Was Nvidia’s June NDA strong-arm an attempt to stop negative reviews of the 20 series of cards?

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Gatecrasher3000

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We all remember back in June when Nvidia attempted to push hardware reviewers (like [H]) to sign a new 5 year NDA. For those of you that don’t remember, it was argued that this new NDA would have made it so negative criticism of their products would have been considered breaking the NDA, and possible legal punishment of the reviewer.

It was considered by many to be an odd thing for NV to do, considering they had MOSTLY made hardware that was well received among the community. However, the considerable price hike on the 20 series of cards, and the lacklustre acceptance of RTX in games, has been the first real misfire for Nvidia in many years.

So, that got me wondering about the real reason behind the June NDA, was it possible that Nvidia saw the writing on the wall, was the June NDA an attempt to stop negative reviews of the 20 series that they knew were coming?

I understand we will never know the true answer to this question, so this thread will be pure speculation.
 
It doesn't even matter due to the Initial launch of defective 2080ti cards that caught up to them before anything.
 
I dunno, I'd be more convinced it was a long term maneuver to position themselves better for Navi (due to the console support) and Intel entering the high end GPU market. I don't think GPP would've been able to hide the lack of RT games or the performance hit it brought onto those games.
 
I don't think it was really an effort to stop negative reviews of the 2000 series specifically. I think it was a way for them to cherry pick reviewers in an effort to get more positive coverage in general prior to releases. I don't see this as that much different than AMD cherry picking reviewers in the past, and not sending samples to reviewers they deemed were not "fair". Both are fairly crappy practices to me.
 
If respected reviewers got behind each other to refuse overreaching NDAs or backroom handshakes their reviews would be trusted and nepotism would be forgotten. I get it, everyone wants to be first at getting a card prior to release for review and I understand that comes with responsibility requiring a nondisclosure agreement, but anything that threatens a reviewer's honest opinion based on facts is not an NDA it's a strong arm tactic that needs to be rejected. Anyone who signed June's NDA cannot be trusted. I respect needing to pay the bills, but honor and respect should be more important than click bait. Anyone who buys a card at retail and then reviews it I trust the results over those early reviews by tech groupies. We've all been ripped off by hype and I'm sick of it.
 
It had nothing to do with preventing bad reviews. It was meant to prevent the behind-the-scenes research Kyle and other investigative journalists were doing.

There is clearly marked section of the NDA allowing for the freedom of user-created content. This covers positive/negative reviews of the product.

But the "you can't report on Nvidia Proprietary Data" basically covers leaked information. So they could take Kyle to court, because only Nvidia has the power to make information non-proprietary (free for all).
 
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rinaldo00 said:
But it does. It was an intimidating tactic that encourages positive reviews.
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How?

Nvidia already has a long history of stiffing reviewers who don't play ball, or are too critical of products. So does AMD.

Just ask the [H] (along with other review sites) how many cards they had to pay for?

Adding a more restrictive NDA does nothing to sharpen those already fucking obvious blood-coated review sample fangs. It just gives Nvidia a virtually unlimited time (5 years) to prevent the leaking of insider information to outside reporters.
 
The NDA did not prevent reviewers from giving their honest opinion on the RTX cards. The NDA was more of an attempt to prevent things like GPP from leaking out again. Reviewers haven't exactly been over the moon about the RTX cards in regards to their prices and the lack of games with RTX or DLSS support (along with current implementations of both).

Nvidia has a much more effective way of dealing with reviewers they feel are being "unfair". They simply refuse to sample cards to them or (as happened to Hardware Unboxed) delay shipments so that the reviewer misses out on launch day coverage. The threat of blacklisting is a more effective tool than a NDA.
 
GPP, the out of the ordinary NDA, the release of "space invaders", Stocks imploding.

Karma, when it hits you like a ton of bricks.

It really isn't about stopping a negative review, it's more the looking into why the space invaders showed up.
If Kyle had signed the NDA he could have told of his card failure in the review, but he would not have been able to dig deeper as to the why the card failed.
In other words exactly what Kyle is working on right now. https://hardforum.com/threads/rtx-space-invaders-wanted.1973631/
And I think that we the consumers deserve more information as to the "why".
 
