NVIDIA Bans Reviewer for Concentrating on Rasterization Instead of Ray Tracing

Smoked Brisket said:
This will affect NVIDIA's bottom line.
Click to expand...
Maybe, but that need to be compared to a parallel world were no reviewer receive gift and script/bullet point feature to talk about (if you are not enforcing them, they become was less efficient....), maybe that practice affect NVidia bottom line in a positive way overall (they are probably calculating that it does).

Look at Apple, how long is there banned youtuber list ? How tight is there press control (and store reseller employees rules, etc...) ? How good is that bottom line ?
 
madpistol said:
Damn... I genuinely wish I hadn't bought an RTX 3080 now. Hardware Unboxed is one of the most fair and balanced reviewers out there, and for Nvidia to pull this stunt on them is shameful.
Click to expand...
Put your money where your mouth is and post it in the trade forums. There are plenty of users here looking to buy one. You'll get at least what you paid for it.
 
Twitter is on fire on Hardware Unboxed twitter feed

This post gave me a chuckle

"If they're so intent on having reviewers praise ray tracing, maybe they should bake it into a product in a way that delivers without forcing $700+ cards to use artificial upscaling in order to turn the shit on".


So true.
 
I just discovered HU with the latest GPU launches and while I still don't care for video reviews as much as written they have a direct approach that is more informative and enjoyable than most. Many of the better written reviews haven't been available at launch these days so they've been my first stop for some of the recent launches.

This behavior from Nvidia doesn't surprise me at all but it is a good example of one of the reasons I'm likely to avoid their products as long as the alternative is a decent option. I will still buy their products if the alternative doesn't make sense and I'm willing to revise my opinion if the roles reverse but I prefer not to support practices that I view as anti-consumer.
 
madpistol said:
Damn... I genuinely wish I hadn't bought an RTX 3080 now. Hardware Unboxed is one of the most fair and balanced reviewers out there, and for Nvidia to pull this stunt on them is shameful.
Click to expand...

Well, unfortunately it won't make much of a difference either way.

With how low availability there is, both AMD and Nvidia is going to sell everything they can possibly produce right now either way.
 
It's a bad look to cut off a legit reviewer after handing out cards to influencers and streamers that never do hardware reviews. It's an odd move since I never really noticed an anti Nvidia/RTX slant from Hardware Unboxed videos so Nvidia lose more than they gain from this action.
 
I could ask about the POTENTIAL BLOOD Diamonds on Dr Su's body amongst other things,but will refrain. Suffice it to say ALL multi National Corporations are EVIL F's who dont give a damn about you or me. nVIDIA is evil ? So are they all. If Steve at HU wants to keep playing that violin, I will listen,when and IF he does as Burke at GN does,buy your hardware yourself as we here all do ,do not rely on ANY handouts then complain when the hand that feeds stops feeding after you've bitten it. Steve is not hard put and without the hardware he would need to find another line of work. He is no saint,by any means. Like NV and AMD and Inhell he is in it for y/our $$$$$$$$$$$$.
 
Anyone see the jayztwocents review on the 6900xt? Look at the games used in that review.

Another thing Nidia is doing (maybe amd too), is giving cards to twitch people and influencers. And they just blindly praise how great it is without any data to back it up. I think they’ve found a good way to get their cards out there without being put through it’s paces by reviewers.
 
LukeTbk said:
$4,500 a month from Patreons is nice, but I imagine they still depends on views a lot.


Well yes they can still do reviews if they want. Has for being for the consumers, if you are a not paying anything, ask yourself if you are the "customer"
Click to expand...


Like GN and others with large Patreon recurring donations, of which I donate to GN,they both make FAR larger bank $$$ off of advertising and merch. Many thousands a month just look at the $$ equipment they buy on the regular.
 
Manny Calavera said:
Like GN and others with large Patreon recurring donations, of which I donate to GN,they both make FAR larger bank $$$ off of advertising and merch. Many thousands a month just look at the $$ equipment they buy on the regular.
Click to expand...
You are paying, making you a clear customer (most of the views do not come from paying customer), those advertiser can easily become their clients.

As soon has yesterday a serious review publication would have never accepted to have advertising in it.

You will not see an ads in there: https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/about-us/policies-and-financials/our-bylaws/index.htm
And they would never accept a free sample of company (buying the product exactly like a regular client is important for obvious never creating the issue in this thread but also not receiving specially good product from the company but the regulars one).

They have a clear case of who are their customers.
 
