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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
Watching the Linus WAN Show - holy shit have never seen him this fired up.
Seems to me that this guy from NVidia just didn't realize who/how big Hardware Unboxed actually is maybe?
Seems to me that this guy from NVidia just didn't realize who/how big Hardware Unboxed actually is maybe?
Can't believe we still have some defending Nvidia here.
NVIDIA... You've officially gone TOO far this time...
Of course they are backtracking. Now that the bigger bloggers are involved they have no other choice. They tried to put pressure on Hardware Unboxed because they are not that big yet.
To Nvidia it's all about money and if they forecast bad publicity that might hurt their image, meaning stocks, they will give a dishonest apology to save face.
NVIDIA... You've officially gone TOO far this time...
Of course they are backtracking. Now that the bigger bloggers are involved they have no other choice. They tried to put pressure on Hardware Unboxed because they are not that big yet.
To Nvidia it's all about money and if they forecast bad publicity that might hurt their image, meaning stocks, they will give a dishonest apology to save face.
That would require him to be stupid. He's held that position long enough to know better, but apparently he's pulled similar shit with J2C until AIBs stepped in and told NVIDIA they were being ridiculous. Nah, this likely came from the top to serve as a warning to all reviewers and it ended up exploding in their faces.
Like Linus said, people now have actual evidence to call NVIDIA a scummy company and not to trust reviewers. They've shot themselves in the foot and damaged their own brand and image with a lot of the enthusiast community. Everyone that calls reviewers shills has now real ammunition from the company itself.
I am glad it was reversed. But I wouldn't let Nvidia off the stick too easily. They are showing their true colours in that original email.
Hopefully the community remembers this going forward, and keep an close eye on Nvidia from now on. This is not their first attempt of shitting on reviewers. Also probably not their last.
This whole thing was an embarrassment. HUB hopefully can relax now and focus on their business.
Hopefully the community remembers this going forward, and keep an close eye on Nvidia from now on. This is not their first attempt of shitting on reviewers. Also probably not their last.
This whole thing was an embarrassment. HUB hopefully can relax now and focus on their business.
Shit behavior from a shit company and walking back their BS doesn't count. It's fucking ridiculous. I just wonder for a senior VP of PR... what the hell did that guy think was going to happen? I mean in the age of social media... what was going to be the best outcome here, especially since Hardware Unboxed is a fairly well known and respected hardware review outfit?
Like what was the "winning" move for Nvidia here? Have Steve shill for Team Green a bit more? Was it REALLY worth it at the end?
Like what was the "winning" move for Nvidia here? Have Steve shill for Team Green a bit more? Was it REALLY worth it at the end?
Many people , including some reviewers, seem to be theorizing that this was to intentionally poison the well against all reviewers and instill distrust for the traditional objective PC hardware review. Here in the age of influencers, that doesn't sound particularly implausible.
it doesnt matter how big/small the outlet is that they targeted, that completely misses the point and is entirely irrelevant.
I guess this blow up beyond what they expected.
That's honestly was the main reason I had my doubts about the events before I opened the thread, as that move sounded way too idiotic to be real. I guess that was a great example of someone being in an ivory tower.
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To a degree it has been working for Nvidia. Even here we still have those talking nonstop about raytracing. I remember back when the 2000 series came out and how some tried to oversell it on the fact it does raytracing. On what, 2 titles with severe performance hits? Hardware Unboxed was making logical videos and because they were not promoting it like other fanatics do they get blacklisted. The irony is they were doing videos as Linus proved.
Glad to see this backfiring.
The big issue with Nvidia starting this whole debacle over raytracing is that Raytracing still isn't there yet. Sure, games have it "working" now, but it's basically in the same state I'd argue VR was a few years ago: It's neat, but it's still far from reaching consumer critical adoption. The closest thing it has to a killer app right now is Minecraft or Quake 2 in terms of what benefits it can provide.
Nvidia showed the world their ass when literally everyone wants/wanted a 3000 series GPU by deciding to do this stunt.
Nvidia showed the world their ass when literally everyone wants/wanted a 3000 series GPU by deciding to do this stunt.
Nvidia will be fine. They tried to strongarm an influencer. This blew up in their faces. They give a half assed apology. next batch of cards sell like hotcakes anyway because people need those frames and we move on to the next stupid thing a company does.
We will see if this actually does any damage to their brand.
We will see if this actually does any damage to their brand.
