Oh, right, the CAD thing was sketchier. IIRC there wasn't any feature of OpenGL/DirectX that was nerfed, it was just an agreement with CAD companies to reject the GPUs that didn't have the workstation bit fused.
For this performance nerf, IDK, seems fine to me. Software companies do this all the time. Same piece of software but you have to pay to unlock features. I don't see why hardware should be any different.
Granted, even for the CAD nerf, it's a gray area. You pay for features, not for silicon, and NVidia is clear about what you have to pay for what features, so. But I'm a bit more biased on that one because my 10-person HW company had to spring for several of those workstation cards.
That sounds like a classic Anti-trust suit waiting to happen. CAD company and NVIDIA colluding to drive sales exclusively to each other. That's illegal and exploitative.
Actually probably not, you can't use your position in one market to benefit your position in another. But antitrust law is hardly enforced so yeah probably.
For this performance nerf, IDK, seems fine to me. Software companies do this all the time. Same piece of software but you have to pay to unlock features. I don't see why hardware should be any different.
Granted, even for the CAD nerf, it's a gray area. You pay for features, not for silicon, and NVidia is clear about what you have to pay for what features, so. But I'm a bit more biased on that one because my 10-person HW company had to spring for several of those workstation cards.