Consumers should criticize companies for offering bribes rather than defend them for it.
Advocating for your own interests 101.
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Hardware Unboxed claims Nvidia has banned them from receiving future FE samples because they did not focus much on Ray Tracing.
- Thread starter unrealist
- Start date
Consumers should criticize companies for offering bribes rather than defend them for it.
Advocating for your own interests 101.
It's Nvidia's stipulation, so if they want to play with corporate products, play by their rules. It sucks like hell, but that's what it is.
I honestly agree with you on needing more context.
The specific quote they released where Nvidia says, "It is very clear from your community commentary..." has me curious, because it says community commentary, not review, which makes it sound like it was something one of the HU guys said on their forums or in the Youtube comments with which Nvidia took issue.
Show me the quote from Nvidia where they say you weren't doing enough RT in your review. That should be extremely easy, right? I am hugely skeptical that they were "banned" for not having enough RT comparisons.
Release the email. Right now they are just weaponizing the community.
It's almost like straight forward capitalism 101 is a bad thing. Bad for consumers. Bad for society. I think it's good that people in this thread are rightfully calling it out as bad.
Its the way the card handles basic shading of the primary colours - red, gold, and green.
So like 'normal' 3D graphics before ray tracing etc. Its odd because really its all rasterisation, you're just spending more time calculating the value for a pixel when you're doing RT. But these days its being used as 'not ray tracing'
And? That's no different from what's happening with the review codes for most games. It doesn't matter if you are a big or small website. Look at what happened with Cyberpunk 2077. Most influencers got a code, whereas most gaming websites did not.
Here is an example. We (DSOGaming) have more than one million visitors per month (we are not a big website but we are certainly not a small one). However, some publishers have blacklisted us (and I can assure you it's not because we don't have a big fanbase, as websites with WAY lower traffic/visitors receive review codes from those publishers). It's PR stuff, it's business, we get it. You don't see us crying over at social media about it. Instead, we buy the games ourselves in order to provide our readers with the Performance Analysis articles for these games. Yes, it has an impact on the day-1 coverage, but that's how it is.
Bottom line, you can write freely about what you want/believe, however, there might be consequences. You must be ready to accept them, period. You are not entitled to free stuff just because you are a journalist/reviewer.
PS: In case it's not made clear, I 100% agree it's a dick move from NVIDIA (consumer-wise). I also completely agree that Hardware Unboxed should NOT change its methodology. They should be free to write/say whatever they want. However, this does not mean that they are entitled to free stuff.
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I'm not saying they're fanboys who will ignore issues on AMDs side and praise them to heaven but they do have bias that is noticable.
Like I said in another post if you suddenly change your test suite and include 3 sponsored AMD games, which are big outliers btw, right before a bunch of GPU reviews I'm going to be critical of that choice. And if all those games were big releases like Valhalla you could argue that these are just the games that are relevant these days but when 2 out of those 3 games are Dirt 5 & Godfall, a game which almost no one plays or cares about, I'll voice my doubt about objectivity. It's no coincidence that HU is the only review outlet where a 5700xt matches a 2070S.
I feel the way this issue is handled also supports what I'm saying and I agree with Finalflame's standpoint. If you're going to air your dirty laundry on twitter atleast post the entire thing instead of selectively choosing quotes.
It is not a bribe unless Nvidia explicitly told HU to only mention the positive aspect of ray tracing which I doubt. Companies give out free stuff hoping to get good feedback but if they get negative ROI it is normal to cut ties. It is just marketing like every type of ads which is not bribing in a legal way. This type of stuff is happening in every business, not just Nvidia.
Again I'm talking from a business perspective, if you are regular HU viewers, you can complain whatever.
Nvidia is in the right here, no matter what anyone says. Companies should get to control the opinions of those using their products for free, or else access to those products should be removed. If some insignificant YouTube channel can't handle the fire, they should just stay out of the kitchen.
What you interestingly choose to describe as "crying" is in the public interest for consumers.
I don't have any stake in the success of Hardware Unboxed, but I do have a stake in the degree to which pseudo-kickbacks taint the trustworthiness of the information I base purchasing decisions on. We should rightly criticize these things, not normalize them.
