NVIDIA Bans Reviewer for Concentrating on Rasterization Instead of Ray Tracing

jfreund said:
Is this guy _trying_ to be a stereotype?
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Reading it actually made me feel dirty for liking raytracing, even though realtime RT has been the dream since 20 years. Which is absurd because it's another one of those things that would just sell itself - no coercion required - if they just keep improving it, it markets itself.

Imagine Rockstar emailed reviewers that they didn't focus enough on the beautiful landcapes, and wide variety of horses available in RDR2, and therefore no early access to GTA6. Assholes, everyone already gets it, they like all that, it goes without saying. "PLAY UP THE HORSES! Remind your audience they were motion captured!"
 
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I read the tweet from HUB and was immediately reminded of GPP. The last nvidia product I had was a MB. They will not get another dollar from me until there is some evidence that they are no longer pulling this kind of crap. I don't think that will happen until they have a new CEO.
 
I'm gonna say it first, Bryan Del Rizzo DID NOT KILL HIMSELF!
 
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The more I think about this the more it pisses me off. How are you going to leave out a selling point for a new product in a review?? No matter what your opinion is on RT, it IS a selling point for some even if most people don't use it or don't have access to it yet. Nearly all games announced for the future will be using RT in some form so HOW is this information not useful for the consumer??

So I ask again.. why is Hardware Unboxed going to purposely leave ray tracing results out of future Nvidia product reviews? Oh yea! *BECAUSE THEY'RE BIASED TOWARDS AMD AND AMD'S CURRENT RAY TRACING CAPABILITIES ARE TRASH!* If anyone remembers they used to include overclocking results for their CPU reviews some time back. They stopped doing this as well. When do you ask? When Ryzen released.. Why? Because Ryzen sucked at overclocking and Intel didn't. This is the SAME shit. They're excluding ray tracing results from GPU reviews because AMD currently has no answer for Nvidia's ray tracing performance.

I'm completely on Nvidia's side on this one. If you're not going to fully review a product properly and leave out some of it's selling points then you can kick rocks. How no one knows that HU is AMD biased is beyond me. With every Intel or Nvidia review there's always some tongue in cheek distaste towards their products.
 
rushaoz said:
The more I think about this the more it pisses me off. How are you going to leave out a selling point for a new product in a review?? No matter what your opinion is on RT, it IS a selling point for some even if most people don't use it or don't have access to it yet. Nearly all games announced for the future will be using RT in some form so HOW is this information not useful for the consumer??

So I ask again.. why is Hardware Unboxed going to purposely leave ray tracing results out of future Nvidia product reviews? Oh yea! *BECAUSE THEY'RE BIASED TOWARDS AMD AND AMD'S CURRENT RAY TRACING CAPABILITIES ARE TRASH!* If anyone remembers they used to include overclocking results for their CPU reviews some time back. They stopped doing this as well. When do you ask? When Ryzen released.. Why? Because Ryzen sucked at overclocking and Intel didn't. This is the SAME shit. They're excluding ray tracing results from GPU reviews because AMD currently has no answer for Nvidia's ray tracing performance.

I'm completely on Nvidia's side on this one. If you're not going to fully review a product properly and leave out some of it's selling points then you can kick rocks. How no one knows that HU is AMD biased is beyond me. With every Intel or Nvidia review there's always some tongue in cheek distaste towards their products.
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Uh huh.:rolleyes:
 
My guess is one of two things will likely happen:

1) Absolutely nothing. Nvidia will wait for this to boil over over the next few days and then return back to business as usual. As if they never did anything wrong.

2) If enough pressure from reviewers and their communities continues over the next few days/weeks then I can definitely see Nvidia telling BDR he is going to have to take one for team Green and either resign or go on an “extended leave”. Nvidia will unblacklist Hardware Unboxed but they’ll continue to be on the thinnest ice possible.

In either situation, things won’t change behind the scenes. Nvidia will continue to try and strong arm in order to control the narrative.

The scary thing is that Nvidia is this desperate to control the narrative when the competition has matched it in just rasterization performance. Imagine the desperation Nvidia will go through if AMD continues to close the gap in RT and Nvidia will no longer have areas where they are clearly best.
 