It's a great feature for professionals but utterly pointless for gamers.
Yep this is some insane levels of arrogance and overall shitty behavior shown by Nvidia. Knowing how large companies work I highly doubt this was some "rogue" low level employee.
It wasn't, it was apparently from the Global PR Head or whatever his title is called.
When asked if looking at how AMD GPUs have aged, would he go back and change his review stance from recommending Nvidia he says no. He doesn't believe in advising users to buy products on the uncertainty of future promise. Nvidia offered better performance and power efficiency at the time of the review so he would stay with his recommendation.
Wrt Nvidia, they have always been a terribly anti-consumer company. Some great products but everything about the way they choose to operate is just awful for the consumer. One of if not the worst offenders in the entire tech industry.
This is incorrect on many levels. Would you care to provide a source for Gamer's Nexus buying their hardware? And then explain how they managed to produce full launch day reviews and subsequent tear down videos for 3080 and 3090 FE cards? I.e., cards that are not available for purchase until that day? Or how they purchased pre-release models of all those cases/aios/etc. they review?
Think about what you are advocatng for. In your world, we would only now be getting "independent" reviews for products that launched in September, and only as each reviewer managed to win the purchase lottery. If you actually wanted to see a review or benchmarks comparing different brands for the same card (you know, like any one of us who wanted to buy a 3080), you might be waiting until 2021. Embargoing reviews until launch day is already very anti-consumer; you are proposing a solution that is orders of magnitude worse. I can barely rationalize a company wanting people to buy their products sight unseen (barely, because why would they be afraid of reviews if the product isn't shit). I can't fathom why you think this is a good thing for consumers.
Speaking of Jay, if this thread were about him instead of HWU I would still believe it. I don't watch every single one of his videos but the last few I've seen that mentioned the 3000 cards and RT in general he too made comments about how RT isn't that important yet and that the numbers aren't as important as non-RT performance.
Also: HWU doesn't exactly have a super tight relationship with Jay and other channels, so the fact they're chiming in defending them actually says a lot IMO.
Also: HWU doesn't exactly have a super tight relationship with Jay and other channels, so the fact they're chiming in defending them actually says a lot IMO.
I don't plan on trawling through their videos to find it, but there have definitely been videos where they've said, to paraphrase: "we won't publish our findings now, but could, because we are not under embargo as we have sourced the hardware ourselves."
Presumably the reason for not publishing early is because they still don't want to get in trouble with those companies even if the hardware was not supplied by them.
I'm not talking about anything specific to the 30-series GPUs here though; and perhaps it's a mixture of both.
At no point did I say that this is a good thing.
What I said was that I didn't see why it was such a big deal that NVIDIA would choose not to send out Founders Edition GPUs if they felt the coverage they were getting did not justify sending out the hardware. I followed that up with another post after watching Linus' 35 minute rant.
If anything, I think the relationship between these influencers/reviewers is already tainted with the way that they are so heavily reliant on these companies for early hardware access, driven by a need to have videos ready to go at a time decided by the marketing department.
If you want truly independent reviews, that relationship should not exist - whether they felt they could say what they wanted or not.
And let's not forget that AMD did the exact same thing a few years ago, refusing to ship Radeon hardware to outlets like TechPowerUp and [H]ardOCP - who were veterans in the industry rather than newcomers - and sent hardware to influencers instead.
Hardware scarcity at the moment is unprecedented for a number of reasons, but assuming that everything was normal, why is it that people expect every single outlet to have reviews ready at a designated time anyway? I've already pointed out examples where that is not the case; e.g. Digital Foundry, and that doesn't seem to be a problem.
If I'm looking to buy a new television, I'll wait for RTINGS or HDTVtest to independently source a display, review it on their own time, and publish when they are ready.
They don't want or feel a need to receive hand-picked pre-release displays from the manufacturer along with everyone else in the industry and publish a video at the time marketing decides is optimal. What is so special about a GPU that it must have a complete review ready on day one?
As a side-note, the idea that manufacturers are sending out hand-picked displays for review is laughable, based on my experience with them. We certainly never received anything that appeared to be hand-selected as one of the best examples of a TV. But obviously it could happen if they felt so inclined.
Just to be a bit more specific - though I did not want to go into details - it was a review of their flagship television at the time, which was shipped to me in advance of release.
It was shipped at such a high priority that I received it the same day as it was collected from the previous journalist, and it was delivered just after midnight - I didn't know that such services even existed.