Whether it is strictly legal or not isn't a big concern to me. Whether it is good for Nvidia as a business is of zero concern to me.
It is obviously bad for me as a consumer, so I should be opposed to it. It has nothing to do with being a viewer of this particular channel or not. The big mystery to me is the motives of those trying to spin this on Nvidia's behalf.
Beyond shitty from Nvidia. This is going to make them look terrible once other sites start reporting on it.
That being said I don't think it's good for reviewers to sideline RT and DLSS just because they aren't industry standard yet. Maybe if they were as inconsequential as PhysX or Hairworks it would make sense to ignore them, but the writing is on the wall with the new consoles having full DX12U support. It reminds me a bit of the people who pushed for highly clocked Pentiums and i3s because they were "good enough" when 4C+ multithreading was in the cusp of breaking out.
I guess the stickler for me is that it's not really an "either or" situation since the RTX 3080 generally beats the 6800XT in raster anyway and AIB prices are largely the same. I don't think a negligible raster gain is worth giving up the potential of playing a transformative RT game in the future. It's like the classic exercise where you can have a million dollars upfront or $0.01 doubled each day for a month instead.
That being said I don't think it's good for reviewers to sideline RT and DLSS just because they aren't industry standard yet. Maybe if they were as inconsequential as PhysX or Hairworks it would make sense to ignore them, but the writing is on the wall with the new consoles having full DX12U support. It reminds me a bit of the people who pushed for highly clocked Pentiums and i3s because they were "good enough" when 4C+ multithreading was in the cusp of breaking out.
I guess the stickler for me is that it's not really an "either or" situation since the RTX 3080 generally beats the 6800XT in raster anyway and AIB prices are largely the same. I don't think a negligible raster gain is worth giving up the potential of playing a transformative RT game in the future. It's like the classic exercise where you can have a million dollars upfront or $0.01 doubled each day for a month instead.
Considering the RT and DLSS feature set are key features of the high-end Nvidia cards, and frankly, Hardware Unboxed's pretty staunch stance of downplaying the value of those, I...kind of understand why you wouldn't be sending out preview hardware that leverages it? Like, it's shitty, but presumably this is an environment where Nvidia itself needs to prioritize this stuff (i.e., more outlets than they have hardware to lend/track).
I think it's (generally) bad form to withhold materials for editorial reasons, but I don't think it's exactly out of left field, and this is more fundamental re: feature set vs the outlet's focus.
I think it's (generally) bad form to withhold materials for editorial reasons, but I don't think it's exactly out of left field, and this is more fundamental re: feature set vs the outlet's focus.
Best for consumers would be that they pay for the card themselfs and say how it is without having to worry about it.
How is Godfall not relevant? That game literally just came out. It's not like Nvidia doesn't also have sponsored games and videos. Like when all those 8k videos came out right before the 3090 launched.
I stumbled on HU's review on my own, and thought benchmarking Godfall was strange. It's nice for anyone who's playing it, but... Who's playing it?
I think I settled on this conclusion too. I wonder if NVIDIA had specific review guidelines - not to enforce a bias but more specifically showcase their more or less exclusive features.
I really like Hardware Unboxed and the guys that run it, but I don't get why they wouldn't test that out thoroughly anyway - if only for their viewers to get that information even if they gave their own honest bad or good conclusions on it.
But ultimately, it's just really not a good look for NVIDIA. Doubt much is gonna change either way unless everyone in the industry kind of stands up for this behavior. Which it won't.
Yeah, and hopefully they mention why they're not doing FE reviews before every AIB card review.
People are still using Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Counter Strike to benchmark the 3080. No one needs a 3080 to run CS and who's playing Tomb Raider. Godfall at least had the relevancy of being a Next Gen launch game. And let's not act like people weren't interested and seeing it's performance considering the dumb claims the developers put out about needing a lot of VRAM.
I watched their cyberpunk performance video, I mean at this point he was fishing for the drama right? He actually still takes shots at nvidia saying this is an nvidia sponsored game and highly optimized for nvidia hardware but amd gpu's work well and that surprises him basically implying nvidia go out of their way to hamper amd. I mean Horizon Zero Dawn vs Death Stranding, Valhalla vs WD Legions if we take those recent examples AMD seem to be playing that game harder than nvidia lol.