Said this on another forum but I'll say this here as well. DLSS and RT are and I repeat are in like 40 + ish games. It is NOT a universal feature. If you buy an Nvidia card you CANNOT turn on DLSS or RT for that matter in EVERY game you play. It's beyond moronic to treat these two features like they are universal. THEY ARE NOT. Freakin GSync has more value than these features because with the right hardware it's universal. Asking them to test DLSS or RT in the same amount as rasterization is ludicrous. That would be fanboyism. DLSS while great HAS ISSUES, which many people like to gloss over. There's blurring and sometimes just straight up artifacts almost EVERY time a game releases with it. It is cherry picking beyond words to insist that every DLSS + RT game be benchmarked in every review when it's not even close to the average gamer experience. DX12 has more games and it isn't even universally tested yet.

It is ultra-dense to say, "well they are biased because they didn't test DLSS" and change their whole benchmarking suite which for many reviewers stays the same for YEARS! It took 2 YEARS before reviewers began testing DX12 games. Why? Because there were like only a handful in that time (DLSS+RT is even less than that). It made no sense to completely break the historical benefit of referencing previous cards just to make Microsoft and whomever happy. I brought that up myself before but really researched it and began to understand. Asking reviewers to break historical referencing just because of a semi-available feature/api is nuts! It's the same with DLSS + RT. GTFOI.
 
Last edited:
RanceJustice said:
I'm so tired of watching Nvidia pull this kind of stuff again and again. There's a clear relationship here between "No reviewer, you focus on the thing we care about and makes us look good for the moment. Pay no attention to the green poof of smoke behind the curtain..." behavior like this, and their long history of pushing for controlling, proprietary hardware and software solutions. PhysX was the big one of the past generation, finally defunct. CUDA is another big one with major impacts. GameWorks. Gsync (the one example that they FINALLY at least allowed their GPU owners to connect to FreeSync displays as well) GeForce Experience / Streaming and their encoder. It goes on and on and now everything is focused on DLSS and Raytracing.
Click to expand...
Sounds a lot like Sony.
 
cvinh said:
Put your money where your mouth is and post it in the trade forums. There are plenty of users here looking to buy one. You'll get at least what you paid for it.
Click to expand...
If I knew I could snag a 6800 XT or 6900 XT to replace it, I would. With everything being kryptonite right now, I'll hang on to it (for now).
 
So they won't get any FE cards... oh fuck no! Meanwhile they'll still get EVGA, Gigabyte, Asus, and every other manufacturer to send them review samples... so net result, Nvidia cards are still going to be reviewed.
 
sfsuphysics said:
So they won't get any FE cards... oh fuck no! Meanwhile they'll still get EVGA, Gigabyte, Asus, and every other manufacturer to send them review samples... so net result, Nvidia cards are still going to be reviewed.
Click to expand...
LOL, you think? Nvidia controls their AIBs with an iron fist. Once they cut you off you are fucked. It's happened before.
 
I'm not surprised since this is Nvidia's history here. It was just two years ago when Nvidia was going to force everyone onto their partner program. But here's the thing, Nvidia isn't entirely incorrect here. I've noticed that there's a lack of benchmarks right now and Ray-Tracing was one of them. Rasterization is everywhere, but hardly anyone is doing Ray-Tracing benchmarks. I get that it requires more time since reviewers not only gotta benchmark the rasterization but also the Ray-Tracing and DLSS features. But I wouldn't buy a RTX graphics card for just rasterization performance, because I feel the GTX 1080 Ti is the peak of rasterization. Sure it gets better but not a whole lot better with some RTX cards. Some of the rasterization frame rates of these benchmarks are in the hundreds of frame rates. I would have liked to see a lot more Ray-Tracing benchmarks for these graphic cards.

On the flip side this is also entirely Nvidia's fault. When I heard about RTX I said that it'll be hard for Nvidia to make $100 and $150 graphic cards that can effectively do Ray-Tracing because without these cards able to do this then you lock the majority of the user base out of this feature. This is reminiscent of the DX8 and DX9 era of graphics where both ATI and Nvidia's low and GPU's were the Geforce 4MX and the Radeon 7500. Which sold the most and the amount of people able to do DX8/DX9 level of graphics was low. Don't know about you guys but RTX hardly shows up on the Steam Hardware Survey. Is it a surprise that the best games to show off Ray-Tracing are Quake 2 and Minecraft? Most other games use Ray-Tracing for puddles of water and mirrors, which is not going to be that noticeable.

The amount of games capable of Ray-Tracing is super small, and can be easily overlooked by reviewers. If Nvidia wanted to solve this problem, then a ban to a reviewer is not one of them. The RTX line of graphic cards are prohibitively expensive and therefore most people won't have access to that kind of hardware. If people don't have the hardware then developers won't implement that feature into their game, or won't implement it to the point where it actually makes a visual difference. Nvidia should have a RTX 3050 that's cheap and capable of Ray-Tracing at 1080P. When I say cheap I mean $150 cheap. Do not release another GTX GPU based on Ampere that can't do Ray-Tracing you idiots, cause that's what the GTX 1650 and 1660 was with Turing. That's how you can separate yourselves from AMD who will likely not have a RDNA2 graphics card for $150 for some time. Even if AMD did have a $150 Ray-Tracing GPU, it'll likely be terrible at it.
 