IKV1476 said:
GPP, the out of the ordinary NDA, the release of "space invaders", Stocks imploding.

Karma, when it hits you like a ton of bricks.

It really isn't about stopping a negative review, it's more the looking into why the space invaders showed up.
If Kyle had signed the NDA he could have told of his card failure in the review, but he would not have been able to dig deeper as to the why the card failed.
In other words exactly what Kyle is working on right now. https://hardforum.com/threads/rtx-space-invaders-wanted.1973631/
And I think that we the consumers deserve more information as to the "why".
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I don't think the NDA would prevent people from looking into why the card's failed. Steve from Gamer's Nexus got in a handful of failed cards and tried to see if he could figure out what was causing them to fail. He definitely didn't go the lengths Kyle is (mostly because GN returned the cards to their original owners so they could be RMA'd vs Kyle buying the card from the original owner so that it can be sent off to be poked and prodded at) though. Tech Yes City also had a video (a pretty bad and utterly worthless one really) looking into the failure and blaming it on VRAM.
 
I ran a small review site for about a year back in 02-03 more than once I had companies try to influence a review. Sometimes flat out saying a good review would result in more, better product samples in the future. Or having an attractive, flirty female as the marketing rep that I dealt with sending free gifts like posters and coffee cups out of the blue. I never got asked to sign an NDA but I was also a very small fish in the pond so I wasnt getting stuff like new GPU launches. I think all of the companies that send out hardware for review purposes expect a positive return, which is the main reason I trust [H] reviews. yes they get hardware sent to them, but if for whatever reason they are excluded they will just buy the hardware themselves.
 
Derangel said:
I don't think the NDA would prevent people from looking into why the card's failed. Steve from Gamer's Nexus got in a handful of failed cards and tried to see if he could figure out what was causing them to fail. He definitely didn't go the lengths Kyle is (mostly because GN returned the cards to their original owners so they could be RMA'd vs Kyle buying the card from the original owner so that it can be sent off to be poked and prodded at) though. Tech Yes City also had a video (a pretty bad and utterly worthless one really) looking into the failure and blaming it on VRAM.
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Precisely. Once the data has been made public (review deadline reached), anyone is free to investigate the cards themselves to whatever ends they wish. t is no-longer protected information after reviews are released.

But you can't keep the cards forever, so investigating faulty cards like this requires retail purchases.

The only restriction the NDA would prevent here is possibly using insider contacts to investigate WHY Nvidia didn't go with a different DRAM supplier, assuming it's found to be the fault of Micron.

The new NDA only covers two things:

1. Currently secret data (before review), but intended to be revealed at a later date (official release).
2. Company data that is not intended to be known outside the company ((internal leak)

Breaking the first one is already a way to guarantee you never get sent more review hardware, so the only one of the two that really adds any teeth is number 2.
 

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defaultluser said:
Precisely. Once the data has been made public (review deadline reached), anyone is free to investigate the cards themselves to whatever ends they wish. t is no-longer protected information after reviews are released.

But you can't keep the cards forever, so investigating faulty cards like this requires retail purchases.

The only restriction the NDA would prevent here is possibly using insider contacts to investigate WHY Nvidia didn't go with a different DRAM supplier, assuming it's found to be the fault of Micron.

The new NDA only covers two things:

1. Currently secret data (before review), but intended to be revealed at a later date (official release).
2. Company data that is not intended to be known outside the company ((internal leak)

Breaking the first one is already a way to guarantee you never get sent more review hardware, so the only one of the two that really adds any teeth is number 2.
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There isn't any big mystery to be solved regarding memory. Micron and Samsung are the only companies producing GDDR6. Nvidia and AIBs use both companies as neither can keep up with demand on their own.
 
defaultluser said:
How?

Nvidia already has a long history of stiffing reviewers who don't play ball, or are too critical of products. So does AMD.

Just ask the [H] (along with other review sites) how many cards they had to pay for?

