Nvidia Kills Controversial Geforce Partner Program Due To 'Conjecture And Mistruths'

But will graphics card makers still offer exclusive GeForce and Radeon brands?

- Brad Chacos

After weeks of rumors and a counterattack by AMD’s Radeon, Nvidia is ending its mysterious, controversial GeForce Partner Program.

“A lot has been said recently about our GeForce Partner Program,” Nvidia’s John Teeple wrote (go.pcworld.com/plpl). “The rumors, conjecture and mistruths go far beyond its intent. Rather than battling misinformation, we have decided to cancel the program.”

So what is the GeForce Partner Program? Despite the strong words above, Nvidia never dived into details publicly, but additional reporting suggested it was intended to keep gaming brands from Nvidia’s graphics card partners (like Asus and Gigabyte) off of Radeon hardware.

Nvidia introduced the GeForce Partner Program in a vague post (go.pcworld. com/gfpp) at the beginning of March, stating that it was “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.” Partners would get early access to Nvidia technology and promotional support from the company’s social media channels. But despite Nvidia’s repeated use of the word transparency in the post, it never actually explained to the public what the GeForce Partner Program did.