I then had access to it for less than 24 hours before it was collected again to go on to the next person.
So it's not like I was making the comparison between some random low-priority Samsung consumer electronics device and GPUs.
Ultimately though, the high pressure to deliver reviews under those conditions, and the way that it was handled by shipping a limited number of units around the country like that, just wasn't worth it at all.
As I said, after we were blacklisted for the review - which was a fair review based on its objective performance - we started to seek out deals with retailers where they could loan us a display for a longer period of time and it could then be sold on as a professionally calibrated display, or potentially kept in-house as a reference.
Perhaps it was a bigger deal for print publications, where they had to get content done in time to make that month's print deadline or whatever, but as an online publication we did not feel the need to rush the review process like that, since we could publish as soon as it was done and still have it out before print. But we never really felt that there was a need to rush the review for that.
And based on the majority of comments that these reviews received, most people that actually read them seemed to be looking to validate their own purchases rather than people looking for information to make a decision anyway. I received a lot of hate for unfavorable reviews of displays that people had already purchased (or pre-ordered).
YouTubers or "new media" have a tendency to want to stick together and defend anyone inside their own sphere.
Linus in particular has blindly defended problematic people in the past because he seemingly felt obligated to, lest he allow a transgression against 'his' community.
Though I agree for the most part with a lot of YT communities, there's been "accidental" "drama" in the past between HWU and Jay (at least) due to some ill-received joke they made, and it kind of made things seem sour between HWU and "the rest" of them.
It just seems (at least to me and based on my admittedly limited viewing of all these folks) that there's a good amount of camaraderie between Jay/Linus/GN/Hardware Canucks/etc. and none between them and HWU. They just generally seem to not like those 2 guys to me. Maybe not enough for them to not come to their aide but at least enough for them to call out HWU if they think they're being misleading about the nVidia stuff.
Yeah, friend, I think you are really missing the point here.
First, which video - where RT is relevant - is purposely leaving RT or DLSS out? In addition, do you think reviews should ALL be RT/DLSS benches? Did games without these feature stop being a thing now? How many, percentage wise, games are right now RT vs no RT? Do you think RT games are disproportionately low on their videos?
Plus, they, personally, considering that RT is not worth the performance hit, is it a minor opinion in the PC community? Maybe you'll say "yes" in terms of hardware reviews. If that's the case, is it a bad thing that a hardware media outlet approaches their reviews with that part of the community in mind?
Now, it's not just Cyberpunk. They have done separate, dedicated videos about RT and DLSS for most big releases. WDL, Metro, SotTR, among others. Revisiting even. It's not "doing business". It's what they have always done.
And, why would Nvidia has to successfully manage to change their editorial opinion for it to be a shitty move by them? I really don't understand this reasoning. This is freakin' unethical! That's the problem. It's not just "not receiving a card", there are drivers, media information, many stuff tech channels already need to fulfill in order to be part of the pre-release, or hell, actual release, coverage. They need it both in terms of the deal they have and for their own media coverage, they are press. Nvidia is not necesarely at a loss here. You'd think that this is bad press so it'll hurt, but not on the current, dry, out-of-stock, market. This only hurts HW. Which, as Linus said in their podcast, feels even personal.
EDIT: oh well, they reversed their decision. Good for HWU
Yes, you literally were talking specifically about the 30-series GPUs. You said: "I'm pretty sure Gamers Nexus don't get free cards from NVIDIA either." The entire thread and issue is about Nvidia Founder's Edition GPUs. Gamer's Nexus clearly did not buy their Nvidia FE cards, directly contradicting your claim. Yet, by your own standards, they were able to provide fair reviews of those products. I'm in no way calling out GN - I agree they are independent and fair despite how the system works for these products. I replied because your comment was not accurate and your proposed solution does not solve the problems in a way that helps consumers.
This is a very good point and should be repeated. The oversell was outrageous and quite frankly it's still going on. Like we just had cyberpunk release and it looks outstanding with a good PC and no desperate need for a RT enabled card to enjoy it all the same.
Folks like HW unboxed and Gamers Nexus have thankfully been doing the right thing and doing what reviewers should do - give their opinion, and back it up with logical videos.
While I 100% agree with you, that second video about driver issues was like 4 months too late. TBF I know HU said they personally weren't having driver issues.