They all charge too much for gpu's that offer nothing more than an fps boost.
I play games that are more visually enticing than triple a games and they can be run on integrated graphics.

The last AAA game I played that wowed me was RDR2 on a ps4. I need games not $700 reshases of the last years performance.
 
Business as usual. I've been to numerous lan parties sponsored by intel and nvidia and when their reps find out your using amd hardware you don't get the time of day from either of them. Amd sponsored one lan while I was running intel and nvidia hardware and the amd rep and I had a very long conversation about why I chose the hardware I was using. Got so tired of the Invidiot mentality I just stopped attending the PDXlan completely.
 
DukenukemX said:
I'm not surprised since this is Nvidia's history here. It was just two years ago when Nvidia was going to force everyone onto their partner program. But here's the thing, Nvidia isn't entirely incorrect here. I've noticed that there's a lack of benchmarks right now and Ray-Tracing was one of them. Rasterization is everywhere, but hardly anyone is doing Ray-Tracing benchmarks. I get that it requires more time since reviewers not only gotta benchmark the rasterization but also the Ray-Tracing and DLSS features. But I wouldn't buy a RTX graphics card for just rasterization performance, because I feel the GTX 1080 Ti is the peak of rasterization. Sure it gets better but not a whole lot better with some RTX cards. Some of the rasterization frame rates of these benchmarks are in the hundreds of frame rates. I would have liked to see a lot more Ray-Tracing benchmarks for these graphic cards.

On the flip side this is also entirely Nvidia's fault. When I heard about RTX I said that it'll be hard for Nvidia to make $100 and $150 graphic cards that can effectively do Ray-Tracing because without these cards able to do this then you lock the majority of the user base out of this feature. This is reminiscent of the DX8 and DX9 era of graphics where both ATI and Nvidia's low and GPU's were the Geforce 4MX and the Radeon 7500. Which sold the most and the amount of people able to do DX8/DX9 level of graphics was low. Don't know about you guys but RTX hardly shows up on the Steam Hardware Survey. Is it a surprise that the best games to show off Ray-Tracing are Quake 2 and Minecraft? Most other games use Ray-Tracing for puddles of water and mirrors, which is not going to be that noticeable.

The amount of games capable of Ray-Tracing is super small, and can be easily overlooked by reviewers. If Nvidia wanted to solve this problem, then a ban to a reviewer is not one of them. The RTX line of graphic cards are prohibitively expensive and therefore most people won't have access to that kind of hardware. If people don't have the hardware then developers won't implement that feature into their game, or won't implement it to the point where it actually makes a visual difference. Nvidia should have a RTX 3050 that's cheap and capable of Ray-Tracing at 1080P. When I say cheap I mean $150 cheap. Do not release another GTX GPU based on Ampere that can't do Ray-Tracing you idiots, cause that's what the GTX 1650 and 1660 was with Turing. That's how you can separate yourselves from AMD who will likely not have a RDNA2 graphics card for $150 for some time. Even if AMD did have a $150 Ray-Tracing GPU, it'll likely be terrible at it.
Click to expand...
A 1080Ti at 1080p ultra is less than 60fps avg. The new high end cards are double that at 100+ avg.

That's 1080p, those that are playing at 1440 will see that fall to 36fps avg for the 1080ti. I think it is safe to say raster performance still has room to grow.

These numbers are for cyberpunk 2077, I somehow neglected that important bit of info.
 
Last edited:
learners permit said:
Business as usual. I've been to numerous lan parties sponsored by intel and nvidia and when their reps find out your using amd hardware you don't get the time of day from either of them. Amd sponsored one lan while I was running intel and nvidia hardware and the amd rep and I had a very long conversation about why I chose the hardware I was using. Got so tired of the Invidiot mentality I just stopped attending the PDXlan completely.
Click to expand...
Imagine that. Sponsors could care less about people running the competitors gear. I'm shocked I tell you.
 
FrgMstr said:
Hardware Unboxed is my first stop on review day. Steve does excellent work when it comes to GPU.
Click to expand...
Yup, they're the only video reviewer I watch, so this dick move guarantees that I'll be going AMD this time around (as soon as they're widely available).
 
https://www.nvidia.com/en-au/geforce/technologies/dlss/

EpAKJY9UwAEVUFw.jpeg


giphy.gif
 
Well look at their drivers I think that tells the story. Nvidia is more propratary with black box code and AMD is more open source. The 6800XT runs CyberPunk 2077 really well and trades blows with 3080. CyberPunk can use RT with DXR in DX12. It's just AMD hasn't optimized it yet while Nvidia develop thier own tech using specific assigned cores in their chips to help accelerate. Nvidia has great RTX features but it's not as open as AMD. Freesync vs G-sync etc
 
Revenant_Knight said:
Well that’s a shame. I guess Hardware Unboxed is done for now. They couldn’t possibly have any other way of obtaining a card without Nvidia handing it to them.I mean, it’s not like they have a strong base of viewers who give them money....