He continually refers to his user poll that 60fps is the break point, it's important more than visuals but stay away from that dirty dlss word and button. Everyone knows nvidia can be dicks, but he just seems to be that kid that just keeps kicking the dog until he gets bit then cries and tells dad he didn't do anything.
He continually refers to his user poll that 60fps is the break point, it's important more than visuals but stay away from that dirty dlss word and button. Everyone knows nvidia can be dicks, but he just seems to be that kid that just keeps kicking the dog until he gets bit then cries and tells dad he didn't do anything.
poor corporation nvidia fighting back agaisnt evil small youtube content creator!
It's funny because in the process of defending Nvidia for acting in its own self-interest, you're acting against your own self-interest.
Huge unforced error by Nvidia there.
It's funny, because they're not wrong - some of the more recent GPU smorgasboard videos (by Hardware Unboxed) have definitely been dismissive towards RT in a way that sometimes feels....repetitive in how often its brought up, but as others have said, there are limited games supporting it, and without DLSS it's not even remotely worth it.
But that doesn't change the fact that this comes off far too much as 'we don't like your reviews - change them, or lose access'.
Unfortunately, the whole PC review sphere is largely based on free-early-access model, so I don't see there being too much rocking of the boat beyond twitter outcry.
It's funny, because they're not wrong - some of the more recent GPU smorgasboard videos (by Hardware Unboxed) have definitely been dismissive towards RT in a way that sometimes feels....repetitive in how often its brought up, but as others have said, there are limited games supporting it, and without DLSS it's not even remotely worth it.
But that doesn't change the fact that this comes off far too much as 'we don't like your reviews - change them, or lose access'.
Unfortunately, the whole PC review sphere is largely based on free-early-access model, so I don't see there being too much rocking of the boat beyond twitter outcry.
I agree with this. Also If they are going to dismiss major feature of my product while receiving free review samples, I would definitely cut them off. In case of Nvidia I am referring to ray tracing and dlss. Just watch several of their videos on the matter. They always seem to dismiss these features. They were also peddling the 5700 xt a while back over the 2070 super. Those users are getting fucked now by their narrow point of view.
NVIDIA themselves shouldn't be forcing RT down everyone's throat considering the performance on current hardware. The performance is simply terrible.
...and devs/pubs should stop it with their "recommended specs" nonsense as it's mostly lies (unless the target is 30 FPS).
...and devs/pubs should stop it with their "recommended specs" nonsense as it's mostly lies (unless the target is 30 FPS).
this is correct. Even if it's commentary on some video, I wouldn't be surprised if they felt the lack of 1:1 comparison by price like in that WDL comparison graph and the lack of disclaimer about RT missing half the reflections on AMD.
that kind of indirect and misleading editorializing but leaving out context for what is essentially a consumer review page/channel would be enough to justify suspending free samples if repeated often.
I'm gonna go ahead and say it: If Nvidia did do it based on HU focusing on one data point rather than overall performance? They're not wrong to do it.
It'd be like PC Gamer reviewing a CPU solely on its web browsing capabilities b/c somehow they're better on Intel than AMD... That's not remotely close to being a fair review, and seems more than a bit biased. I know HU tends to be fair and responsible about irs reviews, which is why I find it odd, but if true... Nvidia can definitely just pull support away over it.
It'd be like PC Gamer reviewing a CPU solely on its web browsing capabilities b/c somehow they're better on Intel than AMD... That's not remotely close to being a fair review, and seems more than a bit biased. I know HU tends to be fair and responsible about irs reviews, which is why I find it odd, but if true... Nvidia can definitely just pull support away over it.
At this point I really think we need to see the whole letter, choosing specific quotes out can really be misleading and there definitely can be situations that would be solid reasons to not send free samples to a reviewer.
It was probably this which caught NVs' eye. They probably looked at the results and said not worth sending them cards.
In their 3060Ti review they reviewed the card, but in the final conclusions they (I'm parapharasing) say that RT doesn't matter enough to be a deciding factor to recommend the card. It wouldn't be the first time they say something like that. It could have something to do with that.