But as someone who came within a hair of buying a 5700XT over a 2070S, thankfully there was a ton of reddit reports, smaller outlets, and in my case, a pile of 5700 returns at a local retailer to sway me away. So when that HU video about driver issues came about in early 2020, I was kinda thinkin "uuuh where have y'all been the last couple of months?" :)
edit: typos
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I know that GN have said in the past that they sourced hardware independently pre-release rather than receiving it from vendors. But I do not recall the specifics of the video or what hardware it related to, and don't care enough to go looking for it.
I mentioned it here because I was under the impression that this was what they did generally, rather than it being a one-off thing, but it sounds like I could be wrong about that. I don't think there's a video specifically detailing how they sourced their 30-series cards, but I've not paid that close attention to their coverage either.
If it were not for the availability issues right now, consumers would be far better served by waiting for truly independent reviews before making a purchasing decision, rather than reviews rushed out to meet a deadline mandated by the hardware vendor, using hardware provided by them in advance.
That's not to say current reviews are invalid, but the current situation is far from ideal as it is.
Imagine defending NV's shitty stance for last 3 days only to realize their corporate overlords apologized for said shitty stance.
Did anyone other than Nvidia make any FE boards for the 3000 series?
This would be hilarious if this incident made HWU a much bigger channel because of all the bigger tech tubers calling Nvidia out on their horseshit and drawing attention to that shitty letter they sent. Essentially having the opposite effect that they intended to happen.
HWU is absolutely fantastic for game benchmarks and monitor/motherboard reviews. They're the best in the business for it, and I appreciate that they're there to fill that niche. They're probably my second favorite tech YouTube behind GN.
Always have liked the Hardware Unboxed guys even if their benchmark selections are somewhat interesting...
I do like that that really stress 1440p and up. Too many places put up 1080p benchmarks on these new $700+ cards like anyone is looking to play at that resolution with them. Also monitor reviews are A+, they talked me into the Odyssey G7 even with their critical review on it.
I do like that that really stress 1440p and up. Too many places put up 1080p benchmarks on these new $700+ cards like anyone is looking to play at that resolution with them. Also monitor reviews are A+, they talked me into the Odyssey G7 even with their critical review on it.
To be fair I don't think they said they can't review Nvidia products, they just won't be receiving any from them.
Still a pretty jackass thing to do, especially since it's not like these these guys are unknown.
Ya thats what I meant by the review cards, the ones sent earlier to the review sites.
The fact is, we should be wanting more and varying outlets to provide more and varying coverage - if HWU have different priorities to another review outlet, their editorial direction is no less valid than another outlet prioritising their coverage on something else. If a particular outlet doesn't provide the specific coverage you like, perhaps don't watch them and instead watch coverage from outlets that cater more to your needs or taste?
As long as the outlet's coverage and opinion is fair, grounded in fact/reality and can be supported by their research and due diligence, why should we be hoping or agreeing with any valid outlet to be restricted access so we get fewer viewpoints on this hobby of ours? If HWU cover 20 different games in their bench marking suite and don't just focus on the latest 5 or so hyped releases, aren't they providing value as reviewers by covering more games that more people would be playing? Unless people are claiming HWU are somehow faking test results?
As long as the outlet's coverage and opinion is fair, grounded in fact/reality and can be supported by their research and due diligence, why should we be hoping or agreeing with any valid outlet to be restricted access so we get fewer viewpoints on this hobby of ours? If HWU cover 20 different games in their bench marking suite and don't just focus on the latest 5 or so hyped releases, aren't they providing value as reviewers by covering more games that more people would be playing? Unless people are claiming HWU are somehow faking test results?
Great news, I'm happy for HU and how fellow techtubers came together. Ironically, some of the grossest Nvidia supporting comments on this matter have actually been posted by this community in this thread.
I'm also not going to search hundreds of videos. I find it extremely unlikely that anyone could independently source pre-release pc tech products like this. There is no "gray market" for pre-launch gpu/cpu/mobo/etc. They clearly did not make this claim on any of their cpu/gpu reviews in this launch cycle. They acquired the products the same way every other reviewer did.
In principle, this all sounds fine. In practice, it doesn't work even without the availability issues. I bought an entire pc part by part in this cycle. I was coming from a laptop only, so needed cpu, gpu, mobo, case, fans, aio, ram, ssd, monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Every single part was researched online, including some tips from resetera, print sites like anandtech and rtings, but especially from watching a lot of youtube videos. I certainly encountered a few videos that were clearly in the "sponsored product" category, but the vast majority were fair *and* helpful. Most of these videos include objective data that you can use regardless of whether you agree with the hosts opinion. In particular, I was very glad to have different perspectives available since it was all new to me. Want to know what wasn't useful?