Oh...wait.

This is one of the dumbest moves I’ve seen. Someone at Nvidia had a tantrum, and crossed a major line of journalism.
Click to expand...
Crossed a major line of journalism? This is the standard of journalism. It's a business. It isn't church, and journalism typically isn't ethical. It's mostly paid advertising. Don't let journalists tell you otherwise - their livelihood depends on it.
 
Hardware unboxed is the most impartial and nonpartisan channel out there. So I guess nvidia doesn't want any talk of competition being halfway decent. Even when... They are. I'm a die hard nvidia user because amd can't compete in compute and video rendering, and the Cuda ecosystem is so far developed, but this is horse shit nvidia. If all I was doing was gaming, I'd buy an amd card just to spite them.
 
123Lanoix said:
Well look at their drivers I think that tells the story. Nvidia is more propratary with black box code and AMD is more open source. The 6800XT runs CyberPunk 2077 really well and trades blows with 3080. CyberPunk can use RT with DXR in DX12. It's just AMD hasn't optimized it yet while Nvidia develop thier own tech using specific assigned cores in their chips to help accelerate. Nvidia has great RTX features but it's not as open as AMD. Freesync vs G-sync etc
Click to expand...
The problems with Cyberpunk reek of what happened with Hairworks. Because just the utilization of Nvidia's technology creates havoc with anything that's not their top tier card. This is bad because it creates this bizarre scenario where merely having an Nvidia card alone isn't enough. You have to have the top tier card to play the title well and that's a disservice to gamers not a benefit. Conversely many times AMD's open technology usually benefits Nvidia users as well. This should not be lost in the discussion at all. Having console versions become literally unplayable during launch is NOT normal AT ALL. And it really makes me wonder what the real cause of the delays came from.
 
Revenant_Knight said:
Well that’s a shame. I guess Hardware Unboxed is done for now. They couldn’t possibly have any other way of obtaining a card without Nvidia handing it to them.I mean, it’s not like they have a strong base of viewers who give them money....

Oh...wait.

This is one of the dumbest moves I’ve seen. Someone at Nvidia had a tantrum, and crossed a major line of journalism.

Hey Nvidia! You showed up to a GPU fight with half the VRAM. Instead of whining about reviewers, how about prove you’re worth our money. You want people to praise Ray Tracing? Fine, Cyberpunk looks incredible at the 10-15 FPS it runs on my 3070 before I trash the image with the worst DLSS since BF5.
Click to expand...
As long as Nvidia makes their partners wait to release their own versions of cards, It basically ensures that HU will not have release day reviews of Nvidia cards. So, they will miss out on the relatively easy views and resulting revenue, of such content.

It doesn't mean HU will be in trouble financially. They are established and plenty creative, will make other content which sustains them. But as I said, release day review videos are easy money for content creators. Its a low blow by Nvidia.
 
With all the talk about "I know the emailer" and "He would never say something like this" do you think maybe this was a faked, hacked or hit job e-mail?
 
Krenum said:
With all the talk about "I know the emailer" and "He would never say something like this" do you think maybe this was a faked, hacked or hit job e-mail?
Click to expand...
No idea...the shocking part is that marketing slide that even quotes Hardware Unboxed!
 
Brackle said:
No idea...the shocking is that marketing slide that even quotes Hardware Unboxed!
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's what lead to my thought about it being faked. Something is fishy. Moreover when HWU did a follow up specifically talking about DLSS & Raytracing & compared it to AMD, which obviously showed Nvidia beating AMD.
 
Krenum said:
Yeah, that's what lead to my thought about it being faked. Something is fishy.
Click to expand...

i mean its possible, but I am sure HUB has been in contact with that Nvidia rep for a long time. So fucking fishy
 
After watching this video...I have no idea what Nvidia is talking about in their e-mail. Perhaps they took it personal with the title card on the video?


If they don't like the bad press, make a better product. or just stick by the old saying "Any press is good press"
 
Krenum said:
Yeah, that's what lead to my thought about it being faked. Something is fishy. Moreover when HWU did a follow up specifically talking about DLSS & Raytracing & compared it to AMD, which obviously showed Nvidia beating AMD.
Click to expand...
I would think Nvidia would already be all over proclaiming innocence if that were the case. Their silence looks more like developing a PR strategy to put out the fire.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top