Regardless of nvidia strong arming, lack of product availability (amd here too), driver growing pains (amd historically worse here), I go with multiple reviews from multiple sites. Not just for rasterization, not just for raytracing. I want a full understanding of 4K performance because that's what matters to me. Doesn't make what they did right, but I take a lot of things into consideration - unless they fuck me directly (and they tried with geforce experience as the only way to get driver updates, and backed the fuck off due to the massive, deserved, backlash).

With that said, I was only able to find 1 reviewer that actually put out performance numbers for both the 3090 and 6900XT for Cyberpunk 2077 - and while the 6900XT can't do raytracing yet, the rasterization performance at 4K Ultra was significantly lower than the 3090. Around 20% lower (memory bandwidth limitation?). EDIT: two reviews this one a 25% difference. Toss in raytracing and DLSS 2.0 - I chose correctly, and am enjoying the ever-loving hell outta this amazing game.
 
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Linus pointed out one of the biggest problems now for reviewers: anything anyone says positively about Nvidia products will now be subject to accusations of coercion or corruption. Short of Rtings or Consumer Reports purchasing stuff for review, everyone will be accused of being on Nvidia’s payroll, or under their boot.
 
The more I think about this, the more I realize how BAD this is for the industry. This is Nvidia attempting to control the narrative. This goes way beyond public perception of their products. This is literally Nvidia saying "Promote our products, or else."

The 2 current GPUs in my possession are an RTX 2070 Super and a 3080. I bought an RTX 3080 because it's a damn good GPU for 4K120 and it has HDMI 2.1. All of the Nvidia "fluff" on top of that are nice to have, but they aren't items that I cannot live without. This leads me to say that if I could find an RX 6800 XT or 6900 XT, I would sell my 3080 simply because I HATE supporting companies that try and control the narrative.

Nvidia:

You have a great product in the RTX 3080. Seriously. It does almost everything right (*cough* VRAM *cough*). I came to that conclusion via reviewers like Hardware Unboxed, who is very balanced and fair in their review methods. Your attack on them for not parroting your talking points shows me that you care more about consumer perception than unbiased reviews. That doesn't jive with me, and I will more than likely be off-loading my RTX 3080 Founders Edition as soon as I can get a valid replacement. I cannot in good faith support a company that is this cavalier in their dealing with review partners such as Hardware Unboxed.
 
What Nvidia allegedly did is shameful. GN, HUB, and others are my go-to and this is disturbing for their bottom line as access to the product drives viewership.
I was skeptical with RTX upon introduction. After hearing 2nd hand reports from an early adopter, there was no way I'm adopting a new technology out of the gate. If I can have it at my current level of experience (frame-times) I'll consider adopting it, but its still not there yet, for the games I play mainly. No matter what Nvidia claims (2x performance*), I'll wait for reviews before adopting.

As for my experiences with the Nvidia technologies, the only thing I really liked was Shadowplay, until it breaks randomly (has been pretty stable on my 2070, but 1070 was sketchy in a couple driver releases).

What I don't like about Nvidia's technology is that my experience in games is similar to 20 year old hardware playing quake II. Sure it looks better, but 38fps isn't quite my expectations. Also, GeForce experience. Go fuck yourselves with that login bullshit for driver updates. Seriously, WTF.
 
When has nVidia ever, in the past 10 years, been a pro consumer organization? Time and time again, they push the envelope of the morally reprehensible from insidious pricing strategy, to reviewer manipulation/influence, to straight up spec fudging. Remember when they announced they were going to lock down overclocking on laptops (while simultaneously pushing manufactuers to advertise overclocking); remember when 3.5GB meant "4GB"; how about GPP? And these were just the cut-and-dry tomfoolery that came to light.

My 6800 XT preorder arrives ETA two weeks at which point my 3080 (replacement on an RMA already, btw) is going up for sale. I was teetering on which one to hold on to -- I'm going to relish swapping cards now.

Ceterum censeo RT is a joke at present, two years later (hardware performance and software support). It should be waaay down the list of things that should influence a card purchase (somewhere between DX7.1 performance and the color of the PCB).
 
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cageymaru said:
NVIDIA has banned Hardware Unboxed from receiving GeForce Founders Edition GPU review samples. NVIDIA wants tech reviewers to concentrate on ray tracing performance instead of rasterization.