1. Videos over a few months old (except for case/keyboard/mice stuff that doesn't change that much). They just don't work as well given product lifecycles, game releases, bios/driver updates.
2. Videos that only have a limited comparison set. It is marginally useful to hear a person's opinion on one item. It is very useful to see how product A compares against products B, C, D, and more.
In your independent review only model, how would it work for pc's? There are over 100 different versions of 3080's from ~20 manufacturers. How many should this reviewer buy (each one costing them $699 or more)? But I really need to see results vs 3090 ($1500 or more) 3070, 3060ti. Well, actually, I need to compare against AMD also, so add 6900xt, 6800xt, 6800. It's a new launch, so I also need to compare against previous gen 2080ti, 2080, supers, and... You are asking for thousands of $ of inventory that will allow them to make a handful of videos and a few articles. Oh, and they can't just ebay them after the review because they need to rerun all the benchmarks anytime the testing setup changes for a new game or product launch (which happens every 3 to 6 months). Now multiply that again for cpus. And ram. and motherboards. and...This business model doesn't work.
Rtings model is great, but works because peripherals are ok reviewed as standalone products. For the most part, it doesn't matter what my receiver or blu-ray is when buying a tv or monitor. It does matter how my cpu/gpu/mobo/ram work together. E.g., I would have a lot less trust in a reviewer who couldn't address things like compatibility, scalability, cpu constraints, SAM, in a video card review.
Well given how well my 2080's have aged, I can certainly understand why looking to RTX as a longevity feature is rather dubious at this point. From my perspective at least that's basically a reason to upgrade every time a new iteration appears if you value RTX features. It's a rather fast moving emerging tech. I don't expect my 3080 to hold up to the next major card release either. From a 2-3 years use perspective, I expect it to hold up great for... 1440p Rasterization performance.
As for the looks back at AMD cards go, many of them were done due to requests by their Patreon members IIRC. I think Steve being impressed by improvements is mainly just him geeking out over the fact he found actual performance gains.
I do remember HU going back to look at Vega 64 vs the 1080 and basically saying "Still don't see any real difference. Vega 64's a poor value." So I don't think they actually go out of their way to make AMD look good, or approach things from such an agenda.
I think they are very data driven. (Only GN is more data driven of the tech tubers I've watched.) Their focus is bang for buck though, so they'll always recommend what pushes the most frames at the lowest relative price that's on the market at the time.
I am very impressed by the way that many PC hardware channels banded together and harshly criticized Nvidia until it was forced to walk back this ridiculous decision. They all exhibited exemplary journalistic integrity and respect for their audience. Well done.
Bruh
You literally went "Well I kinda get why NV would to this".
It doesn't even really matter if they're being fair, as long as they're not spreading lies. The Verge for instance has a bit of an Apple bias, yet their Android reviews, especially those by Dieter, are still fantastic. Never mind that HU, as was shown in this thread, has properly trashed AMD on more than one occasion.
Lol nope.
And tbf, very few people would buy a potentially inferior product just to stick to their morals. Hell, I'm really tempted by the 3080 myself - it is a fantastic GPU after all.
If only the same happened with games journalism and publishers. Quite a few outlets and YouTubers are blacklisted by publishers for "negative coverage"
And then I wrote "that said putting HU on blacklist for this is a really childish move on their part". I understand why they did this, but at no point I've said that I agree with, or approve what they did.
This warps back to my original point that HU panders mostly to a segment of the consumers that only care about here and now, which I believe is not representative of the community as a whole. Also, I would argue that something like mesh shaders or other DX12 Ultimate features are not "uncertain future promise".
Agree.
Good to see NV reverse its decision. I am not exactly upset if NV decides to take away access to FE GPUs to a hardware bencher, but I am not happy if NV adds some bit in there about pressuring an outlet to change its editorial. Bad PR move by NV here and it makes me wonder why they did it in the first place given how negative the reaction would be. Any idiot could have seen how bad this would look.
100% agree and why I didn't get a new video card this year. Seems pointless to me until raytracing performance is improved.
Indeed. I have several issues with the way games journalism works and this is one of them.