4685 Points ∼99%+31%
Sager NP5852
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 7700HQ
4662 Points ∼98%+30%
HP Envy 17-ae143ng
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 8250U
4631 Points ∼98%+29%
Schenker Media 15
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 7700HQ
4591 Points ∼97%+28%
Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro i7
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 8550U
4285 (min: 4274, max: 4292) Points ∼90%+20%
Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro i5
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 8250U
4252 Points ∼90%+19%
Average NVIDIA GeForce MX150
(of 24, min: 2796, max: 4775)
4230 Points ∼89%+18%
Asus Zenbook UX430UN
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 8550U
3867 Points ∼82%+8%
Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UN
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 8550U
3581 Points ∼76%0%
Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 13.3 2018
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 8250U
3539.5 (min: 3537, max: 3543) Points ∼75%-1%
Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UA
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 8550U
3461 Points ∼73%-3%
HP Envy 13-ad006ng
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 7500U
3459 Points ∼73%-3%
Lenovo IdeaPad 320S-13IKB
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 8250U
2796 Points ∼59%-22%
3DMark 11 | 3DMark

Be Careful Which Notebooks You Buy with the GeForce MX150
Why have two variants of the MX150 in the first place? The reasons are likely related to power management as the slower '1D12' GPU is purportedly within a 10 W TDP envelope for thinner and lighter notebook designs similar in concept to the Max-Q series of GTX GPUs. We've noticed, for example, that all notebooks thus far with the '1D12' version of the GPU are 13-inch notebooks. While we don't have an issue with selling multiple variants of the same silicon, it's disappointing to not see any marketing material differentiating between the two versions especially since their performance deltas are more than marginal.

Casual gamers or heavy users looking for full performance out of the MX150 should double-check new notebooks before committing to a full purchase."

 

THE worst part isn’t that they’re doing it. For me it’s the consumers that won’t k ow the difference. This kind of crap shouldn’t be happening and after some careful thought Nvidia is equally to blame as thy should at least force the laptop companies to label the GPU differently.

 

That's the real issue, there is no visible differentiation at the consumer level. IDK why Nvidia couldn't add a MX145 label, or *gasp* MX150 Max-Q label, so people would know it's not a MX150 at all.

It's going to really stifle MX-150 sales, and result in many returns as the word gets out, with unfortunately many who won't figure it out in time to return - so they are stuck with it, or sell it for a loss. I wonder if those that sell it off will mention it's got the slow MX-150?

 

Well makes sense now how Asus is advertising the ux331un with such amazing battery life on the 1080p non touch model. Im really undecided now. its the slimmest and lightest (1.1kg) notebook with a dGPU and its not expensive for the i5 model. I can overclock it if needed. I wouldnt expect the other mx150 for heavy gaming anyway. But still, makes one feel a little ripped off that they (Nvidia and the OEMs) werent up front about it.

If only MS could sell its Surface Book 13 at a lower price point. And of course apple hasnt put anything Pro in the MBP13 for a decade, still stuck with 15w dual core and no dGPU, pathetic.