Here is the tweet from Hardware Unboxed announcing the ban.
https://twitter.com/HardwareUnboxed/status/1337246983682060289

Nvidia have officially decided to ban us from receiving GeForce Founders Edition GPU review samples

Their reasoning is that we are focusing on rasterization instead of ray tracing.

They have said they will revisit this "should your editorial direction change".

View attachment 307892

AMD 6900 XT review from Hardware Unboxed





Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Benchmark Review from Hardware Unboxed

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Hell, I thought HU bent over backwards for Nvidia. Without mentioning The $1500 price for the 3090 he showed it a winner over the $1000 6900XT. He didn't mention the $100 per extra frame. If he kicked RT on they both would have died in FPS. It's RT and 1080P or 1440P.
 
jfreund said:
I should have been more clear. AMD has cut off reviewers in the past, but this is just one more duechey action in a long line from nVidia.



I did. That's why I have a 6800 right now, and am looking for a 6800XT or 6900XT. Nvidia made it easy by not offering a real upgrade to the 1080Ti with Turing.
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6900XT? Just think man, for $500 more you can get 5 more FPS with the 3090.
 
madpistol said:
Nvidia:

You have a great product in the RTX 3080. Seriously. It does almost everything right (*cough* VRAM *cough*). I came to that conclusion via reviewers like Hardware Unboxed, who is very balanced and fair in their review methods. Your attack on them for not parroting your talking points shows me that you care more about consumer perception than unbiased reviews. That doesn't jive with me, and I will more than likely be off-loading my RTX 3080 Founders Edition as soon as I can get a valid replacement. I cannot in good faith support a company that is this cavalier in their dealing with review partners such as hardware Unboxed.
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The irony, is hardware unboxed was actually pretty complimentary. Hell from the LTT video above, Nvidia actually used quotes from HUB for their DLSS marketing material.
 
Since nVidia tried and suceeded in controlling AIB's line of product renaming to make nVidia's GPU sound and look more premium compared to AMD ones, nothing can surprise me anymore. They are pure evil. This is compared to what Intel did with bribing retailers and OEMs when AMD surpassed them with Athlon 64 CPUs.
 
SPARTAN VI said:
I'm not saying that Nvidia is obligated to continue sampling HUB, or anyone for that matter. But Brian's email sends a clear message to the media to either tow the line, or they're axing you too. I'm getting flashbacks of AMD cherry picking reviewers for their R9 Fury Nano years ago.
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Good call. I'm frankly surprised that more aren't remembering the Nano incident - where Kyle, TechReport, and TPU were not provided review samples.
Remember when AMD_Roy said, "Reviews need to be fair"?

It's what makes people saying, "I will buy AMD to spite nVidia" so funny to me. People really do have short memories on here - that's not a good thing.
 
6 pages of people acting surprised, like this is the first time Nvidia has fucked over the industry, the consumers, and the reviewers. Amazing.

All the outrage for how shitty they are now, and in a year it will be outrage at how people can't spend $1,800 on a card because it was a paper launch. How fast the memory fades.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
How much you wanna bet right now Nvidia is secretly telling AIBs not to sample to HUB?
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Like Linus pointed out in his video. AIB reviews are always embargoed for 3-4 extra days, and perhaps more in the future if Nvidia feels like it. So even if they get AIB cards..... Nvidia is basically cancelling a Youtube reviewer that requires launch day reviews to stay relevant.
 
I don't actually care? I'm going to purchase the GPU with the best performance and stability for my use on my systems (increasingly GNU/Linux).
Today that means AMD, yesterday it was Nvidia, who knows what it will be tomorrow.
There is still proper, written tech journalism for that; I can do without the ad-infested, YT "tech tubers" shouting on twitter and jumping over each other to get their "review" out first.
 
To me, the big question is...Why HUB, specifically?

I don’t see their coverage as more or less favorable toward ray tracing than other sites. Are they just trying to make an example of them?
 
Parja said:
To me, the big question is...Why HUB, specifically?

I don’t see their coverage as more or less favorable toward ray tracing than other sites. Are they just trying to make an example of them?
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nvidia hates aussies
 
Parja said:
To me, the big question is...Why HUB, specifically?

I don’t see their coverage as more or less favorable toward ray tracing than other sites. Are they just trying to make an example of them?
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Probably to make an example out of them unfortunately. Even if Hardware Unboxed didn’t come out publicly about this, the reviewers talk amongst themselves.