Adding a more restrictive NDA does nothing to sharpen those already fucking obvious blood-coated review sample fangs. It just gives Nvidia a virtually unlimited time (5 years) to prevent the leaking of insider information to outside reporters.
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You don't think that ups the ante?
 
defaultluser said:
It had nothing to do with preventing bad reviews.
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I agree with the rest of your post but not this.
It was spelled out clearly in the text of the NDA, was basically that anything that was not beneficial to NVidia was against the NDA. Especially proprietary info that wasn't release/public from Nvidia. E.g. if kyle gets some amazingly autistic EEs to pull a RMA20 series apart and figure out that the die or ram or whatever is at fault, it would be proprietary info coming out and not able to be done because NDA.
 
defaultluser said: "It had nothing to do with preventing bad reviews."

N4CR said:
I agree with the rest of your post but not this.
It was spelled out clearly in the text of the NDA, was basically that anything that was not beneficial to NVidia was against the NDA. Especially proprietary info that wasn't release/public from Nvidia. E.g. if kyle gets some amazingly autistic EEs to pull a RMA20 series apart and figure out that the die or ram or whatever is at fault, it would be proprietary info coming out and not able to be done because NDA.
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"Bad reviews" can consist of honest opinions that do not rely on "proprietary info that wasn't release/public from Nvidia". If a product has poor performance for the money, or is hot, loud, etc, and is stated a such in the review, that is NOT against the NDA as you misleadingly seem to imply.
 
N4CR said:
I agree with the rest of your post but not this.
It was spelled out clearly in the text of the NDA, was basically that anything that was not beneficial to NVidia was against the NDA. Especially proprietary info that wasn't release/public from Nvidia. E.g. if kyle gets some amazingly autistic EEs to pull a RMA20 series apart and figure out that the die or ram or whatever is at fault, it would be proprietary info coming out and not able to be done because NDA.
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Read sane analysis here. Important sections bolded.

Not all information shared by NVIDIA (or any hardware maker for that matter), is free to be disclosed at the expiry of review publication restrictions. NVIDIA's technical marketing people can sometimes put out off-the-record remarks or details to help reviewers better understand the product they're reviewing. These are usually 1-on-1 verbal communications between people who have built years of trust.
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Notwithstanding the expiration of this Agreement, the recipient's obligations with respect to any Confidential Information will expire five years after the date of their disclosure to the recipient," the NDA continues. Heise also interpreted the NDA survival clause (a standard component of most NDAs) as meaning that any information deemed a "trade secret" by NVIDIA (which if any technical marketing person is dumb enough to disclose to the press), remains embargoed forever under this NDA. "The protection of information, which is a trade secret, never goes out," it writes. Here is a crash-course on survival clause by a law firm.
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[quote]This NDA is not going to stop TechPowerUp from pointing out any shortcomings of NVIDIA products, and none of NVIDIA's NDAs in the past ever have. During the review process, all NVIDIA does is check on progress, and whether we have encountered any abnormalities that they might be able to help with. Completely ignoring that inquiry is fine, and we've done so many times. Whenever we've come across bad products from NVIDIA, such as the GeForce GTX 480, or bad implementations of NVIDIA cards by its AIC partners, we've never hesitated to bring them to the attention of our readers, and will never stop doing so.[/quote]

Also NVIDIA doesn't need any NDA to cut off media that they don't like to work with for whatever reason. They can simply stop providing information or samples, it's not like NVIDIA has any obligation to work with everyone.
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https://www.techpowerup.com/245507/revised-nvidia-reviewers-nda-raises-eyebrows-our-thoughts
 
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N4CR said:
I agree with the rest of your post but not this.
It was spelled out clearly in the text of the NDA, was basically that anything that was not beneficial to NVidia was against the NDA. Especially proprietary info that wasn't release/public from Nvidia. E.g. if kyle gets some amazingly autistic EEs to pull a RMA20 series apart and figure out that the die or ram or whatever is at fault, it would be proprietary info coming out and not able to be done because NDA.
Click to expand...

Only if he got the info from nvidia, if it was from a 3rd party it's not part of the nda. However, nvidia could use this against him easily - say by telling him why the cards failed but that it was confidential, then he couldn't report on it without violating the NDA - and I think something like this is exactly why he refused to sign.
 
NDA was there to "prevent" the journalistic side of the reviewers to do anything but to review the product. For whatever reason beyond that scope Nvidia can declare that you are breaking the NDA and you could do nothing against it.
 
They knew it was a stinker, and they knew shills would at least give it cautious recommendations. The 2080 series was complete snake oil.
 
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