[H]ard|OCP have posted an article looking at the brand new GeForce Partner Program which NVIDIA has announced that has a striking resemblance to a certain Intel initiative … which turned out poorly. After investigating the details for several weeks, including attempts to talk with OEMs and AIBs some serious concerns have been raised, including what seems to be a membership requirement to only sell NVIDIA GPUs in a product line which is aligned with GPP. As membership to the GPP offers "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)" this would cut out a company which chose to sell competitors products from quite a few things.

At this time NVIDIA has not responded to inquiries and the OEMs and AIBs which [H] spoke to declined to make any official comments; off the record there were serious concerns about the legality of this project. Expect to hear more about this from various sites as they seek the transparency which NVIDIA Director John Teeple mentioned in his post.

"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."

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