Unfortunate for Nvidia, it appears that the tech tubers and their communities are standing together on this one. But unfortunate for these big tech tubers; there isn’t a shortage of growing tech tubers who would kiss Nvidia’s ass for special privileges that would make the channels grow faster.
 
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Parja said:
To me, the big question is...Why HUB, specifically?

I don’t see their coverage as more or less favorable toward ray tracing than other sites. Are they just trying to make an example of them?
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I’ve noticed a slight AMD bias from them for a while and they’ve consistently downplayed DLSS and RT. That’s probably why. GN shits on Nvidia too sometimes but it doesn’t feel as biased.
 
Bias.... Nvidia used Hubs DLSS fluff as the first featured third party words on their own DLSS page.

DLSS a fake resolution bump that only works with selected titles that have DLSS updates for every minor content update, and will never work with games that aren't frozen in time and preferably on a rail... 90% of the time I'm playing online MMO type games where DLSS type techs that require external computation will never really work. "Extremely impressive - Hardware Unboxed". lol Nvidia shill detected. (I think I'm being sarcastic.... but seriously DLSS is such a BS feature) lol
 
rushaoz said:
The more I think about this the more it pisses me off. How are you going to leave out a selling point for a new product in a review?? No matter what your opinion is on RT, it IS a selling point for some even if most people don't use it or don't have access to it yet. Nearly all games announced for the future will be using RT in some form so HOW is this information not useful for the consumer??

So I ask again.. why is Hardware Unboxed going to purposely leave ray tracing results out of future Nvidia product reviews? Oh yea! *BECAUSE THEY'RE BIASED TOWARDS AMD AND AMD'S CURRENT RAY TRACING CAPABILITIES ARE TRASH!* If anyone remembers they used to include overclocking results for their CPU reviews some time back. They stopped doing this as well. When do you ask? When Ryzen released.. Why? Because Ryzen sucked at overclocking and Intel didn't. This is the SAME shit. They're excluding ray tracing results from GPU reviews because AMD currently has no answer for Nvidia's ray tracing performance.

I'm completely on Nvidia's side on this one. If you're not going to fully review a product properly and leave out some of it's selling points then you can kick rocks. How no one knows that HU is AMD biased is beyond me. With every Intel or Nvidia review there's always some tongue in cheek distaste towards their products.
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You haven't watched a single Hardware Unboxed review, have you?
 
t1337duder said:
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.
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Your attitude is part of the problem. If you let companies (and journalists) get away with what they want, they will do what they want. If you hold companies to a higher standard and enough people do so, they will rethink their methods.

If you think a journalist's career can't be destroyed by a lack of integrity, think again. If other journalists found out, they will make sure to spread it everywhere they can, because not only does it make good news, it also culls the competition.

Mav451 said:
Good call. I'm frankly surprised that more aren't remembering the Nano incident - where Kyle, TechReport, and TPU were not provided review samples.
Remember when AMD_Roy said, "Reviews need to be fair"?

It's what makes people saying, "I will buy AMD to spite nVidia" so funny to me. People really do have short memories on here - that's not a good thing.
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Meh, when the choice is between two evils, wouldn't it make sense to try to support the lesser of two evils?
 
Tsumi said:
Meh, when the choice is between two evils, wouldn't it make sense to try to support the lesser of two evils?
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How do you know which one is more evil? Maybe Nvidia is more reckless than the others with their shitty antics that end up being exposed. AMD and Intel also have their dirty histories and we do not know what truly goes on behind the scenes in any of these companies. You can't trust any of them.
 
Step 1: Make list of all countries with a say in approving ARM sale to nVidia
Step 2: Make list of government representatives most vocal about anti-trust
Step 3: Send timeline containing nVidia’s shady business practices to said representatives
Step 4: Coordinate social media campaign highlighting shady business practices to coincide when governments are set to vote on ARM acquisition
 
I was thinking, as I sometimes do. Maybe Nvidia did this on purpose to stop people from talking about supply issues?
 
$trapped said:
Step 1: Make list of all countries with a say in approving ARM sale to nVidia
Step 2: Make list of government representatives most vocal about anti-trust
Step 3: Send timeline containing nVidia’s shady business practices to said representatives
Step 4: Coordinate social media campaign highlighting shady business practices to coincide when governments are set to vote on ARM acquisition
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Gl with that.
 
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