Is that a lie though? He shows the benchmark comparing the RT performance between different cards for you to decide yourself if that's important to you
Hardware Unboxed spent the better part of a year shitting on DLSS and claiming that AMD's image sharpening was a superior solution - even after the problems of the initial few games were fixed.
Now whenever they benchmark games with RT support they usually say something along the lines of "well, NVIDIA is clearly ahead of AMD, but who really wants the performance hit of RT anyway?"
If I was NVIDIA I wouldn't keep them on the list of outlets that get free cards either.
I don't really like the way they're framing this as being "banned" from receiving future samples. They just aren't on the list for getting a free GPU any more. They aren't banned from anything.
On my ASUS monitor, even the sRGB mode is not entirely accurate, since it locks the backlight to 50 when the correct setting is 30 (100 nits).
If you actually look at the comparison, the backlight is cranked up and the image lacks any depth after the factory reset.
An inaccurate SDR image can easily be made brighter and more vibrant than an accurate HDR one, and an HDR display lets you take SDR further out-of-spec.
You need to be comparing an accurate SDR image to an accurate HDR image in a side-by-side.
Now whenever they benchmark games with RT support they usually say something along the lines of "well, NVIDIA is clearly ahead of AMD, but who really wants the performance hit of RT anyway?"
If I was NVIDIA I wouldn't keep them on the list of outlets that get free cards either.
I don't really like the way they're framing this as being "banned" from receiving future samples. They just aren't on the list for getting a free GPU any more. They aren't banned from anything.
The source of this was a Hardware Canucks video where Dmitry claimed that NVIDIA must have intentionally made the SDR image look worse because a factory reset of the monitor; i.e. taking it out of the calibrated sRGB mode, ended up making it look brighter and more vibrant than the HDR image.Let me just remind you:
NVIDIA Deliberately Worsens SDR Monitor Image Settings to Showcase HDR
In its eagerness to showcase just how important HDR (High Dynamic Range) support is for the image quality of the future, NVIDIA set up a display booth on Computex, where it showcased the difference between SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) and HDR images. However, it looks as if the green company was...www.techpowerup.com
On my ASUS monitor, even the sRGB mode is not entirely accurate, since it locks the backlight to 50 when the correct setting is 30 (100 nits).
If you actually look at the comparison, the backlight is cranked up and the image lacks any depth after the factory reset.
An inaccurate SDR image can easily be made brighter and more vibrant than an accurate HDR one, and an HDR display lets you take SDR further out-of-spec.
You need to be comparing an accurate SDR image to an accurate HDR image in a side-by-side.
I wonder if this is actually a bug, or another of their "optimizations" like having the driver limit tessellation back when their GPUs couldn't handle it nearly as well as NVIDIA's - which would often break effects in games (but run better) or going much further back, when they did similar things for Quake 3.
and leaves out the fact that the 3060 TI is $100 cheaper and AMD performance is overindexed due to missing half the RT reflections
It wasn't a lie. It also was clearly said in a "personal opinion" voice. I do care about RT and stuff, but many people doesn't. Since that was personal opinion, I imagine the "community commentary" may have something to do with it
What a shame, it's one of the few sites I visit because of their unbiased views and not acting like they are shilling for AMD or Nvidia.
Oh yeah, I forgot they did that! It's definitely a possibility, although I'd assume it would be more wide-spread if they were doing it on purpose.
In other words, keep shilling for us or no free stuff. What a way to inform the consumer, I love it.
How about we look after the consumer first and foremost and not overcharge for products because there is no competition? That would be an awesome start and even better would have the community who welcomes competition where we can elaborate on what's good and what needs to be improved without the same patterns of focusing always on the latter.
Even pushing aside the ethical considerations, from a simple PR perspective this is also just so incredibly dumb. Hardware Unboxed is a relatively large channel, the trivial cost of supplying them with a few graphics cards every generation vs. the shitstorm this is going to create is amazingly incompetent. What did they possibly think was going to be the outcome from this?
I never watched Hardware Unboxxed videos, but they are always recommended by You Tube. That chart is super misleading knowing this. Intentional or ignorance, either way not good.