There is a rumour going around that NVIDIA is unhappy with its AIB partners, simply because they may want to work with Intel and its chipmaker’s ARC Battlemage graphics lineup. In fact, the green GPU maker is reportedly prepared to ban said partners, should they launch said Intel-based GPUs.
The report was first broken on the Russian Telegram channel, PRO Hi-Tech, which is written entirely in Russian, for obvious reasons. This is also still just a very ethereal rumour, and should be treated as hearsay at this stage. Getting back on point, beyond the anger and threats from NVIDIA to its AIB partners, the channel goes on to say that this isn’t the first time the GPU brand has tried to “limit” its partners and the kind of cards they can actually promote.
As pointed out by Videocardz, one such move was the NVIDIA GeForce Partner Program (GPP) back in 2018. On the surface, the program’s goal was simple: to foster a closer relationship between the green GPU brand and its hardware partners. Behind the scenes, critics and observers thought that the company’s goal was to forcibly limit the partners’ ability to offer competing products, including AMD’s Radeon GPUs, which in itself, is a form of anti-competitive behaviour.
In light of those complaints and the perceived threats to its AIB partners, it didn’t take long for NVIDIA to abandon the GPP, almost as quickly as it had announced it, even. It then released a statement on the matter, saying that its program had been misunderstood, and that it had never intended for its actions to limit or hinder the competition. For another matter, Intel’s ARC Battlemage is expected to be significantly more powerful than the current Alchemist lineup. As to how much more powerful, it is possible we could be looking at RTX 30 Series or Radeon RX 6000 Series levels of power, but again, this is all just speculation at this point.
(Source: Pro Hi-Tech, Videocardz)
